Ethical_Issues_Raised_by_Global_Warming

Ethical Issues Raised by Global Warming Tera Bazanka SOC 120 Robert Strain February 19, 2010 In 1950, the world’s population was 2.5 billion people. By the year 2050, it is expected to grow to between nine and ten billion people. During this time of population growth, the human impact on the planet is expected to increase significantly, not only because of the huge increase in our numbers, but also because of the new technical power to dig deeper, cut faster, build larger, and traverse more quickly great distances in automobiles, trucks, and planes. As a result, serious new environmental problems have emerged. These problems include global climate change; worldwide loss of rain forests, and wetlands; decline of coastal ocean quality; and the deterioration of the world’s freshwater and ecological systems. These new threats raise critical new ethical questions for the human race. Yet even some of the most obvious ethical dimensions of emerging global environmental problems are only dimly seen by most; rarely are they part of the public debate. In a 1999 New York Times op-ed piece on climate change entitled “Indifferent to Planet Pain,” Bill McKibben, wondering why the ethical dimensions of global warming were not more widely understood, writes: “I used to wonder why my parents’ generation had been so blind to the wrongness of segregation; they were people of good conscience, so why had inertia ruled so long' Now I think I understand better. It took the emotional shock of seeing police dogs rip the flesh of protestors for white people to really understand the day-to-day corrosiveness of Jim Crow. We need that same gut understanding of our environmental situation if we are to take the giant steps we must take soon.”     Most ethical systems are focused on our responsibilities to people who are close by and can be directly affected by our actions. The technical power that humans now have to affect people they will never meet is a challenge for such ethical systems. Still, global environmental problems raise very serious ethical issues: for example, a global climate change will hurt the poorest on the planet, seriously reduce the quality of life for future generations, and threaten plants and animals around the world. For example, the greenhouse effect, which allows incoming solar radiation to pass through the earth’s atmosphere but prevents much of the outgoing infrared radiation from escaping into outer space, is a natural process. Natural greenhouse gases include water vapor, carbon dioxide, ozone, and other trace gases. Without the greenhouse effect, life on Earth as we know it would not exist. Emissions of some greenhouse gases are a result of human activities, and these create an enhanced greenhouse effect. These human-induced greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone-depleting substances. Human activities have altered the chemical composition of the atmosphere; as a result, the earth’s climate is changing. Over the past two hundred years, emissions from cars, power plants, and other human inventions have led to a substantial increase in the natural concentration of carbon dioxide and more than a 100 percent increase in the atmospheric concentration of methane. Globally, the average temperature of the earth has warmed over 0.55°C since the mid-nineteenth century. Climate models show that the poorest people around the world are the most vulnerable to climate change. The ecological systems of many of the poorest nations are most at risk. Human-induced climate change represents an important additional stress to the many ecological and socioeconomic systems already affected by pollution, increasing resource demands, and no sustainable management practices. The vulnerability of human health and socioeconomic systems—and, to a lesser extent, ecological systems—depends upon economic circumstances and institutional infrastructure. This implies that systems typically are more vulnerable in developing countries where economic and institutional circumstances are less favorable. The poorest nations are most vulnerable to storms, flooding, and a rising sea level. These estimates put about 46 million people per year currently at risk of flooding due to storm surges. Countries with higher population densities will be more vulnerable. Storm surges and flooding could threaten entire cultures. The health of the poor worldwide is at greatest risk from global warming, since climate change is expected to cause significant loss of life in the poorest nations. Direct health effects include increases in cardio respiratory mortality and illness due to an anticipated increase in and duration of heat waves. The food supplies of the poor are especially at risk from global warming, because many of the poorest nations are in the poorest regions of Africa, Asia, Central and South America. Many of the world’s poorest people—particularly those living in subtropical and tropical areas and those dependent on isolated agricultural systems in semi-arid and arid regions—are most at risk of increased hunger. Global food supplies during the next century may become increasingly inadequate to meet projected consumption due to both climatic and no climatic factors. The poorest nations have the least financial ability to adapt to climate change. The poorest nations are the least prepared to spend money on ideas that might allow them to adjust to hotter and drier climates, more violent storms, rising sea levels, degraded agricultural resources, and increased burdens on human health organizations. Many countries cannot afford food imports, irrigation systems, large-scale public works to prevent flooding, or costly health protection strategies. The poor will be the most vulnerable to the unanticipated shocks of climate change. There are a number of ethical questions raised by human-induced climate change such as; how much degradation from human-induced climate change should the international community should tolerate' On the other hand, is the absence of scientific certainty about the consequences of human-induced climate change a valid excuse for not taking protective action' Although there are still some scientific uncertainties about the timing and magnitude of climate change, many facts are not in dispute. We know, for instance, how naturally occurring greenhouse gases warm the planet, how these greenhouse gases absorb infrared radiation, that humans are releasing large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, that greenhouse gases are accumulating in the atmosphere in proportion to their human use, and that there has always been a strong correlation in the historical record between levels of greenhouse gases and temperature. We also know that human-induced changes in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will change the climate in a way that will cause great damage. What we do not know with certainty, given nonlinear feedback mechanisms in the climate system, is the actual timing and magnitude of the change. Do the developed nations have special responsibilities to act before the poorer nations' Another standard objection to American action on climate change is the argument that the United States should take no action until the developing world agrees to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This argument rests on the fact that the United States cannot solve the problem of climate change by itself, and some nations in the developing world continue to contribute to the problem. If the United States acts and the developing world does not, so goes this argument, climate change will still happen and American industry will put itself at a competitive disadvantage.   These environmental problems, like the problems of human-induced climate change and loss of biodiversity, raise the ethical question of our human duty to protect animals and plants from destruction by human behavior and of the responsibilities of the developed world to the developing world. The use of organic chemicals in any nation can cause damage elsewhere. Both ocean and fresh-water degradation are being caused in part by a climate change that is largely caused by the developed nations. For these and several other environmental problems, there is a direct causal link between activity in the developed world and damage in the developing world. For other problems, the causal connection is indirect. For instance, some of the damage to coastal areas and water supplies in the developing world is being caused by manufacturing and resource extraction in poorer nations to meet high levels of consumption in richer nations. Moreover, the costs of mitigating toxic, ocean, and fresh-water problems are much more onerous for developing nations. Progress on solving these problems depends on deciding who should pay for the protection of global environmental resources—and this is an issue of distributive justice. References Bill McKibben, New York Times, 4 September 1999 John Houghton, Global Warming, The Complete Briefing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997 ), 111.