Below you will find brief summaries of articles that I have published recently or are still in the pipeline. Frequently, I will be more than happy to pass along drafts and pre-prints upon request.
Moral Reasoning in the Climate Crisis: A Personal Guide. Moral Philosophy and Politics (Forthcoming)
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.
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trend in contemporary environmentalism that emphasizes ‘accepting responsibility’ for the natural world in contrast to outdated preservationist thinking that shirks such responsibility.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.
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, demandingotherwise, and acting in hope to achieve a better future.
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.
Abstract: We should re-wild philosophy. This article argues there is an easily overlooked yet intimate relationship between wildness-- the self-willed quality of non-human nature-- and the human experience of wonder and humility. Moreover, it suggests philosophy originated in this wild, awe-struck space and that there are many advantages of doing philosophy in the wild once again. This possibility perhaps holds unique promise for professional philosophers, but is not reserved for them. This article closes by considering what everyone might gain from embracing a more wild flavor of philosophy.
What Would Aldo Leopold Think About Geoengineering? (In Preparation)
Abstract: Aldo Leopold’s entreaty to think like a mountain is often, rightly, understood as conveying the environmental importance of intellectual humility. To think like a mountain is “to see there is more to the world than we understand.” And, in Leopold’s wake, humility has come to become arguably the cardinal environmental virtue. But what exactly is intellectual humility? And why is it such an essential environmental virtue? In this paper, I distinguish between two salient forms of humility— technological and moral— and consider their significant implications for the ethics of geoengineering. Drawing from the work of Steve Vogel and Christopher Preston, I argue that appropriate technological humility provides significant reason to doubt global climate engineering will go as planned. Meanwhile, appropriate moral humility clarifies the disvalue of geoengineering even if it works. I close by suggesting that this two-pronged intellectual humility prized by Aldo Leopold justifies a strongpresumption against geoengineering.
Rewilding Europe and Rewilding North America: Rival Paradigms? (In Preparation with Linde De Vroey)
Abstract: There is a popular narrative separating the European and North American approaches to rewilding. According to this narrative, whereas North American rewilding is believed to promote wilderness, and criticized for it, European rewilding is said to promote wildness. This approach is said to not only be more apt for the Old Continent, but is often also judged to be less dualistic, less colonial, and less exclusionary than its American cousin. Yet, in this paper, we challenge this increasingly popular narrative by taking a genealogical approach to the ideas of wilderness and rewilding.
To do so, we draw attention to three important points. First, we show that the North American wilderness movement inspired by thinkers like Henry David Thoreau and Aldo Leopold cannot be reduced to dualism or colonial yearning— despite what some claim. On the contrary, a naturalistic ethic rooted in wild value has long played a key role in North American wilderness preservation. Second, we point out that dualistic and colonial rewilding exists in Europe, and that European rewilding does not escape such pitfalls by appealing to an abstract notion of ‘wildness.’ Instead, rewilding in Europe must critically examine its values and the gap between theory and practice. Third, we contend that liberatory elements of wildness, present in both its North American and European roots, must be centered in all future rewilding.
Ultimately, it is not the idea of wilderness that is colonial; rather, it is the desire to conquer or even annihilate transgressive, wild beings. Symmetrically, it is not the idea of wildness alone that will secure a just and flourishing future. Rather, Rewilding Europe and North America must realize the truly liberatory potential of a wildness-centered environmentalism in practice.
