These are the articles that appeared in Journal of Global Ethics 7 (2011), special issue "Climate Ethics." An expanded edition, as a book, is in the works, with essays on African wisdom and Arctic perspectives. I have no legit hyperlinks (sorry). The intro is excerpted below. An oddity about this issue is that 'climate ethics' seemed alright as a title when I put the collection together, but it strikes me now as a misnomer. If climate ethics is what critics say--a technical application of analytic approaches meaningful in an Anglo-American domain--then what we are doing is not climate ethics!
Call it 'climate philosophy'.
Call it 'climate philosophy'.
Plan B: global ethics on climate change
Martin Schönfeld
7 (2011): 129-136
climate, imagination, Kant, and situational awareness
Michael Thompson
7 (2011): 137-148
moral progress and Canada's climate failure
Byron Williston
7 (2011): 149-160
climate change and philosophy in Latin America
Ernesto O. Hernandez
7 (2011): 161-172
Watsuji Tetsuro, Fudo, and climate change
Bruce B. Janz
7 (2011): 173-184
climate change and the ecological intelligence of Confucius
Shih-yu Kuo
7 (2011): 185-194
a Daoist response to climate change
Chen Xia, Martin Schönfeld
7 (2011): 195-204
justice, negative GHIs, and the consumption of farmed animal products
Jan Deckers
7 (2011): 205-216
Excerpt from my introduction (pp. 129-136)
"(p. 129) If we are not careful, climate change may trigger the greatest catastrophe in the history of civilization. Climate change is not a future danger anymore. The processes are well underway, and a destabilization of the Earth system has begun. This lends vital urgency to the question that is at the heart of ethics: what should we do? Philosophy is the rational investigation of existence in the world, but the world is different now from the one our ancestors inhabited. The difference concerns not so much the obvious phenomena one associates with modernity, such as urbanization, industry, and technology, because all of them, in various ways, have shaped the world already for centuries. The real and radical difference, between our generation and all the ones in the past, is the collective arrival at the limit of existing in the world. The world is our oikos or house; we have filled this ecological house over time, and now the house is full. Reaching such limits is an experience bygone cultures knew as well, but only in localized form. This is the first time in all of history that global civilization without exception – the sum-total of humankind – arrives at this juncture.
"... (p. 133) The new reality of climate change informs virtually all phenomena on the list of environmental problems, plus spawning entire new orders of hitherto unknown troubles of its own. From the traditional vantage point of environmental ethics, it also affects whoever has moral standing in some form, whether these are people, future generations, apes, animals, plants, biotic systems, or Aldo Leopold’s integrity of the land. Climate change, through its diverse facets, manifold risks, and multiple dimensions, is an integrative reality. It puts all the traditional problems in a new place. It arises as the salient context for all of them. Thus, it is not an entry on the list; it is the new paper the old items are written on. To put it baldly, it is the list. Because being-in-the-world has arrived at the fork, everything is now different. As an academic aside, it is perhaps worth noting that environmental ethics is now obsolete. The sum-total of its subject-matter currently integrates in the existential context of climate change. Thus, climate ethics is its rightful heir. From a philosophical look at the fork, all empirical trends point to the same conceptual conclusion: taking the right path – the path of sustainability, mitigation, and resilience – requires civilization to put as much distance as possible between itself and the paradigm whose implementation unleashed the climate crisis. The question of where we stand at the fork is also a question about location relative to the paradigm.
"... (p. 134) This topic issue of Journal of Global Ethics is based on the assumption that conventional modes of thought are bankrupt. It is difficult to believe that the normative perspectives and conceptual tools that contributed to the climate crisis in the first place, such as discounting against the future, cost-benefit analysis, and other utilitarian market devices, will be capable of providing us with a solution. Put differently, I doubt that ‘Plan A’ is going to work. A continued deliberation of market tools and utilitarian devices may not lead very far. What is worse, it appears that the prevailing mentalities of philosophical convention are not going to be of great use either. Philosophy, in the past century, split into postmodern thought and analytic philosophy. These two camps, despite their obvious differences, share the common ground of skepticism. Skepticism is inappropriate and irresponsible in the face of absolute limits. Postmodernity emphasizes culture over nature, (p. 135) deconstruction over structure, and interpretation over lawfulness. Such emphasis, it appears, makes things worse, as postmodern approaches are easily appropriated by climate deniers for corporate gain. Analyticity stresses the breakdown of information, the isolation of data, and the separation of events from context. This appears wrong-headed and obsolete, because climate change asks philosophers to do the precise opposite: the reconciliation of information, the understanding of data, and the integration of events in context.
Analysis is not needed now; synthesis is."
"... (p. 133) The new reality of climate change informs virtually all phenomena on the list of environmental problems, plus spawning entire new orders of hitherto unknown troubles of its own. From the traditional vantage point of environmental ethics, it also affects whoever has moral standing in some form, whether these are people, future generations, apes, animals, plants, biotic systems, or Aldo Leopold’s integrity of the land. Climate change, through its diverse facets, manifold risks, and multiple dimensions, is an integrative reality. It puts all the traditional problems in a new place. It arises as the salient context for all of them. Thus, it is not an entry on the list; it is the new paper the old items are written on. To put it baldly, it is the list. Because being-in-the-world has arrived at the fork, everything is now different. As an academic aside, it is perhaps worth noting that environmental ethics is now obsolete. The sum-total of its subject-matter currently integrates in the existential context of climate change. Thus, climate ethics is its rightful heir. From a philosophical look at the fork, all empirical trends point to the same conceptual conclusion: taking the right path – the path of sustainability, mitigation, and resilience – requires civilization to put as much distance as possible between itself and the paradigm whose implementation unleashed the climate crisis. The question of where we stand at the fork is also a question about location relative to the paradigm.
"... (p. 134) This topic issue of Journal of Global Ethics is based on the assumption that conventional modes of thought are bankrupt. It is difficult to believe that the normative perspectives and conceptual tools that contributed to the climate crisis in the first place, such as discounting against the future, cost-benefit analysis, and other utilitarian market devices, will be capable of providing us with a solution. Put differently, I doubt that ‘Plan A’ is going to work. A continued deliberation of market tools and utilitarian devices may not lead very far. What is worse, it appears that the prevailing mentalities of philosophical convention are not going to be of great use either. Philosophy, in the past century, split into postmodern thought and analytic philosophy. These two camps, despite their obvious differences, share the common ground of skepticism. Skepticism is inappropriate and irresponsible in the face of absolute limits. Postmodernity emphasizes culture over nature, (p. 135) deconstruction over structure, and interpretation over lawfulness. Such emphasis, it appears, makes things worse, as postmodern approaches are easily appropriated by climate deniers for corporate gain. Analyticity stresses the breakdown of information, the isolation of data, and the separation of events from context. This appears wrong-headed and obsolete, because climate change asks philosophers to do the precise opposite: the reconciliation of information, the understanding of data, and the integration of events in context.
Analysis is not needed now; synthesis is."
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