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The Bible lays itself open to charges of divine injustice in the way it treats election, divine zeal, and prolonged inaction while evil blossoms and bears fruit, the dark side of God, divine pathos, and monotheism. Theodicy was therefore inevitable, although profoundly problematic. Neither the abandoning of the quest through an atheistic viewpoint nor spreading the blame to many gods or a demon gave much solace. The effort to define God so that the problem of evil would vanish came at the expense of a viable concept of deity, for it postulates a weak, ignorant, and vulnerable God. Shifting the blame to humans heightened the mystery surrounding theodicy, even when entrusting them with a noble task of working to establish justice in the absence of divine success in that endeavor.

The word ‘can’ stands at the intersection of people's theoretical and practical interests. In science and rational enquiry, people seek to explain human behavior and assume there to be natural laws to be discovered in this domain as in others. Given such laws and suitable antecedent conditions, every human action may be explained in such a way that it appears that the agent could have performed no other action other than the one she did. People's legal and moral concerns, on the other hand, lead people to assume that people sometimes could have fulfilled their obligations, when, in fact, they did not do so. The present moment is a propitious one for reconsideration because of recent research on conditionals using possible world semantics.

Chapter 1 begins by stressing the severity of climate change (CC) and showing how, contrary to popular belief, atomic energy is not a viable solution to CC. Many scientists and most market proponents agree that renewable energy and energy efficiencies are better options. The chapter also shows that government subsidies for oil and nuclear power are the result of flawed science, poor ethics, short-term thinking, and special-interest influence. The chapter has 7 sections, the first of which surveys four major components of the energy crisis. These are oil addiction, non-CC-related deaths from fossil-fuel pollution, nuclear-weapons proliferation, and catastrophic CC. The second section summarizes some of the powerful evidence for global CC. The third section uses historical, ahistorical, Rawlsian, and utilitarian ethical principles to show how developed nations, especially the US, are most responsible for human-caused CC. The fourth section shows why climate-change skeptics, such as “deniers” who doubt CC is real, and “delayers” who say that it should not yet be addressed, have no valid objections. Instead, they all err scientifically and ethically. The fifth section illustrates that all modern scientific methods—and scientific consensus since at least 1995—confirm the reality of global CC. Essentially all expert-scientific analyses published in refereed, scientific-professional journals confirm the reality of global CC. The sixth section of the chapter shows how fossil-fuel special interests have contributed to the continued CC debate largely by paying non-experts to deny or challenge CC. The seventh section of the chapter provides an outline of each chapter in the book, noting that this book makes use of both scientific and ethical analyses to show why nuclear proponents’ arguments err, why CC deniers are wrong, and how scientific-methodological understanding can advance sound energy policy—including conservation, renewable energy, and energy efficiencies.

This chapter looks at the real significance of the distinctions between different forms of estoppel. One distinction that has been questioned is that between proprietary estoppel and the principle in the 1947 case Central London Property Trust Limited v. High Trees House Limited, known as promissory estoppel. The chapter divides estoppel into the formal estoppels and reliance-based estoppel, and uses the term ‘estoppel’ to refer to the latter unless otherwise stated. Reliance-based estoppel is treated as a unity; variations within it are described transparently, rather than using terms which have become ambiguous. Hence, we can speak of the special considerations arising when the representation is by silent inaction, or when the representation is a concession of contractual obligations (a High Trees-type case), or when the representation is about land.

This introductory chapter discusses how our current response to climate change has been inadequate and inequitable. During UN climate negotiations, nations still talk about climate inaction. Developed countries emphasize the importance of climate issues, but climate change is largely a product of their own unconstrained greenhouse gas emissions. Nations downplay their historical responsibilities for the problem, demanding instead that all nations take measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions—an issue described here as climate injustice. In addition, power relations continue to shift in new ways, particularly as the world warms. The chapter explores these shifting power dynamics and considers their impact on our ability to take sustainable and equitable action, and how we can change course.

This chapter examines one of Augustine of Hippo's best known and most powerful objections to Academic skepticism: the “Inaction Objection.” It first considers the Academics' response to the Inaction Objection, with particular emphasis on their appeal to persuasiveness as a means of explaining how the wise person may guide his or her actions in the absence of knowledge. It then discusses Augustine's criticism of the Academic response and his reasons for thinking why it was a failure. It also explores a possible rejoinder to Augustine's criticism and the extent to which it is open to the Academics to make it. It argues that Augustine has succeeded in placing a burden on the Academics—the burden of explaining why judgments of persuasiveness do not involve latent judgments of truthlikeness or, if they do involve such judgments, why the Academics are entitled to make them while at the same time disavowing all knowledge of truth.

This chapter determines the power of the financial industry and develops the argument about collective inaction as an exercise of power. It also analyzes different aspects of power—particularly, structural and productive power. The power of the financial industry rests on structural features and has been enshrined in collectively produced knowledge regimes over time. Still, both the financial industry and governments retained discretion over crisis management. Studying the responses of some countries draws particular attention to the power of collective inaction exercised by the financial industry in four out of six cases. This collective inaction becomes more significant when we consider the fundamental problem that led policymakers to support private institutions through public money: systemic risk.

Chapter Four looks into the transformation of rural Chinese women into industrial workers and the process through which management’s particular mode of labor discipline gradually penetrates their minds and bodies. Nawon’s foreign management departed from its initial methods based on the “universal” concepts of labor supervision and rational principles of reward and punishment, since it had to change disciplinary methods according to the workers’ reactions to them. Han-Chinese workers reacted to them with their own critical consciousness of a proper level of body discipline and work diligence. As management’s methods of labor discipline and punishment infringed on their ideas about proper discipline and work ethics, the workers developed their own tactics to evade management’s control. The chapter therefore shows that the actual process of labor discipline is a dialectical one that ultimately leads to the mutual transformation of workers and management.

Chapter Seven analyzes the limits of globalization by describing new developments on the shop floor such as a new plant manager from a Guatemalan maquila factory and an unprecedented workers’ strike. After the collision with the local power holders, management realized it could no longer rely on their unofficial support. Instead, management chose to push forward a “higher level of globalization” to restore shop-floor control. As part of its new managerial push, management decided to hire the new plant manager, expecting he would introduce managerial practices “more global” than those of Nawon. The “global standards” of the new management reinforced labor supervision and increased the intensity of labor. These changes, however, triggered a Han-Chinese workers’ strike, leading to the new plant manager’s resignation. The strike resulted from the “global” management’s ignorance of the workers’ expectation of “decent” wages and the previous management’s paternalist attitude toward the workers.

Throughout the 1970s, Human Events, National Review, and Commentary drew connections to argue that the nation’s dependence on foreign oil continued to grow because of numerous regulations imposed on energy producers by the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations. The three media outlets also concluded that America’s inability to respond to the economic aggression of OPEC represented another example of the weakness that had been at the heart of the American worldview for decades. Finally, the seizure of the US embassy in Iran in 1979 by Islamic fundamentalists led writers for these publications to contend that in order for the United States to regain national greatness it must free itself from limitations imposed on it by hostile forces at home and abroad. That goal of national revival was a key theme that Ronald Reagan and his supporters at Human Events, National Review, and Commentary capitalized on as the country moved into the presidential election of 1980.

Shifting the chemicals economy towards safer chemicals and alternatives is a huge and complex task. It will take years,--at least a generation--but, if we are ever going to do it, we should begin now. The costs of waiting are too high. There are many leverage points in the chemical production, consumption and disposal system and there are many forces currently working for change. The task is integrating and coordinating these many forces and developing a new understanding that the chemicals problem cannot be solved chemical at a time. What is needed is a broad, inclusive movement to promote a safer chemical market, a more sustainable chemical industry, and a robust green chemistry

The chapter focuses on modernist fascination with vitality and movement to show how this “vitalocentric” tendency is matched by a cultural countercurrent of the aesthetics of cessation. The chapter uses Raymond Williams’s concept of emergent cultural value, the chapter examines modernist art and literary manifestos and essays, their deep-seated distrust towards all signs of what Filippo Marinetti called lethargy, a distrust coupled with a special privileging of vitality-as-animation. As far as the classical interpretations of modernism go, it was this valorization of vibrant vitality over lethargic inactivity that provided necessary fuel for the modernist rebellious claims to uniqueness. The chapter challenges the vitalocentric interpretation of modernism and focuses on previously unacknowledged counter-vitalist impulses within the modernist project. Such impulses can be traced in Gertrude Stein’s philosophy of art, generally considered as one of the pillars of early 20th century vitalocentrism. While apparently consistent with vitalist sensibility, Stein’s ideas -- when read through the lens of Marcel Duchamp’s concept of inaction externe and Giorgio Agamben’s notions of impotency and inoperativity-- go beyond the modernist sensibility and capture in an embryonic form the structures of feeling traditionally associated with modernism’s successor, postmodernism.

This chapter begins with a brief exploration of the various phases of this devastating conflict. It explores why China has used its veto power on seven occasions over the course of this war (up to September 2019); a puzzle, because vetoing is extremely unusual Chinese behaviour. The chapter also explores the image consequences for China, mostly damaging in the early stages of this war, that have flowed from that change in its approach. It references some of the resolutions that have caused UN Security Council division. In particular, it focuses on the justifications Beijing has offered for the voting decisions it has made over the course of a devastating conflict that has included the use of chemical weapons. The Syrian case is afforded its own chapter in this study not only because of China’s more frequent use of the veto, but also because of Syria’s status as one of the worst failures in human protection since World War II. The case study is additionally instructive with regard to China’s approaches to the UN’s POC and R2P agendas.

Previous research has focused primarily on assessing dialectical thinking among respondents in representative East Asian and Western nations (e.g., China, Japan, South Korea, and the United States). This chapter examines how dialectical thinking varies across 19 nations/subnations spanning four continents. Consistent with previous theory, dialectical thinking was highest in East Asian societies, such as mainland China, Hong Kong, and Japan. Dialectical thinking was lowest in Guatemala, Turkey, and Italy. Further, both individual and nation-level dialecticism significantly predicted attitudes toward action and inaction. That is, both cultural groups and individuals high in dialectical thinking evidenced greater balance and moderation in attitudes toward action and inaction than cultural groups and individuals low in dialectical thinking. Given that dialectical thinking exists to some degree in a variety of cultures, factors that cultivate dialecticism in both East Asian and Western cultures are addressed. The chapter concludes with discussion of avenues for future research examining patterns of dialectical thinking across the globe.

This chapter argues that a psychological approach to climate change law and policy may be helpful in increasing our ability to effectively understand, predict, and shape human behavior regarding climate change. This approach requires reviewing the basic science of climate change; evaluating the psychology of climate change by developing an understanding of people’s perceptions, motivations, and cognition regarding climate change; and recognizing the distinctive psychology of the key climate strategies of mitigation, adaptation, geoengineering, and inaction.

This chapter introduces the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing: the claim that doing harm is harder to justify than merely allowing harm. It argues that rejecting the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing would require radical revision of our moral judgements. Nonetheless the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing requires defence. It shows that proper understanding of the Doctrine allows us to avoid some common objections. The distinction between doing and allowing is different from the distinction between action and inaction, but that the two distinctions are related.

This chapter continues the analysis of the doing/allowing distinction by exploring what makes a fact substantial. A fact will count as substantial if it has some feature that makes it more than a mere background condition. Three features that can make a fact substantial are discussed: being a positive fact about a relevant framework; being scalar positive relative to some natural scale; being contrary to the normal presuppositions (the relatively stable set of shared background assumptions made in discussion/reasoning). The discussion of the positive/negative distinction draws on the work of Jonathan Bennett. The author also shows that an account of the action/inaction distinction follows from this analysis.