Moira Howes

Dr. Howes is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Trent University. Her research focuses on science and values, with special emphasis on values in biology. She has published on philosophical problems in immunology, the metaphysics of selfhood, and the epistemology of science.

Incremental Damage: Ethical Well-Being and Climate Change

What happens to our ethical well-being when we knowingly act in ways that contribute to climate change? I will examine how the many environmentally relevant decisions made daily—from gassing up the car to purchasing plastic objects to leaving the lights on—cumulatively and adversely affect our ethical well-being. I will argue that in order to have an effective living environmentalism, we need to think more seriously about the moral harm we do to ourselves in our everyday decision-making.

Christine Freeman-Roth

Professor Christine Freeman-Roth is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Trent University. She received her BA in Philosophy at the University of Guelph and her MA and her Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of Waterloo. Her areas of research include ethics, social and political theory with a focus on international justice and human rights. Her recent research concerns the nature and limits of personal autonomy, the ethical issues surrounding the vacation, and the morality and
legalization of polygamy.

Climate Change and Hard Choices: Reconciling Diverging Rights Claims

Much debate in environmental ethics has focused on whether the environment has intrinsic value on its own, or whether it can only be considered in terms of its instrumental value to human beings. While there are drawbacks to the anthropocentric view, I will argue that human centered arguments have had and will continue to have the best chance of convincing individuals, governments and industry to make the necessary changes. These changes will not be simple or straightforward and we will be challenged to balance the rights claims of those in industrialized countries with those in the developing world, to mediate between the rights claims of our parents and of our children, and to resolve conflicts between the rights claims of individuals and those of groups. We will be called upon by future generations to justify the choices we make today and although the urgency of the situation will not allow us to delay any longer, we must think quickly but carefully about the short and long term effects of those hard choices.