[Introductory paragraph] The present generation must confront a challenge. The challenge is to determine what it must do for the sake of future generations. This challenge is quite puzzling because the present generation, like its predecessors, will pass on to future generations a complex mix of goods, inventions, institutions and opportunities containing a range of benefits and burdens. In this thesis, I focus on one key intergenerational problem – anthropogenic climate change – considering some of the questions of intergenerational justice that it raises. While it has not always been the case, climate and climate change have recently taken on new significance as a process to which humans can, and in fact do, contribute. More specifically, while paleoclimatic data show substantial variation in the Earth’s climate (Masson- Delmotte, Schulz, Abe-Ouchi, Beer, Ganopolski, J.F. González Rouco, E. Jansen, et al., 2013: 385), an ever-growing mass of evidence shows that human activity – particularly the sustained emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) – is beginning to change the global climate, with much greater changes still to come (IPCC, 2013b: 4, 19ff). This produces what is known as anthropogenic climate change, “a change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g., by using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties, and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer”, and that results from human activities (IPCC, 2013a: 1448, 1450).
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:752425 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Bennett, Christopher D. |
| Publisher | University of Warwick |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/103409/ |
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