-
Mobilizing Hope Against Pessimism and Plutocracy Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2024-02-06 Darrel Moellendorf
This paper offers responses to the challenges and questions rasied by the comments of John M. Meyer, Gwen Ottinger, Mark Reiff, and Steve Vanderheiden to my book Mobilizing Hope: Climate Change and...
-
Hope Springs Eternal? Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2024-01-28 Steve Vanderheiden
Published in Ethics, Policy & Environment (Vol. 27, No. 1, 2024)
-
Hope in an Illiberal Age? Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2024-01-24 Mark R. Reiff
In this commentary on Darrel Moellendorf’s Mobilizing Hope: Climate Change & Global Poverty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), I discuss his use of the precautionary principle, whether his ho...
-
All I Ask of You Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2024-01-22 Gwen Ottinger
Mobilizing Hope asks that we take the eradication of poverty as morally mandatory, that we pursue technological development, and that we act on the belief that it is possible to do both of those th...
-
Thinking about Hope, Vision, and Mobilization with Darrel Moellendorf’s Mobilizing Hope Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2024-01-17 John M. Meyer
Published in Ethics, Policy & Environment (Vol. 27, No. 1, 2024)
-
Synthetic Biology and the Goals of Conservation Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2024-01-04 Christopher Hunter Lean
The introduction of new genetic material into wild populations, using novel biotechnology, has the potential to fortify populations against existential threats, and, controversially, create wild ge...
-
Another Shake of the Bag: Stefansson and Willners on Offsetting and Risk Imposition Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-12-26 Christian Barry, Garrett Cullity
There is a difference between acting with a probability of making a difference to who is harmed, and worsening someone’s prospect. This difference is relevant to debates about the ethics of offsett...
-
Political Feasibility and a Global Climate Treaty Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-11-15 David Lefkowitz
I contend that to be politically feasible a global climate treaty must satisfy the International Paretian principle (IP). I begin by defending IP as a principle of instrumental rationality that ref...
-
Welcoming, Wild Animals, and Obligations to Assist Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-11-14 Josh Milburn
What we could call ‘relational non-interventionism’ holds that we have no general obligation to alleviate animal suffering, and that we do not typically have special obligations to alleviate wild a...
-
Sufficiency and the Distribution of Burdens Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-10-25 Robert Huseby
A common objection to sufficientarianism is that it allows large inequalities above the threshold. A sharpened form of this objection highlights that this indifference also encompasses large inequa...
-
Sufficiency as a Value Standard: From Preferences to Needs Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-10-23 Ian Gough
This paper outlines a conceptual framework for a sufficiency economy, defining sufficiency as the space between a generalizable notion of human wellbeing and ungeneralisable excess. It assumes an o...
-
Using Plant Biotechnology to Save ʻŌhiʻa Lehua: Western and Indigenous Conservation Perspectives Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-10-16 Yasha Rohwer
The ʻōhiʻa lehua is an ecologically and culturally important Hawaiian tree. It is currently threatened by two exotic fungal pathogens. One potential way to save the tree may be to genetically modif...
-
What Do ‘Humans’ Need? Sufficiency and Pluralism Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-08-29 Ben Davies
ABSTRACT Sufficientarians face a problem of arbitrariness: why place a sufficiency threshold at any particular point? One response is to seek universal goods to justify a threshold. However, this faces difficulties (despite sincere efforts) by either being too low, or failing to accommodate individuals with significant cognitive disabilities. Some sufficientarians have appealed to individuals’ subjective
-
Climate Precaution and Producer versus Consumer Dependence on Fossil Fuels Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-08-18 Daniel Steel, Paul Bartha, Rachel Cripps
ABSTRACT This article explores the consequences of falling costs of solar and wind power for the ethics of climate change mitigation. We suggest that price competitiveness of renewables reveals a divergence of interest between fossil fuel consumers and producers: cheap renewables strengthen precautionary arguments for aggressive mitigation for consumers but threaten the economic base of producers.
-
Towards a Practical Climate Ethics: Combining Two Approaches to Guide Ethical Decision-Making in Concrete Climate Governance Contexts Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-08-01 Anthony Voisard, Ivo Wallimann-Helmer
ABSTRACT This paper discusses two approaches to climate ethics for practical reflection and decision-making in concrete local climate change governance. After a brief review of the main conceptual frameworks in climate ethics research, we show that none of these leading approaches is sufficiently context specific and pluralistic to provide guidance appropriate for concrete local climate governance
-
Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-07-31 Ronald Sandler, Ryan Baylon, Anya Ghai
Published in Ethics, Policy & Environment (Vol. 26, No. 3, 2023)
-
Environmental Neologisms Through the Lens of the Virtue Ethics of Catholicism and Stoicism Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-07-06 María Carmen Molina, Kai Whiting
ABSTRACT The complexity and emotional/psychological responses to the environmental challenges of the 21st century has led to the coining and development of new words and concepts that, for some people, better describe how they are personally grappling with anthropogenic ecosystem damage and climate breakdown. This paper identifies some of the more commonly used environmental neologisms within scholarly
-
Carbon Offsetting Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-06-15 Dan Baras
ABSTRACT Do carbon-offsetting schemes morally offset emissions? The moral equivalence thesis is the claim that the combination of emitting greenhouse gasses and offsetting those emissions is morally equivalent to not emitting at all. This thesis implies that in response to climate change, we need not make any lifestyle changes to reduce our emissions as long as we offset them. An influential argument
-
What the Heck Cattle Have to Do with Environmentalism: Rewilding and the Continuous Project of the Human Management of Nature Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-06-13 Eric Katz
ABSTRACT In the 1920s and 1930s, an attempt was made to resurrect the aurochs (Bos primigenius primigenius), the extinct wild ancestor of contemporary domestic cattle. The back-bred species that was produced are called ‘Heck cattle’. I argue that the attempt to create the Heck cattle as a form of resurrected aurochs, and their subsequent use in rewilding projects (as in the Oostvaardersplassen in the
-
Normative Uncertainty in Solar Climate Engineering Research Governance Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-05-26 Benjamin Hofbauer
ABSTRACT This paper explores what kind of uncertainty a research program governing solar climate engineering through Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI) needs to account for. Specifically, it tries to answer two central issues with regards to SAI research and it’s ethical evaluation: One, what irreducible uncertainties remain throughout the decision-process, and, two, how do these remaining uncertainties
-
The Ethics of Unintentional Geoengineering Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-05-24 Alexander Lee, Marc Shapiro
Published in Ethics, Policy & Environment (Ahead of Print, 2023)
-
Using Synthetic Biology to Avert Runaway Climate Change: A Consequentialist Appraisal Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-05-24 Daniele Fulvi, Josh Wodak
We attempt to justify the use of synthetic biology in response to the climate crisis, based on the premise that it is impossible to avert runaway climate change without sequestering sufficient gree...
-
Reducing Wild Animal Suffering Effectively: Why Impracticability and Normative Objections Fail Against the Most Promising Ways of Helping Wild Animals Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-05-12 Oscar Horta, Dayron Teran
ABSTRACT This paper presents some of the most promising ways wild animals are currently being helped, as well as other ways of helping that may be implemented easily in the near future. They include measures to save animals affected by harmful weather events, wild animal vaccination programs, and projects aimed at reducing suffering among synanthropic animals. The paper then presents other ways of
-
The Rebugnant Conclusion: Utilitarianism, Insects, Microbes, and AI Systems Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-04-26 Jeff Sebo
ABSTRACT This paper considers questions that small animals and AI systems raise for utilitarianism. Specifically, if these beings have more welfare than humans and other large animals, then utilitarianism implies that we should prioritize them, all else equal. This could lead to a ‘rebugnant conclusion’, according to which we should, say, create large populations of small animals rather than small
-
Solidarity with Wild Animals Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-04-24 Mara-Daria Cojocaru, Alasdair Cochrane
ABSTRACT ‘Solidarity’ is a key concept in political movements and usually bears on matters of labour, health and social justice. As such, it is essential in the reproduction and transformation of communities that support their members and protect their interests. It is sometimes overlooked that interspecies solidarity already pertains with a number of domesticated animals, and that people are willing
-
Wild Animal Ethics: A Freedom-Based Approach Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-04-17 Eze Paez
ABSTRACT On expectation, most wild animals have lives of net suffering due to naturogenic causes. Some have claimed that concern for their well-being gives us reasons to intervene in nature on their behalf. Against this, it has been said that many interventions to assist wild animals would be wrong, even if successful, because they would violate their freedom. According to the Freedom-based Approach
-
Embedding Justice Considerations in Climate Resilience Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-04-17 Jose Carlos Cañizares, Samantha Copeland, Neelke Doorn
This article contributes to recent work on justice in resilience-based projects for climate adaptation. At present, the model commonly used for guiding normative reflection in this domain is the tr...
-
Vulnerability and the Ethics of Environmental Enhancement Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-04-14 Catia Faria
ABSTRACT In this paper, following the taxonomy developed by Mackenzie, Rogers and Dodds of different sources and states of vulnerability, I claim that wild animals are inherently and situationally vulnerable. This is because they can experience suffering as a response to certain internal and external states and have a high exposure to, and a low capacity to cope with, harmful natural processes. From
-
Positive Duties to Wild Animals: Introduction Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-04-13 Kyle Johannsen
ABSTRACT Though we’ve always known that the wild is a nasty place where predators lethally attack prey, only recently have most animal ethicists come to realize that most wild animals fail to flourish. In fact, what we know about wild animal reproduction suggests that the majority of sentient beings born into the world may not even live lives worth living. It’s not unreasonable for one to initially
-
Preserving the Preservation of Opportunity Principle Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-04-06 Michael Carrick
ABSTRACT In Living Well Now and in the Future: Why Sustainability Matters, Randall Curren and Ellen Metzger formulate an ethics of sustainability, conceptually connecting sustainability with ongoing opportunities for people to live well. Part of the sustainability ethics they develop is a principle called the Preservation of Opportunity Principle. My goal in this paper is to analyze the Preservation
-
Wishful Thinking vs. Hopeful Action: Response to Diehm on American Chestnut Restoration Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-04-03 Evelyn Brister, Andrew E. Newhouse
ABSTRACT Christian Diehm has argued against using a genetically modified American chestnut variety in forest restoration. He is concerned that a GM variety sets a bad precedent and is disrespectful toward nature. He is also concerned that not enough has been done to consult with Native American tribes. We give evidence that consultation with tribes, environmental organizations, and the public is valuable
-
Southern Resident Orca Conservation: Practical, Ethical and Political Issues Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-02-27 Samantha Muka, Chris Zarpentine
ABSTRACT This article focuses on practical, ethical and political issues that arise in the context of cetacean conservation. Our point of departure is the controversy surrounding plans to assist J50, an ailing member of the southern resident orca population, during the summer of 2018. A brief history of cetacean captivity provides context for the current backlash against captivity. We then argue that
-
Understanding Feasibility of Climate Change Goals and Actions Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-02-27 Anna Döhlen Wedin
Climate change goals and actions are often discussed with reference to their feasibility. However, in the climate change literature, there is no agreed upon understanding of what feasibility means....
-
Rationing and Climate Change Mitigation* Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-02-19 Nathan Wood, Rob Lawlor, Josie Freear
In this paper, we argue that rationing has been neglected as a policy option for mitigating climate change. There is a broad scientific consensus that avoiding the most severe impacts of climate ch...
-
Ubuntu and the Problem of Belonging Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-02-17 Olusegun Steven Samuel
ABSTRACT This paper proposes an original ubuntu-inspired account of human-animal moral status for engaging the problem of belongingness—the ethico-ecological community view. This account embodies two integrated features: locatedness and relationality. While locatedness prompts us to attend to the embeddedness of beings in the built and natural environment, relationality allows the discussion to focus
-
Accounting for Future Generations in Energy Ethics: The Case for Temporalized Ethical Matrices Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-02-07 Céline Kermisch, Christophe Depaus
Accounting for future generations is central in energy ethics and the ethical matrix can be used to reveal ethical impacts on them. However, the way it integrates future generations is questionable...
-
Why It’s OK to Eat Meat Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-02-01 Trevor Hedberg
Published in Ethics, Policy & Environment (Vol. 26, No. 1, 2023)
-
Why Offsetting is Not Like Shaking a Bag: A Reply to Barry & Cullity Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-01-30 H. Orri Stefánsson, Mac Willners
ABSTRACT Barry and Cullity argue that when morally assessing a person’s climate actions, we should ask how these actions affect other people’s prospects, understood in terms of the actor’s episemic probabilities. In this comment we argue, first, that even though Barry and Cullity are right in that we should use a person’s epistemic probabilities when assessing her climate actions, it is not clear that
-
Exploring Intergenerational Climate Resilience: A Basic Needs-Based Conception Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-01-25 Daniel Petz
ABSTRACT This paper situates the concept of resilience in the context of intergenerational climate justice. It argues that overlooking intergenerational justice questions when it comes to resilience can lead to blind-spots in resilience-building policies. Introducing a sufficientarian basic needs-based conception of justice, it explores the relationship between distributive justice and resilience,
-
Beyond Intrinsic and Instrumental: Third-Category Value in Environmental Ethics and Environmental Policy Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2023-01-24 Anna Deplazes-Zemp
ABSTRACT Values have always tended to play a central role in discourse on the environment, a tendency which is currently particularly evident in the biodiversity context. Traditionally, arguments about the environment have invoked instrumental value to highlight the necessity or utility of a healthy environment for people and intrinsic value to emphasize the importance of protecting nature for its
-
Eco-relational Pluralism: Political Liberalism’s Challenge to the Economic Growth Imperative Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2022-12-22 Manuel Rodeiro
ABSTRACT Rawls theorizes principles of justice as defining a ‘pact of reconciliation’ between diverse conceptions of the good. What does fulfillment of this pact entail when reasonable pluralism is recognized as having an environmental dimension? Fair acknowledgment of the plurality of citizens’ relationships with the natural world challenges the neutrality of aims conventionally used to justify ecocide
-
Limited Aggregation for Resolving Human-Wildlife Conflicts Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2022-11-22 Matthias Eggel, Angela K. Martin
ABSTRACT Human-wildlife interactions frequently lead to conflicts – about the fair use of natural resources, for example. Various principled accounts have been proposed to resolve such interspecies conflicts. However, the existing frameworks are often inadequate to the complexities of real-life scenarios. In particular, they frequently fail because they do not adequately take account of the qualitative
-
How Might Stoic Virtue Ethics Inform Sustainable Clothing Choices? Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2022-11-12 Kai Whiting, Edward Simpson, Angeles Carrasco, Aldo Dinucci, Leonidas Konstantakos
This paper explores sustainable fashion choices from a Stoic philosophical perspective. Ancient Stoic teachings can help us reexamine our relationship with clothes in the 21st century and provide d...
-
Should I Offset or Should I Do More Good? Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2022-11-10 H. Orri Stefansson
ABSTRACT Offsetting is a very ineffective way to do good. Offsetting your lifetime emissions may increase aggregated life expectancy by at most seven years, while giving the amount it costs to offset your lifetime emissions to a malaria charity saves in expectation the life of at least one child. Is there any moral reason to offset rather than giving to some charity that does good so much more effectively
-
Do We Impose Undue Risk When We Emit and Offset? A Reply to Stefansson Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2022-11-10 Christian Barry, Garrett Cullity
ABSTRACT We have previously argued that there are forms of greenhouse gas offsetting for which, when one emits and offsets, one imposes no risk. Orri Stefansson objects that our argument fails to distinguish properly between the people who stand to be harmed by one’s emissions and the people who stand to be benefited by one’s offsetting. We reply by emphasizing the difference between acting with a
-
Why I Should Still Offset Rather Than Do More Good Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2022-11-10 Kritika Maheshwari
ABSTRACT Stefansson (forthcoming) argues that by emitting and offsetting, we fail to fulfil our justice-based duty to avoid harm owed to specific individuals. In this paper, I explore a case where offsetting fails to prevent some but not all risks of harms that our emissions impose on them. By drawing on a distinction between general and specific duties not to (risk) harm, I argue that if by emitting
-
Carbon Offsetting and Justice: A Kantian Response Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2022-11-10 Zachary Vereb
ABSTRACT In ‘Should I offset or should I do more good?’, H. Orri Stefansson defends an argument that calls into question the belief that we can discharge our duties to prevent harm by carbon offsetting. Stefansson suggests that other actions, such as donations, should be preferred. This paper questions aspects of that analysis by evaluating the normative assumptions underlying it. It does so from a
-
Is There Any Virtue in Offsetting? Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2022-11-10 Kevin Meeker
Published in Ethics, Policy & Environment (Vol. 25, No. 3, 2022)
-
Offsetting Risks to the Unjustly Advantaged: Why Doing More Good Sometimes Takes Priority Over Offsetting Risks We’ve Unjustly Imposed Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2022-11-10 Brian Berkey
Published in Ethics, Policy & Environment (Vol. 25, No. 3, 2022)
-
Can Consumption-Based Emissions Accounting Solve the Problem of Historical Emissions? Some Skeptical Remarks Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2022-11-10 Laura García Portela
Published in Ethics, Policy & Environment (Vol. 25, No. 3, 2022)
-
Replies to “Can Consumption-Based Emissions Accounting Solve the Problem of Historical Emissions? Some Skeptical Remarks” Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2022-11-10 Olle Torpman
Published in Ethics, Policy & Environment (Vol. 25, No. 3, 2022)
-
Uniting Ecocentric and Animal Ethics: Combining Non-Anthropocentric Approaches in Conservation and the Care of Domestic Animals Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2022-11-02 Helen Kopnina, Joe Gray, William Lynn, Anja Heister, Raghav Srivastava
ABSTRACT Currently, there is no non-anthropocentric guide to the practice of nature conservation and the treatment of invasive species and domestic animals. In examining the so-called ‘ecocentric’ and ‘animal’ ethics, we highlight some differences between them, and argue that the basic aspiration for support of all nonhuman life needs to be retained. We maintain that hierarchies of value need to be
-
Innovation, Deep Decarbonization and Ethics Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2022-10-27 Ewan Kingston
ABSTRACT Deep decarbonization – slashing global greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero – now dominates global climate policy. Two recent books assess feasible routes to achieve deep decarbonization. Bill Gates’ How to Avoid a Climate Disaster explains in depth why deep decarbonization requires significant innovations in tech, and Danny Cullenward and David Victor’s Making Climate Policy Work emphasizes
-
The Motivation Problem: Jamieson, Gardiner, and the Institutional Barriers to Climate Responsibility Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2022-10-25 Tim Christion
After decades of institutional failure to address climate change, the need for ethically-motivated collective action is clear. It is equally clear that this issue is not widely perceived as an ethi...
-
Antibiotic Resistance, Meat Consumption and the Harm Principle Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2022-10-24 Davide Fumagalli
ABSTRACT This paper vindicates using the harm principle (HP) to justify restricting consumer’s access to meat products in light of the impact that it has on the development of antibiotic resistance (ABR). In particular, the study claims that, since an individual instance of consumption, or purchase of meat, meaningfully contributes to the development of ABR in farming environments, a state intervention
-
Between Neutrality and Action: State Speech and Climate Change Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2022-10-24 Kevin McGravey, Matthew Hodgetts
ABSTRACT 2019 saw a wave of youth-led climate strikes that demanded states ‘listen to the science’. Some of these states are committed to protecting free speech through neutrality on climate change. That commitment inhibits informed democratic deliberation by remaining neutral between climate science and denial. In response, using the United States as our example, we argue that the state can and should
-
The Concept of Extinction: Epistemology, Responsibility, and Precaution Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2022-10-20 Fenner Stanley Tanswell
ABSTRACT Extinction is a concept of rapidly growing importance, with the world currently in the sixth mass extinction event and a biodiversity crisis. However, the concept of extinction has itself received surprisingly little attention from philosophers. I will first argue that in practice there is no single unified concept of extinction, but instead that its usage divides between descriptive, epistemic
-
Does Wilderness Matter in the Anthropocene? Resolving a Fundamental Dilemma About the Role of Wilderness in 21st Century Conservation Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2022-10-18 Patrick Kelly, Peter Landres
Should wilderness be understood as primarily untrammeled or primarily natural? In this paper, we examine the conceptual and philosophical roots of untrammeled and natural in the context of the 1964...
-
The Social Cost of Carbon, Abatement Costs, and Individual Climate Duties Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2022-10-17 Colin Hickey
In this paper I examine the relation between Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) estimates, abatement cost analyses, and individual climate duties. I first highlight the stakes that SCC and abatement cost ...
-
Exploitation: A Missing Element to Our Understanding of Environmental Justice Ethics, Policy & Environment Pub Date : 2022-10-16 Christopher H. Pearson
Environmental justice crucially depends on issues of distributive justice. However, absent from philosophical examinations of environmental justice has been careful consideration of the role exploi...