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Are philosophers responsible for global warming?

Maxwell, N.; (2008) Are philosophers responsible for global warming? Philosophy Now , 65 pp. 12-13. Green open access

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Abstract

Global warming has come about as a result of rapid population increase plus our whole modern way of life, all made possible by modern science. In order to tackle global warming successfully, we need a new kind of inquiry that gives intellectual priority to tackling problems of living over problems of knowledge. If we had had this new kind of inquiry fifty years ago, we might have begun to do something about global warming long ago, in the early 1960s, when Keeling first discovered that carbon dioxide was increasing in the atmosphere. Our long-standing failure to respond to global warming is in part due to our failure to develop a genuinely rigorous kind of inquiry devoted to helping us tackle our global problems, which is, in turn, a philosophical failure. Philosophers are responsible for global warming to the extent that they have failed to highlight this philosophical blunder inherent in academia in part responsible for our tardy response to global warming.

Type: Article
Title: Are philosophers responsible for global warming?
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
Publisher version: http://www.philosophynow.org/contents?issue=65
Language: English
Additional information: Full text made available here with permission from Editor of Philosophy Now
UCL classification: UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Science and Technology Studies
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/20190
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