Philosophy

1. What philosophy can contribute
to the climate change debate

3. “We do not yet have a good understanding of many
of the ethical issues at stake in global-warming
policy”. We remain confused about vital factors like
who should take responsibility, equity between
generations and how to think about nonhuman
animals. This confusion, gives us reason for avoiding
our obligations. Resistance by governments to
taking action, attempts by various players to throw
sand in the eyes of the public and specious
arguments to justify an unwillingness to do what is
necessary – “moral corruption”.
The subversion of our moral discourse to our own
ends
Clive Hamilton quoting Stephen Gardiner

4. • The question of how we should address the
impacts of climate change- both now and in
the future
• The extent of our obligations to take action to
reduce our emissions in order to limit global
warming
• How best to understand the collective action
necessary to address climate change
• The argument from skepticism and why we
still face significant skepticism as to the causes
of climate change

5. How should we best address the
impacts of climate change?
• “CO2 concentration has ranged between 172
and 300 ppm for the past 800 000 years. In
2008, CO2 concentration has risen to a much
higher 383 ppm. Global CO2 concentration
has risen 37 per cent since the Industrial
Revolution” CSIRO, 2011
http://www.csiro.au/Outcomes/Climate/Understanding/Humans-Changing-Climate/Atmospheric-greenhouse-gas-exceeds-
pre-industrial-levels.aspx

6. Global effects of climate change

7. Precautionary principle
If an action or policy has a suspected risk of
causing harm to the public or to
the environment, in the absence of scientific
consensus that the action or policy is harmful,
the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls
on those taking the action.

8. How to reduce impacts in the future?

9. Cosmopolitanism
• The increasing rise of capitalism and world-wide
trade and its theoretical reflections
• The reality of ever expanding empires whose
reach extended across the globe
• The voyages around the world and the
anthropological so-called ‘discoveries’ facilitated
through these
• The renewed interest in Hellenistic philosophy
• The emergence of a notion of human rights and a
philosophical focus on human reason
Kleingeld and Brown- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2002

10. Examples of Cosmopolitanism
• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), 1948, along with
related covenants;
• The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 1992;
• The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, 1992;
• The Rio Declaration on the Environment and Development, 1992;
• The UNESCO Declaration on the Responsibili- ties of the Present
Generations Towards Future Generations, 1997;
• The Kyoto Protocol, 1997;
• The Earth Charter, 2000, as recognized by the UNESCO General
Conference;
• The Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development, 2002;
• The Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (UDBHR),
2005.

11. Game Theory

12. Tim Soutphommasane
http://www.themonthly.com.au/ethics-climate-change-peter-singer-tim-soutphommasane-
p2-2586

14. Skepticism
CSIRO
Second Annual Survey of Australian Attitudes to Climate Change:
INTERIM REPORT 2011
Humans are causing
climate change Climate change is a
natural fluctuation

15. Earth’s 35 year thermal inertia
“The Earth has a 35 year thermal inertia and so… we’re waiting 35 years
even to see the effects of what we did 35 years ago. So it would be another
30 years until we started to really see, even at the only 380 parts per million
level that we’re doing now, what those effects are.
And we’ll be at 550 parts per million by then – or more. It’s never been
above 300. So there’s a serious debate over whether that will be very bad
or not, but all we know is no matter what we do when we get there, there’s
no turning back."
Dr. Nathan Lewis
Professor of Chemistry
California Institute of Technology

16. The detail of modern science is incomprehensible
to almost everyone, which means that we have
to take what scientists say on trust. Yet science
tells us to trust nothing, to believe only what can
be demonstrated. This contradiction is fatal to
public confidence
George Monbiot

17. Natural variations and climate change

18. The argument against skepticism
“Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the
'body of fact' [linking smoking with disease] that exists in the mind of
the general public”
1969, Brown and Williamson

19. Attitudes to climate change based on political affiliation