33 found
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  1. Carbon pricing ethics.Kian Mintz-Woo - 2022 - Philosophy Compass 17 (1):e12803.
    The three main types of policies for addressing climate change are command and control regulation, carbon taxes (or price instruments), and cap and trade (or quantity instruments). The first question in the ethics of carbon pricing is whether the latter two (price and quantity instruments) are preferable to command and control regulation. The second question is, if so, how should we evaluate the relative merits of price and quantity instruments. I canvass relevant arguments to explain different ways of addressing these (...)
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  2. Will Carbon Taxes Help Address Climate Change?Kian Mintz-Woo - 2021 - Les ateliers de l'éthique/The Ethics Forum 16 (1):57-67.
    The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis ought to serve as a reminder about the costs of failure to consider another long-term risk, climate change. For this reason, it is imperative to consider the merits of policies that may help to limit climate damages. This essay rebuts three common objections to carbon taxes: (1) that they do not change behaviour, (2) that they generate unfair burdens and increase inequality, and (3) that fundamental, systemic change is needed instead of carbon taxes. The (...)
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  3. What Do Climate Change Winners Owe, and to Whom?Kian Mintz-Woo & Justin Leroux - 2021 - Economics and Philosophy 37 (3):462-483.
    Climate ethics has been concerned with polluter pays, beneficiary pays and ability to pay principles, all of which consider climate change as a single negative externality. This paper considers it as a constellation of externalities, positive and negative, with different associated demands of justice. This is important because explicitly considering positive externalities has not to our knowledge been done in the climate ethics literature. Specifically, it is argued that those who enjoy passive gains from climate change owe gains not to (...)
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  4. A philosopher’s guide to discounting.Kian Mintz-Woo - 2021 - In Budolfson Mark, McPherson Tristram & Plunkett David (eds.), Philosophy and Climate Change. Oxford University Press. pp. 90-110.
    This chapter introduces several distinctions relevant to what is called the “discounting problem”, since the issue is how (future) costs and benefits are discounted to make them comparable in present terms. The author defends the claim that there are good reasons to adopt Ramsey-style discounting in the context of climate change: the Ramsey rule is robust, flexible, and well-understood. An important distinction involved in discounting—“descriptivism” and “prescriptivism”—is discussed. It is argued that, even if we adopt prescriptivism, and accept that this (...)
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  5. Why and Where to Fund Carbon Capture and Storage.Kian Mintz-Woo & Joe Lane - 2021 - Science and Engineering Ethics 27 (6):70.
    This paper puts forward two claims about funding carbon capture and storage. The first claim is that there are moral justifications supporting strategic investment into CO2 storage from global and regional perspectives. One argument draws on the empirical evidence which suggests carbon capture and storage would play a significant role in a portfolio of global solutions to climate change; the other draws on Rawls' notion of legitimate expectations and Moellendorf's Anti-Poverty principle. The second claim is that where to pursue this (...)
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  6. Carbon Tax Ethics.Kian Mintz-Woo - 2024 - WIREs Climate Change 15 (1):e858.
    Ideal carbon tax policy is internationally coordinated, fully internalizes externalities, redistributes revenues to those harmed, and is politically acceptable, generating predictable market signals. Since nonideal circumstances rarely allow all these conditions to be met, moral issues arise. This paper surveys some of the work in moral philosophy responding to several of these issues. First, it discusses the moral drivers for estimates of the social cost of carbon. Second, it explains how national self-interest can block climate action and suggests international policies—carbon (...)
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  7. Carbon Pricing and COVID-19.Kian Mintz-Woo, Francis Dennig, Hongxun Liu & Thomas Schinko - 2021 - Climate Policy 21 (10):1272-1280.
    A question arising from the COVID-19 crisis is whether the merits of cases for climate policies have been affected. This article focuses on carbon pricing, in the form of either carbon taxes or emissions trading. It discusses the extent to which relative costs and benefits of introducing carbon pricing may have changed in the context of COVID-19, during both the crisis and the recovery period to follow. In several ways, the case for introducing a carbon price is stronger during the (...)
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  8. (1 other version)The Ethical Challenges in the Context of Climate Loss and Damage.Ivo Wallimann-Helmer, Kian Mintz-Woo, Lukas Meyer, Thomas Schinko & Olivia Serdeczny - 2019 - In Reinhard Mechler, Laurens M. Bouwer, Thomas Schinko, Swenja Surminski & JoAnne Linnerooth-Bayer (eds.), Loss and Damage from Climate Change. Springer. pp. 39-62.
    This chapter lays out what we take to be the main types of justice and ethical challenges concerning those adverse effects of climate change leading to climate-related Loss and Damage (L&D). We argue that it is essential to clearly differentiate between the challenges concerning mitigation and adaptation and those ethical issues exclusively relevant for L&D in order to address the ethical aspects pertaining to L&D in international climate policy. First, we show that depending on how mitigation and adaptation are distinguished (...)
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  9. Put a price on carbon now!Peter Singer & Kian Mintz-Woo - 2020 - Project Syndicate.
    [Newspaper Opinion] Before the COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying fall in oil prices, a carbon price would have been immediately painful for the countries that imposed it, but far better for everyone over the longer term. In this unprecedented moment, introducing a carbon price would be beneficial both now and for the future.
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  10. The Need-Efficiency Tradeoff for negative emissions technologies.Kian Mintz-Woo - 2022 - PLoS Climate 1 (8): e0000060.
    [Opinion] This aims to begin deliberation about investing in negative emissions technologies (NETs) by suggesting that the investment could be responsive to two particular values: need and efficiency—and that these values point us towards taking different actions. For negative emissions technologies, I suggest, we face a Need-Efficiency Tradeoff, i.e. a “NET effect”. This tradeoff also highlights several contrasts: responding to need focuses on regional and short-term moral considerations; responding to efficiency focuses on global and long-term moral considerations. [Open access].
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  11. On Parfit’s Ontology.Kian Mintz-Woo - 2018 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 48 (5):707-725.
    Parfit denies that the introduction of reasons into our ontology is costly for his theory. He puts forth two positions to help establish the claim: the Plural Senses View and the Argument from Empty Ontology. I argue that, first, the Plural Senses View for ‘exists’ can be expanded to allow for senses which undermine his ontological claims; second, the Argument from Empty Ontology can be debunked by Platonists. Furthermore, it is difficult to make statements about reasons true unless these statements (...)
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  12. Justice considerations in climate research.Caroline Zimm, Kian Mintz-Woo, Elina Brutschin, Susanne Hanger-Kopp, Roman Hoffmann, Kikstra Jarmo, Michael Kuhn, Jihoon Min, Raya Muttarak, Keywan Riahi & Thomas Schinko - 2024 - Nature Climate Change 14 (1):22-30.
    Climate change and decarbonization raise complex justice questions that researchers and policymakers must address. The distributions of greenhouse gas emissions rights and mitigation efforts have dominated justice discourses within scenario research, an integrative element of the IPCC. However, the space of justice considerations is much larger. At present, there is no consistent approach to comprehensively incorporate and examine justice considerations. Here we propose a conceptual framework grounded in philosophical theory for this purpose. We apply this framework to climate mitigation scenarios (...)
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  13. Principled Utility Discounting Under Risk.Kian Mintz-Woo - 2019 - Moral Philosophy and Politics 6 (1):89-112.
    Utility discounting in intertemporal economic modelling has been viewed as problematic, both for descriptive and normative reasons. However, positive utility discount rates can be defended normatively; in particular, it is rational for future utility to be discounted to take into account model-independent outcomes when decision-making under risk. The resultant values will tend to be smaller than descriptive rates under most probability assignments. This also allows us to address some objections that intertemporal considerations will be overdemanding. A principle for utility discount (...)
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  14. A new defence of probability discounting.Kian Mintz-Woo - 2016 - In Adrian J. Walsh, Säde Hormio & Duncan Purves (eds.), The Ethical Underpinnings of Climate Economics. Routledge. pp. 87-102.
    When probability discounting (or probability weighting), one multiplies the value of an outcome by one's subjective probability that the outcome will obtain in decision-making. The broader import of defending probability discounting is to help justify cost-benefit analyses in contexts such as climate change. This chapter defends probability discounting under risk both negatively, from arguments by Simon Caney (2008, 2009), and with a new positive argument. First, in responding to Caney, I argue that small costs and benefits need to be evaluated, (...)
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  15. A Dynamic Collapse Concept for Climate Change.Daniel Steel, Giulia Belotti, Ross Mittiga & Kian Mintz-Woo - forthcoming - Environmental Values.
    Despite growing interest in risks of societal collapse due to anthropogenic climate change, there exists no consensus about how collapse should be understood. In this article, we critically examine existing definitions and argue that none adequately address the challenges for conceptualizing collapse that climate change presents. We therefore propose an alternative conception, which regards collapse as a reduction of collective capacity resulting in a pervasive and difficult-to-reverse loss of basic functionality. Our conception is dynamic in that it focuses on the (...)
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  16. Moral hazards and solar radiation management: Evidence from a large-scale online experiment.Philipp Schoenegger & Kian Mintz-Woo - 2024 - Journal of Environmental Psychology 95:102288.
    Solar radiation management (SRM) may help to reduce the negative outcomes of climate change by minimising or reversing global warming. However, many express the worry that SRM may pose a moral hazard, i.e., that information about SRM may lead to a reduction in climate change mitigation efforts. In this paper, we report a large-scale preregistered, money-incentivised, online experiment with a representative US sample (N = 2284). We compare actual behaviour (donations to climate change charities and clicks on climate change petition (...)
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  17. Strengthening midwifery in response to global climate change to protect maternal and newborn health.Maeve O'Connell, Christine Catling, Kian Mintz-Woo & Caroline Homer - 2024 - Women and Birth 37 (1):1-3.
    In this editorial, we argue that midwives should focus on climate change, a link which has been underexplored.
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  18.  88
    Carbon Offsets and Concerns About Shifting Harms: A Reply to Elson.Kian Mintz-Woo - 2024 - Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 17 (1):310-317.
    Luke Elson defends carbon offsetting on the basis that it is not morally objectionable to shift harms or risks around. As long as emitting and offsetting does not increase the overall harms or risks—and merely shifts them—compared to refraining from emitting, he suggests there is no injustice involved. I respond in several ways, suggesting that the time delay involved in offsetting can increase these risks but, regardless, there is a defensible default which could justify refraining from emitting, even when planning (...)
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  19. A Forward-Looking Approach to Climate Change and the Risk of Societal Collapse.Daniel Steel, Charly Phillips, Amanda Giang & Kian Mintz-Woo - 2024 - Futures 158:103361.
    Highlights: -/- • -/- Proposes forward-looking approach to studying climate collapse risks. • -/- Suggests diminishing returns on climate adaptation as a collapse mechanism. • -/- Suggests strategies for sustainable adaptation pathways in face of climate change. • -/- Illustrates analysis with examples of small island states and global food security. -/- Abstract: -/- This article proposes a forward-looking approach to studying societal collapse risks related to climate change. Such an approach should indicate how to study emerging collapse risks and (...)
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  20. A directional dilemma in climate innovation.Kian Mintz-Woo - 2024 - Journal of Responsible Innovation 11 (1):2346972.
    One branch of the responsible innovation literature involves the direction of innovation: if the public or decision-makers can or should direct innovation, how should innovation be directed? This paper explicates a case study where directionality – the plurality of plausible values for innovation – is directly implicated. In this case, a key technology may require a strategy for innovation, but there are contrasting normative reasons to drive that innovation in different ways, reflecting two distinct moral values, ‘effectiveness’ and responsiveness to (...)
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  21. The ethics of measuring climate change impacts.Kian Mintz-Woo - 2021 - In Trevor M. Letcher (ed.), The Impacts of Climate Change. Elsevier. pp. 521-535.
    This chapter qualitatively lays out some of the ways that climate change impacts are evaluated in integrated assessment models (IAMs). Putting aside the physical representations of these models, it first discusses some key social or structural assumptions, such as the damage functions and the way growth is modeled. Second, it turns to the moral assumptions, including parameters associated with intertemporal evaluation and interpersonal inequality aversion, but also assumptions in population ethics about how different-sized populations are compared and how we think (...)
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  22.  16
    Compensation Duties.Kian Mintz-Woo - 2023 - In Pellegrino Gianfranco & Marcello Di Paola (eds.), Handbook of Philosophy of Climate Change. Springer Nature. pp. 779-797.
    While mitigation and adaptation will help to protect us from climate change, there are harms that are beyond our ability to adapt. Some of these harms, which may have been instigated from historical emissions, plausibly give rise to duties of compensation. This chapter discusses several principles that have been discussed about how to divide climate duties – the polluter pays principle, the beneficiary pays principle, the ability to pay principle, and a new one, the polluter pays, then receives principle. The (...)
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  23. Infant feeding and the energy transition: A comparison between decarbonising breastmilk substitutes with renewable gas and achieving the global nutrition target for breastfeeding.Aoife Long, Kian Mintz-Woo, Hannah Daly, Maeve O'Connell, Beatrice Smyth & Jerry D. Murphy - 2021 - Journal of Cleaner Production 324:129280.
    Highlights: -/- • Breastfeeding and breastfeeding support can contribute to mitigating climate change. • Achieving global nutrition targets will save more emissions than fuel-switching. • Breastfeeding support programmes support a just transition. • This work can support the expansion of mitigation options in energy system models. -/- Abstract: -/- Renewable gas has been proposed as a solution to decarbonise industrial processes, specifically heat demand. As part of this effort, the breast-milk substitutes industry is proposing to use renewable gas as a (...)
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  24. Collapse, Social Tipping Dynamics, and Framing Climate Change.Daniel Steel, Kian Mintz-Woo & C. Tyler DesRoches - 2024 - Politics, Philosophy and Economics 23 (3):230-251.
    In this article, we claim that recent developments in climate science and renewable energy should prompt a reframing of debates surrounding climate change mitigation. Taken together, we argue that these developments suggest (1) global climate collapse in this century is a non-negligible risk, (2) mitigation offers substantial benefits to current generations, and (3) mitigation by some can generate social tipping dynamics that could ultimately make renewables cheaper than fossil fuels. We explain how these claims undermine familiar framings of climate change, (...)
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  25. Public Values in the Right Context.Kian Mintz-Woo - 2020 - Australasian Philosophical Review 4 (1):57-62.
    [Comment] I am sympathetic to Avner de Shalit’s position that a political philosophy should incorporate public values, but I see their role differently. Philosophers of science standardly distinguish between values being introduced in the context of discovery (inputs into the investigation or arguments) and in the context of justification (acceptance or rejection of substantive claims in light of the arguments or investigation). I argue that de Shalit is wrong to put the public values in the context of discovery; with respect (...)
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  26. The NET effect: Negative emissions technologies and the need–efficiency trade-off.Kian Mintz-Woo - 2023 - Global Sustainability 6:e5.
    Non-technical summary: -/- When developing and deploying negative emissions technologies (NETs), little attention has been paid to where. On the one hand, one might develop NETs where they are likely to contribute most to global mitigation targets, contributing to a global climate solution. On the other hand, one might develop NETs where they can help support development on a regional basis, justified by regional demands. I defend these arguments and suggest that they reflect the values of efficiency and responding to (...)
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  27. Carbon Pricing is Not Unjust.Kian Mintz-Woo - 2024 - Global Challenges 8 (1):2300089.
    While there are a variety of moral issues that relate to carbon pricing policies, I will focus on one that has received a large amount of attention: is carbon pricing unjust? Campaigners and civil society groups, especially those involved in environmental and climate justice spaces, have rejected carbon pricing as unjust. This claim deserves some discussion and, in this perspective, I discuss a few potential dimensions of justice that could be relevant to this claim. My goal is to show that, (...)
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  28. Fossil fuels.Kian Mintz-Woo - 2016 - In Benjamin Hale & Andrew Light (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Environmental Ethics. Routledge. pp. 317-326.
    First, with respect to our personal relationship to fossil fuels, this chapter introduces arguments about whether we should or even can address our own usage of fossil fuels. This involves determining whether offsetting emissions is morally required and practically possible. Second, with respect to our relationship with fossil fuels at the national level, it discusses forms of local resistance, especially divestment and pipeline protesting. Finally, with respect to our relationship with fossil fuels at the international level, it considers two types (...)
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  29. Teaching & learning guide for: Carbon pricing ethics.Kian Mintz-Woo - 2022 - Philosophy Compass 17 (2):e12816.
    This teaching and learning guide accompanies the following article: Mintz-Woo, K., 2022. Carbon Pricing Ethics. Philosophy Compass 17(1):article e12803. doi:10.1111/phc3.12803. [Open access].
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  30. Carbon capture and storage: where should the world store CO₂? It’s a moral dilemma.Kian Mintz-Woo - 2021 - The Conversation.
    [Newspaper opinion] To give carbon storage sites the greatest chance of success, it makes sense to develop them in places where the geology has been thoroughly explored and where there is lots of relevant expertise. This would imply pumping carbon into underground storage sites in northern Europe, the Middle East and the US, where companies have spent centuries looking for and extracting fossil fuels. On the other hand, it might be important to develop storage sites in economies where the current (...)
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  31. Why COVID-19 is the right time to increase carbon prices.Kian Mintz-Woo - 2020 - RTÉ Brainstorm.
    [Newspaper opinion] strengthening carbon pricing during COVID-19 is the best time to do so for both consumers and for governments.
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  32. Introducing Climate Ethics and a New Climate Principle.Kian Mintz-Woo - 2021 - American Philosophical Association Blog.
    [Blog Post] This blog post (1) introduces a fundamental debate in climate ethics (polluter pays v beneficiary pays v ability to pay principles) while (2) arguing for a new principle (polluter pays, then receives, or PPTR/"Peter", principle).
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  33. (2 other versions)Book Review: Philosophical Foundations of Climate Change Policy, Joseph Heath. Oxford University Press, 2021, viii + 339 pages. [REVIEW]Kian Mintz-Woo - forthcoming - Economics and Philosophy.
    Joseph Heath sometimes plays the role of a gadfly in climate and environmental ethics. He often defends conventional, economics-focused claims which rub many philosophers the wrong way—claims that are at the heart of issues raised in these pages, claims such as that discounting is justifiable, growth is good, or cost-benefit analysis is appropriate in liberal democracies. I think we can all agree that sophisticated defences of conventional positions play an important part in the ecosystem. For philosophers, a gadfly can challenge (...)
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