Skip to main content

Climate Ethics

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Sustainable Management
  • 41 Accesses

Synonyms

Ethics of climate change

Definition

Climate ethics is a subfield of environmental ethics which focuses on the distribution of individual and collective duties and rights, burdens, and benefits pertaining to the causes and consequences of climate change. It tackles the moral issues embodied in the recent evolution of the Earth system and its future course. Due to the key role of humanity, especially since the onset of the industrial times, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, captured by the concept of Anthropocene (the age/epoch of humans), climate ethics deals with Homo sapiens’ responsibility in the rise of climate-related harms, risks, and uncertainties. More precisely, it addresses the issues of (1) who is responsible for the current climate patterns, i.e., for emitting vast amounts of greenhouse gas; (2) how should the burdens and benefits be distributed, including carbon abatement; and (3) how to balance the interests of the present and the future generations. In...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Brigham-Grette, J., Melles, M., Minyuk, P., Andreev, S., Tarasov, P., Deconto, R., Koenig, S., Nowaczyk, N., Wennrich, V., Rosén, P., Haltia, E., Cook, T., Gebhardt, C., Meyer-Jacob, C., Snyder, J., & Herzschuh, U. (2013). Pliocene warmth, polar amplification, and stepped Pleistocene cooling recorded in NE Arctic Russia. Science, 340(6139), 1421–1427. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1233137.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cebalos, G., Ehrlich, P. R., & Dirzo, R. (2017). Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 114(30), E6089–E6096. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1704949114.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gardiner, S. (2010). Ethics and global climate change. In S. M. Gardiner, S. Caney, D. Jamieson, & H. Shue (Eds.), Climate ethics: Essential readings (pp. 3–35). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • IPCC. (2007). Climate change 2007: Impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. In M. L. Parry, O. F. Canziani, J. P. Palutikof, P. J. van der Linden, & C. E. Hanson (Eds.), Contribution of working group II to the fourth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • IPCC. (2013). Climate change 2013: The physical science basis. In T. F. Stocker, D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S. K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex, & P. M. Midgley (Eds.), Contribution of working group I to the fifth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • IPCC. (2018). Global warming of 1.5 °C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty. In V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, H.-O. Pörtner, D. Roberts, J. Skea, P. R. Shukla, A. Pirani, W. Moufouma-Okia, C. Péan, R. Pidcock, S. Connors, J. B. R. Matthews, Y. Chen, X. Zhou, M. I. Gomis, E. Lonnoy, T. Maycock, M. Tignor, & T. Waterfield (Eds.) Geneva: IPCC.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lenton, T. M., Rockström, J., Gaffney, O., Rahmstorf, S., Richardson, K., Steffen, W., & Schellnhuber, H. J. (2019). Climate tipping points too risky to bet against. Nature, 575, 592–595. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03595-0.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leopold, A. (1949). A sand county almanac. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mill, J. S. (1859). On liberty. London: John W. Parker and Son, West Strand.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moellendorf, D. (2014). The moral challenge of dangerous climate change: Values, poverty, and policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Naish, T., Powell, R., Levy, R., Wilson, G., Scherer, R., Talarico, F., Krissek, L., Niessen, F., Pompilio, M., Wilson, T., Carter, L., DeConto, R., Huybers, P., McKay, R., Pollard, D., Ross, J., Winter, D., Barrett, P., Browne, G., Cody, R., Cowan, E., Crampton, J., Dunbar, G., Dunbar, N., Florindo, F., Gebhardt, C., Graham, M., Hannah, I., Hansaraj, D., Harwood, D., Helling, D., Henrys, S., Hinnov, L., Kuhn, G., Kyle, P., Läufer, A., Maffioli, P., Magens, D., Mandernack, K., McIntosh, W., Millan, C., Morin, R., Ohneiser, C., Paulsen, T., Persico, D., Raine, I., Reed, J., Riesselman, C., Sagnotti, L., Schmitt, D., Sjunneskog, C., Strong, P., Taviani, M., Vogel, S., Wilch, T., & Williams, T. (2009). Obliquity-paced Pliocene West Antarctic ice sheet oscillations. Nature, 458, 322–328. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature07867.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nordhaus, W. (2008). A question of balance: Weighing the options on global warming policies. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rees-Owen, R. L., Gill, F. L., Newton, R. J., Ivanović, R. F., Francis, J. E., Riding, J. B., Vane, C. H., & Lopes dos Santos, R. A. (2018). The last forests on Antarctica: Reconstructing flora and temperature from the Neogene Sirius Group, Transantarctic Mountains. Organic Geochemistry, 118, 4–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orggeochem.2018.01.001.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stern, N. (2007). The economics of climate change: The Stern review. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, P. (1986). Respect for nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wuebbles, D. J., Fahey, D. W., Hibbard, K. A., DeAngelo, B., Doherty, S., Hayhoe, K., Horton, R., Kossin, J. P., Taylor, P. C., Waple, A. M., & Weaver, C. P. (2017). Executive summary. In D. J. Wuebbles, D. W. Fahey, K. A. Hibbard, D. J. Dokken, B. C. Stewart, & T. K. Maycock (Eds.), Climate science special report: Fourth National Climate Assessment (Vol. I, pp. 12–34). Washington, DC: U.S. Global Change Research Program.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xavier Landes .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Section Editor information

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this entry

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this entry

Landes, X. (2020). Climate Ethics. In: Idowu, S., Schmidpeter, R., Capaldi, N., Zu, L., Del Baldo, M., Abreu, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sustainable Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02006-4_638-1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02006-4_638-1

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-02006-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-02006-4

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Business and ManagementReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

Publish with us

Policies and ethics