Duke Climate Ethics and Economics Workshop Report
Date 3/2 – 3/4 2016
Venue: Fuqua School of Business.
Project website: http://sites.duke.edu/ceew/
Overview: The three-day workshop was highly successful, with positive feedback received
from many participants and no negative feedback. The workshop gathered fifteen invited
speakers (see appendix) and around 20 other unique visitors over the three days. Individual
sessions attracted between 2-10 extra attendees.
The project had two main objectives.
Objective 1: Raise the quality of economic and ethical analyses of climate change.
Objective 2: Develop low carbon innovation in international academic collaboration.
Progress on Objective 1: Workshop sessions covered many of the important topics and
methods that sit at the intersection of climate ethics and economics. Topics included
discounting, uncertainty and catastrophic outcomes, intergenerational bargaining, the value of
nature, the scope of the social welfare function, intra-generational burden sharing and the ethics
of climate modelling. Presenters came from different backgrounds, with a roughly 50/50 split
between (theoretical) economists and philosophers, which allowed for rich dialogue and
learning between the two disciplines. Thus, as well as papers relying on philosophical
reasoning and critical thinking, we saw presentations making use of formal overlapping
generations models, integrated assessment models, and social choice models. Each presentation
received substantive feedback and discussion, which will improve the likelihood of eventual
publication. Finally there were many informal discussions over lunch, dinner and breaks, and a
panel discussion that crossed the policy/theory divide on the future of climate modelling.
Progress on Objective 2: We used a skype connection to join the Duke and Goethe
University venues each day, at 1015 EST, for a plenary talk. This proved to be very
successful – the sessions were well attended and gathered engaged attention and
questions from the remote site that was not presenting. The quality of the audio and
video connection was surprisingly good, and we suffered only the most minor technical
challenges. Informal discussions after the talk over the skype connection were popular,
given that some participants already knew each other. The feedback from the
participants was strictly positive, and the template will likely be repeated.
Lessons learned on Objective 2
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Scheduling with the German academic year is not easy – their long break is in the
US spring semester
Arranging the video camera so the speaker can look at the screen and camera at
the same time when asking/answering questions is best practice.
Having equal visibility/high profile guests/ for the workshop in each location
would reduce the chance of having people travel to the remote site (several
Europeans chose to come to the US to meet one of our invited speakers).
Use of Green Grant funds: The Green Grant funds went to catering lunches in as
sustainable manner as possible. We were constricted in our choice of caterer by our
venue – events at Fuqua can only be supplied by Fuqua’s Bon Apetit catering. However,
Bon Apetit has sustainability policies, with an emphasis on regional and seasonal food.
We used their option to provide a water cooler for refilling vessels, rather than bottled
water. We asked Bon Apetit to provide to-go boxes so any leftover food would not be
wasted.
Thurs night conference dinner
Appendix I: Timetable
Duke Climate Ethics and Economics Workshop
Wed 2nd March
Venue: Davis Meeting Room, Fuqua School of Business.
5:00pm: Welcome/Refreshments
5:30pm: Niko Jaakkola (CESifo Group) (Co-authors, Francis Dennig, David von Below) – The
climate-pension deal: an inter-generational bargain. Chair: David Frank
6:30pm: Reception
Thurs 3rd March
Venue: Esbenshade Room, Fuqua School of Business
9:00 am: Ewan Kingston (Duke) – How should we assess the fairness of countries’ NDCs? Chair:
Avram Hiller
9:50am: Break
10:15am: Geoff Brennan (ANU/UNC/Duke) – On Broome’s ‘Climate Matters”. Shared session
with the concurrent workshop at Goethe University Frankfurt. Chair: Ewan Kingston
11:45am: Informal discussion with Frankfurt Workshop/ Break (Lunch provided)
1:30pm: Matthew Adler (Duke) – Prioritarianism and climate change. Chair: Doug Maclean
(UNC)
2:30pm: Paul Kelleher (University of Wisconsin)- Discounting and the scope of the social
welfare function Chair: Anders Herlitz
3:20pm: Break
4:00pm: Avram Hiller (Portland State)– Towards an intrinsic valuation of the effects of climate
change on the non-human world. Chair: Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (Duke)
5:00-5:50pm: Geoffrey Heal (Columbia) - Discounting as a Social Choice Problem. Chair: Matt
Adler
Friday 4th March
Venue: Esbenshade Room, Fuqua School of Business
9:00 am: David Frank (UNC)- Ethics of the scientist qua policy advisor: Catastrophe and
inductive risk in climate economics. Chair: Marisa Beck
9:50 am: Break
10:15am: Video Link with Frankfurt - John O’Neill (Lancaster) Climate Disadvantage and Just
Adaptation. Duke moderator for Q+A: Ewan Kingston
11:45am: Informal interaction with Frankfurt Workshop/Break
12:15 Panel Discussion, with Brian Murray (Chair), Billy Pizer, Martin Ross (Duke) Marisa Beck
(Waterloo), Mark Budolfson (Princeton) “Equity and models in climate policy: looking ahead”
Lunch provided
2pm: Presentation by Anders Herlitz (Rutgers) and David Horan (University College Dublin) –
Evaluating partial satisfaction of multiple capped objectives under scarcity. Chair: Paul Kelleher
3pm:Workshop ends.