Trevor Grant Hedberg

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Scholarly Contributions

Books

• Hedberg, T. (2020). The environmental impact of overpopulation: The ethics of procreation. Taylor and Francis. doi:10.4324/9781351037020
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  This book examines the link between population growth and environmental impact and explores the implications of this connection for the ethics of procreation. In light of climate change, species extinctions, and other looming environmental crises, Trevor Hedberg argues that we have a collective moral duty to halt population growth to prevent environmental harms from escalating. This book assesses a variety of policies that could help us meet this moral duty, confronts the conflict between protecting the welfare of future people and upholding procreative freedom, evaluates the ethical dimensions of individual procreative decisions, and sketches the implications of population growth for issues like abortion and immigration. It is not a book of tidy solutions: Hedberg highlights some scenarios where nothing we can do will enable us to avoid treating some people unjustly. In such scenarios, the overall objective is to determine which of our available options will minimize the injustice that occurs. This book will be of great interest to those studying environmental ethics, environmental policy, climate change, sustainability, and population policy.

Chapters

• Hedberg, T. (2025). Restoring biodiversity as compensation for climate change. In Disruptive Innovations and the Environmental Crisis : Ethical, Practical, and Sociopolitical Concerns. Taylor and Francis. doi:10.4324/9781003449287-4
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  One of the longest-lasting and most significant effects of climate change will be a decline in global biodiversity. This chapter argues that this decline in global biodiversity, combined with the more general obligation to compensate the victims of climate change for the harms they suffer, generates a moral duty to pursue research in synthetic biology with the long-term goal of replacing extinct species with similar organisms. After presenting a short overview of why biodiversity is valuable and why its loss will make the world worse for future people, the chapter argues that humanity has a moral obligation to compensate present and future people for the harms caused by climate change. Proposals to compensate victims of climate change usually focus on monetary compensation, but that will do little to compensate for the losses tied to species extinctions. Thus, the chapter considers whether de-extinction-a cluster of emerging technologies that aim to restore species with genetic and phenotypic similarities to extinct species-could serve as a more appropriate means of compensating future people for biodiversity loss. In defending continued research into de-extinction, the chapter also argues that concerns about this technology disincentivizing people from protecting biodiversity are overstated and that pursuing this research does not reflect poorly on humanity's character. Global climate change poses a number of substantial threats to both present and future people. Rising sea levels will displace millions of people and cause some low-lying island nations to disappear beneath the ocean. Hurricanes, heat waves, and other severe weather events will become more intense. Dry regions will become dryer, causing more droughts and lower crop yields.
• Hedberg, T. (2022). Animal Suffering, Environmental Impact, and Lab-Cultured Meat. In Animals and Business Ethics. Springer Nature. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-97142-7_9
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  Current methods of industrialized animal agriculture have unacceptable impacts on nonhuman animals, human beings, and the environment. Over the past several decades, two clear paths toward improving this agricultural system have emerged: a return to non-industrialized farming and a transition to plant-exclusive farming. Unfortunately, given the realities of meat demand, neither of these strategies for changing animal agriculture will be achievable this century. Lab-cultured meat—animal flesh grown using cell cultures rather than actual living animals—could serve as a new method of meat production capable of providing consumers with the meat they want while also minimizing animal suffering and reducing environmental impacts. In this chapter, I argue that lab-cultured meat, despite its current technological and economic limitations, is the best option available for changing animal agriculture in the ways that morality demands. I begin by highlighting the main problems with industrialized animal farming and then compare lab-cultured meat with non-industrialized farming and plant-exclusive farming along both moral and practical dimensions. Lab-cultured meat does not represent a morally perfect solution to the problems associated with animal agriculture, but since the options that might be morally better are clearly not feasible, it is our best bet for making grand changes to animal agriculture later in the twenty-first century.

Journals/Publications

• Nolt, J., & Hedberg, T. (2025). Nonanthropocentric climate ethics. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 16(Issue 1). doi:10.1002/wcc.920
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  Anthropogenic climate change poses increasingly severe long-term threats to living things worldwide. It may even contribute to a mass extinction that would leave biodiversity depleted for millions of years—quite possibly longer than the duration of the human species. Such effects are obviously of ethical concern, but because traditional ethical theories have focused on the relatively short-term interests of human beings, they offer little guidance. In the late 20th century, a growing number of ethical activists and theorists sought to expand moral consideration to nonhuman animals and to the diverse life forms and habitats of wild nature. Simultaneously and at first independently, others began to develop long-term (sometimes called “intergenerational”) ethics, which extends moral consideration into the distant future. Concerns about future climate change quickly became a central focus of this work. But only in this century have there been concerted efforts to integrate these lines of thought into far-sighted nonanthropocentric climate ethics. These efforts are the subject of this review. This article is categorized under: Climate, Nature, and Ethics > Ethics and Climate Change Integrated Assessment of Climate Change > Assessing Climate Change in the Context of Other Issues Climate, Nature, and Ethics > Comparative Environmental Values.
• Hedberg, T. (2023).

  The Virtues of Sustainability, edited by Jason Kawall

  . Journal of Moral Philosophy, 20(3-4), 362-365. doi:10.1163/17455243-20030008
• Hedberg, T. (2023).

  Why It’s OK to Eat Meat: by Dan C. Shahar, New York, Routledge, 2022, xiii + 220 pp., $170.00 (hardback), $26.95 (paperback), ISBN: 9780367172763

  . Ethics, Policy & Environment, 26(1), 149-152. doi:10.1080/21550085.2023.2170032
• Hedberg, T. (2018). Climate Change, Moral Integrity, and Obligations to Reduce Individual Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Ethics, Policy and Environment, 21(Issue 1). doi:10.1080/21550085.2018.1448039
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  Environmental ethicists have not reached a consensus about whether or not individuals who contribute to climate change have a moral obligation to reduce their personal greenhouse gas emissions. In this paper, I side with those who think that such individuals do have such an obligation by appealing to the concept of integrity. I argue that adopting a political commitment to work toward a collective solution to climate change—a commitment we all ought to share—requires also adopting a personal commitment to reduce one’s emissions. On these grounds, individuals who contribute to climate change have a prima facie moral duty to lower their personal greenhouse gas emissions. After presenting this argument and supporting each of its premises, I defend it from two major lines of objection: skepticism about integrity’s status as a virtue and concerns that the resulting moral duty would be too demanding to be morally required. I then consider the role that an appeal to integrity could play in galvanizing the American public to take personal and political action regarding climate change.
• Hedberg, T., & Huzarevich, J. (2017). Appraising Objections to Practical Apatheism. Philosophia (United States), 45(Issue 1). doi:10.1007/s11406-016-9759-y
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  This paper addresses the plausibility of practical apatheism: an attitude of apathy or indifference about philosophical questions pertaining to God’s existence grounded in the belief that they lack practical significance. Since apatheism is rarely discussed, we begin by clarifying the position and explaining how it differs from some of the other positions one may take with regard to the existence of God. Afterward, we examine six distinct objections to practical apatheism. Each of these objections posits a different reason for thinking that belief in God is practically significant. Five of these objections prove unsuccessful. The sixth, which appeals to the practical significance of belief in God with respect to our fates in the afterlife, is more promising but nonetheless encounters significant obstacles. Since the success of this objection is controversial, whether we have good grounds to reject practical apatheism should be similarly controversial, and the view should be given further examination.
• Hedberg, T. (2016). Animals, relations, and the laissez-faire intuition. Environmental Values, 25(Issue 4). doi:10.3197/096327116x14661540759197
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  In Animal Ethics in Context, Clare Palmer tries to harmonise two competing approaches to animal ethics. One focuses on the morally relevant capacities that animals possess. The other is the Laissez-Faire Intuition (LFI): the claim that we have duties to assist domesticated animals but should (at least generally) leave wild animals alone. In this paper, I critique the arguments that Palmer offers in favour of the No-Contact LFI–the view that we have (prima facie) duties not to harm wild animals but no duties to assist them. I argue that Palmer’s endorsement of the No-Contact LFI is unwarranted. Her arguments actually provide strong reasons to endorse what I call the Gradient View–a position that posits weak presumptive duties to assist wild animals that become stronger as our relations with the animals grow stronger.
• Hedberg, T. (2014). Epistemic supererogation and its implications. Synthese, 191(Issue 15). doi:10.1007/s11229-014-0483-5
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  Supererogatory acts, those which are praiseworthy but not obligatory, have become a significant topic in contemporary moral philosophy, primarily because morally supererogatory acts have proven difficult to reconcile with other important aspects of normative ethics. However, despite the similarities between ethics and epistemology, epistemic supererogation has received very little attention. In this paper, I aim to further the discussion of supererogation by arguing for the existence of epistemically supererogatory acts and considering the potential implications of their existence. First, I offer a brief account of moral supererogation and how morally supererogatory acts generate a strong intuition that a similar phenomenon should exist in epistemology. Afterward, I argue for the existence of epistemically supererogatory acts by examining five cases where an epistemic activity appears to be epistemically supererogatory. Epistemic supererogation appears to provide the best explanation for our considered judgments about the individuals’ behavior in these different cases. Finally, I consider how epistemic supererogation might impact the contemporary study of epistemology, particularly with regard to how we appraise certain epistemic duties.
• Palmer, D., & Hedberg, T. (2013). The Ethics of Marketing to Vulnerable Populations. Journal of Business Ethics, 116(Issue 2). doi:10.1007/s10551-012-1476-2
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  An orthodox view in marketing ethics is that it is morally impermissible to market goods to specially vulnerable populations in ways that take advantage of their vulnerabilities. In his signature article "Marketing and the Vulnerable," Brenkert (Bus Ethics Q Ruffin Ser 1:7-20, 1998) provided the first substantive defense of this position, one which has become a well-established view in marketing ethics. In what follows, we throw new light on marketing to the vulnerable by critically evaluating key components of Brenkert's general arguments. Specifically, we contend that Brenkert has failed to offer us any persuasive reasons to think that it is immoral to market to the vulnerable in ways that take advantage of their vulnerability. Although Brenkert does highlight the fact that the specially vulnerable are at greater risk of being harmed by already immoral marketing practices (e.g., deception, manipulation), he fails to establish that the specially vulnerable are a unique moral category of market clients or that there are special moral standards that apply to them. Moreover, even if Brenkert's position were theoretically defensible, the practical implications of his position are far less tenable than he suggests. If our criticisms are sound, then Brenkert and others who endorse his position are seriously mistaken regarding how one can permissibly market products to vulnerable populations, and, in addition, they have improperly categorized certain morally permissible marketing practices as being immoral. © 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

Presentations

• Nardinelli, J. A., & Hedberg, T. G. (2023).

  Honors Professor of Practice Joint Presentations

  Small Teaching by James Lang (2021)

  . Honors Faculty Meeting.
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  We presented on several subtopics from Lang's Small Teaching (2021), focusing on retrieval, recall, and belonging to discuss small-scale classroom interventions to promote improved learning and engagement with undergraduate students. We also facilitated a follow-up discussion and Q&A.