While the foundations of climate science and ethics are well established, fine-grained climate predictions, as well as policy-decisions, are beset with uncertainties. This chapter maps climate uncertainties and classifies them as to their ground, extent and location. A typology of uncertainty is presented, centered along the axes of scientific and moral uncertainty. This typology is illustrated with paradigmatic examples of uncertainty in climate science, climate ethics and climate economics. Subsequently, the chapter discusses the IPCC’s (...) preferred way of representing uncertainties and evaluates its strengths and weaknesses from a risk management perspective. Three general strategies for decision-makers to cope with climate uncertainty are outlined, the usefulness of which largely depends on whether or not decision-makers find themselves in a context of deep uncertainty. The chapter concludes by offering two recommendations to ease the work of policymakers, faced with the various uncertainties engrained in climate discourse. (shrink)

Environmental ethicists have not reached a consensus about whether or not individuals who contribute to climate change have a moral obligation to reduce their personal greenhouse gas emissions. In this paper, I side with those who think that such individuals do have such an obligation by appealing to the concept of integrity. I argue that adopting a political commitment to work toward a collective solution to climate change—a commitment we all ought to share—requires also adopting a (...) personal commitment to reduce one’s emissions. On these grounds, individuals who contribute to climate change have a prima facie moral duty to lower their personal greenhouse gas emissions. After presenting this argument and supporting each of its premises, I defend it from two major lines of objection: skepticism about integrity’s status as a virtue and concerns that the resulting moral duty would be too demanding to be morally required. I then consider the role that an appeal to integrity could play in galvanizing the American public to take personal and political action regarding climate change. (shrink)

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has developed a novel framework for assessing and communicating uncertainty in the findings published in their periodic assessment reports. But how should these uncertainty assessments inform decisions? We take a formal decision-making perspective to investigate how scientific input formulated in the IPCC’s novel framework might inform decisions in a principled way through a normative decision model.

Given that mitigating climate change is a large-scale global issue, what obligations do individuals have to lower their personal carbon emissions? I survey recent suggestions by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Dale Jamieson and offer models for thinking about their respective approaches. I then present a third model based on the notion of structural violence. While the three models are not mutually incompatible, each one suggests a different focus for mitigating climate change. In the end, I agree with (...) Sinnott-Armstrong that people have limited moral obligations to directly lower personal emissions, but I offer different reasons for this conclusion, namely that the structural arrangements of our lives place a limit on how much individuals can restrict their own emissions. Thus, individuals should focus their efforts on changing the systems instead, which will lead to lower emissions on a larger scale. (shrink)

In this paper I engage interdisciplinary conversation on inaction as the dominant response to climate change, and develop an analysis of the specific phenomenon of complacency through a critical-feminist lens. I suggest that Chris Cuomo's discussion of the “insufficiency” problem and Susan Sherwin's call for a “public ethics” jointly point toward particularly promising harm-reduction strategies. I draw upon and extend their work by arguing that extant philosophical accounts of complacency are inadequate to the task of sorting out what (...) it means to be complacent on climate change. I offer a sketch for an alternative account, which I take to be a start in the direction of mapping out a diverse array of “motivational vices” that need to be named, grappled with, and remedied. (shrink)

Understanding climate change is becoming an urgent requirement for those in education. The normative values of education have long been closely aligned with the global, modernised world. The industrial model has underpinned the hidden and overt curriculum. Increasingly though, a new eco-centric orientation to economics, technology, and social organisation is beginning to shape up the post-carbon world. Unless education is up to date with the issues of climate change, the estate of education will be unable to (...) meet its task of knowledge transfer. This paper covers the basic science and ethical policy debates, and begins to outline the questions that will necessarily entangle education as we orientate ourselves to the new world that is upon us. (shrink)

The human faculty of moral judgment is not well suited to address problems, like climate change, that are global in scope and remote in time. Advocates of ‘moral bioenhancement’ have proposed that we should investigate the use of medical technologies to make human beings more trusting and altruistic, and hence more willing to cooperate in efforts to mitigate the impacts of climate change. We survey recent accounts of the proximate and ultimate causes of human cooperation in (...) order to assess the prospects for bioenhancement. We identify a number of issues that are likely to be significant obstacles to effective bioenhancement, as well as areas for future research. (shrink)

Obstacles to achieving a global climate treaty include disagreements about questions of justice raised by the UNFCCC's principle that countries should respond to climate change by taking cooperative action "in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities and their social and economic conditions". Aiming to circumvent such disagreements, Climate Change Justice authors Eric Posner and David Weisbach argue against shaping treaty proposals according to requirements of either distributive or corrective justice. The USA's (...) climate envoy, Todd Stern, takes a similar position. In this article I explain the practical and theoretical drawbacks of Posner & Weisbach's welfarist perspective and propose an alternative. I show that their arguments fail to rule out John Rawls' non-utilitarian, political conception of international justice and human rights, the Law of Peoples. On this basis I develop a conception of climate justice that highlights implications of some of Rawls' principles and adds a principle for determining fair shares of climate -treaty-related benefits and burdens. I propose this conception as a moral framework for negotiating a treaty that would promote human welfare consistently with requirements of justice, and I argue that a treaty proposal satisfying these requirements could best satisfy Posner & Weisbach's own feasibility criteria. (shrink)

Is drastic action against global warming essential to avoid impoverishing our descendants? Or does it mean robbing the poor to give to the rich? We do not yet know. Yet most of us can agree on the importance of minimising expected deprivation. Because of the vast number of future generations, if there is any significant risk of catastrophe, this implies drastic and expensive carbon abatement unless we discount the future. I argue that we should not discount. Instead, the rich countries (...) should stump up the funds to support abatement both for themselves and the poor states of the world. Yet to ask the present generation to assume all the costs of drastic mitigation.is unfair.Worse still, it is politically unrealistic.We can square the circle by shifting part of the burden to our descendants. Even if we divert investment from other parts of the economy or increase public debt, future people should be richer, so long as we avert catastrophe. If so, it is fair for them to assume much of the cost of abatement.What we must not do is to expose them to the threat of disaster by not doing enough. (shrink)

Scholars, journalists, and activists working on climate change often distinguish between “individual” and “structural” approaches to decarbonization. The former concern choices individuals can make to reduce their “personal carbon footprint” (e.g., eating less meat). The latter concern changes to institutions, laws, and other social structures. These two approaches are often framed as oppositional, representing a mutually exclusive forced choice between alternative routes to decarbonization. After presenting representative samples of this oppositional framing of individual and structural approaches in environmental (...) communication, we identify four problems with oppositional thinking and propose five ways to conceive of individual and structural reform as symbiotic and interdependent. (shrink)

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 the net losers, but to the emitters, just as the emitters owe compensation to the net losers for the negative externality. This is defended by appeal to theoretical virtues and to the social benefits of generating positive externalities, even when those positive externalities are coupled with far greater negative externalities. We call this the Polluter Pays, Then Receives ('PPTR', or 'Peter') Principle. This principle is then applied at two levels in the context of Canada. [Open access]. (shrink)

“Since the actions I perform as an individual only have an inconsequential effect on the threat of climate change,” a common argument goes, “it cannot be morally wrong for me to take my car to work everyday or refuse to recycle.” This argument has received a lot of scorn from philosophers over the years, but has actually been defended in some recent articles. A more systematic treatment of a central set of related issues shows how maneuvering around these (...) issues is no easy philosophical task. In the end, it appears, the argument from inconsequentialism indeed is correct in typical cases, but there are also important qualificatory considerations. (shrink)

This chapter concerns the nature of our obligations as individuals when it comes to our emissions-producing activities and climate change. The first half of the chapter argues that the popular ‘expected utility’ approach to this question faces a problematic dilemma: either it gives skeptical verdicts, saying that there are no such obligations, or it yields implausibly strong verdicts. The second half of the chapter diagnoses the problem. It is argued that the dilemma arises from a very general feature (...) of the view, and thus is shared by other views as well. The chapter then discusses what an account of our individual obligations needs to look like if it is to avoid the dilemma. Finally, the discussion is extended beyond climate change to other collective impact contexts. (shrink)

Climate change adaptation is largely a local matter, and adaptation planning can benefit from local climate change projections. Such projections are typically generated by accepting climate model outputs in a relatively uncritical way. We argue, based on the IPCC’s treatment of model outputs from the CMIP5 ensemble, that this approach is unwarranted and that subjective expert judgment should play a central role in the provision of local climate change projections intended to support decision-making.

Discussions of where the costs of climate change adaptation and mitigation should fall often focus on the 'polluter pays principle' or the 'ability to pay principle'. Simon Caney has recently defended a 'hybrid view', which includes versions of both of these principles. This article argues that Caney's view succeeds in overcoming several shortfalls of both principles, but is nevertheless subject to three important objections: first, it does not distinguish between those emissions which are hard to avoid and those (...) which are easy to avoid; second, its only partial reference to all-things-considered justice means it cannot provide a full account even of climate justice; and third, it assigns to the poor very limited duties to meet climate change costs, even where they have created those costs, which may incentivise them to increase emissions. An alternative pluralistic account which avoids these objections is presented. (shrink)

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 about distributing goods across or within times. The intention is to survey the morally important assumptions that go into estimates of the social cost of carbon, the marginal cost of an additional tonne of carbon dioxide to society. (shrink)

Climate change – and its most dangerous consequence, the rapid overheating of the planet – is not the offspring of a natural procedure; instead, it is human-induced. It is only the aftermath of a specific pattern of conomic development, one that focuses mainly on economic growth rather than on quality of life and sustainability. Since climate change is a major threat not only to millions of humans, but also to numerous non-human species and other forms of (...) life, as well as to the equilibrium and the viability of the very planet, addressing it is of dire importance. In this chapter it will be argued that addressing the threat of climate change is primarily a task and a challenge for ethics, since the stabilization and gradual amelioration of the situation requires abandoning an up to now dominant model of life, longestablished customs and a so far cogent system of moral values. It will be further maintained that this for ethics might – or, even, should – become a new categorical imperative, since preserving the viability of the planet is a fundamental moral duty not only towards the existing members of the moral community, but also towards future generations. (shrink)

Tackling climate change is one of the most demanding challenges of humanity in the 21st century. Still, the efforts to mitigate the current environmental crisis do not seem enough to deal with the increased existential risks for the human and other species. Persson and Savulescu have proposed that our evolutionarily forged moral psychology is one of the impediments to facing as enormous a problem as global warming. They suggested that if we want to address properly some of the (...) most pressing problems that cause catastrophic harm to our existence, we should enhance our moral behavior by biomedical means. The objective of this paper is, precisely, to reflect on whether a Moral Bio-Enhancement (henceforth MBE) program would be a viable option to confront the climate emergency. To meet this goal, I will propose the Ultimate Mostropic (hereafter UM) thought experiment, a hypothetical situation where we have already discovered the UM, an available, safe (without any deleterious secondary effects), extremely cheap and effective pill to enhance our cognitive, affective and motivational abilities related to morality. After briefly presenting the main argument of Persson and Savulescu regarding MBE and climate change, I will point out some of the difficulties that make MBE a daunting but exciting philosophical and scientific debate. In order to overcome these complications, I will describe the UM thought experiment, which involves two scenarios of the MBE program: (a) the state-driven, compulsory and universal enterprise, and (b) the initiative of voluntary individuals. I will show that the shortcomings of MBE programs through the UM in both scenarios make Persson and Savulescu’s proposal a not appealing pathway to mitigate climate change. In the final section, I will suggest that an inaccurate attribution of responsibilities underlies their proposal and that the collective inaction problem should be redirected primarily through a reinforcement of the political nature of the solutions. (shrink)

Is authoritarian power ever legitimate? The contemporary political theory literature—which largely conceptualizes legitimacy in terms of democracy or basic rights—would seem to suggest not. I argue, however, that there exists another, overlooked aspect of legitimacy concerning a government’s ability to ensure safety and security. While, under normal conditions, maintaining democracy and rights is typically compatible with guaranteeing safety, in emergency situations, conflicts between these two aspects of legitimacy can and often do arise. A salient example of this is the COVID-19 (...) pandemic, during which severe limitations on free movement and association have become legitimate techniques of government. Climate change poses an even graver threat to public safety. Consequently, I argue, legitimacy may require a similarly authoritarian approach. While unsettling, this suggests the political importance of climate action. For if we wish to avoid legitimating authoritarian power, we must act to prevent crises from arising that can only be resolved by such means. (shrink)

Dale Jamieson has claimed that conventional human-directed ethical concepts are an inadequate means for accurately understanding our duty to respond to climate change. Furthermore, he suggests that a responsibility to respect nature can instead provide the appropriate framework with which to understand such a duty. Stephen Gardiner has responded by claiming that climate change is a clear case of ethical responsibility, but the failure of institutions to respond to it creates a (not unprecedented) political problem. In (...) assessing the debate between Gardiner and Jamieson, I develop an analysis which shows a three-part structure to the problem of climate change, in which the problem Gardiner identifies is only one of three sub-problems of climate change. This analysis highlights difficulties with Jamieson’s argument that the duty of respect for nature is necessary for a full understanding of climate ethics, and suggests how a human-directed approach based on the three-part analysis can avoid Jamieson’s charge of inadequacy. (shrink)

In this paper I tell the story of the evolution of the climate change regime, locating its origins in "the dream of Rio," which supposed that the nations of the world would join in addressing the interlocking crises of environment and development. I describe the failure at Copenhagen and then go on to discuss the "reboot" of the climate negotiations advocated by Eric A. Posner and David Weisbach. I bring out some ambiguities in their notion of International (...) Paretianism, which is supposed to effectively limit the influence of moral ideals in international affairs, and pose a dilemma. I go on to discuss the foundations of their views regarding climate justice, arguing that the most reasonable understandings of their favored theoretical views would not lead to some of their conclusions. Finally, I return to the climate regime, and make some observations about the road ahead, concluding that for the foreseeable future the most important climate change action will be within countries rather than among them. (shrink)

The effects of anthropogenic climate change may be devastating. Nevertheless, most people do not seem to be seriously concerned. We consume as much as we always did, drive as much as we always did, eat as much meat as we always did. What can we do to overcome this collective apathy? In order to be able to develop effective measures, we must first get clear about the causes of climate change inaction. In this paper I ask (...) whether moral nihilism is a significant cause of climate change inaction. The answer to this question depends mainly on the extent to which being a moral nihilist reduces one's likelihood of taking action against climate change. At first sight, the extent seems to be considerable. I argue, however, that this assumption is false. Only slightly more non-nihilists than nihilists are led to climate-friendly actions by moral considerations. And in absolute terms, morality plays such a minor role in leading people to act that the difference is barely noticeable. (shrink)

Anthropogenic climate change poses some difficult ethical quandaries for non-anthropocentrists. While it is hard to deny that climate change is a substantial moral ill, many types of non-human organisms stand to benefit from climate change. Modelling studies provide evidence that net primary productivity (NPP) could be substantially boosted, both regionally and globally, as a result of warming from increased concentrations of greenhouse gases. The same holds for deployment of certain types of climate engineering, (...) or large-scale, technological modifications of the global environment in order to prevent or slow anthropogenic climate change. For example, solar radiation management with stratospheric aerosol injections could benefit plant life by promoting enhanced photosynthesis, increasing diffuse radiation, and reducing heat stress. This has a surprising implication: from some non-anthropocentric perspectives, certain scenarios of climate change and climate engineering might bring about morally better states of affairs when compared to emission-mitigation baselines. (shrink)

Climate change policy decisions are inescapably intertwined with future generations. Even if all carbon dioxide emissions were to be stopped today, most aspects of climate change would persist for hundreds of years, thus inevitably raising questions of intergenerational justice and sustainability. -/- The chapter begins with a short overview of discount rate debate in climate economics, followed by the observation that discounting implicitly makes the assumption that natural capital is always substitutable with man-made capital. The (...) chapter explains why non-substitutability matters if we are to take intergenerational justice seriously and invest aptly in mitigation. Non-substitutability simply implies that there are some forms of capital that cannot be substituted by another, and so consumption of one cannot be compensated with additional stocks of the other. The non-substitutability of critical natural capital can be defended without empirical data about preferences or the need to view the environment as a superior good, and the argument is presented through the language of keeping options open. -/- Those alive today make decisions about what natural capital to use and what to save for future. These choices are often represented as different points in a continuum of sustainability: weak sustainability is associated with a high degree of substitutability and therefore a lot of flexibility over what capital to consume, whereas strong sustainability is more stringent on substitutability. While it may be that in economical understanding weak and strong sustainability collapse into one another, philosophically the emphasis is slightly different. The chapter discusses how normative sustainability can be supported without ignoring opportunity costs and trade-offs. (shrink)

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) has only lately included environmental sustainability as a key area for the social desirability of research and innovation. That is one of the reasons why just a few RRI projects and proposals include environmental sustainability, and Climate Change (CC) in particular. CC is one of the grand challenges of our time and, thus, this paper contributes to the operationalization of CC prevention in RRI. To this end, the tools employed against CC were identified. (...) Tools originated in corporate social responsibility and sustainable innovation which help to operationalize strategies against CC in RRI practice. Complementarily, the latest proposals by RRI projects and actors related to CC were reviewed. The findings of the document analysis and the web review were arranged in a framework intended for research and innovation that has an indirect but relevant negative impact due to CC. Thus, four main strategies for CC prevention in RRI were determined: a voluntary integration of the aims, a life cycle perspective, open access databases and key performance indicators, and stakeholder management. The article is finished acknowledging diverse barriers hindering the operationalization of CC prevention in RRI, and we introduce future avenues for research in this area. (shrink)

Overpopulation is often identified as one of the key drivers of climate change. Further, it is often thought that the mechanism behind this is obvious: 'more people means more greenhouse gas emissions'. However, in light of the fact that climate change depends most closely on cumulative emissions rather than on emissions rates, the relationship between population size and climate change is more subtle than this. Reducing the size of instantaneous populations can fruitfully be thought (...) of as spreading out a fixed number of people more thinly over time, and (in light of the significance of cumulative emissions) it is not immediately clear whether or how such a 'spreading' would help with climate change. To bring the point into sharp relief, I first set out a simple model according to which population reduction would not lead to any climate-change-related improvement. I then critically examine the assumptions of the model. If population reduction would lead to a significant climate-change-related improvement, this must be because (i) population reduction would significantly reduce even cumulative emissions, and/or (ii) climate damages are, to a significant extent, driven by the pace of climate change, and not only the eventual extent of the change. (shrink)

The intuition of neutrality, as discussed by John Broome, says that the addition of people does not, by itself, produce or subtract value from the world. Such intuition allows us to disregard the effects of climate change policy onto the size of populations, effectively allowing us to make policy recommendations. Broome has argued that the intuition has to go. Orsi responds by urging a normative (rather than Broome's axiological) interpretation of neutrality in terms of an exclusionary permission to (...) disregard the value of adding lives. He explores justifications and limits of such permission by referring to the prospect of human extinction. (shrink)

Reprint of a chapter initially published in _Bioethical Insights into Values and Policy: Climate Change and Health_ (2016).

Early discussions of ?climate justice? have been dominated by economists rather than political philosophers. More recently, analytical liberal political philosophers have joined the debate. However, the philosophical discussion of climate justice remains in its early stages. This paper considers one promising approach based on human rights, which has been advocated recently by several theorists, including Simon Caney, Henry Shue and Tim Hayward. A basic argument supporting the claim that anthropogenic climate change violates human rights is presented. (...) Four objections to this argument are examined: the ?future persons? objection; the ?risk? objection; the ?collective causation? objection; and the ?demandingness? objection. This critical examination leads to a more detailed specification and defence of the claim that anthropogenic climate change violates human rights. (shrink)

commissioned for the Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change.

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 responses are (1) that there is both theoretical and empirical reason to think that carbon taxes do change behaviour, with larger taxes changing it to a greater extent; (2) that undistributed carbon taxes are regressive but distributing the tax receipts can alleviate that regressivity (and, in many cases, make the overall effect progressive); and (3) that while small changes for increasing democratic decision-making may be helpful, (fundamental) change takes time and the climate crisis requires urgent action. [Open access] //// -/- La crise de lamaladie à coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) devrait servir de rappel sur les coûts de la non-prise en compte d’un autre risque à long terme, les changements climatiques. Pour cette raison, il est impératif de considérer lesmérites des politiques susceptibles de contribuer à limiter les changements climatiques. Cet essai réfute trois objections courantes aux taxes sur le carbone : (1) qu’elles ne changent pas les comportements (2) qu’elles génèrent des charges injustes et augmentent les inégalités, et (3) qu’un changement fondamental et systémique est nécessaire au lieu de taxes sur le carbone. Les réponses sont (1) qu’il existe des raisons à la fois théoriques et empiriques de penser que les taxes sur le carbone modifient effectivement les comportements, et que des taxes plus élevées les modifient dans une plus grande mesure; (2) que les taxes sur le carbone non distribuées sont régressives,mais que la distribution des recettes fiscales peut atténuer cette régressivité (et, dans de nombreux cas, rendre l’effet global progressif); et (3) que, bien que de petits changements pour l’amélioration de la prise de décision démocratique peuvent être utiles, un changement (fondamental) prend du temps et la crise climatique exige une action urgente. (shrink)

Climate change is ‘a complex problem raising issues across and between a large number of disciplines, including physical and life sciences, political science, economics, and psychology, to name just a few’ (Gardiner 2006: 397). It is also a moral problem. Therefore, in this chapter, I will consider what kind of a contribution an ethical theory called ‘contractualism’ can make to the climate change debates. This chapter first introduces contractualism. It then describes a simple climate (...) class='Hi'>change scenario. The third section explains what kind of moral obligations we would have in that situation according to contractualism. Finally, the last section discusses some of the advantages and problems of the sketched view. These discussions should help us to better understand contractualism and illustrate how contractualism could perhaps enable us to come to grips with some of the more difficult moral aspects of climate change. (shrink)

Cheryl Hall has argued that framing of climate change must acknowledge the sacrifices needed to reach a sustainable future. This paper builds on that argument. Although it is important to acknowledge the value of what must be sacrificed, this paper argues that current frames about the environment falsely portray humans and the environment as in a zero-sum game, and in doing so ask people to give up the wrong things. This could undermine the public’s trust in environmentalism, and (...) might even create a backlash against action on climate change. I propose we need alternative framing that portrays humans as a keystone species, and highlights positive human activity. (shrink)

In this article we analyse the role that artificial intelligence (AI) could play, and is playing, to combat global climate change. We identify two crucial opportunities that AI offers in this domain: it can help improve and expand current understanding of climate change and it contribute to combating the climate crisis effectively. However, the development of AI also raises two sets of problems when considering climate change: the possible exacerbation of social and ethical (...) challenges already associated with AI, and the contribution to climate change of the greenhouse gases emitted by training data and computation-intensive AI systems. We assess the carbon footprint of AI research, and the factors that influence AI’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in this domain. We find that the carbon footprint of AI research may be significant and highlight the need for more evidence concerning the trade-off between the GHG emissions generated by AI research and the energy and resource efficiency gains that AI can offer. In light of our analysis, we argue that leveraging the opportunities offered by AI for global climate change whilst limiting its risks is a gambit which requires responsive, evidence-based and effective governance to become a winning strategy. We conclude by identifying the European Union as being especially well-placed to play a leading role in this policy response and provide 13 recommendations that are designed to identify and harness the opportunities of AI for combating climate change, while reducing its impact on the environment. (shrink)

The evidence is overwhelming that members of particularly wealthy and industry-owning segments of Western societies have much larger carbon footprints than most other humans, and thereby contribute far more than their “fair share” to the enormous problem of climate change. Nonetheless, in this paper we shall counsel against a strategy focused primarily on blaming and shaming and propose, instead, a change in the ethical conversation about climate change. We recommend a shift in the ethical framework (...) from a focus on the role of individual agents and a conversation about guilt; in its place, we propose a relational approach to public health ethics that is centered around the idea of relational solidarity. We begin by briefly reviewing the most common—and woefully inadequate—approach in the West to reducing emissions and responding to the health-related impacts of climate change. We then go on to propose a relational approach to public health ethics as an alternative ethical framework that better fits the moral problems associated with climate change and holds promise for a more meaningful response. (shrink)

Outside the philosophy classroom, global skeptics – skeptics about all (purported) knowledge of the external world – are rare. But there are people who describe themselves as “skeptics” about various more specific domains, including self-professed “skeptics” about the reality of anthropogenic climate change. There is little to no philosophical literature that juxtaposes the climate change skeptic with the external world skeptic. While many “traditional” epistemologists assume that the external world skeptic poses a serious philosophical challenge in (...) a way that the climate change skeptic doesn’t, many “applied” or “social” epistemologists assume that there isn’t much to be learned from debates about the external world skeptic, finding her challenge to be distant from both common sense and real-world concerns. I try to show that both of these views are mistaken. The external world skeptic raises deep questions that are important for our everyday deliberation about what to believe, and there are significant structural parallels between the arguments for external world skepticism and those for at least a form of climate change skepticism that is idealized – but not too idealized! – from the views of flesh-and-blood climate change skeptics. As such, we have strong reasons to think in parallel about how to reply to both skeptics’ challenges. I thus finish by (briefly) considering how different widespread responses to the external world skeptic might or might not generalize happily to the climate change skeptic’s challenge. (shrink)

This paper discusses two distinct questions of distributive justice raised by climate change. Stated very roughly, one question concerns how much protection is owed to the potential victims of climate change (the Just Target Question), and the second concerns how the burdens (and benefits) involved in preventing dangerous climate change should be distributed (the Just Burden Question). In Section II, I focus on the first of these questions, the Just Target Question. The rest of (...) the paper examines the second question, the Just Burden Question. To answer this question, I argue, it is necessary to address two important methodological questions (one concerning the choice between what I term Integrationism and Isolationism and the other concerning the choice between what I term Holism and Atomism). Sections III-V, thus, set out and explore these two methodological issues. Having done so, the paper then turns from methodological issues to substantive analysis, and in Section VI it examines three principles of distributive justice that, it has been suggested, should determine how the burden of addressing dangerous climatic changes should be distributed (the Polluter Pays Principle, the Ability to Pay Principle and the Beneficiary Pays Principle). (shrink)

Citation: Braun G, Hellwig MK, Byrnes WM (2007) Global Climate Change and Catholic Responsibility: Facts and Faith Response. Journal of Catholic Social Thought 4(2): 373-401. Abstract: The scientific evidence is now overwhelming that human activity is causing the Earth’s atmosphere to grow hotter, which is leading to global climate change. If current rates of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions continue, it is predicted that there will be dramatic changes, including flooding, more intense heat waves and storms, and (...) an increase in disease. Indigenous peoples and the poor will be most severely affected, as will Earth’s wild animals and plants, a quarter of which could become extinct in fifty years. We urgently need to switch to renewable (non-GHG emitting) energy sources, and try to live in a simpler, more sustainable way. In this article, a renewable energy expert, a biochemist, and a theologian have come together to describe the situation in which we find ourselves, and present ideas for a solution that incorporates Catholic social teaching. (shrink)

This collection is a contribution to the growing scholarship in the humanities and social sciences devoted to the normative dimension of global climate change.

We must resist thoroughly reframing climate change as a health issue. For human health–centric ethical frameworks omit dimensions of value that we must duly consider. We need a new, an environmental, research ethic, one that we can use to more completely and impartially evaluate proposed research on mitigation and adaptation strategies.

In this article I discuss a recent proposal according to which human beings are in need of moral enhancement by novel biomedical means in order to reduce the risk of catastrophes that could threaten the very possibility of continued human existence on this planet. I raise two objections to this proposal. The first objection claims that the idea that human beings could be morally enhanced by altering our emotional psychological inclinations, such as altruism, is misguided. In the line with Kantian (...) understanding of morality I argue that our morality is based on rationality and not on inclinations. If we take this view of morality it becomes clear that the proposed enhancement by biomedical means cannot be moral enhancement. What is enhanced is emotional aspect of our character, not our morality. People enhanced in this way would not act on the basis of their deliberate choices but on basis of preprogramed psychological inclination. This would in turn undermine our basic moral concept of freedom and, thereby, of moral responsibility. The second objection to the proposal show how the idea that moral enhancement by biomedical means should be mandatory violates political freedom of citizens. Faced with the objection that moral enhancement by biomedical means could be necessary in order to prevent catastrophic destruction of environment, in the final part of this chapter I try to point to education and liberal democracy as the alternative and morally acceptable ways of changing our behaviour. (shrink)

Political philosophers commonly tackle the issue of climate change by focusing on fundamental interests as a basis for human rights. This approach struggles, however, in cases where one set of fundamental interests requires one course of action, and another set of fundamental interests requires another course of action. This article advances an alternative response to climate change based on an account of global justice that gives weight to utilitarian, prioritarian, and luck egalitarian considerations. A practical application (...) of this pluralistic account is provided, which shows that it handles trade-offs between individuals’ interests in an appealing way, and that it supports an aggressive policy of climate change mitigation. This account provides a more plausible justification for rights against the harms of climate change. (shrink)

Climate change is considered as the global challenge in the 21st century. Anthropogenic activities have directly led to an immense increase in green house gas emissions mainly carbon dioxide that contributes mainly in the warming of atmosphere. The concentration of carbon dioxide is expected to rise twice as high as those existing in pre-industrial period, within the next century. Pesticides are the biological pollutants, which are being used by the man to kill the pests for increasing the yield (...) of many crops and insect vectors to control the spread of disease. The tremendous use of pesticides has caused severe health hazards to organisms including human beings due to climate change. Excessive use of pesticides may lead to the destruction of biodiversity. Many birds, aquatic organisms and animals are under the threat of harmful pesticides for their survival. The pesticides effects are lessen by organizing awareness program among the farmers, gave special training to them regarding consequences of pesticides, their screening and monitoring methods. (shrink)

Global climate change is one of the most widely discussed problems of our time. However, many libertarian thinkers have not participated in the ethical dimensions of this discussion due to a narrow focus on the scientific basis for concern about climate change. In this paper, I reject this approach and explore the kind of response libertarians should be offering instead. I frame the climate change problem as one which concerns potential rights-infringements and explore different (...) ways in which climate change might be thought to infringe upon rights. I conclude that there are some ways in which climate change might be expected to result in rights-infringements, but that some of the current concern about climate change cannot be reconciled with a rights-oriented paradigm. I close by outlining future directions for research, emphasizing that much remains to be done in order to formulate a complete libertarian perspective on climate change. (shrink)

This essay uses Ulrich Beck’s concept of risk society to understand the threat of catastrophic climate change. It argues that this threat is “abstract-corporeal”, and therefore a special kind of threat that poses special kinds of epistemic and ecological challenges. At the center of these challenges is the problem of human vulnerability, which entails a complex form of trust that both sustains and threatens human survival.

When discussing the general inertia in climate change mitigation, it is common to approach the analysis either in terms of epistemic obstacles (climate change is too scientifically complex to be fully understood by all in its dramatic nature and/or to find space in the media) and/or moral obstacles (the causal link between polluting actions and social damage is too loose, both geographically and temporally, to allow individuals to understand the consequences of their emissions). In this chapter (...) I maintain that both categories of obstacles now play a secondary role: many people have a clear understanding of the physical and social dynamics involved in climate change. The main reason why so few manage to reduce their ecological footprint is an ethical short-circuit that does not allow most people to reveal their “true” climate-related preferences in their daily choices. This short-circuit manifests itself in two phenomena that can be analysed through the lens of moral psychology. First, as the possibility of anticipated utility approaches, individuals further discount expected future utility and may even reverse their preferences (due to the so-called immediacy multiplier, in addition to the better known and discussed future utility discounting). Second, individuals struggle to order their preferences transitively when presented with the opportunity to obtain small net marginal utilities in the short run. The intertemporal and collective structure of the climate problem creates fertile ground for both phenomena, which means that even those who are sincerely convinced of the need to contribute to climate change mitigation end up trapped in loops of procrastination, both first and second level. If, however, we can understand the origin of these phenomena, then we will be able to devise counteracting solutions that will speed up individual mitigation efforts. I will therefore briefly propose three ethical/public strategies to break the procrastination loop: pre-commitment; increasing the costs of marginal postponements; reducing the disutility of action that is likely to be postponed. (shrink)