•  5
    Climate Change, Global Health, and Planetary Health
    with Paul Tubig
    In Pellegrino Gianfranco & Marcello Di Paola (eds.), Handbook of Philosophy of Climate Change, Springer Nature. pp. 799-819. 2023.
    Climate change has been called “the biggest global health threat of the 21st century.” This chapter outlines some central ethical dimensions of the challenge. It begins by reviewing a few of the major health impacts expected from climate change. It then summarizes some key issues surrounding the ethical importance of health, and of injustices connected to global health inequalities. Finally, the chapter explores a recent concept – planetary health – that aims to environmentalize public health in…Read more
  •  2
    A Machiavellian treatise
    Cambridge University Press. 1975.
    In this work, which has survived only in manuscript form and in Italian, Gardiner analyses the great dynastic changes in England's past in order to provide Phillip II with a guide to ruling England and establishing a Catholic dynasty. Gardiner's work is perhaps the clearest example of an attempt to relate Machiavelli's political theories to practical political problems.
  •  21
    Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View
    Mind 114 (453): 207-212. 2005.
  •  66
    Review: Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View (review)
    Mind 114 (453): 207-212. 2005.
  • The environment and geoengineering
    In David Edmonds (ed.), Ethics and the Contemporary World, Routledge. 2019.
  •  19
    Environmentalizing Bioethics: Planetary Health in a Perfect Moral Storm
    Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 65 (4): 569-585. 2022.
    ABSTRACT:Many of humanity's most serious problems are global, intergenerational, and ecological, yet current institutions are poorly placed to confront such problems. In part, this institutional challenge reflects difficulties with our basic concepts and theories. Bioethics is a central area where such questions arise. Although some have argued for an environmentalized bioethics since its inception, biomedicine has thus far failed to embrace the challenge, and some accuse most bioethicists of be…Read more
  •  3
    Abstract: Does the evolving influence of humanity on the Earth’s environment call for new virtues? How might such virtues be seen as contributing to human flourishing? In this paper, I develop Aristotle’s discussion of magnificence and magnanimity to provide a framework within which to discuss such claims. I also defend the controversial view that even if genuinely new virtues may be involved, these may be virtues to which we should not aspire (now, or perhaps ever).
  •  56
    Written both for general readers and college students, Dialogues on Climate Justice provides an engaging philosophical introduction to climate justice, and should be of interest to anyone wanting to think seriously about the climate crisis. The story follows the life and conversations of Hope, a fictional protagonist whose life is shaped by a terrifyingly real problem: climate change. From the election of Donald Trump in 2016 until the 2060s, the book documents Hope’s discussions with a diverse …Read more
  •  19
    We are in the early stages of a new “intergenerational turn” in political philosophy. This turn is largely motivated by the threat of global climate change, which makes vivid a serious governance gap surrounding concern for future generations. Unfortunately, there is a lack of fit between most proposed remedies and the nature of the underlying problem. Most notably, many seem to believe that only piecemeal, issue-specific, and predominantly national institutions are needed to fill the intergener…Read more
  •  8
    Future Ethics
    In Armin Grunwald (ed.), Handbuch Technikethik, Metzler. pp. 203-207. 2013.
    Like it or not, technologists are increasingly being called upon to »save the world«, including from themselves. Today, science and engineering professionals stand on the front-lines both in generating severe risks to the future, and in the search for solutions. This chapter examines the ethical context of their predicament. It begins by outlining the central, characteristic threat to the future, the »tyranny of the contemporary«.
  •  37
    Debating Climate Ethics Revisited
    Ethics, Policy and Environment 24 (2): 89-111. 2021.
    ABSTRACT In Debating Climate Ethics, David Weisbach and I offer contrasting views of the importance of ethics and justice for climate policy. I argue that ethics is central. Weisbach advocates for climate policy based purely on narrow forms of self-interest. For this symposium, I summarize the major themes, and extend my basic argument. I claim that ethics gets the problem right, whereas dismissing ethics risks getting the problem dangerously wrong, and perpetuating profound injustices. One cons…Read more
  • Ethics and Radiological Protection (edited book)
    Academia. 2008.
  •  1
    Geoengineering: Ethical Questions for Deliberate Climate Manipulators
    In Stephen M. Gardiner & Allen Thompson (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Environmental Ethics, Oxford University Press. 2017.
    Ethics is highly relevant to grand technological interventions into basic planetary systems on a global scale (roughly, “geoengineering”). Focusing on climate engineering, this chapter identifies a large number of salient concerns (e.g., welfare, rights, justice, political legitimacy) but argues that early policy framings (e.g., emergency, global public good) often marginalize these and so avoid important questions of justification. It also suggests that, since it is widely held that geoengineer…Read more
  •  1
    In the face of limited time and escalating impacts, some scientists and politicians are talking about attempting "grand technological interventions" into the Earth’s basic physical and biological systems ("geoengineering") to combat global warming. Early ideas include spraying particles into the stratosphere to block some incoming sunlight, or "enhancing" natural biological systems to withdraw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a higher rate. Such technologies are highly speculative and scien…Read more
  • Oxford Handbook of Environmental Ethics (edited book)
    with Allen Thompson
    Oxford University Press. 2017.
  •  62
    Ethics and Geoengineering: An Overview
    In Luca Valera & Juan Carlos Castilla (eds.), Global Changes: Ethics, Politics and Environment in the Contemporary Technological World, Springer Verlag. pp. 69-78. 2019.
    There is widespread agreement that ethical concerns are central to decision-making about, and governance of, geoengineering. This is especially true of the most prominent and paradigm example of climate engineering, the spraying of sulfate particles into the stratosphere in order to block incoming sunlight and so limit global warming ). Geoengineering ethics, like geoengineering science, is still in its early, exploratory days. This chapter offers an introductory overview of the emerging discuss…Read more
  •  16
    En los últimos tiempos he propuesto la necesidad de elaborar una convención constitucional global centrada en proteger a las generaciones futuras. Este cuerpo deliberativo se ría similar a la convención constitucional de Estados Unidos de 1787, que dio lugar a su estructura actual de gobierno. Se enfrentaría a la “brecha de gobernabilidad” actual respecto de la preocupación por las generaciones futuras. Las instituciones contemporáneas, en particular, tienden a desplazar la preocupación intergen…Read more
  •  68
    Recently, I have been arguing for a global constitutional convention focused on protecting future generations. This deliberative body would be akin to the American constitutional convention of 1787, which gave rise to the present structure of government in the United States. It would confront the “governance gap” that currently exists surrounding concern for future generations. In particular, contemporary institutions tend to crowd out intergenerational concern, and thereby facilitate a “tyranny…Read more
  •  68
    The Oxford Handbook of Intergenerational Ethics (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2021.
    This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online. For more information, please …Read more
  •  59
    The Justice and Legitimacy of Geoengineering
    Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 23 (5): 557-563. 2020.
  • The structure of Aristotelian virtue ethics has been misunderstood. Conventional wisdom has it that Aristotle, as indeed all of the major philosophers of ancient Greece, believed that the virtues are reciprocally entailing (RV): a person can have one of the virtues of character if and only if she has them all. But this is false. Instead, Aristotle distinguishes between a set of basic and a set of nonbasic virtues, and claims that only the basic virtues are reciprocally entailing. Furthermore…Read more
  •  45
    Geoengineering, Political Legitimacy and Justice
    Ethics, Policy and Environment 21 (3): 265-269. 2018.
    Geoengineering is commonly defined as ‘the deliberate large-scale manipulation of the planetary environment to counteract anthropogenic climate change’. Technologies which...
  •  65
    ABSTRACTThis article offers a constructive critique of the Oxford Principles for the governance of geoengineering and proposes an alternative set of principles, the Tollgate Principles, based on that critique. Our main concern is that, despite their many merits, the Oxford Principles remain largely instrumental and dominated by procedural considerations; therefore, they fail to lay the groundwork sufficiently for the more substantive ethical debate that is needed. The article aims to address thi…Read more
  •  9
    Q & A
    The Philosophers' Magazine 56 115-116. 2012.
  •  2
    The dissertation puts forwards the theoretical foundations for an alternative to the traditional egoist interpretation of eudaimonism, the ethical theory associated with ancient Greek philosophers such as Aristotle. The first section builds a case for looking for such an alternative by arguing that the connection between egoism and eudaimonism posited by the traditional view is more complex than usually thought, and so requires more defense than usually thought. The second section suggests a way…Read more
  •  38
    Trump and Climate Justice
    The Philosophers' Magazine 78 14-16. 2017.
    A brief critique of President Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.
  •  28
    Why Geoengineering is not Plan B
    In Christopher J. Preston (ed.), Climate Justice and Geoengineering: Ethics and Policy in the Atmospheric Anthropocene, Rowman & Littlefield International. pp. 15-32. 2016.
    Geoengineering – roughly “the intentional manipulation of the planetary systems at a global scale” (Keith 2000) – to combat climate change is often introduced as a “plan B”: an alternative solution in case “plan A”, reducing emissions, fails. This framing is typically deployed as part of an argument that research and development is necessary in case robust conventional mitigation is not forthcoming, or proves insufficient to prevent dangerous climate impacts. Since coming to prominence with the …Read more
  • In this paper, I discuss the International Commission on Radiological Protection’s (ICRP’s) ethical principles of radiological protection - and in particular their recent proposal to revise the recommendations based on those principles - from a particular point of view; namely, that of an outsider. I do this for two reasons. First, it seems to me that there is a strange mismatch between what the commission’s principles seem, from the outside, to demand, and how they have actually been interprete…Read more
  •  36
    The Heart of A Perfect Moral Storm
    Philosophy and Public Issues - Filosofia E Questioni Pubbliche 3 (1). 2013.
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  •  1451
    Reflecting on A Perfect Moral Storm
    Philosophy and Public Issues - Filosofia E Questioni Pubbliche 3 (1). 2013.
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