volume 01 issue 02 archive
Four Connections: Ecology, Economy, Ethics and Citizenship
“One Person, One Share” of the Atmosphere
by Peter Singer
March 25, 2009
For most of human existence, people living only short distances apart might as well have been living in separate worlds. As a result, our moral intuitions evolved to deal with problems within our community, rather than with the impact of our actions on those far away.
readmoreperspectives
The Ethics of Climate Change
by Dale JamiesonThe consequences of climate change will challenge us to reshape and reform our concepts of individual and political morality.
readmoreClimate Change Changes Everything
by Howard SilvermanA discipline-by-discipline tally of assumptions altered and challenges encountered.
readmoreSustainability: The S-Word
by Howard SilvermanSustainability, writes Bill McKibben, is a buzzword without the buzz.
readmoreClimate Change and Cosmopolitan Citizenship
by Steve VanderheidenWhat does it mean to share the obligations of citizenship with all of humanity?
readmoreStuart Kauffman: The Open Universe and the Sacred
by Howard SilvermanI’m going to talk about a sense of God that I think is sharable.
readmoreThinking about “The Green Mind”
by Howard SilvermanHow good a society does human nature permit? How good a human nature does society permit?
readmoreThe Ethics of Geoengineering
by Dale JamiesonAt least three important ethical considerations come to bear: the importance of democratic decision-making, the prohibition against irreversible changes, and the significance of learning to live with nature.
readmoreThe Work of a Writer in a World of Wounds
by Kathleen Dean MooreTo know what are our responsibilities, we must ask, what are our gifts?
readmoreThe Story of the Trillion Tons of Carbon
by Howard SilvermanA new target for carbon emissions reveals fresh insights.
readmoreA Right to Development
by Paul BaerEmissions after all are a means, not an end; the end is what we have come to call “development."
readmoreClimate Change and Subsistence
by Elizabeth GrossmanFor Arctic communities, climate change is not a hypothetical event.
readmoreNotebook 2009: The Summer of Our Climate Politics
by Howard SilvermanThe science of greenhouse gases dominated climate debates for many years. More and more, climate will become a social phenomenon as well.
readmoreClimate Change as a Perfect Moral Storm
by Stephen GardinerClimate change brings together global and intergenerational challenges to our ability to behave ethically.
readmoreSeeking Climate Reconciliation
by Howard SilvermanUnder business-as-usual climate projections, many of today’s children would grow up to become both perpetrators and victims.
readmoreWhat We Talk about When We Talk about Climate
by Howard SilvermanWhat we talk about when we talk about climate is the story of social-ecological relationships, with all their uncertainties and fact-value entanglements.
readmoreCollins and Evans: Expertise in the Age of Amateurs
by Howard SilvermanThe problem of extension means setting boundaries around the legitimate contribution of the general public to the technical part of technical debates.
readmoreSheila Jasanoff: Public Faith in Climate Science
by Howard SilvermanThe IPCC has demonstrated that it can learn and change. That ingenuity should be directed toward building relationships of trust and respect with global citizens.
readmoreTalking about Design for Resilience
by Howard SilvermanDesign is an idealistic enterprise. Design is concerned with how things ought to be.
readmoreBrian Wynne: Climate Scientism and Public Policy
by Howard SilvermanScientism is the ingrained assumption that scientific evidence is the only authority that can justify policy action.
readmoreParticipatory Technology Assessment
by Howard SilvermanWhat innovations in learning tools and methods might help foster social-ecological resilience?
readmoreWebler and Renn: Conflicting Rationalities
by Howard SilvermanEnvironmental decision making is aggravated by differences between the social rationality of lay people and the bounded rationality of experts.
readmorePragmatism in the Age of Social-Ecological Truths
by Howard SilvermanThe trail of the human serpent is over everything.
readmoreWrapping Up Issue #2
by Howard SilvermanThanks for joining P&P in this look at social, ethical and psychological understandings of a changing climate.
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media library
Responding to the Threat of Climate Change
Dan Gilbert speaks at Pop!Tech 2007 on why the threat of climate change fails to trigger alarms.
readmoreJeffrey Sachs on Global Cooperation
Suppose we knew the technical answers. How do we get to the global change that's necessary?
readmoreTim Flannery: Montreal Protocol Day
The agreement on the Montreal Protocol represents a moment in history of great significance.
readmoreThe Age of Consequences
Climate change scenario planning from the Center for Strategic and International Studies
readmoreGlossary of Climate Adaptation and Decision-Making
Terminology related to climate adapatation, risk, uncertainty and decision-making, adapted from the UK Climate Impacts Programme.
readmoreJames Traub on the the Role of the UN
It is hard to recall now how astonishingly ambitious the UN was at the moment when it was created.
readmoreMatthew Nisbet: Framing Climate Change
Nisbet examines research on frames that reoccur across science-related policy debates and applies them to a discussion of climate change.
readmoreGreenhouse Development Rights
It is people – not nations or economies – that possess the right to development. We believe this intra-national focus is the key to breaking out of the North / South trap and, thus, the climate impasse.
readmoreMike Hulme: Why We Disagree about Climate Change
Our engagement with climate change and the disagreements that it spawns should always be a form of enlightenment.
readmoreFacing Climate Change
The Facing Climate Change project tells local stories of a global problem.
readmoreCO2 Responsibilities and Health Burdens
Global maps of cumulative CO2 emissions versus estimated health effects.
readmoreIndigenous Peoples and Climate Change
Climate justice needs to go beyond the confines and concerns of traditional environmental justice advocates.
readmoreGlobal Warming’s Six Americas
These six audience segments describe a spectrum of concern and action about global warming, ranging from the Alarmed (18% of the population), to the Concerned (33%), Cautious (19%), Disengaged (12%), Doubtful (11%) and Dismissive (7%).
readmoreCarbon Benefits of Natural Landscapes
Conservation biologist Thomas Lovejoy and US Deputy Secretary of the Interior David Hayes discuss the strategy of managing forests, soils, grasslands and wetlands to store increasing amounts of carbon.
readmoreCopenhagen Climate Congress Synthesis Report
In March 2009, the largest academic conference ever devoted to climate change put forth a set of political "messages."
readmoreAnthony Leiserowitz: Climate and Risk Perception
Americans seem concerned about global warming, yet view it as less important than nearly all other national or environmental issues. What explains this paradox?
readmoreThe Greenpeace Kingsnorth Six - A Lawful Excuse?
When twelve normal people say that it is legitimate for a direct action group to shut down a coal-fired power station, then one has to ask where exactly that leaves government energy policy.
readmoreClimate Change and Post-Normal Science
In what we call ‘post-normal science’, facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent. In such a case, the term ‘problem’, with its connotations of an exercise where a defined methodology is likely to lead to a clear solution, is less appropriate.
readmoreMeme Brief: Environmental Philosophy
I put together a one-page handout on key ideas and terminology in environmental philosophy.
readmoreAndrew Light: Pragmatism and Climate Change
I wanted to create a form of pragmatism that allowed environmental ethicists to make a contribution.
readmoreWilliam Boyd: Forest Carbon and Climate Change
It has become increasingly clear that REDD could be a crucial component of any overall political deal on a post-2012 agreement by breaking the Kyoto logjam and providing an avenue for developing countries to move toward meaningful emissions reductions commitments.
readmoreWhat do philosophers bring to the climate discussion?
Dale Jamieson: The science of climate change is very different from what we were taught science is supposed to be.
readmoreInnovation AND Insulation
Steve Easterbrook: Three different emissions pathways to give 67% chance of limiting global warming to 2ºC.
readmoreClimate, Information, Perception and Behavior
Connie Roser-Renouf and Matthew Nisbet survey and evaluate a wide range of studies on climate-change related values, opinions, perceptions, preferences, knowledge and behavior.
readmoreClimate, Worldviews and Cultural Theory
This typology plots acceptance of social controls against levels of social commitment to derive four worldviews.
readmoreClumsy Responses to Wicked Climate Problems
The term ‘clumsy institution’ was coined as a way of escaping from the idea that, when faced with contradictory definitions of problem and solution, we must choose one and reject the rest.
readmoreAnthony Giddens: Climate Change Politics
We've got to find a way back to the politics of the long term. Planning was not effective in Soviet-style situations and went out of vogue. But you can't have a 20-30 year perspective on politics without planning in some sense.
readmoreNaomi Oreskes: On Scientific Knowledge
History shows us clearly that science does not provide certainty. It does not provide truth. What it provides us with is the consensus of experts.
readmoreKari Marie Norgaard: Cognitive and Behavioral Challenges
A summary and bibliography of studies that probe humanity's slow response to the potential for climate crisis.
readmoreFour Types of Goods
Two distinctions about goods make four types. Goods can be rival or non-rival, and excludable or non-excludable.
readmoreJohn Berdes: Financing Energy Retrofits
The clean energy economy will be an opportunity economy.
readmoreour compass
Contraction & Convergence
C&C offers an intellectual framework for reaching international agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
readmoreE3 Network
The E3 Network develops and applies economic arguments for active protection of human health and the natural environment.
readmoreCOP15
The December 2009 conference offers an important opportunity for negotiation of a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
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