Runaway climate change: A justice-based case for precautions

Journal of Social Philosophy

Volumn 40, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 187-203

  McKinnon, Catriona ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF READING   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 79953050377     PISSN: 00472786     EISSN: 14679833     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9833.2009.01446.x     Document Type: Article

References (47)

1. James Hansen, "Tipping Point: Perspective of a Climatologist: Abstract." Available at http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/inpress/Hansen- 1.html (accessed July 5, 2007).
2. See Pearce, With Speed and Violence.
3. See Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (London: HarperCollins, 2007), 207-62.
4. See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 251-58.
5. Cf. Kristian S. Ekeli, "Environmental Risks, Uncertainty and Intergenerational Ethics", Environmental Values 13, no. 4(2004):426-27.
6. See Clive Spash, Greenhouse Economics: Value and Ethics (London: Routledge, 2002), 122.
7. See, for example, Richard Posner, Catastrophe: Risk and Response (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 148;
8. and Cass Sunstein, "The Catastrophic Harm Precautionary Principle", Issues in Legal Scholarship 7(2007): Article 3, available at http://www.bepress.com/ils/iss10/art3 (accessed July 1, 2007).
9. For example, see Sven Ove Hansson, "The Limits of Precaution", Foundations of Science 2, no. 2(1997):293-306;
10. Per Sandin, "The Precautionary Principle and the Concept of Precaution", Environmental Values 13(2004):461-75;
11. European Environment Agency, The Precautionary Principle in the 20th Century (London: Earthscan, 2002);
12. Derek Turner and Lauren Hartzell, "The Lack of Clarity in the Precautionary Principle", Environmental Values 13(2004):449-60;
13. and Radoslav S. Dimitrov, "Precaution in Global Environmental Politics", International Journal of Global Environmental Issues 5, no. 1(2005):96-113.
14. see European Environment Agency, The Precautionary Principle, 6.
15. For more on the WPP see Edward Soule, "Assessing the Precautionary Principle", Public Affairs Quarterly 14, no. 4(2000):309-28.
16. Cass Sunstein, Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 14.
17. Both figures given in George Monbiot, Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning (London: Allen Lane, 2006), 51.
18. With a range of -1% to +3.5%. The Stern Review, Executive Summary (2006), 13-16, available at http://www.hmtreasury.gov.uk/media/8AC/F7/Executive- Summary.pdf (accessed February 21, 2007).
19. Note that Gardiner refers to this principle as the "Rawlsian Core Precautionary Principle." See Stephen Gardiner, "A Core Precautionary Principle", The Journal of Political Philosophy 14, no. 1(2006):33-60, at 47-48.
20. see Gardiner, "A Core Precautionary Principle", 56-57.
21. see Frederic Gaspart and Axel Gosseries, "Are Generational Savings Unjust?" Politics, Philosophy and Economics 6(2007):193-217.
22. See, for example, Bjørn Lomborg, "Climate Change Can Wait. World Health Can't", The Observer, July 2, 2006.
23. See, for example, Frank Ackerman and Lisa Heinzerling, Priceless: On Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing (New York: The New Press, 1994);
24. and Elizabeth Anderson, Value in Ethics and Economics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).
25. Of course, economists and utilitarians-for whom all values are commensurable-will vigorously object at this point. Classic defenses of the existence of incommensurable values fit to meet these objection can be found in, for example, Isaiah Berlin, "The Pursuit of the Ideal", The Crooked Timber of Humanity (London: John Murray, 1990);
26. and Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).
27. John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 102.
28. See Gerald Dickens, "The Blast in the Past", Nature 401(1999):752-55.
29. Scott L. Wing, Guy J. Harrington, Francesca A. Smith, Jonathan I. Bloch, Douglas M. Boyer, and Katherine H. Freeman, "Transient Floral Change and Rapid Global Warming at the Paleocene-Eocene Boundary", Science 310(2005):333-36.
30. See Syukuro Manabe, Richard T. Wetherald, Christopher Milly, Thomas L. Delworth, and Ronald J. Stouffer, "Century-Scale Change in Water Availability: CO2 Quadrupling Experiment", Climatic Change 64(2004):59-76.
31. Chris Huntingford, Rhiannon L. Jones, Christel Prudhomme, Richard C. Lamb, John H. C. Gash, and David A. Jones, "Regional Climate-Model Predictions of Extreme Rainfall for a Changing Climate", Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 129(2003):1607-21.
32. See Lynas, Six Degrees, 223-30.
33. See David Kidder and Thomas Worsley, "Causes and Consequences of Extreme Permo-Triassic Warming to Globally Equitable Climate and Relation to the Permo-Triassic Extinction and Recovery", Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 203, nos. 3-4(2004):207-37.
34. See Gregory Ryskin, "Methane-Driven Oceanic Eruptions and Mass Extinctions", Geology 31, no. 9(2003):741-44.
35. See Jesper K. Nielsen and Yanan Shen, "Evidence for Sulphidic Deep Water During the Late Permian in the East Greenland Basin", Geology 32, no. 12(2004):1037-40.
36. See Lee R. Kump et al., "Massive Release of Hydrogen Sulfide to the Surface Ocean and Atmosphere During Intervals of Ocean Anoxia", Geology 33, no. 5(2005):367-400.
37. Note that this is not to say that there could be no justice between people in such circumstances, or between us and them; rather, it is to say that they would be in no position to achieve justice. See Brian Barry, "Circumstances of Justice and Future Generations", in Obligations to Future Generations, ed. R. I. Sikora and Brian Barry (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1978), 204-48.
38. For reflections bearing on this point, see John M. Taurek, "Should the Numbers Count?" Philosophy and Public Affairs 6, no. 4(1977):293-316.
39. For more on this question, see my "Getting Motivated in the Last Chance Saloon", Critical Review of Social and Political Philosophy (in press).
40. For discussion of whether placing the strains of commitment at the heart of political justification in this way is consistent with a contractualist approach, see Jean Hampton, "Contracts and Choices: Does Rawls Have a Social Contract Theory?" The Journal of Philosophy 77, no. 6(1980):315-38.
41. See my "Corrective Justice and Climate Change", Annual Review of Law and Ethics (in press).
42. See Posner, Catastrophe, 24-29.
43. This principle states that a person ought to be free from interference by the state and by others unless her actions affect the interests of others and cause them harm. See John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), chap. 1.
44. For a classic discussion, see Bernard Williams, "Moral Luck", in Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 20-40.
45. For discussions that bear on this hard question, see Judith Jarvis Thomson, "Remarks on Causation and Liability", Philosophy and Public Affairs 13, no. 2(1984):101-33.
46. and Sunstein, "The Catastrophic Harm Precautionary Principle."
47. See Sunstein, Laws of Fear, 2.