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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Derek Bell, Dr Jo SwaffieldORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Climate change and other contemporary harms are often depicted as New Harms because they seem to constitute unprecedented challenges. This New Harms Discourse rests on two important premises, both of which we criticise on empirical grounds. First, we argue that the Premise of changed conditions of human interaction – according to which the conditions regarding whom people affect (and how) have changed recently and which emphasises the difference with past conditions of human interaction – risks obfuscating how humanity’s current predicament is merely the transient result of long-term, gradual processes and developments. Second, we dispute the Premise that New Harmshave certain features that render them newand argue that New Harms share characteristics with other (past) harms. On the basis of these premises, the New Harms Discourse concludes that climate change is a unique social challenge that requires radically new moral thinking, but we argue that this Uniqueness Myth distracts attention from the valuable lessons we can draw from humanity’s successes and failures in dealing with past harms. We will illustrate how action to tackle climate change and other complex, systemic harms can be informed by the interdisciplinary study of historic harms. We will argue that rejecting the New Harms Discourse is not only empirically justified, it also gives cause for optimism, because it opens up the possibility to draw upon the past to face problems in the present and future.
Author(s): Peeters W, Bell D, Swaffield J
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics
Year: 2019
Volume: 32
Pages: 505-526
Print publication date: 01/08/2019
Online publication date: 26/07/2019
Acceptance date: 16/07/2019
Date deposited: 19/07/2019
ISSN (print): 1187-7863
ISSN (electronic): 1573-322X
Publisher: Springer
URL: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-019-09795-y
DOI: 10.1007/s10806-019-09795-y
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