After studying Ethics and International Affairs with Thomas Pogge in the fall of 2010, a group of his students and teaching assistants decided to implement an ethics-in-action project to apply the tenets of justice and human rights to the challenges of the real world. None of these challenges is bigger than confronting the issue of worldwide forced climate migration. Climate Voices grew from this effort to raise awareness about climate migration and bring a human face to the issue. We are now an affiliate of Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP), which is administered through the Global Justice Program at Yale University.
By focusing on those who are currently or will soon be affected by climate change (from island states such as the Maldives to large swaths of low-lying Bangladesh to Sub-Saharan Africa), we believe that we can influence international law to protect internally and internationally displaced persons as well as appeal to individuals to responsibly account for how their daily activities contribute to this problem and change their behavior for the better.
Max Webster is the founder and director of Climate Voices. In 2005, Max and his family were forced to relocate from their home on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Since then, Max has been dedicated toward finding solutions to climate change and representing those who are most vulnerable to its impacts and most in need of a voice. Max is a Senior at Yale majoring in political science with a focus in environmental politics and law.
Who We Are
Gilad Tanay (Co-founder and Advisor) is a Ph.D. student in the Philosophy Department at Yale University. He is writing his dissertation under Stephen Darwall on the the ethical significance of moral disagreement. He received his B.A. degree in Philosophy and Psychology from the program for outstanding students at Tel-Aviv University. He is the co-founder and was the first chairman of the Israeli Student Coalition for Peace. He is a member of the board of directors for Academics Stand Against Poverty.
Rick Herron is a junior at Yale University majoring in political science. Rick was inspired to take action after seeing An Inconvenient Truth at the age of 15. In 2007, he became a Presenter for The Climate Project, a non-profit organization composed of thousands of volunteers worldwide who have been trained by former Vice-President Al Gore to help educate their communities about the climate crisis.
In addition to giving presentations for The Climate Project, Rick is also a member of the Yale Student Environment Coalition, and he served as Yale's Campus Coordinator for Powershift 2011.