PHL.2035 Introduction to Environmental Ethics and Policy
2023 was the warmest year ever recorded and the 10 warmest years since 1850 have occurred in the past decade. Humans bulldoze thousands of acres of wilderness daily. We slaughter billions of animals each year to meet the demand for meat. Yet, particularly in the United States, we are doing very little to address these issues. The aim of this course is to analyze environmental issues through the lens of moral philosophy. Students enrolled in this course will develop an understanding of both environmental issues and ethical theory. Questions we will examine include, but are not limited to: How does each person contribute to environmental degradation? What obligations do we, as individuals, have regarding climate change? How should we go about coordinating collective action to address environmental issues? What are we justified in doing to change environmental policies that we find unjust? Do we have moral obligations towards non-humans? Answering these questions will require examining and critically analyzing conventional approaches.