Dear Ken, Like most of the others, I'm not much worried about whether or not geoengineering is "fundamentally new" in some technical sense. However, I would say that, much as we may love them, it is hard to argue that Aristotle, Hume, Kant, et al., have "already considered" the issues, if this is supposed to mean that they have *adequately addressed* the relevant questions. In my view, climate change brings together a large number of theoretical questions that we are not currently well equipped to handle - in areas such as global justice, intergenerational ethics, humanity's relationship to nature, scientific uncertainty, contingent persons, etc. Some sign of this comes with the difficulties faced by standard theories such as economic CBA, utilitarianism, contractarianism, and so on. So, there is lots of work to do.
In general, my view is that there is an exciting emerging literature on these matters. The Montana bibliography is a very useful resource. Some of my own position is outlined in my recent book, A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Challenge of Climate Change (Oxford, 2011), which includes a chapter on geoengineering. I've also written on the values of the Royal Society report on geoengineering, on Dale Jamieson's classic piece about whether climate change challenges our ethical concepts (my 'Is No One Responsible for Global Environmental Tragedy?'), and on whether Rawls has the theoretical resources to deal with climate change. These papers (and others) are available at: http://www.phil.washington.edu/POV/GardinerFormalPublicationList.htm I'd also recommend Allen Thompson and Jeremy Bendik-Keymer's new MIT collection on the ethics of adaptation (including material on ecological restoration and on geoengineering). Best wishes, Steve Stephen Gardiner Ben Rabinowitz Endowed Professor of the Human Dimensions of the Environment University of Washington, Seattle (Currently Visiting Fellow at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, Oxford University) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en.
