Research Seminars Application: Climate Ethics and Climate Economics

该系列的主要目标是让经济学家和法律学者与哲学家和政治理论家讨论他们论点的伦理基础。关于气候变化的经济论点往往包含道德假设，比如未来的成本和收益应该比现在的成本和收益更少——哲学家们认为这是有问题的。然而，尽管当代气候哲学家对气候经济学文献投入了广泛的关注，但经济学家总体上并没有给予回报。在极少数情况下，经济学家确实试图明确地利用道德理论——比如肯尼斯·阿罗援引塞缪尔·舍弗勒的“以主体为中心的特权”来为减少对未来的重视辩护（1999:16）——哲学家们有时会怀疑经济学家是否真正掌握了这些论点（Caney 2008: 550）。反过来，一些主流经济学家似乎怀疑哲学家是否有必要介入辩论。这不仅反映了学科之间的分歧，也反映了一些英国经济学家与美国主流经济学家之间的分歧。英国经济学明确地借鉴了功利主义哲学传统。相比之下，美国经济学家倾向于认为，成本和收益的分析不应该试图做出道德判断，而是遵循通过市场揭示的偏好（诺德豪斯2008:176；布鲁姆2012:105-6；贾米森2013:121）。因此，耶鲁大学的威廉·诺德豪斯（William Nordhaus）指责英国政府赞助的一份重要报告——《斯特恩气候变化经济学评论》（Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change）——反映了一种“政府的功利主义”，这种功利主义“占据了世界社会计划者的崇高优势，可能助长了大英帝国的余烬”（2008:174），而哈佛大学的马丁·韦茨曼（Martin Weitzman）则认为它采取了“明显的少数家长主义观点....”主要依靠先验的哲学家-国王伦理判断”（2007:707,712）。杰出的美国法律学者也在美国关于气候伦理和政策的辩论中发挥了重要作用，如理查德·波斯纳的《灾难：风险与应对》（2004年）、卡斯·桑斯坦的《最坏情况》（2007年）以及埃里克·a·波斯纳和大卫·维斯巴赫的《气候变化正义》（2010年）。尽管这些作家比美国经济学家更明确地谈到了伦理问题，但他们中的许多人都深受后者观点的影响。与美国经济学家一起，该研讨会旨在吸引他们与英国和欧洲学者进行对话。关于气候变化的跨学科对话很重要，因为经济学、政治理论和哲学都有各自的优势，但也有盲点，这导致了它们向决策者提供的建议截然不同。该系列讨论会还将直接努力鼓励非学院派经济学家、决策者和新闻记者的参与，资助他们出席讨论会。该系列将在两年内包括六个研讨会：气候变化与贴现未来，诺丁汉大学，2016年1月。“向未来借贷”——资助减排的新方式？诺丁汉大学，2016.3年4月肥尾：强加和重新分配风险，伦敦经济学院，2016.7。经济增长和气候正义。曼彻斯特大学政治经济研究所和廷德尔中心，2017.5年1月。风险、不确定性和灾难情景。布里斯托尔大学卡伯特研究所，2017.4.6。贴现未来：我们学到了什么？诺丁汉大学，2017年7月。每个研讨会将有六名演讲者，其中包括两名主讲人，他们将在研讨会之前或之后发表公开演讲。我们将提前三周分发论文，在简短的陈述之后，大部分时间将用于讨论。

The chief goal of the series is to get economists and legal scholars talking with philosophers and political theorists about the ethical foundations of their arguments. Economic arguments about climate change often embody ethical assumptions, such as the claim that future costs and benefits should be given less weight than present-day ones--which philosophers find problematic. Yet while contemporary climate philosophers have devoted extensive attention to the climate economics literature, economists have by and large not returned the favour. In the rare instances where economists do seek to draw explicitly on moral theory-such as Kenneth Arrow's invocation of Samuel Scheffler's 'agent-centred prerogatives' to defend giving less weight to the future (1999: 16)--philosophers sometimes wonder whether the economists have really grasped the arguments (Caney 2008: 550). Some mainstream economists, in turn, seem to doubt that philosophers have any business intervening in the debate. This reflects not only a divide between disciplines, but a disagreement between some British economists and mainstream economists in the United States. British economics explicitly draws on the utilitarian philosophical tradition. In contrast, US economists tend to hold that analyses of costs and benefits should not try to make ethical judgements, but follow preferences revealed through markets (Nordhaus 2008: 176; Broome 2012: 105-6; Jamieson 2013: 121). Thus Yale's William Nordhaus accused a major report sponsored by the British government--the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change--of reflecting a 'Government House utilitarianism' that 'takes the lofty vantage point of the world social planner, perhaps stoking the dying embers of the British Empire' (2008: 174), and Harvard's Martin Weitzman that it took a 'decidedly minority paternalist view.... relying mostly on a priori philosopher-king ethical judgements' (2007: 707, 712). Prominent US legal scholars have also played a major role in US debates about climate ethics and policy in such works as Richard Posner's Catastrophe: Risk and Response (2004), Cass Sunstein's Worst-Case Scenarios (2007) and Eric A. Posner's and David Weisbach's Climate Change Justice (2010). While addressing ethical considerations more explicitly than US economists, many of these writers are strongly influenced by the latter's views. Along with US economists, this workshop aims to draw them into a dialogue with British and European scholars.Interdisciplinary dialogue on climate change matters, because economics, political theory and philosophy all have strengths but also blind spots, and these have contributed to the strikingly different recommendations they have given policy makers. The seminar series will also make a direct effort to encourage the participation of non-academic economists, policy makers and journalists by funding their attendance at the seminars. The series will consist in six seminars over two years:1. Climate change and discounting the future, University of Nottingham, January 2016.2. 'Borrowing from the future'-a novel way to fund mitigation? University of Nottingham, April 2016.3. Fat tails: imposing and redistributing risk, London School of Economics, July 2016.4. Economic growth and climate justice. Political Economy Institute and Tyndall Centre, University of Manchester, January 2017.5. Risk, uncertainty, and catastrophe scenarios. Cabot Institute, University of Bristol, April 2017.6. Discounting the future: what have we learned? University of Nottingham, July 2017.Each workshop will involve six presenters, including two keynote speakers who will deliver public lectures before or after the seminar. We will circulate papers three weeks in advance, and after short presentations most time will be spent on discussion.