Wednesday, April 10, 2024
7pm EDT
via Zoom (please contact Gail Larose at glarose0@gmail.com for the Zoom link)
Andrew Brook
Chancellor’s Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science, Carleton University

Canada and the US: a comparison of environmental legislation

Canada and the US: a comparison of environmental legislation. Both in Canada and the US, environmental legislation makes some surprisingly radical environmental ethics a matter of law. The talk will sketch the history of this body of legislation, then look at some examples of the ethics enshrined therein. Making these ethical principles the law has made a huge difference. For example, the Species at Risk Act (Canada) and the Endangered Species Act (US) make protection of biological diversity a requirement of law. As a result, environmental NGOs in both countries have been able to use lawsuits and the courts to protect endangered species. There are many similar examples. Environmental success stories are not plentiful. We should celebrate them.

Andrew Brook (BA, MA Alberta, DPhil Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship) is Chancellor’s Professor of
Philosophy and Cognitive Science Emeritus at Carleton University. He has had visiting appointments at
Oxford, Dalhousie, and Bryn Mawr. He is Past-president of both the Canadian Philosophical Association
and the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society, the only person to have been president of both. About 130
publications.