Paul G. Harris, Global Ethics and Climate Change (Edinburgh University Press, 2016), 230 pages. Climate change is the world’s greatest challenge. Solutions to it can be found in global ethics. With each passing year, the causes and consequences of climate change grow worse: more pollution from more people and more countries, leading to more adverse environmental changes and widening human suffering. The failure of governments to address climate change effectively has never been more evident. Making the connections between global ethics and climate change, and acting on those connections, has never been more urgent. Building on the ethical and political analyses of the first edition, this edition updates the science and impacts of climate change, exposes the increasing intensity of dangerous trends – particularly growing global affluence, material consumption and pollution – and highlights the intensifying moral dimensions of resulting changes to the environment. In so doing, the book shows readers how vital global justice will be to our common future. Alas, it is too late to stop climate change. It is not too late to reduce the untold injustices it portends. (All of the author’s royalties from sales of Global Ethics and Climate Change are paid by Edinburgh University Press directly to Oxfam.)
“A powerful case for focusing on individual rights and responsibilities in the framework of a new world ethic.”
Peter Singer, Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics, Princeton University, and Laureate Professor, University of Melbourne
As an aid to professors and students using the book in university courses, a companion learning guide is freely available here.
To read the book’s introduction, click here.
Paul G. Harris 