Of Ecocide and Human Rights: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change

As part of the Essex Explores lecture series, Professor Jay Bernstein from the New School for Social Research in New York will discuss 'Of Ecocide and Human Rights: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change'.

What the coronavirus makes evident is that what once might have seemed the remote future of recurring natural disasters is already here. What is nonetheless missing from the climate change argument is the outline of the political morality that would provide the normative foundations for a successor form of life to that of liberal capitalism. But to say this is equally to urge that liberal capitalism is, and is patently, a failed form of life that urgently requires replacing. In order to create a future for humanity, in order to create sustainable forms of life, we must reinvent the entirety of our moral vocabulary.

To open this discussion, Professor Bernstein will argue that only a Convention Against Ecocide, on the model of Crimes Against Humanity, and a socialist, international law reconstruction of human rights is adequate to the task.

Please register in advance for this lecture.

Find out more about the Essex Explores series.

Photo: Patrick Hendry on Unsplash