The Environmental Impact of Overpopulation

The Ethics of Procreation
1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-1-138-48975-2
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd (Sales)

Buch, Englisch, 192 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 449 g

Reihe: Routledge Explorations in Environmental Studies

This book examines the link between population growth and environmental impact and explores the implications of this connection for the ethics of procreation.

In light of climate change, species extinctions, and other looming environmental crises, Trevor Hedberg argues that we have a collective moral duty to halt population growth to prevent environmental harms from escalating. This book assesses a variety of policies that could help us meet this moral duty, confronts the conflict between protecting the welfare of future people and upholding procreative freedom, evaluates the ethical dimensions of individual procreative decisions, and sketches the implications of population growth for issues like abortion and immigration. It is not a book of tidy solutions: Hedberg highlights some scenarios where nothing we can do will enable us to avoid treating some people unjustly. In such scenarios, the overall objective is to determine which of our available options will minimize the injustice that occurs.

This book will be of great interest to those studying environmental ethics, environmental policy, climate change, sustainability, and population policy.

Chapter 5 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hedberg, Trevor

Fachgebiete

• Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Klimawandel, Globale Erwärmung
• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften Ökologie
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Enzyklopädien, Nachschlagewerke, Wörterbücher
• Geowissenschaften Geographie | Raumplanung Geographie: Sachbuch, Reise
• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften, Biologie: Sachbuch, Naturführer

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Part 1: Confronting the Problem 1. The Uncomfortable Reality of Rising Numbers 2. The Gravity of the Population Problem Part 2: Intergenerational Ethics, Population Policy, and Personal Procreative Obligations 3. Intergenerational Equity and Long-Term Environmental Impacts 4. The Moral Duty to Halt Population Growth 5. Policies That Promote Smaller Families 6. Individual Procreative Obligations Part 3: Objections from Alternative Approaches to Procreative Ethics 7. Antinatalism 8. Reproductive Rights and Procreative Freedom Part 4: Lingering Questions 9. What about Immigration? 10. What about the Nonhuman Community?11. Can We Solve the Problem? Appendix: The Non-Identity Problem

Über Autor(innen)

Trevor Hedberg is a postdoctoral scholar at The Ohio State University, USA, jointly affiliated with the College of Pharmacy and the Center for Ethics and Human Values.