Chapter 44 Summary

Jamieson grapples with the ethical problems created by global climate change. He argues that our familiar value system, with its focus on identifiable perpetrators and easily traceable harms, cannot help us properly respond to the unprecedented destruction unleased by global warming. To understand and address diffuse forms of global harm that have no single perpetrator, we must develop new ideas about responsibility to account for the collective sources and impacts of the crisis. He stops short of articulating substantive moral principles, insisting that this requires communal reflection. Instead he proposes a general shift in ethical focus from economic models that calculate probable outcomes, which he argues reinforces apathy and hypocrisy, to an emphasis on the importance of virtues of character such as humility, simplicity, courage, and moderation.