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  1. Global Catastrophic Risks by Chemical Contamination.Alexey Turchin - manuscript
    Abstract: Global chemical contamination is an underexplored source of global catastrophic risks that is estimated to have low a priori probability. However, events such as pollinating insects’ population decline and lowering of the human male sperm count hint at some toxic exposure accumulation and thus could be a global catastrophic risk event if not prevented by future medical advances. We identified several potentially dangerous sources of the global chemical contamination, which may happen now or could happen in the future: autocatalytic (...)
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  2. Population, Consumption & Climate Colonialism.Patrick Hassan - forthcoming - Journal of Population and Sustainability.
    Strategies for combating climate change which advocate for human population limitation have recently been understandably criticised on the grounds that they embody a form of 'climate colonialism': a moral wrong that involves disproportionally shifting the burdens of climate change onto developing, historically exploited nations (which have low per capita emissions but high fertility rates) in order to offset burdens in affluent nations (which have high per capita emissions but low fertility rates). This article argues that once the relevance of population (...)
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  3. If You Polluted, You’re Included: The All-Affected Principle and Carbon Tax Referendums.David Matias Paaske & Jakob Thrane Mainz - forthcoming - Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.
    In this paper, we argue that the All Affected Principle generates a puzzle when applied to carbon tax referendums. According to recent versions of the All Affected Principle, people should have a say in a democratic decision in positive proportion to how much the decision affects them. Plausibly, one way of being affected by a carbon tax referendum is to bear the economic burden of paying the tax. On this metric of affectedness, then, people who pollute a lot are ceteris (...)
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  4. The Moral Inefficacy of Carbon Offsetting.Tyler M. John, Amanda Askell & Hayden Wilkinson - 2024 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy (4):795-813.
    Many real-world agents recognise that they impose harms by choosing to emit carbon, e.g., by flying. Yet many do so anyway, and then attempt to make things right by offsetting those harms. Such offsetters typically believe that, by offsetting, they change the deontic status of their behaviour, making an otherwise impermissible action permissible. Do they succeed in practice? Some philosophers have argued that they do, since their offsets appear to reverse the adverse effects of their emissions. But we show that (...)
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  5. Space Debris: Litter or Pollution?Michael Lindquist - 2024 - Diálogos. Revista de Filosofía de la Universidad de Puerto Rico 55 (114):195-226.
    In this paper, I undertake a conceptual analysis of ordinary usages of the concepts of “litter” and “pollution.” If “litter” or “pollution” applies to space debris in its various contexts, then in dealing with space debris as an ethical concern, we may more neatly apply arguments for the wrongness of litter and pollution to these new contexts. After engaging in a conceptual analysis of “litter” and “pollution,” I consider whether these concepts apply to space debris, examining three contexts: (1) surface (...)
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  6. A directional dilemma in climate innovation.Kian Mintz-Woo - 2024 - Journal of Responsible Innovation 11 (1):2346972.
    One branch of the responsible innovation literature involves the direction of innovation: if the public or decision-makers can or should direct innovation, how should innovation be directed? This paper explicates a case study where directionality – the plurality of plausible values for innovation – is directly implicated. In this case, a key technology may require a strategy for innovation, but there are contrasting normative reasons to drive that innovation in different ways, reflecting two distinct moral values, ‘effectiveness’ and responsiveness to (...)
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  7. Fossil fuels.Kian Mintz-Woo - 2023 - In Benjamin Hale & Andrew Light (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Environmental Ethics. Routledge. pp. 317-326.
    First, with respect to our personal relationship to fossil fuels, this chapter introduces arguments about whether we should or even can address our own usage of fossil fuels. This involves determining whether offsetting emissions is morally required and practically possible. Second, with respect to our relationship with fossil fuels at the national level, it discusses forms of local resistance, especially divestment and pipeline protesting. Finally, with respect to our relationship with fossil fuels at the international level, it considers two types (...)
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  8. Climate Justice and the Duty of Restitution.Santiago Truccone-Borgogno - 2023 - Moral Philosophy and Politics 10 (1):203-224.
    Much of the climate justice discussion revolves around how the remaining carbon budget should be globally allocated. Some authors defend the unjust enrichment interpretation of the beneficiary pays principle (BPP). According to this principle, those states unjustly enriched from historical emissions should pay. I argue that if the BPP is to be constructed along the lines of the unjust enrichment doctrine, countervailing reasons that might be able to block the existence of a duty of restitution should be assessed. One might (...)
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  9. Carbon pricing ethics.Kian Mintz-Woo - 2022 - Philosophy Compass 17 (1):e12803.
    The three main types of policies for addressing climate change are command and control regulation, carbon taxes (or price instruments), and cap and trade (or quantity instruments). The first question in the ethics of carbon pricing is whether the latter two (price and quantity instruments) are preferable to command and control regulation. The second question is, if so, how should we evaluate the relative merits of price and quantity instruments. I canvass relevant arguments to explain different ways of addressing these (...)
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  10. The World Crisis - And What To Do About It: A Revolution for Thought and Action Preface and Chapter 1.Nicholas Maxwell - 2021 - Singapore: World Scientific.
    At present universities are devoted to the acquisition of specialized knowledge and technological know-how. They fail to do what they most need to do: help the public acquire a good understanding of what our problems are, what needs to be done to solve them. Universities do not even conceive of their task in that way. The result is that the public, by and large, fails to appreciate just how serious the problems that face us are, and so fails to put (...)
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  11. Will Carbon Taxes Help Address Climate Change?Kian Mintz-Woo - 2021 - Les ateliers de l'éthique/The Ethics Forum 16 (1):57-67.
    The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis ought to serve as a reminder about the costs of failure to consider another long-term risk, climate change. For this reason, it is imperative to consider the merits of policies that may help to limit climate damages. This essay rebuts three common objections to carbon taxes: (1) that they do not change behaviour, (2) that they generate unfair burdens and increase inequality, and (3) that fundamental, systemic change is needed instead of carbon taxes. The (...)
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  12. Why and Where to Fund Carbon Capture and Storage.Kian Mintz-Woo & Joe Lane - 2021 - Science and Engineering Ethics 27 (6):70.
    This paper puts forward two claims about funding carbon capture and storage. The first claim is that there are moral justifications supporting strategic investment into CO2 storage from global and regional perspectives. One argument draws on the empirical evidence which suggests carbon capture and storage would play a significant role in a portfolio of global solutions to climate change; the other draws on Rawls' notion of legitimate expectations and Moellendorf's Anti-Poverty principle. The second claim is that where to pursue this (...)
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  13. Acts, Omissions, Emissions.Garrett Cullity - 2015 - In Jeremy Moss (ed.), Climate Change and Justice. Cambridge University Press. pp. 148-64.
    What requirements does morality impose on us in relation to climate change? This question can be asked of individuals, of the entire global population, and of groups of various sizes in between. Given the case for accepting that we all collectively ought to be causing less climate-affecting pollution than we do, what follows from that about the moral status of the actions of members of the larger group? I examine two main ways in which moral requirements on group members can (...)
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  14. (3 other versions)Making our children pay for mitigation.Aaron Maltais - 2015 - In Aaron Maltais & Catriona McKinnon (eds.), The Ethics of Climate Governance. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. pp. 91-109.
    Investments in mitigating climate change have their greatest environmental impact over the long term. As a consequence the incentives to invest in cutting greenhouse gas emissions today appear to be weak. In response to this challenge, there has been increasing attention given to the idea that current generations can be motivated to start financing mitigation at much higher levels today by shifting these costs to the future through national debt. Shifting costs to the future in this way benefits future generations (...)
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  15. (3 other versions)Making our Children Pay for Mitigation.Aaron Maltais - 2015 - In Aaron Maltais & Catriona McKinnon (eds.), The Ethics of Climate Governance. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. pp. 91-110.
    Investments in mitigating climate change have their greatest environmental impact over the long-term. As a consequence the incentives to invest in cutting greenhouse gas emissions today appear to be weak. In response to this challenge there has been increasing attention given to the idea that current generations can be motivated to start financing mitigation at much higher levels today by shifting these costs to the future through national debt. Shifting costs to the future in this way benefits future generations by (...)
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  16. (3 other versions)Making our Children Pay for Mitigation.Aaron Maltais - 2015 - In Aaron Maltais & Catriona McKinnon (eds.), The Ethics of Climate Governance. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. pp. 91-110.
    Investments in mitigating climate change have their greatest environmental impact over the long-term. As a consequence the incentives to invest in cutting greenhouse gas emissions today appear to be weak. In response to this challenge there has been increasing attention given to the idea that current generations can be motivated to start financing mitigation at much higher levels today by shifting these costs to the future through national debt. Shifting costs to the future in this way benefits future generations by (...)
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  17. (3 other versions)Making our Children Pay for Mitigation.Aaron Maltais - 2015 - In Aaron Maltais & Catriona McKinnon (eds.), The Ethics of Climate Governance. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. pp. 91-110.
    Investments in mitigating climate change have their greatest environmental impact over the long-term. As a consequence the incentives to invest in cutting greenhouse gas emissions today appear to be weak. In response to this challenge there has been increasing attention given to the idea that current generations can be motivated to start financing mitigation at much higher levels today by shifting these costs to the future through national debt. Shifting costs to the future in this way benefits future generations by (...)
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  18. Carbon Leakage and the Argument from No Difference.Matthew Rendall - 2015 - Environmental Values 24 (4):535-52.
    Critics of carbon mitigation often appeal to what Jonathan Glover has called ‘the argument from no difference’: that is, ‘If I don’t do it, someone else will’. Yet even if this justifies continued high emissions by the industrialised countries, it cannot excuse business as usual. The North’s emissions might not harm the victims of climate change in the sense of making them worse off than they would otherwise be. Nevertheless, it receives benefits produced at the latter’s expense, with the result (...)
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  19. Response to Commentaries on ‘Ethical and Technical Challenges in Compensating for Harm Due to Solar Radiation Management Geoengineering’.Toby Svoboda & Peter Irvine - 2015 - Ethics, Policy and Environment 18 (1):103-105.
    We thank the commentators for their interesting and helpful feedback on our previously published target article (Svoboda and Irvine, 2014). One of our objectives in that article was to identify areas of uncertainty that would need to be addressed in crafting a just SRM compensation system. The commentators have indicated some possible ways of reducing such uncertainty. Although we cannot respond to all their points due to limitations of space, we wish to address here the more pressing criticisms the commentators (...)
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  20. Towards a Just Solar Radiation Management Compensation System: A Defense of the Polluter Pays Principle.Robert K. Garcia - 2014 - Ethics, Policy and Environment 17 (2):178-182.
    In their ‘Ethical and Technical Challenges in Compensating for Harm Due to Solar Radiation Management Geoengineering’ (2014), Toby Svoboda and Peter Irvine (S&I) argue that there are significant technical and ethical challenges that stand in the way of crafting a just solar radiation management (SRM) compensation system. My aim in this article is to contribute to the project of addressing these problems. I do so by focusing on one of S&I’s important ethical challenges, their claim that the polluter pays principle (...)
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  21. Climate Justice and Temporally Remote Emissions.Ewan Kingston - 2014 - Social Theory and Practice 40 (2):281-303.
    Many suggest that we should look backward and measure the differences among various parties' past emissions of greenhouse gases to allocate moral responsibility to remedy climate change. Such backward-looking approaches face two key objections: that previous emitters were unaware of the consequences of their actions, and that the emitters who should be held responsible have disappeared. I assess several arguments that try to counter these objections: the argument from strict liability, arguments that the beneficiary of harmful or unjust emissions should (...)
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  22. The Hanford Advisory Board: participatory democracy, technology, and representation.Alex Sager & Alex Zakaras - 2014 - Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences 4 (2):142-155.
    The Hanford Advisory Board (HAB) is a broadly representative, deliberative body that provides formal policy advice on Department of Energy (DOE) proposals and decisions at the Hanford nuclear cleanup site near Richland, Washington. Despite considerable skepticism about the effectiveness of citizen advisory boards, we contend that the HAB offers promising institutional innovations. Drawing on our analysis of the HAB’s formal advice as well as our interviews with board members and agency officials, we explore the HAB’s unique design, outline a normative (...)
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  23. Ethical and Technical Challenges in Compensating for Harm Due to Solar Radiation Management Geoengineering.Toby Svoboda & Peter Irvine - 2014 - Ethics, Policy and Environment 17 (2):157-174.
    As a response to climate change, geoengineering with solar radiation management has the potential to result in unjust harm. Potentially, this injustice could be ameliorated by providing compensation to victims of SRM. However, establishing a just SRM compensation system faces severe challenges. First, there is scientific uncertainty in detecting particular harmful impacts and causally attributing them to SRM. Second, there is ethical uncertainty regarding what principles should be used to determine responsibility and eligibility for compensation, as well as determining how (...)
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  24. (1 other version)A response to "Libertarianism and pollution: the limits of absolutist moralism".J. C. Lester - 2011 - In Jan Lester (ed.), Arguments for Liberty: A Libertarian Miscellany. Buckingham: The University of Buckingham Press. pp. 155-159.
    Most self-identified libertarians unwittingly have a moral muddle without a central factual theory of liberty. They cannot yet see that they first need to sort out what liberty is, and therefore entails if instantiated, and only after that can moral questions about it be coherently raised and tackled.
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