CFP: Manchester Green Political Theory Workshop

Workshops in Political Theory Sixth Annual Conference
Manchester Metropolitan University
2-4 September 2009

Workshop on GREEN POLITICAL THEORY
Conveners: Stijn Neuteleers (K.U.Leuven, Belgium), Corey MacIver
(University of Oxford, UK)

The management of environmental problems and the rise of the environmental movement pose significant challenges for contemporary political philosophy. These challenges can be found both on a global level and on a local level. At the global level, for instance, climate change is one of the major issues in real-life international politics and has induced a growing debate on the ethics of climate change (global distributive justice, intergenerational justice, etc.). At the local policy level, we are confronted, on the one hand, with the conflict of environmental values with other values such as economic growth and justice. On the other hand, we have to deal with conflicts among environmental values themselves (biodiversity, restoration, wilderness, etc.). Our political and economic instruments and theories have difficulties to cope with these challenges e.g. cost-benefit analysis, value of privacy, discount rates, aggregative models of democracy, etc. The broad field of political philosophy and the environment tries to provide answers to these challenges.
The workshop aims to cover a broad range of green political theory topics such as:
- Ethics and politics of climate change
- Democracy and the environment
- Public policy and the environment
- Environmental citizenship
- Environmental justice
- Green economics
- Environmental decision-making

If you would like to present a paper at this workshop, please submit an abstract of 300-500 words (or a full paper) to stijn.neuteleers@econ.kuleuven.be and corey.maciver@nuffield.ox.ac.uk by April 30, 2008.

Practical information (registration, fees, etc.) can be found on the conference website.

CFP: Climate Change

Call for Papers

What: Climate Change: A Conference on Politics, Policy, and Justice
Where: Bern University, Bern, Switzerland
When: August 19-21, 2009

Please send abstracts (500-800 words) for paper proposals to climateandjustice@gmail.com no later than May 1st. Applicants will know of their acceptance by May 15th. Quality papers will be invited to contribute to an edited collection of the conference proceedings. Graduate students are encouraged to submit proposals, as travel funding has been set aside to aid exemplary graduate student presenters. For more information, please see the conference website: www.climateandjustice.org. The site will be continually updated with travel and lodging information, the conference schedule, and other useful information as it becomes available. If you have further questions, please contact Sarah at sbkenehan@gmail.com.

Keynote speakers:
Simon Caney, Oxford
Lukas Meyer, Graz University
Stephen Gardiner, University of Washington

Conference Abstract: Since the late 1980s climate change has been centre-stage in the international policy arena. However, as of yet, little has been done to incorporate all global players while at the same time catalysing the type of action that must be taken in order to combat this problem. There are likely many reasons for this current inaction, including but surely not limited to: questions surrounding climate science and predictions; questions concerning the most effective way to cope with the problem; and questions relating to the fair distribution of the burden of dealing with climate change. The focus of this conference will be to discuss the latter issue, i.e. the role of justice as it arises in the context of climate change. Justice related issues emerge in the debate over climate change policy on many levels. First, and probably most obviously, it must be determined what role each global actor will play in any coordinated effort to mitigate climate change. The answer to this question is not straightforward, as there are numerous factors that must be considered, including whether rights to emit greenhouse gases (GHG) should be divided equally among all nations, or whether rights to emit should be a function of the geographical placement of a nation, the population of a nation, the level of development of a nation, or even perhaps some combination of these elements. Second, and intimately related to the first issue, it has to be decided to what degree (if any) a nation’s historical emissions ought to be considered. As with the first issue, there is no clear-cut way to work through this problem, since there are seemingly justifiable reasons for engaging in all of the following: severely limiting the largest historical emitters’ claims to present and future emissions, considering only the historical record from the point in time in which a nation could reasonably have known of the harm it was contributing to, or, alternatively, agreeing that historical emissions should have no weight in the discussion, but rather all nations should agree on a fair emissions target from the present forward. Third, it must be determined to what degree (if any) future people ought to be taken into consideration when establishing climate change policy, since it has been predicted that the effects of climate change will stretch far into the future. Addressing this question requires having discussions on how future people can have justice claims on current people, what those justice claims might be, and how far into the future these claims reach. Fourth, it must be determined what types of entities have viable justice claims. Is it only individual persons that can make coherent justice claims? Or can nations, industries, businesses, non-human animals, species, ecosystems, and the like have and make meaningful justice claims? Finally, we must determine the level of responsibility individual actors have in mitigating and adapting to climate change, since it is not evident whether this responsibility falls only on nations, or whether it also rests with individuals, businesses, and industries, as well. Clearly then, the issue of justice and climate change is both complex and requires immediate attention.

Conference: Global Justice in the 21st Century

Conference Announcement
"Global Justice in the 21st Century"
Interdisciplinary Conference
Program on Values in Society and the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington, Seattle, WA (USA)
17-18 April 2009

The Program on Values in Society and the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities invite you to a conference on "Global Justice in the 21st Century". In the twenty-first century, the world will continue to become more inter-connected. Health care, environmental degradation, political violence, human rights, and world poverty are global issues requiring global solutions. These issues will be addressed at a conference on "Global Justice in the 21st Century" to be held at the University of Washington on April 17-18, 2009.T he conference will bring together scholars at the forefront of research on these issues to consider such questions as: What kind of international legal order should we work for inthe 21st century? How should human rights be understood in the 21st century? How should intellectual property rights be balanced against the need for life-saving drugs? What rights should poorer countries have against wealthier ones? How should the international community address global warming? What rights should the world's poor have to be protected from the effects of global warming? How should medical research be done to protect the world's poor from exploitation? The conference is free and open to the public.

Conference Schedule

Keynote Address: 7 pm, Friday, April 17, 2009, Kane Hall, Room 210 (Reception to follow in Kane 245) - Thomas Pogge, Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs, with a joint appointment as Professor in the Department of Philosophy and in the Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University - "The Health Impact Fund: Boosting Innovation Without Obstructing Free Access"

Daily Schedule (all in Kane Hall, Room 245)

Friday, April 17, 2009:
8:45 am: Nicole Hassoun, Assistant Professor in Philosophy and International Relations at Carnegie Mellon University - "Libertarian Welfare Rights?"
10:30 am: Dan Wikler, Mary B. Saltonstall Professor of Population Ethics and Professor of Ethics and Population Health at Harvard University - "Single vs. Multiple Standards in Health Care and Research: An Issue of Global Justice"
1:30 pm: Allen Buchanan, James B. Duke Professor of Philosophy and James B. Duke Professor of Public Policy Studies at Duke University - "Innovation and Inequality"
3:15 pm: Angelina Godoy, Helen H. Jackson Chair in Human Rights and Associate Professor in the Law, Societies & Justice Program and in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington - "Intellectual Property, Medicines, and the Right to Health: A View from Central America"

Saturday, April 18, 2009:
8:45 am: Brad R. Roth, Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Law School at Wayne State University - "Sovereign Equality and Moral Disagreement: Premises of a Pluralist International Legal Order"
10:30 am: Joel Ngugi, Associate Professor of Law and Chair of the African Studies Program at the University of Washington - "The Corrosive Effects of Neoliberal Legal Thought on Global Human Rights Discourse"
1:30 pm: Mathias Risse, Associate Professor of Public Policy and Philosophy at the John F. Kennedy School of Justice, Harvard University - "Who Should Shoulder the Burden? Global Climate Change and Common Ownership of the Earth"
3:15 pm: Stephen Gardiner, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Associate Professor in the Program on Values in Society at the University of Washington - "Geoengineering the Climate in a Perfect Moral Storm"

The University of Washington is committed to providing access, equal opportunity and reasonable accommodation in its services, programs, activities, education and employment for individuals with disabilities. To request disability accommodation contact the Disability Services Office at least ten days in advance at: 206.543.6450/V,206.543.6452/TTY, 206.685.7264 (FAX), or e-mail at:dso@u.washington.edu

The conference is co-sponsored by the Graduate School and College of Arts & Sciences; the Law, Societies, and Justice Program; the Law School; the Treuman Katz Center forPediatric Bioethics; the Center for Global Studies; the Department of Bioethics & Humanities; the Department of Philosophy; the Department of Political Science; and the Program on the Environment.

More information is available on the conference website

Contact: Prof. Bill Talbott, Department of Philosophy, University of Washington, 511 Condon Hall 1100 NE Campus Parkway, Seattle, WA 98195, USA. Phone: +1 206 543-5095. Fax: +1 206 685-8740. Email: wtalbott@u.washington.edu

Greenpeace Airplot

Greenpeace activists have purchased a plot of land within the area proposed for the third runway at Heathrow - they are planning to resist the expansion as much as possible, and are going to use their ownership of the land as an obstacle to the development.

Further details can be found here.

Join the plot and help stop airport expansion.