Speaker: Professor Clare Heyward (UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway)
Opening remarks: Katarína Podušelová (Institute of Philosophy SAS, v. v. i.)

Bio: Professor Clare Heyward is a researcher at UiT, University of the Arctic, Tromsø. She trained in analytic political philosophy and was among the first scholars to write a PhD on climate justice. She has spent the last twenty years working on climate justice, with a particular focus on cultural dimensions of climate justice, intergenerational justice, natural resource justice, and moral issues related to the development of technologies to address aspects of the climate change problem. She is the author of numerous scientific articles and the co-editor (with Dominic Roser) of the book Climate Justice in a Non-Ideal World (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Abstract: There is an observable “ambivalence” about the idea of using “geoengineering” technologies as a response to anthropogenic climate change. Calls for research into geoengineering technologies are often accompanied by expressions of regret or unease that such a course of action is recommended. This is puzzling if we assume that advocates of research must hold that the eventual use of the technology can be permissible. Drawing upon work by Stephen Gardiner (2011) and Toby Svobada (2016), I argue that this ambivalence can be accounted for in terms of Thomas Scanlon’s distinction between moral permissibility and moral significance. Doing so has the advantages of showing exactly why “agent regret” is appropriate as Svobada and Gardiner indicate, and makes their accounts, applicable to a wider range of situations and geoengineering technologies than both Svobada and Gardiner discuss. It might also help explain why some kinds of geoengineering technologies are taken to be more controversial than others.