Principal speaker
Donald A. Brown
This presentation will reflect on the practical significance for law and policy on a few of the inescapable ethical and justice issues raised by climate change. The presentation will argue that it is impossible to think clearly about what a nation should do in formulating climate policies until the nation responds to important ethical and justice issues that every national climate change commitment must implicitly take a position on. Yet, thus far there has been an almost universal failure of nations to explicitly identify how ethics and justice considerations have affected their policy choices. In this regard, the presentation will review what we actually know about how nations have considered or ignored ethical and justice principles in formulating climate policies by summarizing recent research on this question that is being conducted in 30 countries. In light of this, the presentation will explain why it is critically important to demand explicit reflection at the national level on how specific climate policies have considered or ignored ethical and justice issues that climate change policy making raises. The presentation will conclude with recommendations about how to get greater traction for ethical and justice considerations in national climate change policy formation.
Donald A. Brown is Scholar In Residence and Professor, Sustainability Ethics and Law, Widener University School of Law, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA.