Monday, June 13, 2011

Pg. 99: Stephen M. Gardiner's "A Perfect Moral Storm"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change by Stephen M. Gardiner.

About the book, from the publisher:
Climate change is arguably the great problem confronting humanity, but we have done little to head off this looming catastrophe. In The Perfect Moral Storm, philosopher Stephen Gardiner illuminates our dangerous inaction by placing the environmental crisis in an entirely new light, considering it as an ethical failure. Gardiner clarifies the moral situation, identifying the temptations (or "storms") that make us vulnerable to a certain kind of corruption. First, the world's most affluent nations are tempted to pass on the cost of climate change to the poorer and weaker citizens of the world. Second, the present generation is tempted to pass the problem on to future generations. Third, our poor grasp of science, international justice, and the human relationship to nature helps to facilitate inaction. As a result, we are engaging in willful self-deception when the lives of future generations, the world's poor, and even the basic fabric of life on the planet is at stake. We should wake up to this profound ethical failure, Gardiner concludes, and demand more of our institutions, our leaders and ourselves.
Learn more about A Perfect Moral Storm at the Oxford University Press website.

Stephen Gardiner is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and the Program on Values in Society, University of Washington, Seattle.

The Page 99 Test: A Perfect Moral Storm.

--Marshal Zeringue