Philosophy of Environmental ethics

This conversation is with Michael Nelson. He is a Prof. of Environmental Ethics & Philosophy, at Oregon state university. He is philosopher in residence of the Isle Royale Wolf-Moose Project and co-founder of Conservation Ethics Group. Here we talk about need of moral philosophy, understanding ethics of biodiversity conservation, human-nature relationship, present and future of CRISPER.

Find more about Michael's work: https://www.michaelpnelson.com/

Buy Michael's book: https://www.amazon.com/Michael-P-Nels...

Timeline of the session:

00:00:00 Introduction

00:00:34 Michael's interest in philosophy

00:01:54 Origins of Morality

00:04:21 Correlation between right-wrong and moral-immoral

00:07:10 Religion and cultures as moral ground

00:09:30 Beliefs as inhibitions for ethics

00:12:04 Evolution of morality

00:15:16 Conversation about reason

00:18:43 Humans ruling the world!

00:20:16 Humans and wildlife relationship

00:23:22 Problem at the heart to accept anthropogenic climate change

00:27:32 Politics and ethics

00:29:34 Being a skeptic for the good of humanity

00:32:24 Importance of scientific for moral philosophy

00:35:18 Animal rights movement

00:36:38 Sentience and morality

00:38:34 Michael's understanding on animal rights

00:40:44 Importance of animal rights for biodiversity conservation

00:43:07 Editing nature with CRISPER

00:45:59 Impact of applying CRISPER to modify biodiversity

00:47:40 CRISPER to solve the world problems

00:48:41 Science and ethics

00:51:25 Understanding science

00:56:30 Different projects Michael is working on for conservation

01:01:36 Applying ethics in educational institutions

01:03:44 A message for early career scientists

01:06:00 Thank you!