PhilSoc is hosting an event for this year’s Green Festival! Sustain.ED is Edinburgh’s first citywide green festival brought to you by the Students’ Association Sabbatical Officer team. Bring along your thinking caps for a talk by Dr Mike Hannis, and consider the freedoms and limitations of environmental policy.
Time: 6:45pm
We recommend you arrive five to ten minutes early. This lecture is free and open to all.
Location: Teviot Row House, Study
TITLE: Is Environmentalism a Threat to Freedom?
Dr Mike Hannis of Bath Spa University
ABSTRACT: An adviser to the current US president has declared that “the environmental movement is the greatest threat to freedom and prosperity in the modern world”. This talk begins by examining how this striking claim may be understood, before moving on to consider how the thinking behind it might be countered. Drawing on material from my recent book “Freedom and Environment”, I explore how competing conceptions of freedom deal with the awkward fact that human civilisations exist within physical limits. I conclude (with Robyn Eckersley) that sustainability should be seen as a condition for autonomy, not a constraint upon it. Along the way I discuss liberalisms, capabilities, rights, and virtues. I also argue that there can be no sustainability without egalitarianism.
https://www.eusa.ed.ac.uk/
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For more details about our event, visit: https://www.facebook.com/events/1867060096903502/
If you have any questions about the festival please contact vps@eusa.ed.ac.uk.