Two abstracts submitted to ISQOLS 2026 organizers

I have just composed and submitted the abstracts below to the organizers of the ISQOLS 2026 Annual Conference, "Beyond the Bluegrass: Harnessing Research to Enhance Quality-of-Life", which is to be held in Kentucky, USA, August 11-14.

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Climate imaginaries and the contested future of economic growth

KEYWORDS: Climate economics; climate imaginaries; degrowth; economic growth; green growth  

Conflicting views on economic growth comprise a controversial issue related to climate economics. While the mainstream of climate economists assert that continued and practically endless economic growth can be taken for granted, critics dispute this and advance alternative economic ideas about a post-growth, degrowth or steady-state economy. Growth of different magnitudes is likewise expected according to most climate scenarios. I assess different ideas about economic growth in the climate discourse by relating them to the notion of climate imaginaries, which can be understood as socio-semiotic systems of shared ideas about issues related to climate change. The powerful influence of climate imaginaries can be decisive with regard to how climate policy and governance is understood and implemented, for instance whether incremental or radical change is pursued. Climate imaginaries range from anticipating apocalypse or radical societal change to relying on business-as-usual scenarios or techno-optimism. Core issues in climate ethics related to equity and intergenerational justice are often framed on the background of the common expectation that future generations will be better off in economic terms. Using climate imaginaries to frame a discussion of conflicting views on the future of economic growth, I will trace the history of green growth and degrowth ideas as applied to the climate issue, with a main focus on the last 30–40 years.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES / TAKEAWAYS  

* Expectations about future economic growth matters for policy discussions 

* Climate scenarios incorporate only one side of the debate (pro-growth) 

* Criticism of mainstream climate economics is required to account for future welfare

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Alternative HDI thresholds for maximum income demonstrate significance for policy advice  

KEYWORDS: human development; Human Development Index; income; methodology, UNDP

For several years, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) misquoted Kahneman & Deaton´s article “High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being” (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 2010) in its technical notes, which describes its methodology for computing the Human Development Index (HDI). This article was erroneously used as basis for capping Gross National Income (GNI) per capita at $75,000. Since the HDRO23/24 Technical notes, released in Spring 2024, the reference to Kahneman & Deaton has been removed in the UNDP´s methodological descriptions, but when computing the HDI the UNDP still caps Gross National Income (GNI) per capita at $75,000. On the background of how the HDI is currently computed, the UNDP has been criticized for promoting policies that weaken environmental sustainability by presenting rich yet unsustainable Western countries as role models for economic development. I will describe how the HDI´s income metrics have changed over time, and outline what difference it would make for HDI rankings of various countries if Gross National Income (GNI) per capita were capped at a) a level just above extreme poverty ($1.095); b) the world average ($20.327); c) the OECD average ($52.698), or d) kept but without any maximum. As these alternative HDI computations will show, simply changing the maximum threshold for income per capita radically changes what countries appear as role models for human development.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES / TAKEAWAYS  

* The Human Development Index´ maximum income threshold is not justified by current research 

* With a high maximum threshold for income, rich yet unsustainable Western countries appear as role models for human development 

* Alternative HDI computations, with different thresholds for maximum income, demonstrate what difference these metrics make for policy advice

#21,5

Today I have had an article writing day, with some 200 words atted to the refugee-themed article I am co-writing with Maren Sagvaag Retland, "The rights and living conditions of unaccompanied minor migrants in the Schengen Area", and some key readings done. This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 21,5, including 15,5 article writing days.

This concludes my academic writing in February, which added up to 4.816 words written over 11 writing days (8.002 words so far this year).

Dialogue meeting with Norwegian Food Safety Authority on animal welfare regulations in aquaculture attended

Today I have attended an online "Dialogue meeting" with Mattilsynet (the Norwegian Food Safety Authority) in relation to their ongoing work on regulatory development concerning animal welfare in aquaculture. I attended as one of the representatives of Norway´s Council for Animal Ethics, along with the council´s Secretary, Lina Ahlén and three others. Three animal welfare/rights organizations also took part.

#20,5

Today I have had what ended up as half an article writing day, with some initial work done in relation to my planned book review of Interpreting, Communication and Animal Welfare for Biosemiotics. Moreover, I added some 100 words to my Salongen article on longtermism, "På sporet av en tapt fremtid" (roughly translating to "In search of a lost future"), and finished and submitted the article to Salongen - nettidsskrift for filosofi og idéhistorie. Finally, I pondered about whether or not I had any essential corrections for the forthcoming paperback edition of Bloomsbury semiotics, which includes my chapter "Semiotics in Ethology and Zoology". This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 20,5, including 14,5 article writing days.

#20

Yesterday I had half an article writing day, with some 950 words added to the Salongen article I am writing on longtermism, now titled "På sporet av en tapt fremtid" (which roughly translates to "In search of a lost future"). This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 20, including 14 article writing days.

#19,5

Today I have had half an article writing day, with some 1.100 words added to the Salongen article I am writing on longtermism. This was the most productive writing day so far this year in terms of words written. This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 19,5, including 13,5 article writing days.

#19

Today I have had an article writing day, with some 700 words added to the Salongen article I am writing on longtermism, and preporatory readings completed. This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 19, including 13 article writing days.

#18

Today I have had a book writing day, with research done on industry news and other news on carbon capture and storage and related topics, and the final design of the book cover chosen for my forthcoming scientific monograph Carbon Capture and the Future of Environmentalism (contracted with Bloomsbury Academic). Moreover, I revised writing plans for the next month, considering when the peer-review of the manuscript will likely be in. Finally, I did some reading related to my scientific monograph in spe Being and Sign.

This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 18, including 6 book writing days.

Consultative meeting attended for Council for animal ethics at Norway´s Ministry of Finance

Today I attended a meeting at the Norwegian Ministry of Finance, in Oslo, representing Norway´s Council for animal ethics (along with the council´s secretary Lina Ahlén and chair Knut E. Bøe) in a consultation a committe that is tasked with suggesting changes to the ethics framework of the Norwegian "oil fund" (formally called Government Pension Fund Global, or Statens Pensjonsfond Utland in Norwegian) organized with selected civil society organizations. Lina and I jointly presented "SPU og dyrevelferd" (Government Pension Fund Global and animal welfare), with definitions, information and recommendations addressed to the committee.

#17

Today I have had an article writing day, with some 300 words added to the article "Når gode råd er plagsomme" (When good advice is bothersome) which I co-write with Svein Tuastad. This also included finishing the media search and analysis related to the article´s climate policy case study. 

This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 17, including 12 article writing days.

#16

Today I have had what ended up as half an article writing day, with a few words added to the Salongen article I am writing on longtermism, and some key readings done. This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 16, including 11 article writing days.

#15,5

Today I have had a book writing day, with some 300 words added to the manuscript of my scientific monograph Being and Sign, for which I drafted (parts of?) the preface. Moreover, I researched industry news and other news on carbon capture and storage and related topics. This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 15,5, including 5 book writing days.

Rejected by Œconomia – History / Methodology / Philosophy

I have been notified that my proposed paper "Climate economics imaginaries and the contested future of economic growth" has been rejected and will thus not be included in the journal Œconomia – History / Methodology / Philosophy's forthcoming special issue "History of Climate Economics".

#14,5

Today I have had an article writing day, with some 800 words added to Store Norske Leksikon, primarily the new encyclopedia article "miljøetikk" (environmental ethics), but also links to that article from a number of related articles. This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 14,5, including 10,5 article writing days.

#13,5

Today I have had an article writing day, with some 250 words added to a popular scientific article on longtermism for Salongen. This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 13,5, including 9,5 article writing days.

Abstract for 26th Gathering in biosemiotics: "Life in Earth – a new look at the nature of life"

I have just composed and submitted the abstract below to the organizers of the 26th Gathering in Biosemiotics, which will be held in Sheffield, UK, July July 27-31st.

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Life in Earth – a new look at the nature of life  

Morten Tønnessen  

The global survey of biomass by Bar-On, Phillips and Milo (2018) has shown that subterranean life occurs at far greater depths, and is more abundant, than previously assumed. Life in the marine deep subsurface, i.e., subterranean life under the oceans, is actually more abundant than life in the oceans (ibid., see also Ruff et al. 2024). The existence of microbial, fungal and animal subterranean lifeforms raises ethical and political questions about the consequences of human activities in the marine deep subsurface and other subterranean environments.

As Dunn (2021) narrates, human beings are biased towards the organisms that look the most like us and inhabit a similar environment, while we habitually ignore the majority of odd and unfamiliar lifeforms. We know relatively little about the life that dwells in deep-sea environments – and even less about life in the deep subsurface. As is well known, photosynthesis is the dominant source of oxygen for most organisms. However, recent research documenting the assembly of ‘dark oxygen’ in deep-sea environments in the Pacific Ocean has revealed that photosynthesis is not the only source of oxygen on Earth (Sweatman et al. 2024). A further source appears to be ‘geo-batteries’ related to seawater electrolysis in seafloor areas covered by polymetallic nodules, i.e. multimetallic lumps. This discovery might change our outlook on how life has developed, and particularly our understanding of life in deep-sea and seafloor environments.

Recent research has further established that subseafloor cavities beneath hydrothermal vents are inhabited not only by microbes and viruses, but also by animals such as tubeworms and mussels (Bright, Gollner et al. 2024). Three tubeworm species included in the study of Bright, Gollner et al. (2024) uniquely rely entirely on a bacterial symbiont, which in turn “live off the chemicals released by the vents” for nutrition (The Economist, 2024). These tubeworms living in a subsurface environment below the seabed do not rely on nutrition originating from the surface – and ultimately photosynthesis drawn from energy from the sun – but rather on nutrients originating from deep inside Earth. This recent discovery of animal habitats in the subseafloor “expands the known macrofaunal biosphere” to new depths that was entirely unknown until a couple of years ago (Bright, Gollner et al. 2024: 2).

Based on these recent scientific findings, I will briefly discuss these core questions: To the best of our current knowledge, what is the full range of liveable environments on Earth, and the full spectrum of lifeforms on Earth? How do these discoveries change our outlook on the lifeworlds and biosemiosis of animals and other organisms, and how can they inform our efforts to develop more representative lifeworld models in biosemiotics?  

REFERENCES 

Bar-On, Y. M., R. Phillips and R. Milo (2018). The biomass distribution on Earth. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 115 (25): 6506–11. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1711842115. Includes Supplementary Information Appendix, https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1711842115#supplementary-materials. 

Bright, M., S. Gollner et al. (2024), ‘Animal life in the shallow subseafloor crust at deep-sea hydrothermal vents’, Nature Communications, 15: 8466. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-52631-9 

Dunn, Rob (2021). A Natural History of the Future: What the Laws of Biology Tell Us About the Destiny of the Human Species. Basic Books. 

The Economist (2024), ‘Life finds a way: Tubeworms live beneath the planetary crust around deep-sea vents’. Available online: https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2024/10/16/tubeworms-live-beneath-the-planetary-crust-around-deep-sea-vents 

Ruff, S. E. et al. (2024), ‘A global comparison of surface and subsurface microbiomes reveals large-scale biodiversity gradients, and a marine-terrestrial divide’, Science Advances, 10 (51): eadq0645. 

Sweatman, A. K. et al. (2024), ‘Evidence of dark oxygen production at the abyssal seafloor’, Nature Geoscience, 17: 737–9. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-024-01480-8

Joint abstract for 26th Gathering in Biosemiotics: "Ecosemiotics and Environmental Philosophy"

Jonathan Beever and I have just composed and submitted the abstract below to the organisers of the 26th Gathering in Biosemiotics, which will be held in Sheffield, UK, July July 27-31st.

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Ecosemiotics and Environmental Philosophy

This presentation examines ecosemiotics´ relation to environmental philosophy: how has it interwoven with other approaches, and how can it support the future of environmental philosophy? We argue that ecosemiotics’ fundamental relationality offers both strong parallels to and novel perspectives on environmental phenomenology, aesthetics, hermeneutics, and ethics, articulating how ecosemiotics can respond to contemporary debates in environmental philosophy. Ecosemiotics’ novel Peircean and Uexküllian representationalism acts as a thread running through environmental philosophical traditions. Researchers have advanced relational perspectives in environmental ethics deeply informed by ecosemiotics, like Beever and Tønnessen, who argue – for example – that accounts of intrinsic value in nature can be strengthened by appeals to biosemiotics accounts of life-worlds. Key figures in environmental philosophy have cited ecosemiotic figures directly, like Merleau-Ponty’s references to Uexküll that anticipate the emergence of ecophenomenology in environmental philosophy. Other contemporary figures have developed ecosemiotic positions in traditional environmental philosophical areas in order to offer novel and more robust articulations, like Tønnessen’s Uexküllian reading of phenomenology, that pursues Merleau-Ponty and the late Husserl along biosemiotic lines. In this presentation, we draw attention to these threads throughout enviornmental philosophy, and anticipate the possibility of a John Deely-esque project of weaving semiotic threads together in environmental philosophy to fundamentally reorient perceptions of the field and to resolve some old tensions (like around disputes on the metaphysics of deep ecology, concerns about deprioritizing human value, and under-evidenced claims about environmental capacities) with the introduction of an empirically-grounded science of signs and meaning-in-environments. Not only does such a project support ongoing research in environmental philosophy, it can furthermore reshape pedagogical approaches to the field, opening space for a re-telling of the history of environmental philosophy that is grounded in the study of signs. Our presentation will conclude with a foray into the possibility of semiosis of artificial agents and its implications for extensions in environmental philosophy beyond mere «natural» environments.

#12,5

Today I have had an article writing day, with work done related to the article "Når gode råd er plagsomme" (When good advice is bothersome) which I co-write with Svein Tuastad. This included continuing conducting the media search and analysis related to the article´s climate policy case study.  This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 12,5, including 8,5 article writing days.

#11,5

Today I have had an article writing day, with work done related to the article "Når gode råd er plagsomme" (When good advice is bothersome) which I co-write with Svein Tuastad. This included continuing conducting the media search and analysis related to the article´s climate policy case study.

This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 11,5, including 7,5 article writing days.

Google Scholar: 1.537 citations; 2025 now fourth best year

According to my Google Scholar profile my research has attracted a total of 1.537 citations (+31 since December 31st 2025). This includes 165 citations in 2025 (+17 since December 31st) and 14 citations so far in 2026 (+14). 2025 now stands as my fourth best year in terms of number of citations, behind 2024 (226), 2022 (197) and 2023 (185) but ahead of 2021 (154). 

My h-index remains 21, and my i10-index 46.

Peer review

I have recently done a peer review for Law and humanities review.