Founder and Director

Tom Kerns, emeritus professor of philosophy at Seattle College, works to bring human-rights norms to bear on environmental issues, especially on the climate crisis. Dr. Kerns developed and taught an innovative online course on Environment and Human Rights and is the Founder/Director of Environment and Human Rights Advisory. In 2015 he served on the drafting group for the international “Declaration on Human Rights and Climate Change.” Dr. Kerns co-organized the 2018 International Tribunal on Human Rights, Fracking and Climate Change.

Bearing Witness: The Human Rights Case Against Fracking and Climate Change, (Oregon State University Press, 2021), co-edited with Kathleen Dean Moore, is based on the rich testimony, compelling arguments, and final Advisory Opinion of that Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal Session on Human Rights, Fracking and Climate Change. The short film, “Bedrock Rights: A New Foundation for Global Action Against Fracking and Climate Change,” is based on this book and on the testimony and findings from the Tribunal.

The Youth Climate Courts movement, based as it is in human rights standards, emerged from the great success of that 2018 Tribunal and from the powerful Advisory Opinion that court issued several months later.

Youth Climate Courts: How You Can Host a Human Rights Trial for People and Planet (Routledge 2022).

Dr Kerns’s Scholarship (sample list below) includes books and articles that bring human rights norms to bear on critical environmental issues.

He lives in a small village on the central Oregon coast where, when not out on the beach, he reads, writes and works with the Youth Climate Courts initiative.