Choice 评论

This volume by Moellendorf (Johann Wolfgang Goethe Univ., Frankfurt) hits the market at the same time as several other works on climate change by well-known philosophers. Moellendorf's distinctive focuses are on the evaluative dimension of judgments about the science and management of climate change--not just about the moral failing of inaction. Some may naïvely take these judgments to be in some way simply factual and objective concerning the cataclysmic effects of climate change on the world's least-well-off, and the (or a) precautionary principle to guide policy choices. At stake are the welfare and survival of the worst off, biodiversity, and the future of humanity and the planet. The strongest chapter boldly takes on the difficult question of how to pragmatically assign outcome mitigation responsibilities among states (intergenerational justice), partly by appealing to basic concepts from the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. But Moellendorf is caught in a dilemma common to philosophers who write about applied ethics: his intended audience is not clear. Professional philosophers and political scientists will find his painstaking case for the normativity of basic climate-change claims belabored, and nonprofessionals and beginning students will find the complex arguments tough going. --Katheryn Hill Doran, Hamilton College