John Nolt argues in ‘How harmful are the average American's greenhouse gas emissions?’ that, on average, individual Americans are responsible for the severe suffering and/or death of...

By providing an explicit estimate of the harms caused by personal greenhouse gas emissions, John Nolt (in his “How Harmful are the Average American’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions?”) hopes to undermine tendencies to downplay these emissions and their impacts on global climate change. He estimates that an average American would be responsible for one two-billionth of the suffering or death of two billion people (over 1000 years). He treats this as equivalent to being responsible for the suffering or death of one (...) person. In my paper I argue that these are not equivalent, and that the former is less problematic than the latter. I end with the suggestion that, in terms of personal emissions, having fewer children is more effective than merely reducing our current emissions. (shrink)

In ‘How harmful are the average American's greenhouse gas emissions?’ John Nolt correctly points out that the claim that an individual's contribution to total atmospheric greenhouse gas leve...

It has sometimes been claimed (usually without evidence) that the harm caused by an individual's participation in a greenhouse-gas-intensive economy is negligible. Using data from several contemporary sources, this paper attempts to estimate the harm done by an average American. This estimate is crude, and further refinements are surely needed. But the upshot is that the average American is responsible, through his/her greenhouse gas emissions, for the suffering and/or deaths of one or two future people.

Given the complexity of John Nolt's overall argument, I summarise it at the outset. First, focusing on the mean emissions of the United States, ignoring the ‘porousness’ of nations, an...

We take no issue with John Nolt's calculations in ‘How harmful are the average American's greenhouse gas emissions?’. That is, we accept that over the course of a typical American life...

John Nolt's purpose in this paper is to criticise the assumption, often made but seldom supported with evidence, that ‘the consequences of a single individual's greenhouse gas emissions are negligi...

John Nolt offers a helpful, albeit rough quantitative analysis of the harmfulness of the average American's greenhouse gas emissions. By examining the lifetime contributions of the average American...