Does Climate Change Put Ethics on a Collision Course with Itself?

The purpose of this paper is to outline an intuitive ethics of climate change, one that understands our maximizing values, according to which it makes things better to make things better for people, to be tempered by our existential values, according to which existence is just different: making things better for a person by way of bringing that person into existence doesn’t, on its own, make things better. Such a reconciliation, I argue, avoids the collision course we can otherwise anticipate between population ethics on the one hand and climate ethics on the other. The work of reconciliation is commenced by reference to what we can call the person-affecting, or person-based, intuition. It’s hard to get that intuition right; we need a formulation of the intuition that avoids the many pitfalls that many earlier formulations have fallen into. The principle I propose is, however, hardly immune to objection. In this paper, I consider and reply to two such objections both of which rely on the claim that probabilities are, in at least some cases, critical to moral evaluation. My counterargument will be that those objections evaporate just as soon as we clearly recognize that the probability facts underlying the one objection are very different from the probability facts underlying the other.

Climate Change and Non-Identity

What is the practical relevance of the Non-Identity Problem (NIP) for our climate change-related duties? Climate change and the NIP are often discussed together, but there is surprisingly little work on the practical relevance of the NIP for the ethics of climate change. The central claim of this article is that the NIP makes a relatively minor difference to our climate change-related duties even if we pursue what has become known as the ‘bite the bullet’ strategy: endorse a person-affecting view threatened by the NIP and not modify it in such a way as to evade the NIP. In particular I will argue that a harm-based view can justify the big-picture call for action emerging from the field of climate ethics. The key to reaching this conclusion is pointing out the consequences of our climate change-related decisions for people whose existence does not depend on these very decisions.

The Role of Climate Ethics in Biodiversity Conservation

The environmental crisis manifests in various ways such as: desertification, deforestation, marine and atmospheric pollution, environmental racism, destruction of biodiversity and so forth. One of these, the destruction of biodiversity has continued unabated. Many factors have caused biodiversity loss. The most serious of these factors is climate change. This paper argues that to conserve biodiversity there is serious need to combat climate change. Combating climate change requires more than knowledge of scientific facts and public policy, there is need for climate ethics and ethically reconstructive human behaviours that act for climate justice. Through critical analytic and hermeneutic methods the concepts that ground the paper are interpreted and examined. The issues that the paper deals with are critically dissected and appraised. The paper finds that biodiversity loss is one of the most serious problems in the environmental crisis. The paper concludes that climate ethics can help to mitigate biodiversity loss.

Responding to Critics of Emotions and Collectives

Chapter 6 explore three questions: why other climate ethicists including Dale Jamieson, Stephen M. Gardiner, and Tracy Lynn Isaacs have not examined moral emotions or the negative emotions of guilt and shame; why their philosophical assumptions prevent them from doing so; and what the advantages are of taking guilt and shame seriously in environmental and climate ethics. Philosophical climate ethics generally prioritizes rational, individual analyses and direct linear causality. These commitments are challenged by the complex layers of agency causing climate change and lead scholars to overlook (1) the contributions of guilt and shame to moral development and (2) how such moral emotions can help agents recognize their as-yet unacknowledged moral commitments––particularly critical tasks in rapidly developing moral circumstances such as that of climate change. Additionally, philosophical commitments of most climate ethicists hinder their recognition of important ethical questions: What are the ethical ramifications of environmental guilt and shame? Should agents intentionally induce them? Regardless of how these emotions come to exist, how should agents respond to them? A more capacious vision of ethics as outlined in this project—which draws on insights of laypeople as well as academics in multiple disciplines; includes rationality, emotion, relationships; acknowledges the agency of individuals and collectives; and recognizes human limits—can address a broader scope of ethical questions including but not limited to those sparked by environmental guilt and shame.

Reproductive Timing and Climate Change

It has been argued that the most impactful choice an individual could make, with respect to mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, is to have fewer children. This paper brings up a related aspect of individuals’ reproductive choices that has been neglected in the climate ethics literature: the timing aspect. It is argued that, from a climate change perspective, it does not matter only how many children people bring into existence, but also when they are brought into existence. The reason is that the age at which parents choose to procreate affects the number of people that will live simultaneously on the planet, which is in turn relevant for climate change. This provides individuals another means by which they can decrease their emissions.

What do climate change winners owe, and to whom?

Climate ethics have 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.