In Preparation
Below I provide a one-sentence summary of some articles that are still in the pipeline.
A paper on whether one who respects the value of wild nature should support ‘geoengineering.’
A paper scrutinizing the ethics of recent outdoor geoengineering experiments.
A paper arguing the ‘right and left’ political spectrum fails to capture the political reality that will primarily determine our environmental future.
A paper on the conceptual foundations and forward-looking prospects of the ‘National Wild and Scenic River System.’
A co-authored paper critiquing recent attempts to decolonize rewilding through philosophical hair-splitting.
A co-authored paper elucidating some recent principles put forward for geoengineering governance.
Select Abstracts
Below you will find abstracts for papers I have recently published. Frequently, I will be more than happy to pass along pre-prints upon request.
(2024) Moral Reasoning in the Climate Crisis: A Personal Guide. Moral Philosophy and Politics. https://doi.org/10.1515/mopp-2023-0076
Abstract: This article substantiates the common intuition that it is wrong to contribute to dangerous climate change for no significant reason. To advance this claim, I first propose a basic principle that one has the moral obligation to act in accordance with the weight of moral reasons. I further claim that there are significant moral reasons for individuals not to emit greenhouse gases, as many other climate ethicists have already argued. Then, I assert that there are often no significant moral (or excusing) reasons to emit greenhouse gases. In any such trivial-cost— but not necessarily trivial-impact— cases, the individual then has an obligation to refrain. Finally, I apply the Moral Weighing Principle to everyday situations of emitting and establish two surprisingly substantial implications: the relevance of virtues to the interpersonal assessment of environmentally harmful actions, and the extensive individual ethical obligations that exist short of purity.
(2023) Flying from History, Too Close to the Sun: The Anxious, Jubilant Futurism of ‘Age of Man’ Environmentalism. Environmental Ethics 45(4): 337-357. https://doi.org/10.5840/enviroethics202383065
Abstract: There is a remarkable trend in contemporary environmentalism that emphasizes ‘accepting responsibility’ for the natural world in contrast to outdated preservationist thinking that shirks such responsibility. This approach is often explained and justified by reference to the Anthropocene: this fundamentally new epoch— defined by human domination— requires active human intervention to avert planetary catastrophe. However, in this paper, I turn such thinking on its head. The often jubilant, sometimes anxious, yearning for unprecedented human innovation and— ultimately— control in our new millennia mirrors the Futurist movement that took off near the beginning of the last century. Despite the significant differences in the details of how academics have defended this 21st century environmental outlook, they all represent the true flight from history; they too quickly jettison the ideas of historical environmentalists and so misunderstand the environmental values at the heart of preservation that are more salient than ever.
(2023) Individual Responsibility and the Ethics of Hoping for a More Just Climate Future. Environmental Values 32(3): 315-335, with Cody C. Dout. https://doi.org/10.3197/096327122X16569260361823
Abstract: Many have begun to despair that climate justice will prevail even in a minimal form. The affective dimensions of such despair, we suggest, threaten to make climate action appear too demanding. Thus, despair constitutes a moral challenge to individual climate action that has not yet received adequate attention. In response, we defend a duty to act in hope for a more just (climate) future. However, as we see it, this duty falls differentially upon the shoulders of more and less advantaged agents in society. From arguments by Black thinkers like Derrick Bell, we draw a set of distinctions between two types of hope: one for ideal justice, and one for more modest change; and between two types of hopeful actions, those undertaken through formal political channels and those we call ‘extra-political’ actions; and between two sites of differential moral burdens, those of the privileged and those of the oppressed. Ours’ is a case for facing even bleak realities, demanding otherwise, and acting in hope to achieve a better future.
(2023) Responsibility for Climate Harms. In Handbook of the Philosophy of Climate Change, edited by G. Pellegrino and M. Di Paola. New York: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16960-2_49-1.
Abstract: Within the last two decades, a philosophical field of individual climate ethics has taken off. This subdiscipline interrogates the individual’s moral responsibility in causing and preventing climate harm. On the one hand, environmental movements have long emphasized the importance of individual lifestyle changes in solving collective action problems like air pollution. In this tradition, personal obligations to reduce carbon emissions are well-founded. This is the climate individualist view. Against this thinking, skeptics of climate individualism argue that unilateral emissions reductions will not make a difference to climate harms and insist that individuals instead have moral obligations to promote effective institutions through collective action. This is the climate collectivist camp. Climate individualists have replied to the climate collectivist’s charge in two ways. First, they have denied the description by arguing that individual emitting behaviors do cause harm or otherwise might make a difference. Second, they have affirmed the prescription by arguing that individual emissions reductions are required even if they do not make a difference. This survey article critically summarizes the arguments that have arisen in this debate, including the problem of inconsequentialism, the moral grounds of collective responsibility, and non-causal accounts of individual responsibility for climate harms. Ultimately, this survey identifies a consensus in the literature that climate individualism is correct. It then turns to the emerging and contested discussion regarding the extent of individual obligations to minimize contribution to climate harms.