Philosophy and Climate Change

It's interesting to see that philosophers are also concerned with climate change and the ethics behind it. Philosopher and economist, John Broome, raises his concerns about the uncertainty of the climate change effects in the future and the need for Governments to take action. He rules away the idea of utility maximisation, taken from welfare economics, as a means of deciding whether actions should be taken. In his book, 'Counting the Cost of Global Warming' (1992), he argues, "

I do not think the decision-making process can be simply a matter of calculating expected utilities and then going ahead. The problem is too big for that, and the uncertainties - particularly the historical uncertainties - too extreme." Typically, welfare economics uses a cost benefit analysis when deciding whether to pursue policy options, but there lies a lot of difficulty when placing a value on the cost of climate change.

 

As a philosopher, Broome states the idea of justice to future generations of correcting pollution because there is a mutual advantage. In fact, I agree completely with his ideology and Governments should work together to correct this for the whole of society. Another idea of Philosophy which comes into pollution is incommensurability. This means that two ideas can not be compared to one another. For example, protecting nature and human welfare are incommensurable because they are both not better than one another and also not equal to each other, so in this situtation is it not a duty to act in a way which is correct and ethical?