UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Penn State Climate Consortium will host its next Climate Conversation Café featuring Jonathan Marks, professor of bioethics, humanities, law and philosophy at Penn State. The event will be held from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 22, in 117 Earth and Engineering Sciences Building. Attendees may also register to participate virtually. Registration is required.
Marks’ talk is titled “Written in Wind and Water? The Evolving Right to a Healthy Environment in Climate Litigation.” In this talk, Marks will review recent climate litigation in both the U.S. and Europe in which the right to a healthy environment was invoked and developed, as well as the 2025 advisory opinions of the International Court of Justice and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights addressing climate change. He will analyze the implications of the evolving right to a healthy environment in climate litigation and conclude with a brief discussion of some other tools in the legal, ethical and policy toolkit that might complement the right to a health environment and climate.
In addition to his faculty role at Penn State, Marks is the director of the Bioethics Program and affiliate faculty in the School of International Affairs. He is a barrister (and academic member of Matrix Chambers in London and Geneva) with expertise in human rights, public health and environmental law. He has written about the human rights implications of local and global environmental threats to public health — from fracking to climate change.