"Assailing the Anthropocene" (2021)

10th Annual BGSU Workshop in Applied Ethics and Public Policy

"Assailing the Anthropocene: The Ethics of Disruptive Innovations for Surviving our Climate-Changed World"

About the Workshop: The workshop will examine ethical and sociopolitical concerns raised by “disruptive innovations” being developed to respond to impacts of the unprecedented environmental changes that mark the onset of the Anthropocene. “Disruptive innovations” are broadly conceived to include novel initiatives for sustainable adaptation and social change, civil and ecological engineering strategies, applications of technologies for environmental protection and damage mitigation, geoengineering strategies, and bioengineering strategies (e.g. gene editing). The workshop will bring together scholars working on projects on the ethical and more broadly normative aspects of such innovations. The workshop will produce an edited volume containing essays that can inform debates, and policy and legal decision-making, about urgent issues like mitigating climate change damages, climate refugee justice, global urbanization, biodiversity banking, sustainable city design, and sociopolitical adaptation.

AGENDA

Friday, November 6

10-10:10 a.m. – Opening Remarks

10:10-10:45 a.m. – Trevor Hedberg (Ohio State University): "Restoring Biodiversity as Compensation for Climate Change"

10:50-11:25 a.m. – Keje Boersma (Wageningen University): "Gene Drives, Anthropocene Technology and the Paradox of Human Intervention"

11:25-11:40 a.m. – Gillian Barker (University of Pittsburgh): "Healing or Hacking the Earth: Normative lessons for the Metaphors of Climate Intervention"

12:20-1:20 p.m. – Lunch Break

1:30-3:30 p.m. – KEYNOTE ADDRESS: SHEILA JASANOFF (Harvard University): "Humility in the Anthropocene"

3:30-3:44 p.m. – Break

3:45-4:30 p.m. – Zachary Piso  and Felix Fernando (both of University of Dayton): "Value-laden Technologies of Stakeholder Engagement for Transdisciplinary Social-ecological Systems Science"

Saturday, November 21, 2020

 10:10-10:45 a.m. – Kinley Gillette (University of British Columbia): "The (Wrong) Turn to Metaexpertise"

10:50-11:25 a.m. – Christine Susienka (Sacred Heart University): "Trust and Disruption: Securing Human Rights in a Climate-Changed World"

11:30 a.m.-12:05 p.m. – David Frank (Brown University): "Ethics of Ecosocialism for the Capitalocence"

12:05-12:55 p.m. – Break

1:00-3:00 p.m. – Keynote Address: Andrew Light (World Resources Institute/George Mason University): "A Pragmatic Framework for Climate Loss and Damage"

3:00-3:45 p.m. – Anne Barnhill (Johns Hopkins University) and Jan Dutkiewicz (Concordia University): "Peak Anthropocene: Cellular Agriculture and the Politics of Disruptive Harm Reduction"

3:45-4:30 p.m. – Jamie Shaw (University of Toronto): "Which Disruptive Innovations Should We Fund?"

For questions about the workshop, please contact Justin Donhauser, jdonhaus@bgsu.edu