Total Questions : 1
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Climate change is one of the biggest challenges which humankind is facing right now. While several mitigations and adaptation methods have been researched, scientists have high hopes from geoengineering that include Carbon Dioxide removal and reflecting sunlight back into space. The Elders, an independent group of global leaders founded by Nelson Mandela, is pursuing a framework for working of geo-engineering at the international level. However, several ethical issues have been identified with geoengineering which include the following:
a. It would be morally unacceptable to use geoengineering, in any form, as a replacement for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. To do so would impose unacceptably large risks and costs on vulnerable people and future generations.
b. Whether the positive and negative impacts of any geoengineering could be fairly distributed (issue of the distributive justice).
c. How should decisions of geoengineering be made (issue of procedural justice)?
In this context, critically analyze the issues identified by the ethicists.
GS Paper 4 Case Studies
