Today I attended a lecture by John Nolt entitled, The Ethics of Climate Change. John Nolt is a professor of philosophy at The University of Tennessee Knoxville and began his tenure there in 1978. He obtained his PH.D. from The Ohio State University. His lecture was broken main sections. The first on discussed how global climate change is likely to kill billions of people and untold numbers of other organisms over the next millennium The second argued that the harm from greenhouse gas emissions varies directly, and probably more or less continuously on total emissions. The third and what he described as the most controversial is that individual emissions cause non-negligible harm. He then argued that the harm from greenhouse gas emissions contributes to an unjust and unjustifiable, domination of posterity by the now affluent. Next, he used the previous four conclusions to derive that our emissions are, unless necessary, morally inexcusable. Finally, he comes to the conclusion that therefore we should simply stop using unnecessary greenhouse-gas-emitting devices now. The list of unnecessary devices he mentioned includes leaf blowers, jet skis, dryers, large vehicles, and large televisions. I found his lecture to be interesting and informative. However, I found his final conclusion to stop using the unnecessary devices listed above to be totally idealistic and completely unpractical. While cutting out unnecessary devices out would be an ideal solution to cutting back on greenhouse gas emissions, I find his conclusion that they are morally unacceptable to be false because they are so engrained in our culture and are not as much of an environmental hazard as current farming practices.
