Greenhouse Gas Ethics

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Greenhouse Gas Emissions and the Ethics of the Individual
“The most important thing about global warming is this. Whether humans are responsible for the bulk of climate change is going to be left to the scientists, but it's all of our responsibility to leave this planet in better shape for the future generations than we found it.” –Mike Huckabee, politician
Do individual greenhouse gas emissions cause harm? In short, yes. Though this harm may not exactly be measureable on the individual level, it is harm. In similar, though we do not know how many licks it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop, we do know that if we continue licking we will reach the center. Individual greenhouse gas emissions are added collectively to everyone’s individual …show more content…

Most people carry out multiple everyday actions that release greenhouse gas emissions, such as driving a car or even buying a product that leads to emissions. This release of greenhouse gas emissions that individuals are contributing to leads to global warming. The rise in temperature derived from global warming can cause floods, droughts, and many other adverse weather conditions. Global warming causes many people harm, and will continue to cause harm long after the individual has emitted any greenhouse gases. Therefore, individually people contribute to harming both current and future generations by their emissions of greenhouse …show more content…

No direct harm is done by this man taking joy rides, and if he were to refrain from doing so no individual would benefit. Armstrong believes that if the act is neither unusual nor does it directly cause harm to any one person, then the individual does not have a moral obligation to no longer do the action. He ends by saying that though an individual does not have a moral obligation to lower their greenhouse gas emissions, they still shouldn’t contribute to the problem. Using the example of the joy riding man again, he said that this joy ride is a waste of gas, so morally it is better of the man not to take the joy ride. Armstrong realizes that global warming is such a big problem that he says it cannot be expected of individuals to be able to fix the problem. He says that it is not the individual’s moral obligation to fix the problem, but instead the governments. Being that they have to ability to implement laws and regulations that will make more of a change than trying to fix the problem on an individual

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