ONLINE | NSSR Philosophy Colloquium: Jay Bernstein “Ethics in the Anthropocene: The End of Private Property”

“From the standpoint of a higher socioeconomic formation, the private property of particular individuals in the earth will appear just as absurd as the private property of one man in other men.” (Marx)

In this paper I argue that the Anthropocene condition is the consequence of a massive ethical failure to respond to anthropogenically produced climate change.  That failure reveals the ethical emptiness of existing institutions and their philosophical surround.  We now have fundamental responsibilities toward three ultimately powerless and vulnerable others: (i) the impoverished and environmentally threatened people of global south; (ii) future generations; and (iii) the earth system itself that are unintelligible and unanswerable from within existing practices and theories.

In response to the latter two it has been argued that what is required is an ethics of sustainability.  Sustainability is of the living environment in order that future generations can enjoy the ecosystem services necessary to attain a standard of living comparable to what presently exists. I argue that only the radical extension of the public trust doctrine, that is, the idea of individual states or the federal government possessing fiduciary powers over public lands, navigable waters, rivers and streams of a certain proportion, great lakes, etc. can achieve this end.  A universalization of the public trust doctrine justified by the Anthropocene condition would entail the end of private property in land.