The Greenhouse Effect: Ethics and Climate Change

Simon Dalby is an assistant professor of geography at Carleton
University in Ottawa.

This book presents the final results of an interdisciplinary university
research project, assembled by the Calgary Institute for the Humanities,
on ethical responses to climate change. Although technical in places,
this well-edited volume is a readable and clearly organized discussion
of many of the conventional responses to climate change. It deals both
with the case for trying to avert climate change and with how to adapt
to what change is unavoidable.

The book begins with a brief technical primer on climate change and an
outline of ethical considerations toward humans, future generations, and
the environment. The third (and possibly most interesting) chapter
offers a wide-ranging overview of the world’s religions and how they
relate to environmental issues. Chapter 4 investigates the likely
implications of global warming for the Canadian Arctic. Chapters 5, 6,
and 7 deal, respectively, with personal, corporate, and international
responsibilities vis-а-vis climate change. Chapter 8 focuses on
economic mechanisms that could be used to achieve a variety of policy
goals, while Chapter 9 looks at the role of energy efficiencies as a
crucial means of minimizing future impacts.

Missing from this volume is an engagement with the larger, more complex
political issues and with the important question of how societies, like
Canada’s, that cause large amounts of greenhouse emissions per capita
could fulfil their global responsibility for acting to reduce
atmospheric change.