Cultures Of Energy

Cymene and Dominic honor the new river citizens of Aotearoa-New Zealand and India and try to give certain politicians credit where credit is due. Then (13:53) we welcome to the pod University of Washington philosopher Stephen Gardiner to talk about his philosophical work on climate change. We discuss his background in virtue ethics and how one might conceive living an ethical life given the fundamental moral challenges of climate change. Then we turn to his book A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change (Oxford University Press, 2011) wherein Stephen talks back against arguments that it is technologically or economically infeasible at present to seriously address the causes of climate change. We discuss temptations to act badly both at a global and a personal level, the ethical and institutional dimensions of intergenerational and interspecies relations, the tyranny of the contemporary, and why he doesn’t think concepts like “wicked problem,” “prisoners’ dilemma” and “tragedy of the commons