Context
One of the most daunting problems facing the world today is climate change. As we move forward in finding ways to adapt and mitigate climate change, recognising the ethical problems associated with it is crucial.
Necessity to consider the ethical dimensions of Climate Change:
What is the major issue for the protests happening?
What are the principles of research ethics?
What are new ethics proposed by environmentalists?
Environmentalists are proposing a move from a negative ethics focused on avoiding harm to a positive research ethics. These new ethics are needed to guide the global scientific community in relation to civil society and politics during the climate and ecological crises.
What is the meaning of these three pillars?
1. Do no harm
The “do no harm” principle should thus be broadened in two ways:
2. Act with integrity
The principle of integrity asks researchers to follow rigorous protocols, disclose conflicts of interest, refrain from manipulating data, and abstain from plagiarism.For example, by focusing heavily on GDP growth, mainstream economics portrays our planetary habitat mostly as a resource to use or exploit. The idea of geoengineering also largely rests on an understanding of our life-support systems as a set of disconnected pieces that can be engineered.
Ultimately, “integrity means wholeness”. It implies acknowledging that we are parts of a fragile and interconnected web of life, which we need to preserve.
3. Take responsibility
According to the “responsibility” principle, research should be relevant to society and communicated to the public. But in a climate crisis, findings can be so dramatic, their implications for society so huge and controversial, that the word “responsibility” takes a new, heavier meaning.
The “responsibility” principle should therefore be enriched in three ways:
Concerns about future generations in an Ethics of climate change:
With regard to every distant future generation, the alarming state of the present generation is that it still finds itself in a unilateral role: it is still in a role to behave with impunity, as there is no reason for reciprocity from those generations to come.
As such, an important aspect of the ethical response to climate change is the concern of future generations.
Verifying, please be patient.