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Climate Ethics after Bali
Andrew Light, George Mason University, Washington D.C.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Memorial Union, Sun Room
8:00pm
With the effective end of the debate over the basic science of climate
change, and the dramatic shift in the U.S. political response to this
issue, the world should now move quickly toward a successor agreement to
the Kyoto protocol. This was the overwhelming consensus coming out of
the last UN Framework on Climate Change conference held in Bali last
December. What will be the role of ethicists in
forming this new agreement? Will there be a role for ethicists in this
process? After reviewing the current state of work on the ethics of
climate change in the English speaking world I will argue that
philosophers need to move quickly to develop a more "clinical" model of
climate ethics, comparable to clinical models of bioethics, if they want
to be part of the resolution of this critical problem.
Andrew Light is Director of the Center for Global Ethics at
George Mason University and a Senior Fellow at the Center for American
Progress in Washington, D.C.
An internationally recognized environmental ethicist specializing in the ethical
dimensions of environmental policy, restoration ecology, and, more
recently, climate change he has authored, co-authored and edited 17
books on environmental ethics, philosophy of technology, and aesthetics,
including Environmental Values (2008), Reel Arguments: Film,
Philosophy
and Social Criticism (Westview 2003), and The Aesthetics of Everyday
Life
(2005).
Light is also co-editor of the journal Ethics, Place, and
Environment and serves on the editorial boards of Environmental
Ethics,
Environmental Values, Ecological Restoration, Philosophical
Practice,
and Theoria. He is currently finishing a book on the ethics of
restoration ecology. He has previously taught at the University of
Washington, Seattle, NYU, and the University of Montana.
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 Andrew Light
Director,
Center for Global Ethics, George Mason University and
Senior Fellow at the
Center for American Progress
Andrew Light's homepage at U of WA
Select Publications:
(avaliable for download at above webpage)
Light, Andrew. 2005. "Ecological Citzenship: The Democratic Promise
of Restoration." in The Humane Metropolis: People and Nature in
the 21st Century City, ed R. Platt, Amherst, MA:University of
Massachusetts Press.
Light, Andrew. 2004. "Democratic Technology, Population, and Environmental
Change." in Philosophy of Technology: New Debates in the
Democratization of Technology. ed. T. Veak. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Light, Andrew. 2002. "Contemporary Environmental Ethics From
Metaethics to
Public Philosophy." Metaphilosophy.Vol. 33, No. 4
(July):426-449.
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