Individuals’ Contributions to Harmful Climate Change: The Fair Share Argument Restated

In the climate ethics debate, scholars largely agree that individuals should promote institutions that ensure the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. This paper aims to establish that there are individual duties beyond compliance with and promotion of institutions. Duties of individuals to reduce...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of agricultural & environmental ethics 2019-08, Vol.32 (4), p.569-590
Main Authors: Baatz, Christian, Voget-Kleschin, Lieske
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural Economics
Climate change
Conflicts
Education
Emissions
Emissions control
Environmental ethics
Ethics
Evolutionary Biology
Greenhouse effect
Greenhouse gases
Institutions
Philosophy
Plant Sciences
Social responsibility
Studies
Theory of Medicine/Bioethics
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Summary:In the climate ethics debate, scholars largely agree that individuals should promote institutions that ensure the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. This paper aims to establish that there are individual duties beyond compliance with and promotion of institutions. Duties of individuals to reduce their emissions are often objected to by arguing that an individual’s emissions do not make a morally relevant difference. We challenge this argument from inconsequentialism in two ways. We first show why the argument also seems to undermine the case for duties to promote institutions that the arguments’ proponents endorse. Second, we argue that individuals ought to cut emissions if they exceed their fair share of emissions entitlements and, by emitting, contribute to climate-related harm. In response to inconsequentialism, we specify the notion of ‘contribution’ via the so-called NESS theory, according to which an act is causally relevant for and contributes to an outcome if it is a Necessary Element of a Set of conditions that is Sufficient for the outcome. After refuting two objections to our approach, we conclude by discussing how to deal with possible conflicts between duties to promote institutions and to reduce one’s emissions.
ISSN:1187-7863
1573-322X
DOI:10.1007/s10806-019-09791-2