Category Archives: justice

“Creating Carnists” published

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My second co-authored paper with Jeremy Fischer, “Creating Carnists,” has finally, officially been published by Philosophers’ Imprint!

We’re so glad to be able to share our work in another open access venue, so that anyone and everyone can read it free of charge.

In the paper, we argue that there are child-centered reasons (relating to kids’ moral development, autonomy development, and physical health) for all caregivers (individual and institutional) to provide kids with maximally plant-based diets and related education – even if there is no general moral duty for adults to be vegan (although we think there is such a duty).

Since it has been two years (!) since the paper was initially accepted, there are a few things in it that we would say/do differently now. But in the intervening time, we’ve continued developing our arguments in various related works, so stay tuned to learn about how our ideas change (and don’t) over time!

Addressing Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Chicago Campus Buildings: A Report

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With about 70% of climate-destabilizing greenhouse gas emissions in Chicago coming from buildings, it is important to know which ones are among the highest emitters, so that we can make the changes necessary to meet the goals in Chicago’s Climate Action Plan. 

As I learned while working with my team at the Climate Reality Project’s Chicago Metro Chapter, university buildings are among Chicago’s top emitters of climate-warming gasses per square foot. Seven university buildings ranked among the top ten most emissions intensive buildings in the city in 2021!

We recently released a report, Addressing Greenhouse Gas Emissions on Chicago Campuses, which relies on data from electrifychicago.net. That website allows users to get specific, publicly available energy usage and emissions information for individual large buildings that owners are required to report to the city under the Chicago Energy Benchmarking Ordinance. The website also helps users rank and group buildings to allow for better understanding of the data.

Using that excellent resource as a starting place, we identified a number of college and university campus buildings that are making outsize contributions to the climate crisis, as well as multiple institutions of higher education that have failed to comply with the benchmarking ordinance in recent years. We also uncovered a systemic failure on the city’s part to enforce the ordinance – foregoing as much as $30 million in potential fines.

We issued the report to spur universities to decarbonize their buildings by improving energy efficiency and by moving away from fossil fuels like methane gas. The report also highlights actions at the state and city level to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provides strategies for students and others concerned about climate change to work toward emission reductions.

The Climate Reality Project’s Chicago Metro Chapter is an all-volunteer group of Chicago area activists working to catalyze local solutions to the climate crisis since 2017.

To improve our electric grid, transportation system, and buildings, I support the ICJC platform.

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This week, the Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition announced a comprehensive legislative platform to boldly and rapidly accelerate the state’s climate, equity, and clean energy goals.

The platform is a set of bills (the Clean and Reliable Grid Act, the Clean and Equitable Transportation Act, and the Clean and Healthy Buildings Act) that will lower greenhouse gas emissions, create green jobs, and improve health and safety in our communities. Together, these bills would be transformative in helping us work toward climate stability, financial security, fairness across communities, and health statewide.

If you live in Illinois, I invite you to join me in supporting the ICJC platform.

Ror folks who don’t live here, with your help, the ICJC’s work can serve as a model for related efforts elsewhere!

Upcoming Food, Family, and Justice Conference

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I’m excited to be presenting “Unjust Social Structures and Plant-Based Caregiving for Kids” with my co-author, Jeremy Fisher, at the upcoming “Food, Family, and Justice” conference June 21-23, 2024.

Even more exciting for me, though, are the amazing presenters from around the world who are slated to share about a whole bunch of fascinating, important, related topics! I’ve got my eye on multiple sessions by folks whose work I’ve read and enjoyed, but who I’ve never had the good fortune to meet before.

This conference will be a hybrid of remote and in-person presentations at John Cabot University in Rome, Italy. My heartfelt gratitude to the organizers and sponsor (the Society for Applied Philosophy) for pursuing the hybrid format, which makes participation possible for those of us who are minimizing travel for environmental, health, family, financial, or other reasons!

Book recommendation: Solidarity, by Leah Hunt-Hendrix & Astra Taylor

book recommendations, justice,

I can’t tell you how many times, over how many years, I’ve said, “Why don’t people write/talk/study about solidarity more? I want to read a book about solidarity! When is someone going to write a good, detailed book focused on solidarity?”

Well, the universe (or more specifically, Astra Taylor & Leah Hunt-Hendrix) listened and granted my wish!

Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea is a great place to look for a more-than-introduction to the important concept of solidarity. Whether you are an activist, a historian, a philosopher, or just an engaged member of a community (large or small), this book almost assuredly has something that you didn’t already know about and that is worth thinking about some more. I know that I’m going to be returning to it again and again!

Chicago: Clean and Affordable Buildings Ordinance (CABO)

Chicago, climate, justice, ,

In Chicago, about 70% of greenhouse gas emissions come from our buildings. Part of that is because here, it is common to get heat our homes and cook our food with gas appliances (unlike in some other parts of the country where I’ve lived).

To make matters worse, because of repeated, record-breaking rate hikes, 1 in 5 of Chicagoans are behind on gas bills. And in some neighborhoods, up to 50% of households are in chronic debt due to high gas bills. But if folks switched from using gas to electricity, they could save $15,000 to $20,000 over 20 years, according to a study by NRDC.

Burning gas inside your home or business is not only expensive, but it is also detrimental to your health. For just one example of the harms it can do, 1 in 5 cases of childhood asthma in Illinois is attributable to cooking with gas.

The good news is that a Clean & Affordable Buildings Ordinance (CABO) is being considered by City Council. This ordinance would insure that (with a few exceptions) new buildings and substantial renovations to existing buildings would have to meet a strict indoor emissions standard.

CABO is just a first step away from reliance on fossil fuels, and it is supported by a coalition of more than 50 consumer, community, environmental, environmental justice, and faith organizations as a way to lower utility costs, improve public health, create jobs and reduce pollution.

For more information, and form for contacting your alderperson in support of CABO, check out the Citizens Utility Board Q&A.

Directory of Feminist Philosophy Archives

justice, philosophy,

Back when I was working for Hypatia as a graduate student, I helped set up a digital archive for the journal’s own internal use. It was a huge project (one that has continued and morphed since my time with the journal), but it was also one that I really enjoyed working on, in no small part because of the crucial role that archives play in helping transmit knowledge about our past, our present, and our future possibilities. Such knowledge is especially valuable for historically marginalized communities.

So it was with great pleasure that I learned about a new directory that makes various feminist philosophy archives more accessible to all sorts of scholars and members of the general pubic.

I encourage you to check it out!

Upcoming Talk: “Justice in the Cafeteria”

food, justice, philosophy, travel,

On September 14th, I’ll be giving a talk with my co-author, Jeremy Fischer, at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario called “Justice in the Cafeteria.” Here’s the abstract:

School meal reform efforts generally center around health, financial accessibility, and environmental sustainability, all of which are important. However, key ethical and political aspects of school meal programs have not received adequate attention in public discussion. We argue that whether school meal programs provide animal-based foods is a matter of justice for kids and for the society in which they live. Our child-centered arguments against providing such foods offer animal advocates and others who have a stake in the school meal debates a motivationally potent resource for their advocacy—without presupposing any particular view about our duties to animals.

Since COVID isn’t over, I’m doing what I can to minimize the risks of the trip for everyone concerned, but at the same time, I’m looking forward to a bit of a philosophy road trip, spending some time in Canada, and the chance to meet some friends from the APPLE reading group in person!

a color image of mountains in the American West superimposed with a gold foil dollar sign

Book recommendation: Billionaire Wilderness, by Justin Farrell

book recommendations, climate, justice, ,

Yale sociologist Justin Farrell’s new book, Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West, is an amazing piece of scholarship that provides detailed insight into how wealth concentration is shaping the human (and more-than-human) communities in Teton County, Wyoming, which is both the richest county in the United States and the county with the highest wealth inequality (on various measures).

Farrell’s research, both qualitative and quantitative, is meticulous and presented in clear and accessible prose. The excerpted interviews provide candid (and sometimes stomach-churning) insight into the hearts and minds of both the ultra-wealthy and the working poor whose labor makes their lifestyles possible in Teton County and thereabouts. For various reasons that Farrell thoughtfully articulates, rural communities are under-researched, and accessing the ultra-wealthy for research purposes is challenging. But we can no longer afford to neglect such research and this book provides a model for much work that is yet to be done.

I strongly recommend this valuable book to anyone who is working on or simply interested in issues relating to climate change, conservation, wealth inequality, and/or social justice more broadly.

Video of My Recent Lecture

justice, philosophy

If you want to check out the lecture that I gave to the Conceptual Engineering Network back in May, that video is now posted on YouTube!

The talk is called “Conceptual Engineering as Taking Responsibility for Concepts.” It builds on a pair of papers I published in the European Journal of Philosophy a few years back, in which I argued that we can be (backwards-looking) morally responsible for the concepts that we possess and use. In this lecture (a work in progress!), I argue that sometimes, doing conceptual engineering projects involves taking forwards-looking moral responsibility for concepts.

The key example that I talk about in the latter portion of the talk is the concept EMPLOYMENT, and the possible replacement concept HUMAN RENTALS. There, I draw on some fascinating work about workplace democracy by David Ellerman – you can download the whole book here!