Adya Kadambari's Collection of Essays

‘There is no more neutrality in the world. You either have to be part of the solution, or you're going to be part of the problem.’- Eldridge Cleaver In ‘Consequentialism, Climate Harm and Individual Obligations’, Christopher Morgan-Knapp and Charles Goodman critique the argument that abiding by act-consequentialism assumes that individual emissions don’t matter because they are too minuscule. Building off their arguments, I am going to analyze the relevance of their theories and examples with the lens that climate changes disproportionally affects poorer, indigenous, and marginalized communities and conclude with a test that suggests the optimum size of an industry is based on the relationship between its emissions and the number of people dependent on it and what an environmentally oriented government should do. Morgan-Knapp and Goodman start by stating the commonly held view that act-consequentialism cannot provide any moral reason for individuals to voluntarily reduce the...

Philosophers often question what sets humans apart from the rest of the living things. Possibly because of our highly developed brains, we have the ability to make ethically guided decisions; we have a fine-tuned, socialized sense of rationality that animals don ’ t. My stance on environmental ethics takes this assumption to be true and after introspection, I can conclude that it is the premise upon which all my opinions about environmental ethics seem to stem from.  Applying this distinction of humanity's rationality into the context of my morals, I believe that the fact that we have set ourselves apart from the animal kingdom means that we have no business meddling in their livelihood. There is a circle of life and death that we have removed ourselves from by creating ways of sustenance that transcend the next meal- meaning we have no necessity to rely on hunting other animals for our survival. We have used science to create food storage, vaccines that ensure a longer life,...

 

The eve of August 14th, 1947 marks the partition of British India into India, West Pakistan and East Pakistan (Bangladesh). The decision to divide India to create Pakistan, the Land of the Holy, displaced over 12 million people including Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and was the reason for over a million communal deaths and a major refugee crisis. Many scholars and historians have pondered upon all the different reasons for the partition, writing it in a ten page essay would seem futile and shallow. Using the events of the partition, this essay attempts to deconstruct whether it was a religious reason that made the partition inevitable, or a political one.   Two lenses to explain one level: Constructivists would argue that the history of conflict between the distinct religious identities of Hindus and Muslims had created irreparable hostilities between the two communities, inevitably leading to demands for a separate country necessary for the self-determination and liberation of Muslims...