A collage of images, featuring most prominently a person holding a sign reading "no justice no peace"

Author: Wouter Peeters

Academia / General

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To Strike or Disrupt? (take 2)

In November and December 2019, members of the University and College Union (UCU) – the trade union that represents many academics and other university staff in the UK – went on strike. On that occasion, in his post To Strike or Disrupt, Liam Shields discussed whether people not doing any teaching during the strike should go on strike or not, seeing that their striking does not result in significant disruption.

At the end of this week, the UCU will embark on a new wave of 14 days of strike spread over four weeks because the dispute remains unsettled. It therefore seems a good occasion to recall Liam’s argument and to flesh out some implications a bit further.

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Duties / Moral values

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Can we solve the dilemma between pursuing personal projects and the demands of morality by limiting the scope of morality?

Morality is hard work. It’s not easy to make sure our actions do not negatively affect other beings in this universe or to do good to them. How can we carve out some space for the pursuit of personal projects without violating the demands of morality? In this post, I discuss strategies that exclude certain areas of life and activities from moral assessment, and find them wanting.*

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Climate / General

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Are ‘New Harms’ really all that new?

Some theorists argue that contemporary problems such as climate change, sweatshop labour, biodiversity loss, … are New Harms – they are unprecedented problems, and differ in important respects from more familiar harms. Intuitively, this view seems to make sense, but in this post I argue that this view is mistaken.* (more…)

Climate / Economics / General / Moral values

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Why We Need More Materialism

As the famous adage holds, we should try to Do More With Less. We’re living in a time in which minimalism has become a movement and to Marie Kondo has become a verb. As we all know, materialism is bad for the planet and people around us, but I will only focus on how self-interest might also be a significant motivator to reduce our materialism, and also give a humble suggestion as to what fundamentally underlies moving to Doing More With Less (or getting even better at it if you’re already on the programme). (more…)

Academia

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5th Annual Conference of the Centre for the Study of Global Ethics

The Call for Papers for the 5th Annual Conference of the Centre for the Study of Global Ethics (30-31 May 2019, Birmingham) is now open. We welcome abstract submissions on the Conference’s theme Bodies and Embodiment as well as other topics in global ethics. For more information, please see below or visit the conference website. (more…)

Climate / Duties

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Climate ethicists flying to conferences? The middle ground regarding voluntarily offsetting emissions

Voluntary offsetting allows you to ‘neutralise’ your carbon dioxide emissions by preventing the same amount of carbon dioxide from being emitted by someone else, most often somewhere else. Offsetting is a very polarised issue: some defend it as an effective way for individuals to neutralise their carbon emissions, while others have fiercely opposed it as a morally dubious practice

In this post, I take a position in the middle: I believe that under some conditions, emitting-and-offsetting should be morally acceptable.

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General

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Plastic Pollution: How to avoid further degrading our natural environment

Plastic pollution on a beach. Image source https://www.pollutionsolutions-online.com/news/water-wastewater/17/breaking-news/which-countries-are-the-worst-for-ocean-pollution/50933

The theme of this year’s World Environment Day (5 June 2018) is Beat Plastic Pollution. Plastic pollution is indeed a serious problem, severely affecting animals, humans, and marine ecosystems.  Removal of the pollutants that are already in the environment is exceedingly difficult, so we should also ask: How can we avoid plastic and other pollutants entering the environment in the first place?

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Academia

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Conference call: A Post-liberal World?

The Centre for the Study of Global Ethics at Birmingham is pleased to announce its 4th annual conference, on the theme of A Post-liberal World? 

Conference website: globalethics2018.weebly.com

 

  • Where and when: University of Birmingham, 31 May-1 June 2018
  • Already confirmed keynote speakers: Alison Jaggar (Birmingham & Boulder) and Jonathan Wolff (Oxford)
  • Public lecture: Jonathan Wolff will deliver a public lecture on Social Inequality and Structural Injustice (please visit the event page for more info and registration)


Call for Papers: 

The conference will specifically focus on the question whether we are on our way to a post-liberal world. We welcome abstract submissions addressing this theme as well as abstract submissions on a wide range of topics within global ethics.

Abstracts should be 500 words maximum and include three to five keywords. They should be send to globalethicsevents@contacts.bham.ac.uk. The deadline for submissions is 10 February 2018.

For more information on the Call for Papers, please visit the CFP section on the conference website: http://globalethics2018.weebly.com/cfp.html

Climate / International

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The Paris Agreement on Climate Change: A historical landmark or an empty box? (longread)

The Paris Agreement on Climate Change has been heralded as ‘a monumental success for the planet and its people.’ [1] However, others have also already expressed strong criticism. It remains up to the future to decide on the success or failure of the agreement. This post contains some reflections about this future, and I hope that the topicality of the issue justifies its length and unscheduled publication. (more…)