Climate Change as a Moral Issue Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Climate Change as a Moral Issue - Essay Example Climate change has tremendous effect on humanity and it is nowadays the most significant moral challenge that people face. Mother Nature is morally neutral considering the fact that each year natural catastrophes like global warming, tsunami, devastating earthquakes result in millions of casualty. The moral issues lie within the humans by the ways in which we prepare ourselves in defending such disasters and help the victims (Carter n.d.).The change in climate and the environmental challenge as a moral issue deserves a significant amount of discussion (Crompton & Kasser, 2009, p.2) considering the fact that nowadays it is the prime global concern. This paper deals with different aspects of the climatic change as a moral issue and elaborates the role of politics and public in meeting this challenge. Climate change and moral issue The climatic change is inculcated with complex moral troubles, which the present political system is not well adapted to address properly. Many societies are unaware and not well tailored with the variability in climatic change. As a result they are more vulnerable to the devastations of the climatic change that will adversely affect their economic and political indicators which in turn will bring a spillover effect in the international scenario. The climatic change can be viewed as a striking challenge to our moral self. It can be viewed as a paradigm moral problem, however much more multifaceted in nature. The characteristic of a paradigm moral problem is that an individual will harm or make another individual worse off and both the individuals and the damage done that way are identifiable. Again the individuals and the concerned damage are closely linked in terms of time and space. In this case an example may be considered; suppose David intentionally stole James’s bike, in this example the notion of above discussed concept is clear. Here both the individual and the damage are identified and they are also closely linked in tim e and space. But the moral problem related to the climatic change is not so simple and another example will illustrate that, suppose ‘Jack and a large number of unacquainted people set in motion a chain of events that causes a large number of future people who will live in another part of the world, from ever having bikes’ (Jamieson 2007, p.2). In this particular example the identification of the agents causing damage or generating negative externality is not properly identifiable. This refers to the fact that damage caused this way transmits through time and affects future group of people whose numbers can be predicted but cannot be exactly determined at present time frame. Similar to this the climate change affects different groups of people over various time frames and both of them can not be identified with pin point accuracy. More interestingly people are often indifferent or even at dark regarding the future loss incurred through climatic change as that do not dir ectly affect them. Owing to these facts and minimal difference in characteristic with the usual moral problem; the climatic change often does not get considered as a moral problem, which has resulted in common negligence in responding to this problem with utmost urgency (Jamieson 2007, pp. 1-2). Climate Change as a challenge to the Political System Political concerns