• West Virginia University
    John Chambers College of Business & Economics
    MBA Program Director and Teaching Assistant Professor
University of Arizona
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 2017
Morgantown, WV, United States of America
  •  844
    Justice and Climate Change: Toward a Libertarian Analysis
    The Independent Review 14 (2): 219-237. 2009.
    Global climate change is one of the most widely discussed problems of our time. However, many libertarian thinkers have not participated in the ethical dimensions of this discussion due to a narrow focus on the scientific basis for concern about climate change. In this paper, I reject this approach and explore the kind of response libertarians should be offering instead. I frame the climate change problem as one which concerns potential rights-infringements and explore different ways in which cl…Read more
  •  264
    Significantly revised in this third edition, Environmental Ethics: What Really Matters, What Really Works examines morality from an environmental perspective. Featuring accessible selections—from classic articles to examples of cutting-edge original research—it addresses both theory and practice. Asking what really matters, the first section of the book explores the abstract ideas of human value and value in nature. The second section turns to the question of what really works—what it would take…Read more
  •  136
    Rejecting Eco-Authoritarianism, Again
    Environmental Values 24 (3): 345-366. 2015.
    Ecologically-motivated authoritarianism flourished initially during the 1970s but largely disappeared after the decline of socialism in the late-1980s. Today, 'eco- authoritarianism ' is beginning to reassert itself, this time modelled not after the Soviet Union but modern-day China. The new eco-authoritarians denounce central planning but still suggest that governments should be granted powers that free them from subordination to citizens' rights or democratic procedures. I argue that current e…Read more
  •  64
    Treading Lightly on the Climate in a Problem-Ridden World
    Ethics, Policy and Environment 19 (2): 183-195. 2016.
    Personal carbon footprints have become a subject of major concern among those who worry about global climate change. Conventional wisdom holds that individuals have a duty to reduce their impacts on the climate system by restricting their carbon footprints. However, I defend a new argument for thinking that this conventional wisdom is mistaken. Individuals, I argue, have a duty to take actions to combat the world’s problems. But since climate change is only one of a nearly endless list of such p…Read more
  •  33
    Harm, Responsibility, and the Far-off Impacts of Climate Change
    Environmental Ethics 43 (1): 3-20. 2021.
    Climate change is already a major global threat, but many of its worst impacts are still decades away. Many people who will eventually be affected by it still have opportunities to mitigate harm. When considering the avoidable burdens of climate change, it seems plausible victims will often share some responsibility for putting themselves into harm’s way. This fact should be incorporated into our thinking about the ethical significance of climate-induced harms, particularly to emphasize the impo…Read more
  •  31
    Conflict and Comparison between Species
    Ethics, Policy and Environment 14 (2). 2011.
    Paul Taylor has argued that all living organisms have equal inherent worth. David Schmidtz objects, insisting that there is little to be gained by talk of “equality” in interspecific contexts. On Schmidtz’s view, ethicists should be satisfied simply to say that all organisms deserve respect, while leaving unspecified how such claims to respect measure up to one another. Yet in this paper, I contend that Schmidtz’s position cannot be sustained in the face of predictable and ongoing conflict betwe…Read more
  •  20
    Environmental conflict and the legacy of the Reformation
    Environmental Politics 29 (6): 1042-1062. 2020.
    Liberal political theory seeks to enable diverse groups to coexist respectfully despite their differences. According to liberals, this requires embracing certain political institutions and refraining from imposing controversial views on others. The liberal formula has enjoyed considerable success. However, green political theorists insist liberal societies will precipitate an ecological crisis unless they are transformed in line with (controversial) green views. These perspectives highlight a lo…Read more
  •  20
    Integrity versus Expediency for Non-Anthropocentrists
    Ethics, Policy and Environment 17 (3): 271-274. 2014.
    Kevin Elliott observes that environmental protection efforts often benefit humans, not just because the natural environment is useful, but also because activities that result in environmental protections can also promote a range of other human values. Elliott argues that environmentalists could gain practical advantages by emphasizing these indirect benefits. He also insists that even for environmentalists who believe that nature ought to be protected for its own sake, deploying such arguments w…Read more
  •  19
    Why It's Ok to Eat Meat
    Routledge. 2021.
    Vegetarians have argued at great length that meat-eating is wrong. Even so, the vast majority of people continue to eat meat, and even most vegetarians eventually give up on their diets. Does this prove these people must be morally corrupt? In Why It’s OK to Eat Meat, Dan C. Shahar argues the answer is no: it’s entirely possible to be an ethical person while continuing to eat meat—and not just the "fancy" offerings from the farmers' market but also the regular meat we find at most supermarkets …Read more
  •  14
    Libertarians often emphasize courts’ potential to alleviate pollution problems without the need for legislation and regulation. However, this chapter argues courts cannot completely replace these other tools. Because of the historical conditions in which pollution law develops, we should expect courts in industrial societies to initially develop legal standards that deliver limited protection against many common pollution threats. As societies grow wealthier and citizens begin favoring stricter …Read more
  •  3
    Environmental Issues
    In Matt Zwolinski & Benjamin Ferguson (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Libertarianism, Routledge. 2022.
    Although libertarianism is often regarded as “weak” on environmental issues, the truth is more complicated. Because of its commitment to defending private property rights, libertarianism actually lends itself to aggressive protections against pollution—to the point where an interpretive challenge arises in establishing how to reconcile it with any pollution at all. To meet this challenge, libertarians must explicate how societies should delimit and allocate rights over the environment and identi…Read more