ETAK
ENVIRONMENTAL THOUGHT ALASKA is a Committee on Environmental Thought collaboration based at Alaska Pacific University. We explore contemporary normative issues in environmental problems and problem solving. Our projects focus on challenges in conservation, climate change, development, and justice in northern latitudes. ETAK is led by COMET Senior Principle Alexander Lee.
ETAK Members:
Alexander Lee: ETAK Lead, COMET Senior Principle
Alex is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Alaska Pacific University and COMET Senior Principle. His research explores moral obligations and conservation, climate change, restoration, and development. As a faculty member at the Institute of Culture and Environment, he teaches courses in environmental philosophy, the philosophy of science, and ethics. Alex is also currently the Secretary for the International Society for Environmental Ethics (ISEE).
Contact: aplee@alaskapacific.edu
Kat O’Brien: ETAK Graduate Student
Kat is a Master's student at APU studying charisma and obligations with her mentor Alex Lee. As a native New Yorker living in Alaska, she is fascinated by the disparate ways humans interact and perceive the environment. She is particularly interested in environmental reparations, latent characteristics of wildlife envoys, and ethics of climate change.
ETAK Public Philosophy:
Grist, March 25, 2021
To protect federal lands, the burden of proof is on conservationists. It should be on extractors.
“Pro-development politicians have, in the past year, sought to open up Arctic oil reserves, expand oil leasing in the Gulf of Mexico, build long-sought pipelines, and grant access to old growth timber resources. Each time, the burden falls upon conservationists to justify why industry should not log, dam, drill, mine, or harvest, rather than on developers to demonstrate why they should. This is backward.”
Read more by ComET members Alexander Lee, Benjamin Hale, and Alex Hamilton in Grist.
Anchorage Daily News January 23, 2021
“A few hours after inauguration, President Joe Biden signed an executive order requiring further review of arctic oil leases. This comes after the 11th-hour Trump administration lease sale for oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Alaska can’t keep fighting for the past – this latest challenge shows that it’s time to look beyond oil.”
Read more by ETAK lead Alexander Lee in the Anchorage Daily News.
ETAK Projects:
‘Letting the Sea Star Shine’ - Paper in Progress.
Planktonic and adrift: a larva begins its life. As juvenile sea stars descend to the benthos, their bilateral form gives way to their familiar radial shape that these echinoderms are aptly named. Sea stars grow five, or sometimes upwards of fifty, arms from a central disc, a shape familiar to a dark night sky, but unlike much else in the ecological world. Relegated to the sea floor, sea stars’ uniqueness and charisma-- like that of many creatures without eyes or fur-- remains under-appreciated and misunderstood. 86 species of sea stars find a home off the Alaskan Coast. Unfortunately, 20 of these species are at the forefront of a growing sea star wasting disease (SSWD) epidemic (Schrope 2014, Hewson et al. 2014, Miner et al. 2018). Elevating sea stars from touch-tank oddity to a star among climate change evacuees sheds light on a novel path forward for conservation ethics.
Charisma often reflects anthropocentric standards, appeals to emotion, and specific aesthetic valuation (Lorimer 2007, Ducarme et al. 2012, Brambilla et al. 2013). Which is to say, cute and cuddly animals get the poster. Charisma is also something that happens. It emerges as a bubble from relationships, individuality, importance, inspiration, and an expanded notion of environmental aesthetics (Lorimer 2007). Rethinking charisma to incorporate sea stars offers a chance to expand pathways into environmental engagement, concern, compassion, and conservation.