Papers by Kenneth Shockley
PROGRAM OF THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE "ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS AND VULNERABILITY IN WESTERN AND/OR... more PROGRAM OF THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE "ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS AND VULNERABILITY IN WESTERN AND/OR BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY", 24-26 OCTOBER 2024, UNIVERSITY OF VERONA
Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, Aug 13, 2023
In the climate adaptation literature, we can distinguish two seemingly distinct frameworks for th... more In the climate adaptation literature, we can distinguish two seemingly distinct frameworks for the concept of vulnerability. We might think of vulnerability in terms of susceptibility to harm. Some discussions of vulnerability accordingly focus on the risk posed to well‐being. Alternatively, we might think of vulnerability in terms of a system's responsiveness to adverse conditions, often spelled out in terms of resilience. This article highlights and distinguishes these frameworks through a brief survey of climate adaptation literature. Understanding the relationship between these two frameworks is vital not only for conceptual clarity, but also for developing adaptation strategies that respond to the different sorts of vulnerabilities posed by climate change. Mitigating the vulnerability of an individual at risk of harm might well complicate efforts at mitigating the vulnerabilities of systems in which that individual is embedded. Humans are clearly at risk of harm from a changing climate, and changing climate challenges the resilience of systems on which humans depend. The paper concludes with a brief consideration of the vulnerabilities that arise from the dissociation of people from their environments. Dissociation, whether through the migration of people or through changes to environmental background conditions not only makes clear the dual nature of vulnerabilities, but also serves as a lens through which we might consider the prospects for integrating a more cohesive account of vulnerability into successful climate adaptation strategies.This article is categorized under: Climate, Nature, and Ethics > Ethics and Climate Change Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change > Values‐Based Approach to Vulnerability and Adaptation
Ethics, policy & environment, Jun 1, 2011
Regional Environmental Change
Routledge eBooks, Jul 5, 2022
Proceedings of the XXIV International Conference of the Society for Human Ecology (SHE), 2022
Journal of Social Philosophy, 2020
A number of thinkers have pointed to radical hope as both an appropriate affective state to motiv... more A number of thinkers have pointed to radical hope as both an appropriate affective state to motivate action in a time of radical change and perhaps the only appropriate reaction to the uncertainties expected in the Anthropocene. As Jonathan Lear characterizes it, radical hope is a hope that we might find a meaningful existence without the context and substantial constraints that previously provided one's life with meaning. If we are to appeal to radical hope as an appropriate form of motivation in the Anthropocene, however, we need an appropriate object for that hope. We need some sense of what we are hoping for. In this paper I argue that the most appropriate objects for radical hope are ideals generated from the substantial freedoms required for any recognizably human good life. These substantial freedoms amount to Senian capabilities. While, owing to its inherent uncertainties, we cannot conceptualize with suitable specificity what a good life would be in the Anthropocene, we can recognize that it will be shaped by the substantial freedoms required for most any good life, that is, by capabilities. As capabilities express ideals about the good life, these ideals provide the appropriate object for radical hope. Hoping for ideals of the good life should provide an object for our motivation in a time when the specifics of that good life are unclear. Just as radical hope seems an appropriate response to our changing climate, the ideals underpinning capabilities provide a grounding for that hope suitable for the Anthropocene.
Includes appearances by John Didier, Philosophy Chair; Holmes Rolston III; CSU President Dr. Tony... more Includes appearances by John Didier, Philosophy Chair; Holmes Rolston III; CSU President Dr. Tony Frank; Rick Miranda, Provost.
The human costs of climate change are now widespread and severe. Communities across the globe are... more The human costs of climate change are now widespread and severe. Communities across the globe are facing adverse climate impacts--including food and water insecurity, increased prevalence of tropical diseases, and the loss of lives and livelihoods--that will only escalate along with escalating global temperatures. Moreover, many regions that are particularly vulnerable to climate change--from Haiti to the Philippines and from Bangladesh to Sudan--are also relatively low emitters of greenhouse gases. Calls for an international response to climate change that is not only effective but also sensitive to moral concerns are therefore reaching a crescendo. For example, the 2013 U.N. climate negotiations in Warsaw, which commenced just days after the devastating Typhoon Haiyan made landfall in the Philippines, saw a consuming focus on the issue of "loss and damage"--which refers to repairable damage or permanent loss due to the impacts of climate change--as well as demands for fi...
Rich people do not bear the greatest responsibility for climate change. Primary responsibility fa... more Rich people do not bear the greatest responsibility for climate change. Primary responsibility falls on states and other institutional actors. While through their economic impact individual rich people may have disproportionately influenced the climate indirectly, they are not effective agents for generating or addressing climate change. States, economic institutions, and other international actors are effective agents in the international political arena, and so the greatest responsibility for climate change falls on them. Individuals do bear responsibility for engaging with and, to the extent they are able, changing these institutions. But this is not a responsibility for climate change per se.
Ethics, Policy & Environment, 2020
It seems intuitive that human development and environmental protection should go hand in hand. Bu... more It seems intuitive that human development and environmental protection should go hand in hand. But some have worried there is no framework within environmental ethics that suitably conjoins them. I...
Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2018
Characterizations of the Anthropocene often indicate both the challenges that our new epoch poses... more Characterizations of the Anthropocene often indicate both the challenges that our new epoch poses for human well-being and a sense of loss that comes from a compromised environment. In this paper I explore a deeper problem underpinning both issues, namely, that decoupling humanity from the world with which we are familiar compromises human flourishing. The environmental conditions characteristic of the Anthropocene do so, I claim, by compromising flourishing on two fronts. First, the comparatively novel conditions of the Anthropocene risk rupturing our narratives, putting at risk our sense of self and connections to familiar environments. Second, by undermining the connections between our environmental background and the sense of well-being conditioned by that background our ability to exercise options that constitute a recognizable good life are compromised. This paper argues that to the extent humanity is decoupled from their environments humans are not only less able to access opportunities our understanding of who we are, our identities, and our capacity to make sense of the world around us through those identities is compromised. I conclude that the Anthropocene does more than challenge our ability to utilize resources, it challenges our understanding of who we are in the world.
Journal of Global Ethics, 2018
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which serve as the primary feature of the 2030 Agenda for S... more Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which serve as the primary feature of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which serve as a vital instrumental of the UNFCCC’s Paris Agreement, have clear synergies. Both are focused, in part, on responding to challenges presented to human well-being. There are good practical reasons to integrate development efforts with a comprehensive response to climate change. However, at least in their current form, these two policy instruments are ill-suited to this task. Where SDGs are focused on supporting considerations of human flourishing to which policy needs to respond, NDCs, in their current form, are dependent on the determinations of the nations that generate them. I conclude that the best means of integrating these two policy initiatives require moving past the subjective foundations of NDCs.
Ethics, Policy & Environment, 2017
Ethics, Policy & Environment, 2015
In December 2014, 196 Parties convened in Lima for the 20 session of the Conference of the Partie... more In December 2014, 196 Parties convened in Lima for the 20 session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 20). The meeting in Lima was, in many respects, a turning point in the history of climate negotiations. At COP 17, held in Durban in 2011, a four-year accelerated round of negotiations, known as the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action, had been launched. Parties entered this round with the objective of reaching an international agreement by COP 21 in December 2015, in Paris. Lima was a turning point because, while the round of negotiations started off almost with an open slate, some of the key elements of the new agreement’s architecture took shape by the end of the conference in Lima, and the previously inchoate Paris agreement, the successor to the Kyoto Protocol, began to take shape. At the meeting’s outset, both the content and the structure of the new agreement were left deliberately open. The only feature adopted from the outset was a desire to expand the global effort, and to do so in a manner that would result in universal participation. The idea is that every nation is to take part in the global climate effort, with no pre-packaged distributions of burdens. Other than this, not much was determined about the terms of cooperation the new agreement would put in place. The idea was that these terms would be fashioned through negotiations. And it was in Lima that the key elements of the new agreement, which would set the stage for the post-2020 global effort on climate change, were to be written down into a preliminary draft. After two nights of overtime, and through tough negotiations and arduous work, the parties agreed on what became known as the Lima Call for Climate Action. The elements of the new agreement are not yet completely finalized, and many of its aspects remain to be developed and refined. But some of the key features are now becoming clear. These can be summarized as follows:
Regions & Cohesion, 2012
The likelihood that the poor will suffer disproportionately from the effects of climate change ma... more The likelihood that the poor will suffer disproportionately from the effects of climate change makes it necessary that any just scheme for addressing the costs and burdens of climate change integrate those disproportionate effects. The Greenhouse Development Rights (GDRs) framework a empts to do just this. The GDRs framework is a burden-sharing approach to climate change that assigns national obligations on the basis of historical emissions and current capacity to provide assistance. It does so by including only those emissions that correspond to income exceeding a development threshold. According to the GDRs framework, this development threshold considers the right to develop to be held by individuals rather than the nations in which those individuals find themselves. The article provides a critique of this framework, focusing on three concerns: First, in generating national obligations the GDRs framework collapses significantly different moral considerations into a single index, p...
Human Virtues of the Future, 2012
Ethics, Place & Environment, 2010
NIMBY claims have certainly been vilified. But, as Feldman and Turner point out, one cannot conde... more NIMBY claims have certainly been vilified. But, as Feldman and Turner point out, one cannot condemn all NIMBY claims without condemning all appeals to partiality. This suggests that any moral problem with NIMBY claims stems not from their status as NIMBY claims but from an underlying illegitimate appeal to partiality. I suggest that if we are to distinguish illegitimate from
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2007
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Papers by Kenneth Shockley