04:30 PM to 07:10 PM W
Section Information for Fall 2019
PHIL 643: Environmental Ethics (Graduate Seminar)
Topic: Responding to Climate Change
Fall 2019, George Mason University
Instructor: Andrew Light
This class will first offer an advanced introduction to questions about how we should understand the value of non-human natural entities, and concurrently whether and to what extent we have moral obligations to protect nature, with a focus on the contemporary field of environmental ethics. Topics to be covered include individual versus collective approaches to moral consideration of the environment, varieties of assessment of the intrinsic (or non-instrumental) value of nature, and the question of whether environmental ethics should embrace some form of moral pluralism.
Second, we will spend more of our time looking at the particular problem of climate change, not only the somewhat abstract set of questions of the moral dimensions of the problem, but the more specific issue of how international institutions empowered to act on climate change, such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), do or do not respond to some of the moral dilemmas inherent in finding a global solution to this problem consistent with scientific assessments of the range and extent of climate impacts. This will involve a review of the current state of the science of climate change, the literature on the costs and benefits of solving this problem, the history of institutions like the UNFCCC, and various moral evaluations of the ideal solutions to the problem. Throughout we will be looking for places where ethical analysis has, or could potentially, inform an articulation of the policy responses to the science.
This course is inherently interdisciplinary as we will be drawing from work in contemporary ethics, public policy, and relevant environmental sciences. The instructor is both an academic and has been an active participant in international climate negotiations for over a decade, both through non-governmental organizations, and from 2013-2016 as a senior climate change official at the U.S. Department of State.
For students in the Ethics and Public Affairs concentration, this course fulfills 3 credits of the 9-credit ethics requirement; or it can be used as an elective.
For students in the Traditional and Contemporary Philosophy focus, this course can be used as an elective.
Tags:
Credits: 3
Enrollment limited to students with a class of Advanced to Candidacy, Graduate, Junior Plus, Non-Degree or Senior Plus.
Enrollment is limited to Graduate, Non-Degree or Undergraduate level students.
Students in a Non-Degree Undergraduate degree may not enroll.
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