Sorry David and Jim, I sent this to the wrong address. I've solved the
problem.
sb
-----Original Message-----
From: Steven Bissell [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, December 08, 2000 8:07 AM
To: enviroethics
Subject: global warming, energy, ethics
Here is an interesting Web site on energy use. It is on the alarmist side,
so I'm sure that some on the list will have a good time with it.
http://dieoff.com/synopsis.htm
However, what I am interested in this morning is the on-going debate on the
list about global warming. I have found it interesting that both sides seem
to think that if they present enough "facts" then the other side will
capitulate, come to their senses, embrace the faith.
I ask all of my students to answer the following question in my
Environmental Policy Analysis class:
2. Environmental regulation started from a robust foundation, but some
environmental policy analysts has been neglected in the past 15 years.
However, others feel that environmental regulation is a threat to personal
liberty and a stagnating force in the economy. why then do they analyze the
same circumstances from such different view points? Is a single factional
view of environmental regulation rational? Why or why not?
These are graduate students and most of them get the point that a lot more
than facts go into policy formulation. One of the objectives of my policy
class is to show students with a science background that the presentation of
facts and good science does not lead to policy formulation. What I'd like
them to realize is that along with politics, economics, sociological
conditions, cultural issues, and science, ethics can and should be included
into environmental policy.
In the case of global warming there are major ethical issues to be resolved.
Whether or not the "science" of global warming is settled is largely
irrelevant to the issue. The discussion of the past week or so has
skirmished around the issue of ethics, but hasn't really said what the
ethical issue is.
Just my thoughts,
Steven
In the final analysis one should think only
of one single science: the science of man,
or, more exactly expressed, social science,
of which our own existence constitutes at
once the principle and the purpose and in
which the rational study of the external
world naturally comes to merge, for this
double reason that the science of nature is
a necessary constituent of and a basic
preamble to social science.
Auguste Comte
Discourses, 1884
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