Theological and Ethical Perspectives on Climate Engineering

Calming the Storm

Contributions by Thomas Bruhn, Forrest Clingerman, Sarah E. Fredericks, Laura M. Hartman, Willis Jenkins, Kevin J. O'Brien, Stefan Schäfer, Dane Scott, Stefan Skrimshire, Marit Trelstad Edited by Forrest Clingerman, Kevin J. O'Brien

Not available to order

Publication date:

09 September 2016

Length of book:

242 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9781498523592

Calming the Storm presents diverse perspectives on some of the most vital questions raised by climate engineering: Who has the right to make decisions about such global technological efforts? What have we learned from the decisions that caused the climate to change that might shed light on efforts to reverse that change? What frameworks and metaphors are helpful in thinking about climate engineering, and which are counterproductive? What religious beliefs, practices, and rituals can help people to imagine and evaluate the prospect of engineering the climate?

Introduction
Forrest Clingerman & Kevin J. O’Brien
Acknowledgments
Part I: Climate Engineering and Religion
Chapter 1
Playing God: Why Religion Belongs in the Climate Engineering Debate
Forrest Clingerman & Kevin J. O’Brien
Chapter 2
From the Garden of Eden to Eden’s Gardener? Experiences from Dialogues with Religious Groups on Climate Engineering and Possible Implications for Transdisciplinarity
Thomas Bruhn, Stefan Schäfer, & Mark G. Lawrence
Part II: Philosophical and Theological Responses to Climate Engineering
Chapter 3
The Temptations of Climate Engineering
Dane Scott
Chapter 4
Real Presence: Process Theological Perspectives on Geoengineering the Body of God
Marit Trelstad
Chapter 5
Time’s Arrow and Narratives of Climate Engineering
Forrest Clingerman
Chapter 6
Rewriting Mortality: A Theological Critique of Geoengineering and De-Extinction
Stefan Skrimshire
Part III: Religious Resources for Moral Discernment
Chapter 7
Healing the Climate? Christian Ethics and Medical Models for Climate Engineering
Laura M. Hartman
Chapter 8
Stewards of Irony: Planetary Stewardship, Climate Engineering, and Religious Ethics
Willis Jenkins
Chapter 9
Ritual Responses to Climate Engineering
Sarah E. Fredericks
Chapter 10
“First Be Reconciled”: The Priority of Repentance in the Climate Engineering Debate
Kevin J. O’Brien
Appendix
Contributors

As methods of containing the horrors of climate change that are acceptable to most people of goodwill turn out to be inadequate and the threat of out-of-control global warming becomes an inescapable reality, scientists and technologists will propose responses from which many of us now recoil. Ethically sensitive people should not wait for the extreme crisis to start reflecting about these proposals. This book begins the process of informed reflection that has the potential to steer humanity wisely through choices that, thus far, many of us have refused to consider.