Lund Philosophical Society invites everyone to attend their 5th and final public philosophy lecture of the year, Caroline Touborg's talk "Hard Choices - an ethical framework for thinking about climate change" on the 11th of December at 18:15 in LUX: B237.

Dear friends and members of the Lund Philosophical Society,

We are pleased to announce our 5th and final speaker of 2024: Caroline Touborg. She will give a talk titled "Hard Choices - an ethical framework for thinking about climate change" on the 11^th of December at 18:15 in LUX: B237.

As always, the talk will be followed by an informal reception in the Department of Philosophy's staff room. The reception is only for members of Lund Philosophical Society, but anyone can become a member by paying 40sek for one year's membership after the talk.

Hope to see you there!

Abstract: "Hard Choices - an ethical framework for thinking about climate change" 

What should we do about climate change? What should we try to save, and what should we be willing to sacrifice along the way? One standard way to think about such questions focuses on maximizing human wellbeing across generations. In this talk, I suggest an alternative: an approach that focuses on avoiding what we might call ‘unacceptable outcomes.’ The approach that focuses on maximizing human wellbeing always has a simple answer about what to do: ‘do what maximizes wellbeing!’ Sometimes, an approach that focuses on avoiding unacceptable outcomes has an equally simple answer: ‘do what avoids unacceptable outcomes!’ But sometimes, there sadly is no course of action that allows us to avoid all unacceptable outcomes. Climate change presents us with such a case. Here, we face hard choices: which unacceptable outcomes should we choose to accept after all? And how should we make such choices?