Philosophers Fight Climate Change
This interview series highlights the exciting ways philosophers engage the public to combat a central crisis of our time.
Evelyn Brister is professor and philosophy program director in the department of philosophy at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She is also president of the Public Philosophy Network.
RIT graduate students and friends planting tree stakes for a forested wetland restoration project in western New York, December 2021. Several students hold tools under a gray sky near a cattail swamp.
The author standing in front of a waterfall in Clark Gully near Naples, NY.
What type(s) of civically engaged or public philosophy do you do?
Right now I’m President of the Public Philosophy Network, supporting public philosophers by planning conferences, panels, and events. About 130 public philosophers attended our virtual conference in October 2021. A group session at the February 2022 meeting of the Central APA will be on “How to Do Public Philosophy,” and we have a co-sponsored webinar with PLATO on “Public Philosophy, Education, and Social Justice,” also scheduled for February. Our next major event will be a workshop in June 2022 on how to initiate research that engages with policymakers, professionals, and communities.
One of the important ways that PPN supports public philosophers is by identifying how universities can do a better job developing talent for public philosophy and giving credit for engaged teaching and research. A PPN committee led by Nancy McHugh has organized volunteers to mentor public philosophers going through tenure or promotion review. A separate panel is available to write informed external reviews for tenure and promotion files.
Public philosophy is riding a wave right now. Universities are under pressure to demonstrate their relevance to social needs, and at the same time, philosophers are eager to do meaningful work that has a broader impact on society.
Other than supporting public philosophers through PPN, do you do engaged philosophical research yourself?
I do, but at this moment, I’m more focused on changing real-world practices than on doing theory. Other than leading PPN, I’ve been working on developing a strategic framework for collaborations between philosophers and policymakers or community groups.
Robert Frodeman and I recently edited a collection of essays, A Guide to Field Philosophy: Case Studies and Practical Strategies (Routledge, 2020). Our contributors all tell captivating stories and reflect on the lessons learned when collaborating with non-philosophers. Every story makes a similar point: that philosophy is broader and more relevant than your typical graduate training makes it out to be. And that philosophy can have real-world impact! All these “fieldwork” projects show how philosophical labor can result in something other than a publication in a philosophy journal.
The main goal of these essays is to show how to do fieldwork in concrete terms, so they are down-to-earth narratives, full of useful advice. It turns out that while we share a vision of how to work collaboratively, we all go through similar struggles to overcome the parts of our training that encourage individualistic and adversarial attitudes.
What non-philosophers have you engaged with recently?
My most recent fieldwork project was with a group of conservation scientists, practitioners, and advocates to publish a statement of intent about the using genetic techniques to address the biodiversity crisis. In a series of meetings during 2020, this group, convened by Revive and Restore, discussed the conservation goals that translocation, gene editing, cloning, and other innovative strategies might achieve. Our team identified the need for shared, explicit best practices to guide community engagement and policy formation so that these techniques can be deployed ethically and effectively.
I’ve also collaborated with the American Chestnut Foundation and scientists at the SUNY-ESF American Chestnut Research & Restoration Project to evaluate ethical issues related to restoring the American chestnut to the eastern US. A genetically modified chestnut variety is currently under environmental evaluation by government agencies, and it could allow us to bring back an important species that’s been missing from our forests for about a century.
Green leaves sprout from the base of the trunk of a blighted American Chestnut tree.
Brown American chestnut leaves and burs (spiky seed pods). These seeds came from a rare grove of young American chestnuts that have not yet succumbed to blight.
How does this work benefit the public(s) you engage with?
It’s tempting to quote the Lorax: “I speak for the trees.” But of course the trees are speaking quite clearly—we know they are under attack by pests for which they have no evolved defenses, that the decline in forest health is a growing problem around the world, and that it’s exacerbated by climate change. Protecting forests is an easy cause to get behind—everyone loves trees—but the details of particular problems are more complicated. Ethics, epistemology, and political theory are intertwined, and I think my work helps smooth out communication among conservation scientists, citizens, and practitioners. I engage with scientists, land managers, tree breeders, and environmentalists, but in this arena, we’re always learning from nature and aiming to serve nature’s ends.
As a philosopher, I sometimes play the role of mediator. I work hard to bring people back to the idea that we all want what’s best for the trees. Discussions continually come back to that shared value, and that keeps us focused on trying to be both ethical and effective. Environmentalists have been able to get by for decades with a hands-off approach to conservation, but the urgency of the current situation changes that. We have to decide when a hands-off approach is actually riskier than taking action because under the current burden, nature is collapsing, not rebounding. Clearly, we need to do something.
If someone wanted to take on public philosophy work like yours, what steps or resources would you recommend?
My work with environmental organizations and scientists merges my research interests with work I was doing in my personal life anyway. I’ve been active in environmental and outdoor recreation organizations since I was in college. During graduate school, I kept my environmental activities separate from my career. The environmentalists I worked with helped me bring the two parts of my life together by asking about ethical issues and encouraging me to bring students into our work.
I’ve learned that the skills we all develop from managing classrooms, organizing events, writing reports, and analyzing arguments are in high demand outside academia. What I learned about shared governance through university committees and administrative roles was extremely useful in working with local environmental groups. Teaching provided confidence in public speaking, something that is a struggle for many. And I found that just showing up and being willing to do whatever needed to be done got the ball rolling. My strategy is to get involved with a community first and then figure out how to contribute philosophically. That often works. Once you’re embedded, your philosophical training starts to become relevant—e.g., questions of ethics and values come up in just about every public issue.
The main requirement is to listen to the concerns that people have and then to translate them into our subject-specific concepts. We philosophers, whether we mean to or not, are constantly classifying, evaluating evidence and arguments, considering the big picture, and comparing practical realities with ideals. If anything, I find that I sometimes have to hold back on these tendencies and be patient with the slow speed of democratic processes.
The author in the snow recording data during a tree survey.
What do you like most about engaged or public work?
Well, obviously, it’s a thrill to feel like you’re having an influence and making a concrete and lasting difference. I like talking about environmental values when I’m working on a restoration project, but I especially like planting trees at the same time. Both the conversations and the trees matter, but while the conversations are ephemeral, I can go back to visit the trees. They’ll be around longer than me.
It’s also wonderful that it’s never the same thing twice, so you can’t get bored. In fact, as soon as you think you understand an issue, something new comes up!
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