Evelyn Brister

There are benefits to organizing an introductory ethics course around the ethical, social, and political questions related to climate change. One topic such a course may fruitfully explore is the issue of whether, when, and how climate scientists should advocate for climate policy. When is scientific advocacy a failure of scientific objectivity, and what are the ethical consequences of scientists attempting to influence policy objectives? This paper lays out a method for using illustrative case studies that helps students understand, first, how scientists interact with policy-makers and the public and, second, the reasons why such activity can—in many actual cases—be seen as ethically unproblematic.

Environmental pragmatists are committed to analyzing questions of environmental policy. Bryan Norton's pragmatic critique of environmental decision-making shows how an implicit commitment to the fact/value distinction has hindered productive environmental action. Nonetheless, Norton, as well as the majority of environmental ethicists, have devoted more attention to theorizing value disagreements as a primary cause of controversy than to examining epistemic structures. A case study demonstrates why and how Norton's procedural account may be supplemented with sensitive attention to the construction of epistemic authority in environmental disputes. I recommend supporting the development of local knowledges and just distributions of epistemic authority.