CFP: Cosmopolitan Ethics and Climate ...

Interesting CFP for a panel at the 2009 ECPR...

CFP: Cosmopolitan Ethics and Climate Change Panel at 2009 ECPR

ECPR 2009 Potsdam, Germany

Panel: "Improving the Climate Regime: Cosmopolitan Solutions" 

The latest science of climate change shows that massive cuts in greenhouse gas emissions will be needed by mid-century to avert extreme, possibly catastrophic, harm to Earth?s climate system. Yet, despite ongoing and sometimes intense diplomatic efforts over two decades, governments of the world have been unable to agree to anything near the kind of regulation of pollution that would be required to achieve these cuts. This failure can be attributed to the nature of the climate change regime, which is premised on negotiations among states seeking to protect or promote their relatively narrow national interests. An alternative (or at least a supplement) to this interstate approach can be found in cosmopolitan conceptions of world affairs. 

Cosmopolitanism offers politically viable alternatives to the status quo regime that are just, practical and efficacious. This panel aims to highlight these alternatives, focusing especially on how cosmopolitan ideas might be moved from the realm of philosophy to the practical politics and policies of climate change. My aim in proposing this panel is to bring together people who believe that cosmopolitan philosophy and ethics can offer practical and workable alternatives to the prevailing state-centric climate change regime. I hope that we can gather a collection of papers, and have a lively discussion, on how cosmopolitanism can inform the climate change regime generally and policies and behaviors in particular. Put another way, the objective is not to develop cosmopolitan philosophy related to climate change as much as it is to enhance policies and practices through (practical) cosmopolitan ethics.

We can have up to seven papers in the panel comprising up to five presenters and two additional 'tabled' papers (the tabled papers can be discussed during the panel but the authors would not actually do a presentation; I'm assuming this limitation is simply to avoid having too many speakers using the allotted time, which seems a reasonable requirement). If we are fortunate enough to have seven quality papers,
it is my hope that we can collect them together in a book manuscript for submission to a university press and/or as a special issue of a scholarly journal. With this in mind, I hope the papers can be well-developed, in the range of 9,000-12,000 words (and possibly a bit longer if authors feel the need).

Please do consider proposing a paper for the panel. For guidelines on how to submit a paper proposal, please go to this website: http://www.ecpr.org.uk/potsdam/howtosubmit.asp. The SECTION is "Green Politics" (no. 13). The PANEL is "Improving the Climate Regime: Cosmopolitan Solutions" (no. 210). More information for paper givers can be found here: 

http://www.ecpr.org.uk/potsdam/files/paper_proposals_guidelines_and_deadlines.pdf
Please note that the DEADLINE for paper proposals is 1 February 2009