A Climate of Risk
We are living in a climate of risk. Our way of life imposes risks on ourselves and others. We are causing climatic changes that have the potential to change radically the conditions under which both we the present eneration and future generations will live. While we are now quite certain that climate change is happening, we are unsure of exactly what will happen and when, given different emissions and policy scenarios. We are therefore in a position where we must decide what to do about the risks climate change threatens in the face of a range of uncertainties.
In this book, Lauren Hartzell-Nichols provides guidance in the face of this uncertainty by offering an in-depth discussion of how and why we ought to take a precautionary approach to climate policy, namely by appeal to a Catastrophic Precautionary Principle and Catastrophic Precautionary Decision-Making Framework. By examining the way in which climate change is harmful, Hartzell-Nichols shows how precaution does have a meaningful role to play in moving climate policy forward if we reconsider what precaution is about before too quickly appealing to precaution as a reason or justification for action.
A Climate of Risk takes a philosophically grounded, interdisciplinary approach that will appeal to a broad scholarly and policy-oriented audience. Hartzell-Nicholss reinterpretation of the precautionary principle enables precaution to be more effectively leveraged as a driver of action on climate change.
Lauren Hartzell-Nichols is an affiliate assistant professor of philosophy at the University ofWashington. She has published widely on many topics in climate ethics, including precaution, adaptation, and geoengineering, both on her own and with diverse, interdisciplinary teams. Her work addresses the ethical challenges climate change poses. In particular, she addresses the complexity of ethical decision making in the face of significant, intergenerational risks.
Environmental Politics / Routledge Research in Environmental Politics
Edited by Steve Vanderheiden
University of Colorado at Boulder
Over recent years environmental politics has moved from a peripheral interest to a central concern within the discipline of politics. This series aims to reinforce this trend through the publication of books that investigate the nature of contemporary environmental politics and show the centrality of environmental politics to the study of politics per se. The series understands politics in a broad sense and books will focus on mainstream issues such as the policy process and new social movements as well as emerging areas such as cultural politics and political economy. Books in the series will analyse contemporary political practices with regards to the environment and/or explore possible future directions for the greening of contemporary politics. The series will be of interest not only to academics and students working in the environmental field, but will also demand to be read within the broader discipline.
The series consists of two strands:
Environmental Politics addresses the needs of students and teachers, and the titles will be published in paperback and hardback. Titles include:
Global Warming and Global Politics
Matthew Paterson
Politics and the Environment
James Connelly & Graham Smith
International Relations Theory and Ecological Thought
Towards Synthesis
Eric Laferrire Peter Stoett
Planning Sustainability
Edited by Michael Kenny James Meadowcroft
Deliberative Democracy and the Environment
Graham Smith
EU Enlargement and the Environment
Institutional change and environmental policy in Central and Eastern Europe
Edited by JoAnn Carmin and Stacy D. VanDeveer
The Crisis of Global Environmental Governance
Towards a new political economy of sustainability
Edited by Jacob Park, Ken Conca and Matthias Finger
Routledge Research in Environmental Politics presents innovative new research intended for high-level specialist readership. These titles are published in hardback only and include:
1. The Emergence of Ecological Modernisation
Integrating the environment and the economy?
Stephen C Young
2 Ideas and Actions in the Green Movement
Brian Doherty
3 Russia and the West
Environmental cooperation and conflict
Geir Hnneland
4 Global Warming and East Asia
The domestic andiInternational politics of climate change
Edited by Paul G. Harris
5 Europe, Globalization and Sustainable Development
Edited by John Barry, Brian Baxter and Richard Dunphy
6 The Politics of GM Food
A comparative study of the UK, USA and EU
Dave Toke
7 Environmental Policy in Europe
The Europeanization of national environmental policy
Edited by Andrew Jordan and Duncan Liefferink
8 A Theory of Ecological Justice
Brian Baxter
9 Security and Climate Change
International relations and the limits of realism
Mark J. Lacy
10 The Environment and International Politics
International fisheries, Heidegger and social method
Hakan Seckinelgin
11 Postmodern Climate Change
Leigh Glover
12. Contemporary Environmental Politics
From margins to mainstream
Edited by Piers H.G. Stephens, with John Barry and Andrew Dobson
13. Sustainable Consumption, Ecology and Fair Trade
Edited by Edwin Zacca
14. Environmental Governance in China
Edited by Neil Carter and Arthur P. J. Mol
15. Global Justice and Neoliberal Environmental Governance
Ethics, sustainable development and international cooperation
Chukwumerije Okereke
16. The Politics of Unsustainability
Eco-politics in the post-ecologist era
Ingolfur Blhdorn and Ian Welsh
17. International Organizations in Global Environmental Governance