Avoiding the Armageddon Factor Justice in an Age of Conservation

Avoiding The Armageddon Factor: Justice in an Age of Conservation is a work of political philosophy. It is written as a follow up to The Ark in Space - A Political Philosophy with a Green Agenda. It accepts the premise of the former work in assuming Planet Earth has a finite capacity to tolerate man's exploitation of the environment to satiate his needs. Also assumed as a pretext for the work is the related notion that man driven 'over production' of the planet's natural wares and manipulation of the environment is in some way contributing to possibly lethal climate change. The first part of the provocative title of this work Avoiding the Armageddon Factor, refers to the 'Armageddon' or 'catastrophic conflict' of planet Earth experiencing the environmental fallout of man encouraged/induced climate change. This work assumes that the latter has been caused by the philosophy that man must consume ever more. Avoiding the 'Armageddon' implies the advocation of a global philosophy of conservation which is both just and fair. Conservation is an issue of political justice because it implies for want of a better term a cost or a burden which must be met by the concerted action of man. Justice in an Age of Conservation, the second part of the title of this work thus explores the idea of a fair model of distributive justice. This work conceives of the Earth as a 'global theatre' in which man has been allotted his 'seat'. The analogy is explored to examine how as a species man fashions his collective seat and asks whether he ought to reappraise his proprietorial attitude to his 'seat' in the theatre and indeed towards the global theatre itself.