On March 3/4th we were lucky enough to attend the ‘Climate Ethics and Economics Workshop’ at Goethe University, Frankfurt. It was an international as well as interdisciplinary event, with a link via Skype to a parallel conference at Duke University. The key note on the first day, broadcast from the US without a single technical glitch, was Geoffrey Brennan. It was Frankfurt’s turn to transmit across the channel on day two, and John O’Neill brought our side of the workshop to a close and raised the curtain on the second day for those the other side of the Atlantic. It would be impossible to sum up all we learnt at the conference, but below are a few key themes that we thought particularly interesting.
One topic that always makes for interesting conversation between philosophers and economists is that of discounting. The debate, stated generally, is about how we ought to weigh the interests of the present against the future. The jumping off point is most often the Ramsey equation, which is an attempt to organise the relevant considerations into a single formula. Two aspects of the discounting debate received the most attention. Kian Mintz Woo’s paper focused on the divisive question of which sort of arguments, from who, we should bring to bear on the different areas of the formula. Certain parameters, Kian argued, might not lend themselves philosophical argumentation and might instead call for a degree of expert elicitation. How we conceive of expertise in this area was, naturally, a bone of contention, and the disagreement made for an intriguing Q&A. In a similar vein, Matthew Randall sought to sharpen our focus on one aspect of the Ramsey equation, this time that of the projected growth rate. Matthew’s concern was that the equation, at least as currently formulated, is not adequately sensitive to low probability catastrophes. His paper was an effort to remedy this oversight. Both presentations on discounting, while very different, reaffirmed how difficult it is to select the specific numerical values for the equation.
![By Kiefer. from Frankfurt, Germany (Goethe Universität Frankfurt, Goethe Installation) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://blogs.reading.ac.uk/leverhulme-trust-climate-justice/files/2016/03/Goethe_Universität_Frankfurt_Goethe_Installation_14388477444-300x225.jpg)
By Kiefer. from Frankfurt, Germany (Goethe Universität Frankfurt, Goethe Installation) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
A final aspect of the conference we thought worth flagging up – again of an encouragingly interdisciplinary nature – was the frequency with which economic models were used in the aid of philosophical argumentation. As a case in point, Darrel Moellendorf’s stimulating paper deployed a predictive model as a way to explore the potential implications of his favoured principle of intergenerational equity against Nordhaus’ utility function. By projecting the comparative costs of mitigation from this point forward, Darrel wanted to gain an understanding of where the principles would likely diverge in practice, rather than just in theory. The results were interesting. While Darrel was sold on the theoretical merits of the principle of equity over its utilitarian counterpart, in practice the latter appeared to better spread the costs toward those more able to pay. On the face of it, such a conclusion does not sit well with the egalitarian intuitions that underpin the principle of intergenerational equity. A number of courses of action might follow from this insight and we await Darrel’s completed paper to find out his own full response. A general take home point, though, was that models can provide a valuable aid in helping philosophers understand the implications of their principles over time – especially through facilitating comparisons with alternatives.
Aside from the academic content, the conference was a lot of fun. We are grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for providing us with the opportunity to go and to Normative Orders for their generosity in hosting the event.
By Alex McLaughlin and Joshua Wells, Leverhulme Doctoral Scholars