Stephen M Gardiner

University of Washington Seattle | UW · Department of Philosophy

The peculiar features of the climate change problem pose substantial obstacles to our ability to make the hard choices necessary to address it. Climate change involves the convergence of a set of global, intergenerational and theoretical problems. This convergence justifies calling it a ‘perfect moral storm’. One consequence of this storm is that,...

Written both for general readers and college students, Dialogues on Climate Justice provides an engaging philosophical introduction to climate justice, and should be of interest to anyone wanting to think seriously about the climate crisis. The story follows the life and conversations of Hope, a fictional protagonist whose life is shaped by the te...

Many of humanity's most serious problems are global, intergenerational, and ecological, yet current institutions are poorly placed to confront such problems. In part, this institutional challenge reflects difficulties with our basic concepts and theories. Bioethics is a central area where such questions arise. Although some have argued for an envir...

We are in the early stages of a new “intergenerational turn” in political philosophy. This turn is largely motivated by the threat of global climate change, which makes vivid a serious governance gap surrounding concern for future generations. Unfortunately, there is a lack of fit between most proposed remedies and the nature of the underlying prob...

In Debating Climate Ethics, David Weisbach and I offer contrasting views of the importance of ethics and justice for climate policy. I argue that ethics is central. Weisbach advocates for climate policy based purely on narrow forms of self-interest. For this symposium, I summarize the major themes, and extend my basic argument. I claim that ethics...

Like it or not, technologists are increasingly being called upon to »save the world«, including from themselves. Today, science and engineering professionals stand on the front-lines both in generating severe risks to the future, and (almost by default) in the search for solutions. This chapter examines the ethical context of their predicament. It...

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

There is widespread agreement that ethical concerns are central to decision-making about, and governance of, geoengineering. This is especially true of the most prominent and paradigm example of climate engineering, the spraying of sulfate particles into the stratosphere in order to block incoming sunlight and so limit global warming (hereafter, ‘s...

This collection gathers a set of seminal papers from the emerging area of ethics and climate change. Topics covered include human rights, international justice, intergenerational ethics, individual responsibility, climate economics, and the ethics of geoengineering. Climate Ethics is intended to serve as a source book for general reference, and for...

Recently, I have been arguing for a global constitutional convention focused on protecting future generations. This deliberative body would be akin to the American constitutional convention of 1787, which gave rise to the present structure of government in the United States. It would confront the “governance gap” that currently exists surrounding c...

This article offers a constructive critique of the Oxford Principles for the governance of geoengineering and proposes an alternative set of principles, the Tollgate Principles, based on that critique. Our main concern is that, despite their many merits, the Oxford Principles remain largely instrumental and dominated by procedural considerations; t...

This paper argues that extortion is a clear threat in intergenerational relations, and that the threat is manifest in some existing proposals in climate policy and latent in some background tendencies in mainstream moral and political philosophy. The paper also claims that although some central aspects of the concern about extortion might be pursue...

In this paper, we focus on stratospheric sulfate injection as a geoengineering scheme, and provide a combined scientific and ethical analysis of climate response tests, which are a subset of outdoor tests that would seek to impose detectable and attributable changes to climate variables on global or regional scales. We assess the current state of s...

Geoengineering is often introduced as a “Plan B”: an alternative solution in case “Plan A”, reducing emissions, fails. This framing is typically deployed as part of an argument that research and development is necessary in case robust conventional mitigation is not forthcoming, or proves insufficient to prevent dangerous climate impacts. In this ch...

Despite the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, a growing number of countries are interested in expanding or introducing nuclear energy. However, nuclear energy production and nuclear waste disposal give rise to pressing ethical questions that society needs to face. This book takes up this challenge with essays by an internati...

Steve has been invited to speak on the ethics and sociology of geoengineering the climate.

Nuclear energy is at a crossroads. While some concerned about climate change urge a rapid expansion of nuclear power to facilitate a shift away from fossil fuels (e.g. Caldeira et al. 2013), others argue for a decisive rejection of nuclear energy, especially in the wake of Fukushima and ongoing difficulties with the storage of long-lived nuclear wa...

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 ch...

How can Socrates the man be so impressive in his main political acts and yet so misguided (even naïve) as a political theorist? To resolve this paradox, many try to isolate Socrates’ political philosophy from his practice. He was, we are told, simply concerned with a different set of political questions than those that interest us. When we see this...

In early policy work, climate engineering is often described as a global public good. This paper argues that the paradigm example of geoengineering — stratospheric sulfate injection (hereafter ‘SSI’) — does not fit the canonical technical definition of a global public good, and that more relaxed versions are unhelpful. More importantly, it claims t...

For some time, and especially over the last two decades, scientists have been warning that humanity is carrying out a giant geophysical experiment by pumping large volumes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as byproducts of fossil fuel use and deforestation (Weart 2003). Such activity is already affecting the world's climate, and if current tr...

Geoengineering has been roughly defined as the intentional manipulation of planetary systems at a global scale (Keith 2000; Schelling 1996). This definition is neither as precise nor as informative as some would like. Nevertheless, we can fix ideas by focusing on the most prominent current proposal, which is to inject sulfate aerosols into the stra...

According to mainstream science, humanity faces a time of emerging global environmental crises. Massive increases in economic output and human population over the last two centuries or so are putting increasing pressure on natural systems, including those basic to the support of human and other forms of life, such as climate, fresh water, oceans an...

An analytically precise and theoretically probing exploration of the challenge to our values and virtues posed by climate change. Predictions about global climate change have produced both stark scenarios of environmental catastrophe and purportedly pragmatic ideas about adaptation. This book takes a different perspective, exploring the idea that t...

Climate change is an ethical issue. Although justice is only one part of ethics, it is often understood to occupy an exalted position as 'the first virtue of social institutions', where this implies that unjust institutions ought not to be tolerated except to avoid greater injustice. Although some have doubted that justice deserves quite such preem...

Climate change is genuinely global, dominantly intergenerational, and takes place in a setting where our prescriptive theories are weak. This "perfect moral storm" poses a profound challenge to humanity. This book explains the storm, how it makes sense of our current malaise, and why better ethics can help. This book argues that despite decades of...

The Royal Society's landmark report on geoengineering is predicated on a particular account of the context and rationale for intentional manipulation of the climate system, and this ethical framework probably explains many of the Society's conclusions. Critical reflection on the report's values is useful for understanding disagreements within and a...

The Royal Society's landmark report on geoengineering is predicated on a particular account of the context and rationale for intentional manipulation of the climate system, and this ethical framework probably explains many of the Society's conclusions. Critical reflection on the report's values is useful for understanding disagreements within and a...

Global climate change is one of the most daunting ethical and political challenges confronting humanity in the twenty-first century. The intergenerational and transnational ethical issues raised by climate change have been the focus of a significant body of scholarship. In this new collection of essays, leading scholars engage and respond to first-...

Climate change and other global environmental problems constitute a significant challenge to contemporary political philosophy, especially with respect to complacency. This paper assesses Rawls’ theory, and argues for three conclusions. First, Rawls does not already solve such problems, and simple extensions of his theory are unlikely to do so. Thi...

This panelist will provide a brief summary of the book.

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...

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The term geoengineering lacks a precise definition but is widely held to imply the intentional manipulation of the environment on a global scale. For most of the last 30 years, there has been a wide consensus that such manipulation would be a bad idea. However, in August 2006, Paul Crutzen, the climate scientist and Nobel laureate, published an art...

Very few moral philosophers have written on climate change. This is puzzling, for several reasons. First, many politicians and policy makers claim that climate change is not only the most serious environmental problem currently facing the world but also one of the most important international problems per se. Second, many of those working in other...

The most authoritative scientific report on climate change begins by saying: . . . Natural, technical, and social sciences can provide essential information and evidence needed for decisions on what constitutes “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” At the same time, such decisions are value judgments. . . . There are good...

Climate ethics is an emerging field. This paper serves as a critical introductory overview. It focuses on five areas of discussion that are particularly relevant to substantive climate policy: the treatment of scientific uncertainty, responsibility for past emissions, the setting of mitigation targets, and the places of adaptation and geoengineerin...

Not to be moved by what one values – what one believes good, nice, right, beautiful, and so on – bespeaks a malady of the spirit. Michael Stocker. Humanity stands on a precipice. Mainstream science tells us that climate change is real, accelerating, and might credibly result in global catastrophe. For decades it has warned that greenhouse gas emiss...

If political leaders have one duty above all others, it is to protect the security of their people … And yet our long-term security is threatened by a problem at least as dangerous as chemical, nuclear or biological weapons, or indeed international terrorism: human-induced climate change.Houghton (2003).Why should political philosophy be concerned...

An introduction to ethical issues surrounding global climate change that discusses the difficulties of interpreting the complex empirical evidence and evaluates answers to the question, How should future carbon emissions be allocated?

Contract theories - such as contractarianism and contractualism - seek to justify (and sometimes to explain) moral and political ideals and principles through the notion of 'mutually agreeable reciprocity or cooperation between equals' (Darwall 2002). This chapter argues that such theories face fundamental difficulties in the intergenerational sett...

The term geoengineering lacks a precise definition, but is widely held to imply the intentional manipulation of the environment on a global scale. Proposals to geoengineer our way out of the climate crisis have not achieved much traction in the last twenty years. But in 2006 the climate scientist Paul Crutzen, a Nobel Laureate, reignited the debate...

This chapter identifies three distinct moral “storms” that provide converge in the phenomenon of global climate change. These three “storms” arise in the global, intergenerational, and theoretical dimensions. A global storm is characterized by the dispersion of causes and effects, the spatial fragmentation of agency, and institutional inadequacy. T...

Political theorists consider the challenge of global climate change from a range of perspectives, including conceptual analysis, critical theory, critical legal studies, and neo-Marxism. Climate change will shape the political, economic, and cultural landscape as surely as it shapes the natural landscape. It challenges our existing political instit...

It is worth remembering that in many ways environmental ethics is a very successful field. Over the course of only thirty or forty years, we have reached a point at which almost every significant philosophy program in the country offers a course in environmental ethics, there are several established and well respected journals, and the subject is r...

Stephen Gardiner gets to grips with the Kyoto agreement on climate change — and asks whether our lack of commitment to seriously reducing emissions is down to the fact that the bad consequences of not reducing emissions won't affect us.

[T]he Precautionary Principle still has neither a commonly accepted definition nor a set of criteria to guide its implementation. 'There is,' Freestone... cogently observes, 'a certain paradox in the widespread and rapid adoption of the Precautionary Principle:' While it is applauded as a 'good thing,' no one is quite sure about what it really mean...