Fossils in an era of globalization, technology and climate change: what has changed and what has to be changed?

Abstract

This dissertation considers why inaction of people and governments against global and intergenerational injustice prompted by climate change and other environmental issues persists, and provides some theoretical and actual solutions for the problem. Although our world is rapidly changing with globalization, technological advance and population growth, people’s mindsets have not changed correspondingly and the area in which their moral concerns are applied is still spatially and temporally limited. This situation produces political, economic and psychological justifications for the inaction. However, those justifications can no longer be accepted if the no-harm principle and other axioms of justice are updated according to the changing elements of our world, and this shift in our ethical ways of thinking must lead to parallel shifts in the legal and economic frameworks of present societies. Furthermore, these theoretical solutions need to be applied to actual policies concerning environmental justice. Such endeavors should be principle-based and pragmatic, to realize the small possibility of reaching a more equitable future.