CFP: Ethics, Policy, and Environment: Human Engineering and Climate Change

This is the official solicitation for open peer commentaries for the Summer issue of Ethics, Policy, and Environment (http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/cepe).

For this next issue, 15.2, we have selected a Target Article by Matthew Liao (NYU), Anders Sandberg (Oxford), and Rebecca Roache (Oxford) titled “Human Engineering and Climate Change.” The abstract follows:

Abstract: Anthropogenic climate change is arguably one of the biggest problems that confront us today. There is ample evidence that climate change is likely to affect adversely many aspects of life for all people around the world, and that existing solutions such as geoengineering might be too risky and behavioural and market solutions might not be sufficient to mitigate climate change. In this paper, we consider a new kind of solution to climate change, what we call human engineering, which involves biomedical modifications of humans so that they can mitigate and/or adapt to climate change. We argue that human engineering is potentially less risky than geoengineering and that could help behavioural and market solutions succeed in mitigating climate change. We also consider some possible ethical concerns regarding human engineering such as its safety, the implications of human engineering for our children and for the society, and we argue that these concerns can be addressed.  Our upshot is that human engineering deserves further consideration in the debate about climate change.

We are now soliciting approximately 4-6 open commentaries in response to this article.  Potential commentators will be invited to write short 750-1500 word responses which will be published simultaneously with the lead target article.

If you would like to be considered as a peer commentator for this article or for some future article, please contact our editorial assistant, Elizabeth Hall: [email protected] to have your name added to our list.   Please explain in the e-mail that you would like to be considered as a peer commentator, and specify if this particular article is one that may interest you, in which case, Elizabeth will send an advance version of the article back to you.

For this article, we would like to have you submit a short summary of your proposed Open Peer Commentary (no more than 150 words) by 5:00 pm, MST, Monday, February 20.  If your peer commentary is selected, you will then have until Monday, March 12 to submit your full commentary.

Moreover, please also consider submitting a suitable article to EPE as a potential target or feature article.

If you are not familiar with the unique format of our open peer commentaries, feel free to read more about us here: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/cepe.  Volumes 14(3) and 15 (1) included commentaries on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster by Kristin Shrader-Frechette, Ibo van der Pol, Kenneth Shockley, Thom Brooks, Paul Kelleher, Deborah Oughton, and Benham Taebi, among many others. 14(3) is now available online, and 15(1) will be available in March.