A Perfect Moral Storm Summary

Therefore, the obligation to address climate change falls on all the nations. But why are the problems of climate change so difficult to think clearly about and act efficiently? To start with, the rapid industrialization of the major Asian nations, especially India and China, amplified the ongoing crisis. And since the impact of Western countries are indirect, they are unwilling to sacrifice their current benefits by cutting down on emissions. Stephen M. Gardiner examines this phenomenon in his paper “A Perfect Moral Storm: Climate Change, Intergenerational Ethics and the Problem of Moral Corruption”. He describes climate change problems as a moral issues. “One consequence of this storm is that, even if the other difficult ethnical questions

Gardiner identifies three dimensions of the storm: global, intergenerational and theoretical. In the global storm, he mentions the fact that emissions are caused collectively by all human actions and affect everyone globally. When you compare this statement with the actions of the countries in the West that entered the industrialization process much sooner than Asia did, you immediately realize that they are not taking on enough responsibility for their shares of the damage. One reason for this is the absence of an effective system of global governance, which is related to the Prisoner’s Dilemma theory. The fact that countries are not willingly taking on responsibilities reflects the moral complexity of environmental degradation. When it comes to the intergenerational storm, moral plays an even bigger role. For the reason that carbon builds up gradually and sea rises slowly, the consequences of our current behaviors will not influence us as tremendously as they do to future generations. In other words, we do not suffer from our own consequences. Ultimately, the problems of climate is in fact a moral issue and is challenging to address by one single