Ethical Anxieties About Geoengineering
Three main justifications are used to defend geoengineering research and possible deployment—it will allow us to buy time, it will allow us to respond to a climate emergency, and it may be the best option economically. Against these a number of ethical risks intrude: we may use the possibility of climate engineering to blind ourselves […]
All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace
This article (published on “The Conversation”) is a commentary on Adam Curtis’s three-part documentary All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace, which was braodcast on SBS TV in October-November 2011.
Women in combat and the death of feminism
“With women now to take on combat roles in the military it is time to sound The Last Post over the rotting corpse of feminism.” An opinion article published in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, 30 September 2011.
Big Porn Inc.
“One of the more bizarre accusations made against people like the authors who appear in this powerful, new book, Big Porn Inc., is that they are anti-sex. This accusation is made by post-modern academics who style themselves pro-sex. Of course, the authors are not anti-sex. They are anti-degradation, anti-exploitation, anti-coercion and anti-trafficking. In truth these are […]
The Ethical Foundations of Climate Engineering
In the standard consequentialist view of climate ethics, the question of whether it is ethically justified intentionally to shift the planet to a warmer or cooler climate depends on an assessment of the costs and benefits of the new state compared to the old one. In this view the natural world is framed as a […]
Environmentalism: The Way Forward
A talk (by videolink) to the National Climate Action Summit University of Melbourne, 9 April 2011 The difficulty and importance of the global warming campaign is many times greater than every other environmental struggle. Controlling carbon pollution requires a wholesale industrial restructuring and defeat of the most powerful industry coalition ever assembled. Yet in the […]
Silencing the Scientists
Climate scientists have found themselves caught up in a hot political debate that they do not really understand or want to be part of, yet they have been the target of savvy, secretive and ruthless organisations ready to pounce on anything they said or wrote. This is the real story of “Climategate”. Instead, the scientists in question have […]
Is Environmentalism Failing?
Environmentalism: The Way Forward A talk (by videolink) to the National Climate Action Summit University of Melbourne, 9 April 2011 Clive Hamilton The difficulty and importance of the global warming campaign is many times greater than every other environmental struggle. Controlling carbon pollution requires a wholesale industrial restructuring and defeat of the most powerful industry […]
The recent controversy
Climate denial versus climate science A speech at the launch of Requiem for a Species Global Change Institute, University of Queensland, 24 March 2010 Clive Hamilton The attack on climate science in recent times has been orchestrated, relentless, and effective. Although it has reached fever pitch over the last six months, the campaign has been […]