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Monthly Archive: April 2025

Academia / Beyond the Ivory Tower / General / Public Philosophy

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Beyond the Ivory Tower Interview with Toby Buckle

This is the latest interview in our Beyond the Ivory Tower series, a conversation between Sara van Goozen and Toby Buckle. Toby Buckle runs the popular Political Philosophy Podcast. He has a BA in PPE from Oxford University and an MA in Political Philosophy from the University of York. He spent many years working with political and advocacy groups in the United States, such as Human Rights Campaign, Environment America,  Working Families Party and Amnesty International. He started his podcast around seven years ago, and has interviewed academics including Elizabeth Anderson, Orlando Patterson, Phillip Pettit, and Cecile Fabre, as well as politicians (such as Senator Sherrod Brown, or Civil Rights Commission Chair, Mary Francis Berry), commentators (such as Ian Dunt) and public figures (such as Derek Guy AKA Menswear Guy). He is the editor of What is Freedom? Conversations with Historians, Philosophers, and Activists (Oxford University Press, 2021). He writes regularly for Liberal Currents. In this interview, we discuss running a podcast, the enduring relevance of historical philosophers, and what young academics can do to build a public profile.

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General

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School attendance

According to the UK government, any child who misses more than 10% of school is “persistently absent” from school. Alarming news headlines inform us that this “persistent absence” is now at record rates of 20%. As a parent and a social philosopher interested in the topics of illness and disability, I find the guidance more worrying than these numbers.

Schools in the UK usually provide 190 days of instruction a year. Missing 10% or 19 days means missing just under 4 weeks of school. We have to remember, however, that these 190 days are not distributed randomly over the year. During the summer, when the number of contagious illnesses is lowest, there is a long break from school. The guidance does not differentiate according to age either. Schooling is compulsory between the ages of 5 and 18, which means children usually start school at age 4. While a 14 year old might be able to go to school with even a relatively bad cold, a 4 year old (or 7 year old) will not be able to do so. Small children delight in close proximity to each other – hence they are likely to pick up both head lice and viral illnesses more quickly from each other too than adults would. They are also likely to do things which result in injuries like broken bones. As a result they are likely to be ill more often. Family size also matters. According to a study conducted in 2009, families with one child had a respiratory viral infection in the household about a third of the time, but this rocketed to more than half the time for families with two or more children. By contrast, families with only adults had viral infections in the household only 7% of the time. Children are simply ill a lot. It is easy for them to miss two weeks of school between September and February, when schools start internal procedures to tackle “pesistent absence” half-way through the school year.

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Climate / Distribution / Economics / Environment / General / Governance

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Quo vadis carbon tax?

Carbon taxes represent a key part of humanity’s current strategy to avoid global warming above 2 degrees Celsius. They work by making carbon-intensive activities more expensive, thus encouraging individuals to reduce these activities. Given the existential threat climate change poses to our societies, one would hope that such a key policy tool was both effective and enjoyed broad public support. Neither of these things are true today. Why is that and what needs to change?

The carbon tax is a so-called steering tax. Its goal is to change people’s behaviour, not to raise revenue for the government. The current version of the carbon tax in place in most countries does not change people’s behaviour as effectively as it could and should. To see why, consider two frequently ignored facts.

First, rich people emit considerably more than the average person. Studies on socioenvironmental inequality estimate that the top 10% of emitters are responsible for about 50% of individual carbon emissions. Think of private jets, which emit up to 4.5 tons of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e) per hour, that is three times as much as the average human on the planet can emit per year if we want to meet our climate targets. Second, someone who falls in this category will usually not even bat an eye at a carbon price of, say, 100 Euros per tCO2e, let alone change their consumption habits. For context, the price of carbon in the European Union Emissions Trading System has oscillated around 80 Euros per tCO2e over the last three years.

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