{"title":"Meso Evaluation for SDGs’ Complexity and Ethics","authors":"M. Marra","doi":"10.1080/21550085.2021.1940450","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21550085.2021.1940450","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Sustainability is normatively defined as the interconnectedness of policy goals and actions; the partnership among governments, civil society, and the private sector; and a transformational vision pursuing structural change against marginalization and environmental degradation. This article provides the conceptual basis for a meso policy analysis and evaluation framework to address the normative dimensions of sustainability-centered policies. Drawing on complexity, behavioral, and sustainability sciences, a meso interpretative lens contributes to articulating the ethical and techno-scientific norms underlying SDGs discourses. Through knowledge co-production, and collaborative governance, a meso policy analysis and evaluation approach can help overcome centralized politics and techno-scientific rationalization.","PeriodicalId":45955,"journal":{"name":"Ethics Policy & Environment","volume":"33 1","pages":"316 - 336"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89683906","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Norwegian Oil Fund in a Warming World: What are the Interests of Future Generations?","authors":"A. Bhopal","doi":"10.1080/21550085.2021.1940451","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21550085.2021.1940451","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The intended beneficiaries of the Norwegian Oil Fund are current and future generations of Norwegians, with the interests of current generations served through the expenditure of revenues on public services and the interests of future generations met by increasing the value of the fund. This formulation is reexamined in light of climate change and found to be narrow and incomplete and in tension with reducing carbon emissions in line with the Paris Agreement. I argue that a collective vision encompassing the financial and non-financial interests of current and future generations is needed and highlight the role of greater public deliberation.","PeriodicalId":45955,"journal":{"name":"Ethics Policy & Environment","volume":"12 1","pages":"106 - 120"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74451773","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Phenomenology, Habit, and Environmental Inaction","authors":"Victor Bruzzone, P. Mulvihill","doi":"10.1080/21550085.2021.1940448","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21550085.2021.1940448","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Despite a growing literature on environmental inaction, it remains poorly understood. This article examines much of this literature including environmental ethics, policy studies, disaster theory, and psychology. Among the many existing explanations, we examine shifting values, rational incentives, and psychological barriers to action. Ultimately, we show how most of these explanations rely on simplistic assumptions about subjectivity. To address this, we apply the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty to show how an understanding of habit informed by Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology reveals the deeper conditions of both action and inaction.","PeriodicalId":45955,"journal":{"name":"Ethics Policy & Environment","volume":"14 1","pages":"178 - 193"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89005794","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Debating Debating Climate Ethics","authors":"D. Weisbach","doi":"10.1080/21550085.2021.1991555","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21550085.2021.1991555","url":null,"abstract":"In Debating Climate Ethics, Stephen Gardiner and I offer our views on how ethics or theories of justice more generally apply to climate change and possibly help inform climate change policy. It is now five years since the book was published, and longer since we wrote our sections. In this essay, I look back at our debate, hopefully with the perspective gained by time, and offer my reflections. Rather than repeating my arguments or seeking to refute Gardiner in another round of back-and-forth, my goal is to understand where Gardiner and I disagree, where we agree, and why. The hope is that understanding the nature and basis of our disagreements will allow us to better find the best answers to how climate change, ethics, and theories of justice more generally interact. While each of us covers many issues in our sections of our book and in related work, I limit myself here to five topics. In each case, I do my best to represent Gardiner’s views in the strongest form that I understand them. This is, however, my own writing, and Gardiner may disagree with my characterizations.","PeriodicalId":45955,"journal":{"name":"Ethics Policy & Environment","volume":"8 1","pages":"112 - 122"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79156880","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Debating Climate Ethics Revisited","authors":"S. Gardiner","doi":"10.1080/21550085.2021.1990674","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21550085.2021.1990674","url":null,"abstract":"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 consequence is that we should reject the alleged “feasibility constraint” of short-term, economic self-interest.","PeriodicalId":45955,"journal":{"name":"Ethics Policy & Environment","volume":"359 1","pages":"89 - 111"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80198832","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Arguments from Need in Natural Resource Debates","authors":"E. D. Stabell","doi":"10.1080/21550085.2021.1906072","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21550085.2021.1906072","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT With regard to any natural resource, we can ask whether we should obtain (more of) it. We may further hold that the answer to this question depends, at least in part, on whether there is a need in our society for the resource in question. In this paper, a framework is developed for evaluating the moral significance of arguments from need in natural resource debates. The main components of the framework are: a harm-based conception of morally significant needs; a transmission principle holding between basic and derived needs; and a bulk of considerations regarding competing concerns.","PeriodicalId":45955,"journal":{"name":"Ethics Policy & Environment","volume":"142 1","pages":"19 - 33"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73975991","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"In Defense of Wild Night","authors":"K. Dill","doi":"10.1080/21550085.2021.1904496","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21550085.2021.1904496","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this piece, I extend a transformative power account to the conservation of dark (and starry) night skies. More specifically, I argue that the transformative power that dark nights bear warrants their conservation and is best understood in terms of the important intellectual, cultural, aesthetic, and (psycho-physiologically) restorative effects that they afford. This gives us a pressing set of reasons to combat the growing, global phenomenon of light pollution. To do so, I argue, we ought to preserve the few remaining dark refuges that we have left (what I term wildness regions) and synergistically re-wild (i.e. re-darken) urban and suburban environments. Synergistic re-darkening, I propose, can be achieved by (i) establishing interpretive (educational) ‘dark zones’, (ii) implementing bioluminescent lighting technologies, and (iii) strategically employing lighting design. Finally, and in order to enact a degree of epistemic justice, I argue that we ought to implement multi-cultural ‘co-learning’ initiatives, which promote education pertaining to both Western, scientific and indigenous, North American astronomies.","PeriodicalId":45955,"journal":{"name":"Ethics Policy & Environment","volume":"1 1","pages":"153 - 177"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89810550","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"As Much as Possible, as Soon As Possible: Getting Negative About Emissions","authors":"K. Peacock","doi":"10.1080/21550085.2021.1904497","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21550085.2021.1904497","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper is a report on the viability, both technical and ethical, of negative emissions technologies (NETs) in climate change mitigation. Given present levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, NETs are almost certainly required in order to avoid the most serious consequences of anthropogenic carbonization. Critics argue that we should not rely on the promise of future NETs because that could be taken as an excuse to avoid decarbonization in the near term. The concern is genuine, but if the prima facie arguments for drawing down carbon as soon as possible are correct, ways must be found to counter the incentives to defer the immediate deployment of NETs and other forms of mitigation. A policy instrument is sketched which could help accomplish that task.","PeriodicalId":45955,"journal":{"name":"Ethics Policy & Environment","volume":"106 1","pages":"281 - 296"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80577865","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Author Meets Critics: Paul Thompson, The Spirit of the Soil, 2nd Ed","authors":"C. Wolf, A. Thompson, Evelyn Brister, P. Thompson","doi":"10.1080/21550085.2021.1904528","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21550085.2021.1904528","url":null,"abstract":"Paul Thompson’s Spirit of the Soil was groundbreaking when it appeared in 1995, and has aged remarkably well. The substantially revised new edition is a benefit not only for the field of agriculture and ethics, but also because it provides a new window into the changing ideas of Thompson himself. This is significant because Thompson’s work on this topic has shaped the field so decisively that his views are sometimes recited as common knowledge. As a result of this book and its notoriety, Thompson may have suffered the worst-best fate that can befall a philosopher: Language from this book, and aspects of Thompson’s framework for thinking about central issues in agriculture, have become so standard in the field of sustainable agriculture that people no longer remember where the terms and ideas came from. I sometimes find students reciting as common knowledge what used to be regarded as philosophically interesting claims first made by Paul Thompson. For example, a paper published this month by a former student of mine in the journal Global Environmental Change includes the following:","PeriodicalId":45955,"journal":{"name":"Ethics Policy & Environment","volume":"14 1","pages":"194 - 223"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81593621","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Egoistic Love of the Nonhuman World? Biology and the Love Paradox","authors":"Elisa Aaltola","doi":"10.1080/21550085.2021.1885245","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21550085.2021.1885245","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Love of nonhuman animals and nature is often presumed to have positive moral implications: if we love elks or forests, we will also better appreciate their moral value and treat them with more respect and care. This paper investigates perhaps the most common variety of love – here termed ‘the biological definition of love’ – as applied to other animals and nature. Introducing the notion of ‘the love paradox’, it suggests that biological love of other animals and nature can also have deeply negative and anthropocentric moral consequences, due to the self-directedness and biases inherent to it. The need for more other-directed definitions of love is underlined.","PeriodicalId":45955,"journal":{"name":"Ethics Policy & Environment","volume":"35 1","pages":"86 - 105"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85469875","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}