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Lecture on Climate Change and Ethics by Andrew Light Presented March 29 at Appalachian

Andrew LightMarch 16, 2012. BOONE — Philosophy professor Andrew Light will lecture on the role of ethics in climate change on Thursday, March 29, at 7 p.m. at Appalachian State University. 

Light’s lecture,  “Climate Ethics for Climate Action: Towards a Better Moral Outcome in International Climate Negations,” will be presented in the Bryce and Izoria Gordon Gathering Hall in the Reich College of Education Building at the corner of College and Howard streets. His talk is sponsored by the Department of Philosophy and Religion and the College of Arts and Sciences. Admission is free and the public is invited. 

Light is an associate professor of philosophy and public policy and director of the Center for Global Ethics at George Mason University.  He also is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, where he works primarily on international climate and science policy.

Environmental ethics is taught in Appalachian’s Department of Philosophy and Religion.

“Climate change is a moral problem because it presents harm to the non-human natural world and human beings in the present and future. It raises a lot of very interesting ethical questions regarding our assumptions about what we should value and the nature and scope of our responsibilities for present and future harm. Climate change ethics is concerned with what we should do about climate change,” said Dr. Kim Hall, who started Appalachian’s first environmental ethics course in 1999.

“Students at Appalachian are really interested in environmental issues. There is a lot of creative energy on campus around thinking about environmental problems, how we might approach and understand them through the various academic disciplines on campus, and how we might work on solutions to various problems.  Climate change presents us with questions and issues that have profound moral significance,” Hall said. “For example, will there be water and food, for whom, and for how long into the future?  How much species extinction are we willing to live with in what will be a radically transformed world? These are problems that affect us all.”

Photo course of George Mason University.