Climate change and individual duties

Fragnière, Augustin

doi:10.1002/wcc.422

Cited by 50 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 99 publications

(382 reference statements)

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“…While government and business policies certainly affect how individuals exercise their consumption choices, could consumers influence structures that influence their choices? Fragnière ( 2016 ) suggests that consumers can do so collectively. Social movements have employed boycotts (and sometimes buycotts as well) to target firms and governments.…”

Section: Climate Mitigation: Structural and Agentic Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Different approaches to reducing aviation emissions: reviewing the structure-agency debate in climate policy

Dolšak

Prakash

2022

Clim Action

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Aviation emissions account for about 2.5% of global carbon emissions, and by 2050, their share could rise to 22%. This review article explores how climate scholars view the role of structural (policy- or business-focused) or agentic (individual-focused) approaches in reducing these emissions. From a structuralist perspective, aviation emissions require policy changes because they reflect regulatory and business failures to address the climate crisis. By itself, individual actions will not significantly reduce emissions. Moreover, focusing on personal (agentic) action might allow governments and firms to disavow their role in the climate crisis. From an agentic perspective, aviation emissions reflect carbon-intensive lifestyles. Even within the existing policy structures, individuals can reduce the carbon footprint of their travel. At the same time, individuals can serve as influencers, voters, and social movement participants to pressure governments and businesses to develop low-emission air travel policies. Rather than viewing agency and structures as distinctly separate approaches, we suggest that they could co-evolve to create pathways to reduce aviation emissions. Policy initiatives can facilitate individual efforts to reduce air travel emissions, and individual action could shape policies structuring their choices.

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Section: Climate Mitigation: Structural and Agentic Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Different approaches to reducing aviation emissions: reviewing the structure-agency debate in climate policy

Dolšak

Prakash

2022

Clim Action

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“…You can personally try to have a lifestyle as climate-friendly as possible, the argument goes, but this will make no difference to the magnitude of climate change. 7 A number of ethicists have argued from the problem of inconsequentialism that individuals have no moral obligation to reduce their emissions-even, according to Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, to avoid frivolous emissions like those from driving a sport-utility vehicle through the countryside merely for pleasure. The only individual moral obligation, they contend, is to work for a collective political solution.…”

Section: Individual Obligation and The Problem Of Inconsequentialismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate Change, Individual Obligations and the Virtue of Justice

Darr

2018

Studies in Christian Ethics

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Over the last decade, a number of climate ethicists have turned their attention to the question of individual moral obligations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Important problems face their efforts, especially what is called the problem of inconsequentialism. The problems, I argue, arise largely from the failure to treat individual obligations as a matter of justice, a failure that stems from the common modern assumption that justice primarily concerns social institutions. I develop an alternative approach by appealing to the account of justice as a virtue in Thomas Aquinas. This approach allows us to talk about individual obligations to reduce emissions as obligations of justice, even in the current context of institutional failure. At the same time, I argue that approaching climate change in Thomistic terms requires an important modification of Aquinas’s understanding of justice.

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“…For about a decade, 'individual climate ethics' has become a topic in its own right (Fragnière 2016). The debate has mainly focused on mitigation duties, which are individual duties to reduce emissions, that is, mitigation duties.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual Compensatory Duties for Historical Emissions and the Dead-Polluters Objection

Portela

2019

J Agric Environ Ethics

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Debates about individual responsibility for climate change revolve mainly around individual mitigation duties. Mitigation duties concern future impacts of climate change. Unfortunately, climate change has already caused important harms and it is foreseeable that it will cause more in the future, in spite of our best efforts. Thus, arguably, individuals might also have duties related to those harms. In this paper, I address the question of whether individuals are obligated to provide compensation for climate related harms that have already occurred. I explore two possible strategies to answer that question. The straightforward strategy answers in the affirmative. Two approaches embrace this strategy: the 'ecological citizenship' approach and the benefits-based approach. I challenge those two approaches and rule out an affirmative answer. The alternative strategy answers in the negative but provides a way to respond to why currently living individuals should pay for burdens created for past individuals. Two possible approaches embrace this alternative: the community-based approach and my own state-based benefits approach. I will argue that individual duties do not fall under the realm of compensatory justice, but they have nonetheless a duty to bear compensatory burdens allocated to their states.

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Climate change and individual duties

Cited by 50 publications

References 99 publications

Different approaches to reducing aviation emissions: reviewing the structure-agency debate in climate policy

Different approaches to reducing aviation emissions: reviewing the structure-agency debate in climate policy

Climate Change, Individual Obligations and the Virtue of Justice

Individual Compensatory Duties for Historical Emissions and the Dead-Polluters Objection

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