Climate Philosophy Newsletter
Volume 2 (2008) No. 2 January/February
“The suburban living arrangement is an
experiment that has entered failure mode.”
James Kunstler
Office:
Philosophy FAO 226, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida 33620,
USA+813-974-2454
Editor:
Martin
Schönfeld (contact)
Editorial
Assistant: Christopher Kirby
Technical Support: Matt
Boksa
Welcome!
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Enjoy, and have a nice spring,
despite Bush v. Bali, and thanks for your participation! See you in the March/April issue…
Best,
-- Martin Schönfeld
1. Hottest year ever: 1998
2. Hottest decade ever: 1998-2007
3. Second hottest year ever (tie): 2005
4. Second hottest year ever (tie): 2007
Errata
The conference on human flourishing and restoration in the age
of global warming will be at Clemson University, which is located in South
Carolina, not in North Carolina.
Events
Teach-In
on Global Warming
31 January 2008
Organized by Focus the
Nation; kicked off at Clemson
Teach-ins at campuses nationwide
in the United States
The University of South Florida gig is posted in climatedynamics forum “Events”; if you know of any American colleagues who do teach-ins at their schools, please share & add your post.
Living
with Climate Change: Limits to Adaptation?
7-8 February 2008
Congress by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Royal Geographical Society, London
Conference information is here.
Dissension
in Science
3-4 March 2008
Workshop conference at University
of California San Diego,
Elizabeth Lloyd (Indiana) and Naomi
Oreskes (UCSD) will speak on climate change.
Energy
& Responsibility: A Conference on Ethics and the Environment
10-12 April 2008
Conference hosted by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Registration is now open. Conference information is here.
Heather Douglas (Tennessee) adds that climate change is a
substantial part of the program.
Research Notes
Robin Attfield (Cardiff) wrote “Mediated responsibilities, global
warming, and the scope of ethics,”
an early version of which was read at the Climate Philosophy conference at the
University of South Florida 2006. The
paper is forthcoming in a collection by →Ruth
Irwin. Attfield’s recent Environmental Ethics: Overview for the
Twentieth-First Century (Cambridge: Polity, 2003/Malden: Blackwell, 2003)
has some bearing on climate change as well.
He is now preparing conference talks; one of these compares the
approaches of Contraction and Convergence
(Aubrey Meyer) with Greenhouse
Development Rights (Baer and Athanasiou).
Professor Attfield encourages comparison of these approaches; others, he
notes, may have more time than he has, for a more thorough comparative job.
John Barry (Queens’ University Belfast) co-authored, with Geraint
Ellis and Clive Robinson, “Cool Rationalities and Hot Air: A Rhetorical Approach
to Understanding Debates on Renewable Energy,” in press at Global Environmental Politics.
I posted an abstract in the climatedynamics
forum “reviews”.
Jeremy Bendik-Keymer (Le Moyne College) installed a piece reflecting environmental collapse at the Tate Gallery in London during a public symposium called Take a Deep Breath. Jeremy, who just completed a six-month stint writing environmental columns for the Dubai paper Emirates Today says that the Tate installation involved video shoots of Dubai, illustrating the thesis that off-cycle civilizations don’t breathe. Professor Bendik-Keymer is now writing “Species Extinction and the Vice of Thoughtlessness” for the Clemson climate conference.
Gregor Betz (Berlin) is working on papers about modal
falsificationism, a methodological issue in the climate sciences. Modal falsificationism, Gregor explains, is
a methodology for scenario range construction and says that a scenario should
be considered possible unless it is positively shown to be impossible. It
contrasts with modal inductivism, i.e. the view that scenarios ought to be
considered possible only if they are shown to be consistent with available
knowledge.
Thorsten Botz-Bornstein (Tuskegee) has
“From Community to Time-Space Development: Comparing N. S. Trubetzkoy, Nishida
Kitaro, and Watsuji Tetsuro” under review at Culture and Space.
(Martin’s
aside: At the risk of pointing out the obvious, Nishida was one of greatest
Japanese thinkers; Watsuji was the first to conceptualize Climate in philosophy; Nishida and
Watsuji belonged to the Kyoto School.
The school’s heuristic nexus to the Kyoto Protocol has not yet
been studied in the West.)
Thom Brooks (Newcastle) completed a collection, The Global Justice Reader, with a
section on international environmental justice that contains essays by Peter Singer (Princeton) and Simon Caney (Oxford). The
Global Justice Reader will be published by Blackwell in February 2008. Professor Brooks is now writing a book, on
global justice as well, for Blackwell that will have a chapter on environmental
justice as well.
Alex Brown (University College London) is working on Rawls, Public Reason, and Climate Change. This project concentrates on the problem of how it is possible to approach mutual understanding and ultimately reach agreement on the issues surrounding climate change given the fact of reasonable pluralism of world views toward such issues. The problems of reasonable disagreement are addressed at both the domestic and international level and it is argued that, though, significant, these problems are far from insurmountable.
Alasdair Cochrane (London School of Economics) published the
“Environmental Ethics” in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
James Connelly (Hull) is working on Sustainability and the Virtues of Environmental Citizenship. An earlier version of this project was “The
Virtues of Environmental Citizenship” in Environmental
Citizenship, ed. D. Bell and A. Dobsen (Boston: MIT Press, 2005). The monograph (forthcoming by Routledge),
addresses the character and virtues citizens will need to have if we are to
build a sustainable future, and how best to encourage and develop environmental
awareness and action.
Thomas Heyd (Victoria) has “Rapid landscape change, vulnerability,
and social responsibility,” in press with Northern
Review, in a special issue on Rapid
Landscape Change and Human Response.
Professor Heyd published Encountering
Nature: toward an Environmental Culture (London: Ashgate, 2007). He and Nick
Brooks (East Anglia) are going to read a paper in the session “The Role of
Values and Culture in Adaptation” at the congress Living with Climate Change, Tyndall Centre, London, 7-8 Feb 2008
James Garvey (Royal Institute) did a podcast for philosophy bites on climate ethics,
to be posted shortly. Professor
Garvey’s The Ethics of Climate Change
was just published by Continuum. For
more information, publisher’s statements, and reviews by Peter Singer, Paul
Attfield, Mark Lynas, and Ted Honderich, please see the climatedynamics
forum “reviews”.
Axel Gosseries (Louvain) published “Cosmopolitan luck
egalitarianism and the greenhouse effect” in Canadian Journal of Philosophy 31 (2007): 279-309, a final draft is
here
(pdf). Professor Gosseries adds that to
date his most popular paper is “Historical Emissions and Free-Riding” (pdf),
in Lukas Meyer, ed. Justice in Time (Baden-Baden: Nomos
2004), 355-382
Edgar González Gaudiano (Mexico City) will translate →Ruth Irwin’s anthology into Spanish.
Simon Hailwood (Liverpool) published “Landscape, Nature, and
Neopragmatism” in Environmental Ethics
29 (2007): 130-151. Forthcoming is his
“Disowning the Weather” in Critical
Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 2008. Professor Hailwood adds that “Disowning the
Weather” will also appear in a Routledge collection this year on Liberalism and Climate Change.
Nicole Hassoun (Carnegie-Mellon) will present on global justice and
climate change at the Energy and
Responsibility conference at the University of Tennessee (see Events) and
at the “Philosophy and Public Affairs” group meeting at the APA Pacific
division conference.
Ruth Irwin (Auckland) is preparing Climate Change and Philosophy for publication. Authors and short titles are
Robin Attfield, “Mediated responsibilities, global warming, and the scope of ethics”
Leo Elshof, “Transforming world views to cope with a changing climate”
Patricia Glazebrook, “Gender and climate”
Edgar González Gaudiano, “Education against climate change”
Ruth Irwin, “Heidegger, education, and climate change”
Heila Lotz-Sisitka & Lesley Le Grange, “Climate change, adaptation, and abatement”
Tim Luke, “Learning how to cope with climate change”
Val Plumwood, “Nature in the active voice”
Martin Schönfeld & Liu
Nai-Yu “Climate change, civil progress, and rational evolution”
Murray Sheard, “Transforming attitudes in environmental law”
Andrew Light (Univ. of Washington), with →Allen Thompson, gave a presentation in
the context of Clemson University’s Focus
the Nation Climate Change Symposium on “Policy Options and a Report from
the UN Climate Change conference at Bali”.
The abstract is in the climatedynamics
forum “events”.
Alex Levine (South Florida) has “Representing the World: Climate
and Weltgeist” under review at Ethics,
Place, and Environment.
Elizabeth Lloyd (Indiana) will present “Climate skeptics and global
climate change” at a workshop-conference on climate change at the University of
California, San Diego, March 3-4.
Catriona McKinnon (Reading) completed a 12 month Leverhulme Trust
Research Fellowship dedicated to developing a liberal approach to the politics
of climate change. Professor McKinnon
is working on Climate Change and Future
Justice that will be published by Routledge. This monograph has grown out of a few of McKinnon’s papers, such
as “Intergenerational corrective justice as an approach to climate change
policy in non-ideal circumstances” (forthcoming in Annual Review of Law and Ethics 2009); “The precautionary principle
and climate change catastrophes”; “The role of shame in motivating the current
generation not to hang posterity with respect to climate change” (forthcoming
in Critical Review of International
Social and Political Philosophy); “Principles of triage, and the hope for a
return to justice, for doomsday climate change scenarios”. With Gideon
Calder (Wales), she will co-edit an issue of Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy on
the topic Liberal Principles and Climate
Change. She is now seeking funding
to set up a center at Reading for the political theory of climate change.
Paul Omofeya (Lesotho) has “The Conflict between Environmental
Rights and Human Rights: A Panacea” forthcoming in International Journal of Development, Management, and Research,
April 2008.
Rupert Read (East Anglia) published Philosophy for Life (London: Continuum 2007). Part 1 is on “Environment” and features a
non-technical account of dangerous climate change.
Martin Schönfeld (USF) gave a two part talk, “Philosophy of Climate
Change: 1. Open Systems; 2. Cultural Evolution” at the Taipei University of
Education, Taiwan, in December 2007.
His essay “Climate 2007—making sense of the year of records” appeared
1/7/08 at common
dreams (in excellent company—a day after George McGovern posted,
“Why I believe Bush must go”). With Liu Nai-Yu he is now completing
“Climate change, civil progress, and rational evolution,” for →Ruth Irwin.
Allen Thompson (Clemson) is selecting papers for the climate
conference (see below); he is also making arrangements for the Clemson
participation in the National
Teach-In on Global Warming on 31 January. Eban Godenstein,
director of Focus the
Nation, will give a keynote address at the 25 January kick off. The event will be podcast nationally, to
serve as a model for events over the country.
The Clemson info is here. With →Andrew Light, Prof. Thompson will speak on “Policy Options and a
Report from the Climate Change Conference at Bali”.
Journal—Climate Philosophy
Thanks for your responses and
support. The editorial framework for Climate Philosophy is now coming into
view. More information soon!
Clemson Conference Update
The conference on “Human
Flourishing and Restoration in the Age of Global Warming”, organized by A.
Thompson, J. Bendik-Keymer, and B. Holland, received many proposals and will
have its selection posted in the not-too-distant future. Current invited speakers include Phil
Cafaro, Gene Eideson, Eric Higgs, Roger Gottlieb, Dale Jamieson, Andrew Light,
Bryan Norton, Martha Nussbaum, and Ron Sandler.
APA Baltimore Dec 2007 – A Look Back
Jeff Huggins sent impressions of the annual meeting of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association that was held in Baltimore, Maryland, a month ago. He writes:
“It seems reasonable to say that there are immense gaps among the public’s understanding of global warming, public discourse about the issue (including its social-moral dimensions), and the extent and nature of environment-oriented discussion in Baltimore. To me, a relative newcomer to the process, these gaps present some very deep concerns and confusions, at least with respect to an issue of such vast moral importance. Given that morality is a vital part of the philosophical quest, the very limited attention garnered by global warming at the APA conference seemed much, much lower than I had hoped. Although I can’t compare Baltimore to last year’s conference, or the year before, nevertheless, the feeling of the conference seemed “business-as-usual.” That said, I was not able to see Kwame Anthony Appiah’s Presidential Address, or later sessions, so perhaps global warming’s pressing moral relevance was highlighted in some of those?”
Jeff Huggins’ “Global Warming and
APA Baltimore—What Would Socrates Do?” is posted in the climatedynamics
forum “Discussions”.
Teaching
Has anyone developed syllabi for
teaching climate change?
If so, kindly post them at
climatedynamics “Discussions”.
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