Blake Francis | Why World Making Is Not Enough: The Need for Climate Change Reconciliation

On the Constructive View (CV), defended by Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, reparative justice is a historically informed distributive justice project that aims to make a just world through a massive transition from the unjust status quo. World making involves redistributing power and resources as well as improving material conditions. The CV explicitly rejectsreconciliation, the view that reparations require repairing moral relations through acknowledgment, apology, memorialization, and other gestures. I argue that the CV is incomplete because many claims for climate change reparations cannot be adequately met by resource redistribution or material improvements alone. Efforts to reconcile the moral relationships damaged by climate change are also required. 

—Blake Francis

About the Speaker

Blake Francis is an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at University of Maryland, Baltimore County and the Director of the Human Context of Science and Technology program. His research focuses on responsibility for climate change. Recent research identifies and theorizes a gap in the existing literature—often centered on the distribution between the wealthy and the poorest—regarding emissions from the world’s middle-class individuals and countries. Prof. Francis considers whether emissions between luxury and subsistence are permissible and whether it is fair to seek opportunities to reduce emissions among those in the global middle class. His next research project develops a theory of climate change reparations detailing what wrongful emitters owe those impacted by climate change. In past research, he has defended national responsibility for climate change against the objection that holding nations responsible is unfair to citizens, who would ultimately bear the burdens of wrongdoing for which they are not responsible. Prof. Francis argues that the objection is based on false assumptions about collective responsibility and civic responsibility. Prof. Francis earned his PhD in Philosophy from Stanford University in August 2017. He also has degrees in philosophy from Northern Arizona University (BA) and the University of Montana (MA), where he also studied Forestry and Conservation. Before graduate school, he worked with the US Forest Service in wilderness management, trail construction, and cabin maintenance in Southern Arizona and Southeast Alaska.