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This book analyzes the major ethical issues surrounding climate engineering. It focuses primarily on solar radiation management techniques for engineering the climate, such as injecting reflective aerosols into the stratosphere or brightening marine clouds. While such techniques might reduce some of the risks of climate change, they also raise ethical questions that are important to address. These issues include questions of distributive justice, the ethics of risk imposition, procedural justice in decision-making, and obligations to future generations. The author argues that there are reasons to think that certain uses of SRM are ethically defensible under realistic future conditions.
List of contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: Benefits
Chapter 2: Distributions
Chapter 3: Decisions
Chapter 4: Virtues
Chapter 5: Dilemmas
Chapter 6: Comparisons
About the author
Toby Svoboda is an assistant professor of philosophy at Fairfield University. He has published in journals such as Environmental Ethics, Environmental Values, and The Journal of Moral Philosophy. He is the author of Duties Regarding Nature: A Kantian Environmental Ethic (Routledge, 2015).
Summary
This book analyzes major ethical issues surrounding the use of climate engineering, particularly solar radiation management (SRM) techniques, which have the potential to reduce some risks of anthropogenic climate change but also carry their own risks of harm and injustice. The book argues that we should approach the ethics of climate engineering via "non-ideal theory," which investigates what justice requires given the fact that many parties have failed to comply with their duty to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Specifically, it argues that climate justice should be approached comparatively, evaluating the relative justice or injustice of feasible policies under conditions that are likely to hold within relevant timeframes. Likely near-future conditions include "pessimistic scenarios," in which no available option avoids serious ethical problems. The book contends that certain uses of SRM can be ethically defensible in some pessimistic scenarios. This is the first book devoted to the many ethical issues surrounding climate engineering.
Additional text
"Svoboda has written a book that does a good job staking a place in the debate around the ethics of solar radiation management (SRM), while still serving as good introduction. It also contributes to growing reflection on the relationship between climate change and non-ideal theories of justice." – Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
