•  14
    Engineering the Climate: The Ethics of Solar Radiation Management (edited book)
    with Albert Borgmann, Holly Jean Buck, Wylie Carr, Forrest Clingerman, Maialen Galarraga, Marion Hourdequin, Ashley Mercer, Konrad Ott, Clare Palmer, Ronald Sandler, Patrick Taylor Smith, Bronislaw Szerszynski, and Kyle Powys Whyte
    Lexington Books. 2012.
    Engineering the Climate: The Ethics of Solar Radiation Management is a wide-ranging and expert analysis of the ethics of the intentional management of solar radiation. This book will be a useful tool for policy-makers, a provocation for ethicists, and an eye-opening analysis for both the scientist and the general reader with interest in climate change
  •  13
    Designer Biology: The Ethics of Intensively Engineering Biological and Ecological Systems (edited book)
    with Immaculada de Melo Martin, Valentina Urbanek, David Frank, William Kabasenche, Nicholas Agar, S. Matthew Liao, Anders Sandberg, Rebecca Roache, Allen Thompson, Stephen Jackson, Donald S. Maier, Nicole Hassoun, Sune Holm, and Scott Simmons
    Lexington Books. 2013.
    Designer Biology: The Ethics of Intensively Engineering Biological and Ecological Systems consists of thirteen chapters that address the ethical issues raised by technological intervention and design across a broad range of biological and ecological systems. Among the technologies addressed are geoengineering, human enhancement, sex selection, genetic modification, and synthetic biology
  •  88
    Moral Considerability: Deontological, not Metaphysical
    Ethics and the Environment 16 (2): 37-62. 2011.
    Ever since Kenneth Goodpaster published his article "On Being Morally Considerable," environmental ethicists have been engaged in a debate over whether animals, plants, and other natural objects matter morally (Goodpaster 1978). Many, if not most, theorists have treated the problem of moral considerability as a problem of status, arguing that earlier ethical positions have unjustifiably given privileged status to one group of beings over others. They have then proceeded in one of two ways. Eithe…Read more
  •  18
    Conservation Floors and Degradation Ceilings
    with Alexander Lee and Alex Hamilton
    Environmental Ethics 42 (2): 135-148. 2020.
    U.S. conservation policy, both in structure and in practice, places a heavy burden on conservationists to halt development projects, rather than on advocates of development to defend their proposed actions. In this paper, we identify this structural phenomenon in several landmark environmental policies and in practice in the contemporary debate concerning oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The burdens placed on conservation can be understood in terms of constraints—as conservat…Read more
  •  11
    Wildness without Naturalness
    with Adam Amir and Alexander Lee
    Ethics, Policy and Environment 24 (1): 16-26. 2021.
    ABSTRACT Some fear the Anthropocene heralds the end of nature, while others argue that nature will persist throughout the Anthropocene. Still others worry that acknowledging the Anthropocene grants humanity broad license to further inject itself into nature. We propose that this debate rests on a conflation between naturalness and wildness. Where naturalness is best understood as fundamentally a metaphysical category, wildness can be better understood as an inter-relational category. The raccoons…Read more
  •  16
    Clowning Around with Conservation: Adaptation, Reparation and the New Substitution Problem
    with Alexander Lee and Adam Hermans
    Environmental Values 23 (2): 181-198. 2014.
    In this paper we introduce the 'New Substitution Problem' which, on its face, presents a problem for adaptation proposals that are justified by appeal to obligations of reparation. In contrast to the standard view, which is that obligations of reparation require that one restore lost value, we propose instead that obligations to aid and assist species and ecosystems in adaptation, in particular, follow from a failure to adequately justify - either by absence, neglect, omission or malice - action…Read more
  •  77
    This paper addresses whether universal, general education programs are enough to satisfy basic criteria of human rights, or whether comprehensive family planning programs, in conjunction with universal education programs, might also be morally required. Even before the Reagan administration instituted the ‘global gag rule’ at the 1984 conference in Mexico City, prohibiting funding to nongovernmental organizations that included providing information about abortion as a possible method of family p…Read more
  • Technology, the environment, and the moral considerability of artefacts
    In Jan Kyrre Berg Olsen Friis, Evan Selinger & Søren Riis (eds.), New waves in philosophy of technology, Palgrave-macmillan. 2009.
  •  4
    A brief foray into a moral thicket, exploring why we should protect nature despite tsunamis, malaria, bird flu, cancer, killer asteroids, and tofu. Most of us think that in order to be environmentalists, we have to love nature. Essentially, we should be tree huggers—embracing majestic redwoods, mighty oaks, graceful birches, etc. We ought to eat granola, drive hybrids, cook tofu, and write our appointments in Sierra Club calendars. Nature's splendor, in other words, justifies our protection of i…Read more
  • Can We Remediate Wrongs?
    In Avram Hiller, Ramona Ilea & Leonard Kahn (eds.), Consequentialism and Environemental Ethics, Routledge. pp. 147-163. 2014.
  •  29
    Indeterminacy and impotence
    Synthese 200 (3): 1-24. 2022.
    Recent work in applied ethics has advanced a raft of arguments regarding individual responsibilities to address collective challenges like climate change or the welfare and environmental impacts of meat production. Frequently, such arguments suggest that individual actors have a responsibility to be more conscientious with their consumption decisions, that they can and should harness the power of the market to bring about a desired outcome. A common response to these arguments, and a challenge i…Read more
  •  12
    Experience and the Environment: Phenomenology Returns to Earth (review)
    Human Studies 28 (1): 101-106. 2005.
  •  14
    From Treasure to Trash: The Lingering Value of Technological Artifacts
    with Lucy McAllister
    Science and Engineering Ethics 26 (2): 619-640. 2020.
    Electronic waste is the fastest growing form of waste worldwide, associated with a range of environmental, health, and justice problems. Unfortunately, disposal and recycling are hindered by a tendency of consumers to resist recycling their e-waste. This backlog of un-discarded e-waste poses significant challenges for the future. This paper addresses the reasons why many people might continue to value their technological artifacts and therefore to hoard them, suggesting that many of these common…Read more
  •  18
    Year One of Donald Trump’s Presidency on Climate and the Environment
    Ethics, Policy and Environment 21 (1): 1-3. 2018.
    When Donald Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States in November 2016, many observers in the U.S. and international environmental communities began voicing concerns about the range...
  •  19
    Editorial
    with Alison Jaggar, Annette Dula, and Dayna Matthew
    Bioethics 24 (1). 2009.
  •  95
    The Methods of Applied Philosophy and the Tools of the Policy Sciences
    International Journal of Applied Philosophy 25 (2): 215-232. 2011.
    In this paper I argue that applied philosophers hoping to develop a stronger role in public policy formation can begin by aligning their methods with the tools employed in the policy sciences. I proceed first by characterizing the standard view of policymaking and policy education as instrumentally oriented toward the employment of specific policy tools. I then investigate pressures internal to philosophy that nudge work in applied philosophy toward the periphery of policy debates. I capture the…Read more
  •  24
    Restoration, Obligation, and the Baseline Problem
    with Alex Lee and Adam Pérou Hermans
    Environmental Ethics 36 (2): 171-186. 2014.
    Should we restore degraded nature, and if so, why? Environmental theorists often approach the problem of restoration from perspectives couched in much broader debates, particularly regarding the intrinsic value and moral status of natural entities. Unfortunately, such approaches are susceptible to concerns such as the baseline problem, which is both a philosophical and technical issue related to identifying an appropriate restoration baseline. Insofar as restoration ostensibly aims to return an …Read more
  •  20
    Open to debate: Moral consideration and the lab monkey
    American Journal of Bioethics 8 (6). 2008.
    No abstract
  •  147
    Gavagai Goulash: Growing Organs for Food
    Think 5 (15): 61-70. 2007.
    Recent advancements in stem-cell research have given scientists hope that new technologies will soon enable them to grow a variety of organs for transplantation into humans. Though such developments are still in their early stages, romantic prognosticators are hopeful that scientists will be capable of growing fully functioning and complex organs, such as hearts, kidneys, muscles, and livers. This raises the question of whether such profound medical developments might have other potentially fr…Read more
  •  42
    Culpability and Blame after Pregnancy Loss
    Journal of Medical Ethics 33 (1): 24-27. 2007.
    The problem of feeling guilty about a pregnancy loss is suggested to be primarily a moral matter and not a medical or psychological one. Two standard approaches to women who blame themselves for a loss are first introduced, characterised as either psychologistic or deterministic. Both these approaches are shown to underdetermine the autonomy of the mother by depending on the notion that the mother is not culpable for the loss if she "could not have acted otherwise". The inability to act otherwis…Read more
  •  278
    What's so moral about the moral hazard?
    Public Affairs Quarterly 23 (1): 1-26. 2009.
    A "moral hazard" is a market failure most commonly associated with insurance, but also associated by extension with a wide variety of public policy scenarios, from environmental disaster relief, to corporate bailouts, to natural resource policy, to health insurance. Specifically, the term "moral hazard" describes the danger that, in the face of insurance, an agent will increase her exposure to risk. If not immediately clear, such terminology invokes a moral notion, suggesting that changing one's…Read more
  •  16
    _The Routledge Companion to Environmental Ethics_ is comprised of sixty original essays, which focus on how ethical questions intersect with real and pressing policy issues. Rather than overviewing abstract conceptual categories, the authors focus on specific controversies involving the environment. Clearly written contributions on Fossil Fuels, Urban Sustainability, Novel Ecosystems, and many other subjects make accessible these issues‘ empirical and political dimensions as well as their theore…Read more
  •  21
    John Dewey and environmental philosophy (review)
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 24 (3). 2007.
  •  50
    Non-Identity for Non-Humans
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (5): 1165-1185. 2016.
    This article introduces a non-human version of the non-identity problem and suggests that such a variation exposes weaknesses in several proposed person-focused solutions to the classic version of the problem. It suggests first that person-affecting solutions fail when applied to non-human animals and, second, that many common moral arguments against climate change should be called into question. We argue that a more inclusive version of the person-affecting principle, which we call the ‘patient…Read more
  •  38
    The Incompleat Eco-Philosopher (review)
    Social Theory and Practice 38 (1): 160-164. 2012.