The Ethical Challenge of Climate Change: Paris in a Perfect Moral Storm
Location
Fairhaven Auditorium
(FA 300)
Climate change is arguably the great problem confronting humanity, but we have done little to head off this looming catastrophe. Professor Stephen Gardiner will clarify the moral situation, identifying the temptations (or "storms") that make us vulnerable to a certain kind of corruption. We are engaging in willful self-deception when the lives of future generations, the world's poor, and even the basic fabric of life on the planet is at stake. We should wake up to this profound ethical failure, Gardiner argues, and demand more of our institutions, our leaders and ourselves.
Speaker Name
Date
Quarter
Speaker Bio
Stephen M. Gardiner is Professor of Philosophy and Ben Rabinowitz Endowed Professor of the Human Dimensions of the Environment at the University of Washington, Seattle, where he is also Director of the Program on Values in Society. His research focuses on global environmental problems, future generations and virtue ethics. He is the author of A Perfect Moral Storm (Oxford, 2011), co-author of Debating Climate Ethics (Oxford, 2016), editor of Virtue Ethics, Old and New (Cornell, 2005), and co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Environmental Ethics (Oxford, 2016) and Climate Ethics: Essential Readings (Oxford, 2010).