Dr. Kenneth Shockley, Associate Professor, University of Buffalo: "We must compel the media to make clear that there is only as much debate about the science behind climate change as there is debate about the science behind the existence of the dinosaurs"

Disinformation, Social Stability and Moral Outrage - Climate Ethics

We must bring to light the corrupting influences. We must compel the media to make clear that there is only as much debate about the science behind climate change as there is debate about the science behind the existence of the dinosaurs (for while in both cases we may doubt the details, there is little doubt about the overall picture). We must compel our political agents to make clear, in the starkest moral terms, why they are making, or failing to make, the decisions they make. This should motivate a movement at least as ferocious as the Occupy Wallstreet movement. The Occupy Wallstreet movement was focused on the very real and morally potent concern that our economy is shifting us toward a society not in line with the basic moral principles on which our nation was founded and on which our hopes and expectations are based. To some extent that economy is reversible. The concern that motivates moral outrage at inaction and obstruction regarding climate change should be focused on the very conditions that make possible a stable society for us, and for our children. Our influence on these background conditions is not so reversible, at least on time scales that matter to our children. For the sake of our children, and for the sake of our own moral decency, this disinformation campaign should inspire moral outrage.

Kenneth Shockley

My primary areas of research are ethics, environmental philosophy, and social philosophy.

More particularly, I am interested in indirect consequentialism, in problems of partiality and the normative requirements of group membership, in the perplexing nature of environmental values and their expression in public policy, and in a number of thorny issues involving collective agency and collective responsibility.