“I attended the lecture “Turning Up the Volume on the Ethical Dimensions of Climate Change” by Dr. Donald Brown, Associate Professor of Environmental Ethics, Science, and Law at Penn State University last night at the EAM. I have got to say that this guy is brilliant…”
Karen Dodson writes at the Erie Art Museum blog:
… Doc Brown comes across as a man bursting with a message that must be heard. He has so very thoughtfully constructed an indisputable argument for an immediate halt to carbon emissions, that I am going to make a bold, if not outrageous statement (outrageous based on my own lack of education, but when has that stopped me) that his reasoning will one day be cited as the single most important legal argument ever devised in relation to this cause. It is brilliant in it’s obvious and elegant simplicity of design…he argues something that every kindergarten child knows… that it is ethically wrong to kill another person to profit by it. We, for to long, have been looking at this (global warming) from a cost benefit analysis point of view, and we need to make amends.
We (the beneficiaries of a seemingly endless supply of carbon based energy aka. the developed world) need to fess up to the fact that we know that it is ethically wrong to let those that will in-arguably profit from continued and escalating carbon emissions to frame the conversation through a cost benefit analysis approach to the problem. The big money interests (read the Doc’s blog) have perpetrated a 25 year relentless release of disinformation and repetitive misstatement of “fakt” that has clouded our collective judgement, and made us feel comfortable with our (America’s) delaying and stone walling of actions to curb emissions world wide. We have been burying our collective heads in the sand, and people are dying. Whew, got that of my heaving chest.
Now, I am a solutions kind of person, and I like this next bit that the Doc proposed…it makes me feel kinda empowered, and I am not talking about the feeling I get when I separate my recyclables…I mean like I could make some noise, I could turn up the volume on the ethical dimensions of climate change. Doc Brown says we need to engage in civil disobedience, that the hour is getting late, and our most powerful tool left is to ask why…why do we need to wait for every detail, until every shred of disputable science is resolved before we stop the death and destruction that is happening right now in sub Saharan Africa?…
Poor Karen Dodson doesn’t know that much of the death and destruction in sub-Saharan Africa has been caused by anti-development and anti-DDT enviros.
Thank you 🙂
You’re correct, Rob. Imo, Karen Dodson is a Globalist, and as a Globalist, is among murdering scum. She wraps herself into a blanket of false humanity, when THE answer for the world, imo, is DEVELOPMENT via capitalism. Kim2000 has her “number”, also, –BRAVO!
What a load of unadulterated bovine excretia – Joseph Goebbels would say “now this one’s a good candidate for my training camp” – I would like any of thsese people to actually come up with any hard evidence to support their constant bleating. Here in NZ we have Lucy Lawless (the warrior princess) illegally occupying a drilling ship because she says she wants the world to stop using oil yet she with her not inconsiderable wealth certainly uses more oil them most in her cars and world wide jetting (Oh but that’s different – I mean only ordinary people shouldn’t use oil) Makes you sick
Dear Karen Dodson.
I’m a kid.
Please explain this part to me.
“he argues something that every kindergarten child knows… that it is ethically wrong to kill another person to profit by it. ”
The rush for land grabs for carbon offset schemes displaces 20,000 and kills hundreds in Honduras, Uganda etc.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/25/they-had-to-burn-the-village-to-save-it-from-global-warming/
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/22/world/africa/in-scramble-for-land-oxfam-says-ugandans-were-pushed-out.html?_r=4&scp=3&sq=uganda&st=cse
Millions of new people are added, yearly, to the roles of the energy-poverty levels. Not just in undeveloped countries.
And you think Dr Brown has a logical argument about CAGW ethics when IPCC states:
“In its latest “Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX)”, whose “Summary for Policymakers” (1) is dated November 18, 2011, the IPCC writes (my emphasis):
(p9) “Projected changes in climate extremes under different emissions scenarios generally do not strongly diverge in the coming two to three decades, but these signals are relatively small compared to natural climate variability over this time frame. Even the sign of projected changes in some climate extremes over this time frame”
http://omniclimate.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/why-everybody-seeing-climate-changes-now-is-uninformed-or-a-liar/
I have news for you Ms.Karen Dodson – There is nothing unethical or immoral in not believing an unproven hypothesis.There is something immoral and unethical in not clearing up the ethics of carbon schemes, lack of accountability and transparency within IPCC and universities which feed these schemes.
Its been a while since I heard this approach. I suppose a presentation at Penn State is the appropriate forum to present it once again. It goes like this:
We are right.
We know we are right beyond any question, any time, any place whatsoever.
We are therefore morally justified beyond reproach in imposing our will on all others in all cases.
This logic served to spread Islam, to invoke the Crusades, and to slaughter untold millions in the name of numerous “-isms.”
And what is the new title of totalitarianism? Ethics.
Ah, humanity.
Brown, the ethicist accusing someone of killing people for profit – apparently so that I can drive an SUV – promotes civil disobedience to get his view across. Dodson is a solutions kind of person blogging at an art museum. Can it get more solution-oriented ethical than that? The world is in the very best of hands.