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

Baatz, Christian; Voget-Kleschin, Lieske

doi:10.1007/s10806-019-09791-2

Cited by 20 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…The discussion of political actions has tended to focus on voting and campaigning (see, for example, Maltais 2013 and Caney 2014) while the discussion of personal actions has focused on changing consumption behaviours, including how we travel and use energy (see, for example, Gardner andStern 2008 andPeeters et al 2015). There is near universal agreement in the literature that individuals have political responsibilities (or duties) to promote effective climate institutions but less agreement on the specifics of those responsibilities (Tan 2015, Baatz andVoget-Kleschin 2019). The disagreements reflect different views on the political efficacy of different types of action as well as different positions on what we can reasonably demand from individual citizens (see, for example, Cripps 2013, Maltais 2013, Caney 2014.…”

Section: Personal Consumption Responsibilitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Conceptually, critics of the argument from inconsequentialism challenge the way that it understands causation. The argument from inconsequentialism assumes that if C is a cause of effect E, E would not have happened without C. Alternative accounts of causation suggest other ways that C can be a 'causally relevant factor' for E even if E would (or might) have happened without C (Hiller 2011, Baatz andVoget-Kleschin 2019). On these alternative accounts, my emissions-generating behaviours are causally connected to climate harms, therefore, there may be consequentialist grounds for limiting my freedom.…”

Section: Personal Consumption Responsibilitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Climate Ethics with an Ethnographic Sensibility

Bell

Swaffield

Peeters

2019

J Agric Environ Ethics

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Where a licence is displayed above, please note the terms and conditions of the licence govern your use of this document. When citing, please reference the published version. Take down policy While the University of Birmingham exercises care and attention in making items available there are rare occasions when an item has been uploaded in error or has been deemed to be commercially or otherwise sensitive.

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Section: Personal Consumption Responsibilitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Personal Consumption Responsibilitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate Ethics with an Ethnographic Sensibility

Bell

Swaffield

Peeters

2019

J Agric Environ Ethics

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“…I restrict myself to advancing a positive case that virtue ethics can provide a substantial response to the problem of inconseqentialism. For further discussion of the problem of inconsequentialism, in particular its implications for promotional duties, see Baatz and Voget-Kleschin (2019). the pond, and the local community by unjustly depriving them of a green space that they once enjoyed.…”

Section: The Virtue Ethics Account Of the Wrongdoing Of Remaining A Mmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For an alternative account of what it means to contribute towards harmful consequences, seeBaatz and Voget-Kleschin (2019).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Inconsequential Contributions to Global Environmental Problems: A Virtue Ethics Account

Knights

2019

J Agric Environ Ethics

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This paper proposes an answer to what Sandler calls 'the problem of inconsequentialism'; the problem of providing justification for the claim that individuals should engage in unilateral reductions of their personal consumption, even though doing so will make an inconsequential contribution to mitigating the harmful impacts of the global environmental problems that the aggregate of such consumption causes. I provide an answer to this problem by developing a virtue ethics-based argument that a limited but significant class of consumption actions performed by typical consumers in rich, industrialised economies in the global North are moral wrongdoings, and the corresponding unilateral reductions in personal consumption are morally obligatory. I make this argument by drawing an analogy between a typical Northern consumer and a member of a golf club who has discovered that his club causes harm-by dumping used golf balls into a nature reserve-to which he inconsequentially contributes. I advance a moral evaluation of remaining a member of a harming group, based on the attitudes to the harm expressed by so remaining, and on Sandler's virtue-grounded agent-relative target principle of right action. I examine a number of objections to this argument. I use Elizabeth Cripps's notion of a 'harming putative group' to respond to the objection that the set of individuals whose aggregated consumption causes environmental problems is merely an arbitrary abstract set, membership of which is not justifiable grounds for moral evaluation. I then present two responses to the objection that withdrawal from this harming putative group-by refraining to perform those consumption actions which constitute membership-is unduly demanding.

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“…wild food foraging, dumpster diving, and farmers' markets) contribute to both individual and collective responses aimed at challenging and disrupting global systems of food production, distribution, and consumption (Canal Vieira et al, 2021). Low-carbon consumption and sustainable lifestyles are constructed through diverse individualistic and subjective values and needs concerning biodiversity and freshwater conservation (Chen et al, 2019) and environmental ethics (Baatz and Voget-Kleschin, 2019). Accordingly, youth enact their environmental citizenship through collective and individual actions that overlap in their daily lives and are interconnected with their sociocultural spaces (Arriagada et al, 2022), for instance, intersectionality and intragenerational and intergenerational relations (Chan, 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Everyday youth climate politics and performances of climate citizenship in Aotearoa New Zealand

Parsons,

Bhor,

Crease

2023

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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Young people around the world are creating their own spaces, strategies, and politics for climate action. In this article we explore the everyday informal politics of climate activism by youth from Aotearoa New Zealand's largest city (Auckland). We examine how young people, frustrated by the lack of global and domestic political inertia, are operationalizing their concerns about climate change into actions in their daily lives directed at mitigating their greenhouse gas emissions. Through a relational qualitative approach, we document the contradictory standing of youth, specifically as agentic actors and environmental citizens, who are aware of and seeking climate action through multiple modes of action including protesting, eco-consuming, influencing others, and eco-caring work. Our youth participants reported how their participation in various forms of climate activism helped to reduce their eco-anxiety and made them more hopeful about their collective abilities to address climate change. Our participants highlighted a hopeful view that their small-scale individual actions will collectively add up to large-scale changes at a systemic level. However, they were highly aware of and critical of state and corporate actors attempts to shift responsibility for taking actions to mitigate climate change onto individuals. Rather than situating themselves solely as eco-consumers engaging in eco-friendly purchasing practices, our youth participants narrated their sometimes contradictory climate actions (protesting, buy-cotting or boycotting, changing how they used goods, and services) as acts of resistance against the socio-economic status quo (high-carbon, neoliberal, and capitalist) that could act as trigger points for wider change. In this article we identify the various methods by which young people are participating in daily climate politics and demonstrating their agency, which are evident in their diverse pro-environmental-oriented and climate mitigation actions; all of which is evidence of how youth are seeking to be good climate citizens.

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

Cited by 20 publications

References 44 publications

Climate Ethics with an Ethnographic Sensibility

Climate Ethics with an Ethnographic Sensibility

Inconsequential Contributions to Global Environmental Problems: A Virtue Ethics Account

Everyday youth climate politics and performances of climate citizenship in Aotearoa New Zealand

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