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71. "The Vulnerable in International Society" by Ian Clark

Author:
Kalevi Holsti
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
In 1977 the Australian international relations scholar Hedley Bull published a seminal work, The Anarchical Society, an exploration of the sources of international order. While acknowledging that international politics are characterized by Hobbesian, liberal, and Kantian elements simultaneously, he argued that underlying them are elements of order, by which he meant a pattern of activity that sustains the elementary or primary goals of the society of states, or international society. The goals are the preservation of the system of states, the preservation of the independence of its members, and that members of the international society see peace as the normal rather than exceptional condition of their mutual relations.
Topic:
Politics
Political Geography:
Australia

72. "Just Freedom: A Moral Compass for a Complex World" by Philip Pettit

Author:
James Bohman
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
In Just Freedom, Philip Pettit undertakes significant revisions of some of his republican commitments. The book has many new and innovative ideas, but most of all this work sharpens Pettit's thinking on the role of democracy in republicanism, and on the often positive interaction between the two. Above all, it seems to me that Pettit's own account of basic freedoms has become broader and wider, and now includes a cosmopolitan conception of what we owe other human beings, whoever they are.
Topic:
Politics
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

73. Who Are Atrocity's "Real" Perpetrators, Who Its "True" Victims and Beneficiaries?

Author:
Mark Osiel
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Modern law's response to mass atrocities vacillates equivocally in how it understands thedramatis personae to these expansive tragedies, at once extraordinary and ubiquitous. Is there any principled order to this? If not, should we care?
Topic:
Genocide and Law
Political Geography:
Yugoslavia, Serbia, and Balkans

74. A Call for a Global Constitutional Convention Focused on Future Generations

Author:
Stephen M. Gardiner
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
The Carnegie Council's work "is rooted in the premise that the incorporation of ethical concerns into discussions of international affairs will yield more effective policies both in the United States and abroad." In honor of the Council's centenary, we have been asked to (briefly) present our views on the ethical and policy issues posed by climate change, focusing on what people need to know that they probably do not already know, and what should be done. In that spirit, this essay argues that climate change poses a profound ethical challenge, that the ongoing evasion of this challenge produces ineffective policy, and, therefore, that a fundamental paradigm shift is needed. More specifically, I maintain that the climate problem is usually misdiagnosed as a traditional tragedy of the commons, that this obscures two deeper and distinctively ethical challenges (what I call the tyranny of the contemporary and the perfect moral storm), and that we should address these challenges head on, by calling for a global constitutional convention focused on future generations.
Political Geography:
United States

75. The Dawning of an Earth Ethic

Author:
Scott Russell Sanders
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Among Earth's millions of species, ours is the only one capable of rapidly changing the chemistry of the atmosphere and thereby endangering the whole web of life, from phytoplankton and corals to polar bears and pine trees, from hummingbirds to humans. We are also the only species capable of documenting this disruption, identifying its causes, and acting to counter it. Yet so far we have failed to act on the scale or with the urgency required to avert this unfolding disaster. Why are we failing? What keeps us from caring for the atmosphere as a shared, finite, and fragile envelope for life?
Political Geography:
United States

76. Ethical Enhancement in an Age of Climate Change

Author:
Paul Wapner
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
This roundtable of Ethics International Affairs provides an opportunity to step back and reflect on the fundamental elements of climate change and how ethics can play a role in addressing them. In this spirit, I explore three questions that capture the broad outlines of climate concerns. First, what is the nature of climate change as a global problem? Second, what frustrates humanity's ability to respond? Third, what can be done?
Topic:
Climate Change

77. Moral Collapse in a Warming World

Author:
Clive Hamilton
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
In his definitive book A Perfect Moral Storm, ethicist Stephen Gardiner argues that the way forward in a climate-changed world is so difficult in part because we "do not yet have a good understanding of many of the ethical issues at stake in global-warming policy." We remain confused about such vital questions as who should take responsibility for the current condition, how to preserve equity between generations, and how best to think about our responsibility toward nonhuman animals. The resistance of governments to taking action, attempts by various players to throw sand in the eyes of the public, and specious arguments used to justify an unwillingness to do what is necessary all add to our moral bafflement.

78. Three Questions on Climate Change

Author:
Clare Palmer
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Climate change will have highly significant and largely negative effects on human societies into the foreseeable future, effects that are already generating ethical and policy dilemmas of unprecedented scope, scale, and complexity. One important group of ethical and policy issues raised here concerns what I call environmental values. By this I do not mean the impact that climate change will have on the environment as a valuable human resource, nor am I referring to the changing climate as a threat to humans in terms of floods, storms, and droughts, important as these are. Rather, I am concerned with the way climate change—and the policies that may be adopted to respond to it—threatens both things we value and, potentially, some of our environmental values themselves.

79. The Changing Ethics of Climate Change

Author:
Daniel Mittler
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Many in the environmental movement have argued in recent years that in order to speed up climate actions we should take the ethics out of the climate change debate. Focusing on the moral obligation to act or on the effects of climate change on the most vulnerable was often judged to render the discourse too “heavy,” “negative,” or “difficult.” Many also deemed it unnecessary. After all, renewable energies, better designed cities that allow for reduced car use, and power plant regulations that lead to cleaner local air—to take just three examples—all have real and substantial benefits unrelated to the fact that they are “the right thing to do” in the face of climate change. They create jobs, reduce health problems and costs, and make society fitter.

80. A "Natural" Proposal for Addressing Climate Change

Author:
Thomas E. Lovejoy
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
One of the fundamental challenges of climate change is that we contribute to it increment by increment, and experience it increment by increment after a considerable time lag. As a consequence, it is very difficult to see what we are doing to ourselves, to future generations, and to the living planet as a whole. There are monumental ethical issues involved, but they are obscured by the incremental nature of the process and the long time frame before reaching the concentration of greenhouse gases and the ensuing accumulation of radiant heat—and consequent climate change—that ensues.