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 Guest Presentations & Breakout Sessions
Environmental (In)Justice: Sources, Symptoms, and Solutions
11-24 April 2008
E-CONFERENCE GUEST PRESENTATION / BREAKOUT SESSION
INJUSTICE & SPECIES EXTINCTION |
| Injustice & Species Extinction
Species extinction for the coming century is placed at between 30 and 70% of all
life-forms currently on Earth. The main causes are global warming and other kinds
of human-induced habitat change. |
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AUTHOR / DISCUSSION LEADERS
Jeremy Bendik-Keymer, American University of Sharjah / Le Moyne College
JKeymer [at] aus.edu
http://www.aus.edu/cas/is/biosketches.php
Allen Thompson, Clemson University
athomp6 [at] clemson.edu
http://people.clemson.edu/~athomp6/web/home.html
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SUMMARY
Can we speak of injustice when species extinction is caused by human activities, and if so, under what conditions, and in what way?
We propose addressing this question through six streams of questioning. Each stream focuses on - and could eliminate - ways to think about justice and species extinction.
- Injustice to non-humans. Can there be injustice to non-humans? If so, under what conditions? Is the injustice to individuals? How, if at all, would species extinction as a result of injustice to individuals be understood?
- The role of species thought in justice. How does thought about species figure in thought about injustice to individuals? Can thought about our humanity and its relation to justice serve as an analogy?
- Injustice to a species. Can there be injustice to a species? Does the analogy to a crime against humanity hold? Is a crime against humanity against a quality - humanness - or against a species?
- Injustice regarding a species. Can there be an injustice regarding, but not to, species? How? If the injustice is to humans, regarding other species, in what form do species figure in thought about what humans are due? In what ways are species good for us, and again, can we speak of the species being good for us, or only individual members of the species?
- Injustice to future generations, regarding a species. Must we solve the question of justice to future generations to answer many questions of injustice regarding species extinction? What special problems does intergenerational justice pose?
- Not injustice, but a wrong. If we cannot do an injustice against a species, perhaps species extinction is only a weak area of environmental justice - though it remains a strong area of environmental morality. How should mass species extinction caused by human activities be understood morally? As a wrong? What kind?
We plan to move through these streams in roughly the order they are presented, yet are open to moving back and forth through them as need be. It will help if participants index which stream they are in during a given comment. Maybe we shall find other streams we haven’t, too.
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MATERIALS / RESOURCE LINKS
- Easy to read species extinction and climate change report http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17861866/
- The World Conservation Union 2007 Red List of endangered species
http://www.iucnredlist.org/
- "The current mass extinction", with many references
http://www.massextinction.net
- IPCC 2007 report on climate change
http://www.ipcc.ch/
- Crimes against humanity (Wiki)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimes_against_humanity
- Crimes against humanity documents (University of Minnesota Human Rights library)
http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/auox.htm
- The virtue of justice (SEP)
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice-virtue/
- Intergenerational justice (Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice-intergenerational/
- International justice (SEP)
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/international-justice/
- The Earth Charter
http://www.earthcharterinaction.org/2000/10/the_earth_charter.html
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