Disowning the weather.

This paper is concerned with two senses of disowning in the context of climate change and human modification of nature generally. In one of these senses disowning is something to be encouraged; but in the other sense discussed here, disowning is to be discouraged. Both raise problems for liberal theory. There is no space here to do little more than indicate some of these problems; consequently the paper is mainly negative and critical in tone. Although I focus mainly on the other sense, I begin in the first part of the paper with the kind of disowning to be discouraged. This is the tendency to deny, or ignore, the responsibility we have for - and in that way 'disown' - the world we are in fact in the process of making including its climatic component. The other sense of disowning I go on to discuss mainly in relation to Hegel's account of property. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]