Category Archives: Public Policy

Call for Nominations: 2020 ISEE Andrew Light Award for Public Philosophy

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Call for Nominations for the

2020 ISEE Andrew Light Award for Public Philosophy

 The International Society for Environmental Ethics established an award to promote work in public philosophy and honor contributions to the field by Dr. Andrew Light, who received the inaugural award in his name at our 2017 annual summer meeting.

With this call, the Society seeks nominations for the Andrew Light Award for Public Philosophy. We strive to recognize public philosophers working in environmental ethics and philosophy, broadly construed, those who are working to bring unique insights or methods to broaden the reach, interaction, and engagement of public philosophy with the wider public.  This may be exemplified in published work or engagement in environmental issues of public importance.

The award is offered without prejudice to stage of career and may be demonstrated by singular work, or engagement of importance, or over a career.  It is important to note that early career scholars are viable candidates and their nominations strongly encouraged. Self-nominations are welcome.

Nominations should include:

(a) A letter of nomination, listing the name, affiliation (if any), and contact information of both the nominee and nominator. The letter should explain how and why the nominee qualifies for the award;

(b) The nominee’s curriculum vitae or professional resume.

Nominations may also include:

(c) Descriptions and representative samples of work in public philosophy, such as op-eds, public presentations, descriptions of philosophically driven civic interactions, or alternative media engagements (blogs, videos, podcasts, etc.) or work about the public importance of environmental philosophy in professional journals;

(d) Additional letters of endorsement for the nomination, no more than two.

 

Nominations assembling these materials into one Adobe Acrobat PDF file are strongly preferred.

Nominations previously submitted for the 2019 Award may be reactivated. Please contact us, as below.

Nominations are due by October 1, 2020. They will be evaluated by ISEE Officers and members of the ISEE Nominating Committee.

 

Send nominations to ISEE President Allen Thompson via email:  allen.thompson@oregonstate.edu

Announcement of the winner and finalists will be made at the ISEE group session meeting during the Eastern Division American Philosophical Assoc., Jan. 4-7, 2021. The award includes a financial prize.

A Philosopher at the IPCC

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John BroomeBy John Broome
email: john.broome@philosophy.ox.ac.uk 
White's Professor of Moral Philosophy and
Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford

John is a British ethicist and economist. 
His most recent book is Climate Matters: 
Ethics in a Warming World

Published May 20, 2014

Climate change is a moral problem. Each of us causes the emission of greenhouse gas, which spreads around the Earth. Some of it stays in the atmosphere for centuries. It causes harm to people who live far away and to members of future generations. Moreover, the harm we cause, taken together, is very great. As a result of climate change, people are losing their homes to storms and floods, they are losing their livelihoods as their farmland dries up, and they are losing even their lives as tropical diseases climb higher in the mountains of Africa. We should not cause harms like these to other people in order to make life better for ourselves.

It is chiefly for moral reasons that we inhabitants of rich countries should reduce our emissions. Doing so will benefit us—particularly the young among us—to an extent, but most of the benefit will come to the world’s poor and to future generations. Our main reason for working to limit climate change is our moral duty towards those people.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recognizes that climate change is a moral problem or, to use its cautious language, it raises ethical issues. The authors of the IPCC’s recent Fifth Assessment Report therefore included two moral philosophers. I am one of them. I recently returned from the Approval Session of IPCC’s Working Group 3 in Berlin. This was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my academic life.

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WORKSHOP – Natural Environments and Cultural Services

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A WORKSHOP TO BE HELD ON 23-24 June 2014 AT DURHAM UNIVERSITY, UK

ThemeDurham U logo

According to decision making bodies such as the UK Government’s DEFRA and the UN Environment Programme, one of the reasons ecosystems have value is because they can provide human beings with cultural ecosystem services. The thought is that woods, say, or wetlands have value, not simply because they supply us with fuel, food and other material benefits, but because they can inspire us, for instance, or fortify our resolve, or hone our aesthetic faculties, or provide us with religious symbols, or shape our sense of who we are. Continue reading →

SUMMER SCHOOL – Degrowth, Barcelona, Spain

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Degrowth Summer School (Barcelona, Spain, July 4-21, 2014)

Adapting to the times of crisis: an advanced course on socially sustainable degrowth

Four Columns, the monument of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.Amidst calls for restoring growth as a path out of the crisis, the intellectual and political degrowth movement exposes the impossibility to greening economic growth, or making it equitable. In theoretical terms degrowth implies a radical critique to the western notion of growth- and technology-led development as a single overarching path of organizing social and economic life. It implies revisiting the role of monetary and market-based transactions in society and searching for a way to bring back its human, emotional, non-utilitarian or gift-based traits. Continue reading →

Ethics of Recent Report on Climate Change Science

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donald_a_brownBy Donald Brown
email: dabrown57@gmail.com 
website: http://blogs.law.widener.edu/climate/
Scholar In Residence, Ethics and Law,
Widener University School of Law.
Donald writes on applied, environmental, 
and climate change ethics.

Published March 9, 2014

Climate Evidence and CausesThe National Academy of Sciences and its British counterpart, the Royal Society, have published Climate Change: Evidence and Causes, a very easy to understand primer on the science of greenhouse-driven global warming. Although there is not a lot new in this report as a matter of science, it makes the strong scientific consensus on human-induced climate change that has existed for some time clearer and more accessible for non-scientists particularly on the major issues that need to be understood by policy-makers and interested citizens.  The report is written in simple language and filled with pictures and graphs which illustrate why almost all mainstream scientists actually engaged in climate change science are virtually certain that human activity is causing very dangerous climate change. Continue reading →

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