American Heat : Ethical Problems With The United States' Response To Global Warming - 02 edition

Brown, Donald : Pennsylvania Consortium for Interdisciplinary Environmental Policy

Donald A. Brown is director of the Pennsylvania Consortium for Interdisciplinary Environmental Policy and former program manager for United Nations Organizations at the United States Environmental Protection Agency, Office of International Environmental Policy.

"Drawing on his own deeply American conscience, Don Brown has put America's indifference to the climate crisis into its most essential context--human ethics. As American Heat illustrates, our response to global warming is corroding our most cherished values. With so much of the debate focused on science and economics, Brown forces us to confront what we are doing to our poor neighbors around the world, to our species at home and, ultimately, to our own children."

--Ross Gelbspan, 1984 Pulitzer Prize Winner and author, The Heat Is On.

"Donald Brown is uniquely placed to make and defend the arguments in American Heat, the first book of its kind to clearly and convincingly connect the questions surrounding climate change with their ethical consequences."

--Laura Westra, University of Windsor

"In American Heat, Donald Brown shines a harsh light on one of the tawdriest chapters in recent American policy: our unwillingness to own up to our obvious obligation to help in the process of repairing the climate we have done so much to damage. If our leaders are capable of shame, this book should do the trick."

--Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature

"A convincing case, made by a gutsy insider, that the history of the U.S. response to global warming is ethically intolerable. American Heat is informative, provocative, and passionately argued. It deserves widespread public attention and discussion."

--William Aiken, Chatham College

"I found American Heat an excellent read. Don Brown examines ethical issues embedded in policymaking and science as they relate to the failure of the United States to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. Readers of American Heat will understand how, when it comes to the issue of global warming, ethics is often a silent but potent driver of political and scientific voices."

--Edward Wells, Environmental Studies Department, Wilson College

"The criticisms in American Heat flow from the intellectual tour de force of Brown's analysis and his deep belief that Americans will help lead the world to combating global warming fairly and justly once they understand how ethically troubling our current stance actually is. This book is a must read."

--John Lemons, University of New England

Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Web Site, January, 2003

Preliminary Matters
Absence of Ethical Concern
History of U.S. Participation in Global Warming Negotiations
Environmental Ethics and Global Warming Policy
Global Warming, Ethics, and Foreign Policy
What Is At Stake? Global Warming's Threat to Human Health and the Environment
Uncertainty in the Scinece of Climate Change
Ethical Analysis of U.S. Excuses for Lack of Action on Global Warming
The Ethical Duty to Reduce Emission in the Face of Scientific Uncertainty about Global Warming Consequences
U.S. Obligation to Act Even if the Developing World Does Not
Ethical Issues Entailed by the Use of Cost-Benefit Analysis--Based Arguments Made In Oppositition to U.S. Greenhouse Gas Reduction Programs
Ethical Problems With the U.S. Insistence on Its View of the Kyoto Flexibility Mechanisms
Other Global Warming Ethical Issues
An Equitable Allocation of Greenhouse Gas Emissions among Nations
Ethical Dimensions of a Greenhouse Gas Atmospheric Stabilization Target
Conclusion: Some Additional Issues
Glossary