Of Ethics and Energy
Knoxville, Tennessee, will play host next month to a conference exploring the ethical implications of energy policy, resource consumption and the environment.
Set for April 10 - 12, “Energy and Responsibility” will feature presentations by, among others, Robert Socolow, the Princeton professor who helped develop the concept of “stabilization wedges” to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and curb climate change.
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Socolow’s keynote address, scheduled for Thursday, April 10, will focus on “Living Ethically in a Greenhouse.”
“I welcome the opportunity to entice ethicists to help others deal with climate change, including the formidable environmental risks and social issues related to energy production, distribution, and consumption,” Socolow said.
Panel discussions during the conference will tackle a variety of topics: “Environmental Ethics and Climate Change,” “Irreversibility and Environmental Damage,” “Collective and Individual Responsibility” and “Energy Use and Future Generations.”
“Environmental problems, instead of being discrete violations of the natural order, have increasingly come to be seen as manifestations of the human domination of nature,” writes Dale Jamieson of New York University, who will give an address on “Ethics, Energy and the Transformation of Nature.” “But using energy, in all of its forms, transforms nature. When does transformation become domination? Answering this and related questions is the greatest theoretical challenge facing contemporary environmentalism.”
