Richard Stewart and Dale Jamieson discuss new book on climate ethics (VIDEO)

Photo of Richard StewartPhoto of Dale JamiesonOn October 28, New York University's Environmental Studies Program hosted the launch of Climate Ethics: Essential Readings, a new book co-edited by Affiliate Professor of Law Dale Jamieson. John Edward Sexton Professor of Law Richard Stewart moderated a panel discussion of the new book, which covers the human dimensions of climate change, including papers on: human rights, international justice, intergenerational ethics, individual responsibility, climate economics, and the ethics of geoengineering.

The field of climate ethics, Jamieson said, developed largely over the last 20 years—and went somewhat unnoticed. The impetus behind Climate Ethics came from the editors’ desire to make the academic field part of the mainstream moral and ethical discussion of climate change. “There was all this work out here, but it didn’t really seem to be as well known in the broader climate science and climate studies community,” Jamieson said. “We decided to produce this book to bring together a lot of the literature under two covers, so at the very least there could no longer be this excuse that people didn’t actually know there was this literature out there.”
 
Jamieson, who is a professor of environmental studies and philosophy at NYU, was joined on the panel by two of the book's co-editors, Henry Shue, a senior research fellow at the Centre for International Studies at Oxford University, and Stephen Gardiner, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Washington. Simon Caney of Magdalen College at Oxford University also served as an editor.

The book discussion, co-sponsored by the Frank J. Guarini Center for Environmental and Land Use Law, the Center for Bioethics, and Oxford University Press, was part of NYU's Great New Books in the Humanities Series.

Watch the discussion (1 hr 17 min):

Posted November 4, 2010