In this article, I shall contend that Rawlsian public reason liberalism (PRL) is in tension with non-anthropocentric environmentalism. I will argue that many reasonable citizens reject non-anthropocentric values, and PRL cannot allow them to be used as the justification for ecological policies. I will analyse attempts to argue that PRL can incorporate non-anthropocentric ideas. I shall consider the view, deployed by theorists such as Derek Bell and Mark A. Michael, that PRL can make a distinction between constitutional essentials and non-essentials, (...) and therefore ecocentric values can be employed when only non-essentials are at stake. I will also consider Simon Hailwood’s argument that PRL can incorporate concern for nature based on its ‘otherness’. I shall conclude that both positions fail to rebut the claim that PRL excludes non-anthropocentric viewpoints. I will consider the question of whether PRL’s exclusion of non-anthropocentric ethics is a problem, and I shall show that appealing to purely anthropocentric arguments leads to a variety of unpalatable conclusions. I will suggest that comprehensive liberalism can include non-anthropocentric concerns, and hence is superior from an environmental perspective. (shrink)

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibility’ admits many interpretations. In the philosophical literature on climate justice, it has typically been cashed out in terms of the following three principles: the ability to pay principle (APP), the beneficiary pays principle (BPP), and the contribution to problem principle (CPP). Many of these accounts have given prominence to the CPP and APP, but there are some who argue that the BPP deserves greater consideration. In this (...) paper, I want to ask whether the BPP must feature in any plausible account of remedial responsibility for climate change. I examine this question by looking at three different ways in which the BPP has been incorporated into accounts of climate burden-sharing. In each case, there are questions about the particular role that the BPP is assigned and it looks like either the BPP must be given equal prominence to the CPP, or the BPP might be redundant when it comes to specific task of remedying the injustices of climate change. I suggest in the conclusion one possible reason to maintain the BPP. (shrink)

Not all countries do their fair share in the effort of preventing dangerous climate change. This presents those who are willing to do their part with the question whether they should 'take up the slack' and try to compensate for the non-compliers' failure to reduce emissions. There is a pro tanto reason for doing so given the human rights violations associated with dangerous climate change. The article focuses on fending off two objections against a duty to take up the slack: (...) that it is unfair and ineffective. We grant that it is unfair if some have to step in for others but argue that this does not amount to a decisive objection under conditions of partial compliance. With regard to the charge of emission reductions being ineffective, we argue that the empirical case for this claim is missing and that even if it were not, there still remains the option of taking up the slack in other forms. (shrink)

Faced with political opponents, proponents of climate justice should consider how politically feasible different principles of climate justice are. I focus in this chapter on the political feasibility of an “ability to pay principle” as a proposal for dividing the burdens of past emissions and emissions from the global poor. I argue that a formulation of an ability to pay principle with a voluntarist scope, restricted only to agreed upon collective goals, is significantly more politically feasible than one with a (...) preventative scope, which focuses on preventing a very bad outcome. A voluntarist ability to pay principle can much more clearly be justified to both constrained policy makers and reactionary citizens as a solution to a collective action problem among states that have already bound themselves to collectively solving the problem. A voluntarist principle also has a stronger precedent as a principle of international law. Thus, those philosophers concerned with the political feasibility of an ability-to-pay principle should carefully consider using a voluntarist rather than a preventative formulation. The chapter proceeds as follows. First, I outline what I mean by “political feasibility” and distinguish it from other conceptions of feasibility. Second, I explore the different rationales for a preventative ability to pay principle. Third, I introduce my voluntarist formulation of the ability to pay principle. I then reply to objections to that formulation, arguing that the drawbacks of a voluntarist formulation are not as dire as they might appear. (shrink)

Action must be taken to combat climate change. Yet, how the costs of climate action should be allocated among states remains a question. One popular answer—the polluter-pays principle (PPP)—stipulates that those responsible for causing the problem should pay to address it. While intuitively plausible, the PPP has been subjected to withering criticism in recent years. It is timely, following the Paris Agreement, to develop a new version: one that does not focus on historical production-based emissions but rather allocates climate burdens (...) in proportion to each state’s annual consumption-based emissions. This change in carbon accounting results in a fairer and more environmentally effective principle for distributing climate duties. (shrink)

Attributions of what we shall call normative responsibilities play a central role in everyday moral thinking. It is commonly thought, for example, that parents are responsible for the wellbeing of their children, and that this has important normative consequences. Depending on context, it might mean that parents are morally required to bring their children to the doctor, feed them well, attend to their emotional needs, or to see to it that someone else does. Similarly, it is sometimes argued that countries (...) that emit most greenhouse gases are responsible for preventing catastrophic climate change. This responsibility might imply that these countries are morally required to take necessary steps individually and jointly to come to an agreement on and implement a workable plan, and to avoid steps that worsen the situation. More trivially, the grading of your student’s essays might be your responsibility, as might making sure there is wine at tomorrow’s picnic, and you might thus be required to see to it that essays are competently graded and suitable wine brought to the picnic. -/- Though attributions of normative responsibilities are legion, such responsibilities have received surprisingly little philosophical attention compared to its normative relatives, obligations and reasons, and compared to retrospective responsibility. This chapter hopes to improve on this situation by taking on two main tasks. The first, attempted in section 1, is to spell out the general structure of normative responsibility, in particular the relation between normative responsibilities and corresponding obligations and demands. We suggest that normative responsibilities are constituted by normative requirements that the responsible agents care appropriately about how well things go in certain regards, and that obligations generally can be seen as straightforward upshots of requirements to care. -/- The second task, taken on in section 2, is to provide an overview of prominent sources of normative responsibility and its distribution among agents. Why would the children’s wellbeing be the parents’ responsibility? Why not the neighbor’s, or the state’s, or everyone’s? Here we discuss a range of possible sources, including agents’ abilities, costs involved in taking on the responsibility in question, retrospective responsibility for the situation, promises or contracts, and certain social relationships. (shrink)

The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change has over the past decade repeatedly warned that we are heading towards inevitable and irreversible climate change, which will negatively affect the lives, livelihoods, and well-being of millions of people around the world, both at present and in the future. In fact, many people, especially vulnerable and marginalized communities in low- and middle-income countries, already live with the effects of climate change in their daily lives. While adaptation – along with mitigation and compensation for (...) loss and damage as a consequence of climate change – was identified as the central pillars of a just climate policy in the Paris Agreement it is unclear whether this entails a right to adaptation – that some people are owed, as a matter of justice, to have the ability to adapt to climate change – and, if so, what such a right would look like. In this paper, I argue that individuals and communities who are or will be negatively affected by climate change through no fault of their own should have the right to adaptation. I argue that the right to adaptation should be specified through four questions: (i) who has a right to adaptation; (ii) what is it a right to; (iii) how much is it a right to; and (iv) who has the duty to uphold the right to adaptation? (shrink)

Excusable ignorance not only undermines moral culpability but also agent-responsibility. Therefore, excusable ignorance absolves of liability for costs. Specifically, it defeats liability that is meant to be derived from causal responsibility wherever strict liability cannot be justified. To establish these claims this paper assesses the potential of arguments for liability of excusably ignorant agents and thereby demarcates the proper domain of strict liability and traces the intuition that seemingly supports strict liability accounts to more general principles. The paper concludes that (...) liability cannot be justified in cases of excusable ignorance. Finally, it stresses that although excusable ignorance defeats the link from causal responsibility to liability for costs this does not imply that victims are left to fend for themselves. (shrink)

On the strict liability view, excusably ignorant agents must cover all the wrongful costs they have inadvertently brought onto others, although it is undisputed that they are not at fault. On the fault liability view, victims need not be compensated by excusably ignorant harmers. To some, both views appear harsh. Under fault liability, those who cause harm are seen as getting off scot-free while victims suffer. Under strict liability, agents are viewed as being burdened without any fault of their own. (...) In response to a seemingly intractable conflict between competing theories, some have called for compromise. Caney :210, 2010) has proposed a “modified strict liability principle” which was further developed by Bell :391–411, 2011). The principle’s revision is promising because it gives substantive reason for why and how middle ground should be achieved. In this paper, I assess this proposal and the prospects for mediating between strict and fault liability more generally. Specifically, I introduce concepts, present Bell’s principle of limited liability, critique it, and explore general avenues for finding middle ground between strict and fault liability. (shrink)

Nation-states are seen as reasonable candidates to whom to assign remedial responsibilities for climate change harms. A natural question arises: Based on what justification should these responsibilities be assigned to states? Three prominent principles have been proposed: the “Polluter pays,” the “Beneficiary pays,” and the “Ability to pay.” However, each principle faces important objections when considered in isolation. Building on David Miller's multi-principle theory of remedial responsibility, I propose and justify an account of remedial responsibility for the case of climate (...) change. I complement the account with a guiding algorithm that arranges these (and more) principles in a systematic way to make remedial responsibilities for climate change harms applicable. This guiding algorithm resolves the objections that arise when the principles are applied in isolation. (shrink)

Large-scale land acquisition (LaSLA) in developing countries is discussed controversially in both the media as well as academia: Opponents point to negative social and environmental consequences. By contrast, proponents conceive of LaSLA as much needed investment into the formerly neglected agricultural sector. This contribution aims at analyzing LaSLA’s environmental dimension against the background of strong sustainability. To this end, I will first introduce sustainable development as a normative concept based on claims for intra- and intergenerational justice. Subsequently, I will argue (...) in favor of a conception of strong sustainability and employ this conception in developing guidelines for the sustainable handling of natural capital. By outlining the main drivers and consequences of LaSLA, the contribution hopes to demonstrate that proponents conceive of LaSLA as a potential solution to several sustainability problems, notably answering growing worldwide demand for agricultural commodities by increasing agricultural yields, substituting agrofuels for fossil fuels and providing acreage for offsetting carbon emissions. Against this background I argue that if LaSLA causes environmental externalities, it actually increases the problems it is supposed to resolve. Thereby, I develop sustainability criteria in regard to LaSLA’s environmental consequences. (shrink)

Contemporary persons are daily confronted with enormous quantities of information, some of which reveal causal connections between their actions and harm that is visited upon distant others. Given their limited cognitive and information processing capacities, persons cannot reasonably be expected to respond to every cry for help or call to action, but neither can they defensibly refuse to hear and reflect upon any of them. Persons have a limited obligation to know, I argue, which requires that they inform themselves and (...) others about their role in harmful social practices, with a view toward challenging the norms that sustain such practices. In this paper, I explore this obligation to know, and the related idea of excusable ignorance, offering accounts of the epistemic burden that it entails for persons in their capacities as citizens and in the context of global climate change and of reproach as a potentially effective tool for rectifying rather than excusing ignorance. (shrink)

The first year of the Trump Presidency has been marked by regressive steps in US climate policy. Trump’s announcement on 1 June 2017 of his intention to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement was...

Using American football as a point of entry, I approach harmful sports from the perspective of fans’ roles and responsibilities. Given that sports’ profitability is a significant obstacle to reform...

This paper argues that, unlike the production-based emissions accounting (on which emissions are attributed to producers of goods and services), the consumption-based emissions accounting (on which emissions are attributed to consumers of these goods and services) can solve the problem of historical emissions. This problem concerns the question of how to assign remedial responsibility for emissions that were made by people who are now dead. Since historical emissions are embedded in the goods consumed by present consumers, and since present consumers (...) can (unlike past producers) do something about their emissions, a consumption-based accounting can contribute to solving the climate crisis. (shrink)

This article explores the consequences of falling costs of solar and wind power for the ethics of climate change mitigation. We suggest that price competitiveness of renewables reveals a divergence of interest between fossil fuel consumers and producers: cheap renewables strengthen precautionary arguments for aggressive mitigation for consumers but threaten the economic base of producers. As existing applications of the precautionary principle to climate change do not address this issue, we develop a novel approach based on lexical utilities. Given the (...) premise that climate catastrophe entails economic catastrophe but not vice versa, we argue that both producers and consumers should favor mitigation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Stephen Gardiner’s A Perfect Moral Storm offers an in-depth analysis of the ethical facets of climate change. In this paper, I contend that he nonetheless overlooks an important structural layer to climate vulnerabilities and injustices because he analyzes them implicitly interactional. I argue that climate change should rather be understood as a form of structural injustice as outlined by Iris M. Young. In this reading, the unjust socio-economic structural processes that give rise to climate change, the production and consumption (...) of fossil fuel energy, are at their core marked by (i) oppressive and dominating power relations that position agents (ii) intersecting with other structural constraints. Crucially, (iii) these structural processes arose historically, persist over time, and entrench the burden on those suffering in the future. This viewpoint improves our understanding of how the climate crisis unfolds over time in a way that augments Gardiner’s analysis. The structural approach can advance the climate justice debate both theoretically and practically. (shrink)

Moral duties concerning climate change mitigation are – for good reasons – conventionally construed as duties of institutional agents, usually states. Yet, in both scholarly debate and political discourse, it has occasionally been argued that the moral duties lie not only with states and institutional agents, but also with individual citizens. This argument has been made with regard to mitigation efforts, especially those reducing greenhouse gases. This paper focuses on the question of whether individuals in industrialized countries have duties to (...) reduce their individual carbon footprint. To this end it will examine three kinds of arguments that have been brought forward against individuals having such duties: the view that individual emissions cause no harm; the view that individual mitigation efforts would have no morally significant effect; and the view that lifestyle changes would be overly-demanding. The paper shows how all three arguments fail to convince. While collective endeavours may be most efficient and effective in bringing about significant changes, there are still good reasons to contribute individually to reducing emission. After all, for most people the choice is between reducing one’s individual emissions and not doing anything. The author hopes this paper shows that one should not opt for the latter. (shrink)

This paper focuses on one particular case that connects climate justice and climate economics. Its contribution is twofold. First, it aims at providing a sound normative foundation for carbon pricing mechanisms around the notions of a ‘right to energy’, the ‘duty not-to-harm’ and an argument for ‘restricted compensation’. Second, it identifies the normative elements from theories of climate justice that should guide the design of market-based instruments for climate change mitigation. This will cast light on the particular moral relevance of (...) the act of internalizing a negative externality and of the funds generated by putting a price on carbon. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper puts forward a normative framework to differentiate between the climate-related responsibilities of different countries in the aftermath of the Paris Agreement. It offers reasons for applying the chief moral principles of ‘historical responsibility’ and ‘capacity’ to climate finance instead of climate change mitigation targets. This will provide a normative basis to realize the goal of climate change mitigation while allowing for developing and newly industrialized countries to develop economically and offer an account of the distributive principles that can (...) regulate climate finance. This is a real-world interpretation of the 1992 UNFCCC principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ that takes into account the progress accomplished at the COP21 in Paris and offers a solution to the still unsolved problem of differentiated responsibilities. This paper offers an application of this proposal to the Green Climate Fund. (shrink)

How should responsibility be theorized in the context of the global climate crisis? This question is often framed through the language of distributive justice. Because of the inequitable distributi...

European Journal of Political Theory, Ahead of Print. How should responsibility be theorized in the context of the global climate crisis? This question is often framed through the language of distributive justice. Because of the inequitable distribution of historical emissions, climate vulnerability, and adaptation capacity, such considerations are necessary, but do not exhaust the question of responsibility. This article argues that climate change is a structural injustice demanding a theory of political responsibility. Agents bear responsibility not in virtue of their (...) individual causal contribution or capacity, but because they participate in and benefit from the carbon-intensive structures, practices, and institutions that constitute the global political and economic system. Agents take responsibility by engaging in collective political action to transform these structures that generate both climate hazards and unjust relationships of power. By incorporating distributive principles within a capacious conception of political responsibility, this framework advances the theory and practice of climate justice in two ways. First, adopting a relational rather than individualistic criterion of responsibility better makes sense of how and why individuals bear responsibility for a global and intergenerational injustice like climate change. Second, framing climate justice in terms of political responsibility for unjust structural processes better orients and motivates the political action necessary for structural transformation. (shrink)

The paper examines two backward-looking principles about how the costs of mitigating and adapting to climate change should be distributed. According to the polluter pays principle, such costs should be borne by those who caused climate change. According to the beneficiary pays principle, they should be borne by those who have benefited from the activities causing climate change, regardless of whether they took part in such activities or not. The paper unpacks both principles, considers their main problems and contends that, (...) when properly combined, they can address such problems. (shrink)

Critics of carbon mitigation often appeal to what Jonathan Glover has called ‘the argument from no difference’: that is, ‘If I don’t do it, someone else will’. Yet even if this justifies continued high emissions by the industrialised countries, it cannot excuse business as usual. The North’s emissions might not harm the victims of climate change in the sense of making them worse off than they would otherwise be. Nevertheless, it receives benefits produced at the latter’s expense, with the result (...) that it has more than it deserves, and that victims will have less. This enrichment is unjust; unjustly enriched agents ought to make compensation. The best form of compensation is vigorous action against climate change. (shrink)

At the United Nations climate change conference in 2011, parties decided to launch the “Durban Platform” to work towards a new long-term climate agreement. The decision was notable for the absence of any reference to “equity”, a prominent principle in all previous major climate agreements. Wealthy countries resisted the inclusion of equity on the grounds that the term had become too closely yoked to developing countries’ favored conception of equity. This conception, according to wealthy countries, exempts developing countries from making (...) commitments that are stringent enough for the collective effort needed to avoid dangerous climate change. In circumstances where even mentioning the term equity has become problematic, a critical question is whether scope for a fair agreement is being squeezed out of negotiations. To address this question we set out a conceptual framework for normative theorizing about fairness in international negotiations, accompanied by a set of minimal standards of fairness and plausible feasibility constraints for sharing the global climate change mitigation effort. We argue that a fair and feasible agreement may be reached by (i) reforming the current binary approach to differentiating developed and developing country groups, in tandem with (ii) introducing a more principled approach to differentiating the mitigation commitments of individual countries. These two priorities may provide the basis for a principled bargain between developed and developing countries that safeguards the opportunity to avoid dangerous climate change without sacrificing widely acceptable conceptions of equity. (shrink)

Distribution of responsibility is one of the main focus areas in discussions about climate change ethics. Most of these discussions deal with the distribution of responsibility for climate change mitigation at the international level. The aim of this paper is to investigate if and how these principles can be used to inform the search for a fair distribution of responsibility for climate change adaptation on the local level. We found that the most influential distribution principles on the international level were (...) in turn built on one or more of seven basic principles: (P1) equal shares, (P2) desert, (P3) beneficiary pays, (P4) ability, (P5) self-help, (P6) limited responsibility for the worst off, and (P7) status quo preservation. It was found that all the basic principles, but P1, P3, and P7, are to some extent translatable to local climate adaptation. Two major problems hamper their usefulness on the local level: (1) several categories of agents need to take on responsibility; and (2) emissions do not work as a base for all principles. P4, P5, and P6 are applicable to local adaptation without changes. P4 is of particular importance as it seems to solve the first problem. P2 is applicable only if the second problem is solved, which can be achieved by using risk of harm instead of emissions as the basis for desert. (shrink)

According to some scholars, while sets of greenhouse gases emissions generate harms deriving from climate change, which can be mitigated through collective actions, individual emissions and mitigation activities seem to be causally insufficient to cause harms. If so, single individuals are neither responsible for climate harms, nor they have mitigation duties. If this view were true, there would be collective responsibility for climate harms without individual responsibility and collective mitigation duties without individual duties: this is puzzling. This paper explores a (...) way to solve this puzzle. First, it will be argued that individual emissions, though not proper and full-fledged causes, causally contribute to raise the probability of climate harms. As a consequence, individuals are in fact responsible for their expected contributions to climate harms – this is contributive responsibility for likely outcomes. Second, it will be argued that people have responsibility also for the possible impacts of their individual emissions on climate harms. People can plausibly be regarded as individually responsible for the possible outcomes of their actions in close possible alternative worlds – this is robust responsibility. Non-causal individual responsibility for climate harms is plausible, and the puzzle may be solved. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the question of how the costs of undertaking an important type of climate change mitigation should be shared amongst states seeking an environmentally effective and equitable response to global climate change. While much of the normative literature on climate mitigation has focused on burden sharing within the context of reductions in emissions of greenhouse gas, I explore the question of how the costs of protecting tropical forests in order to harness their climate mitigation potential should (...) be distributed amongst developing and developed states. In response to this question, I outline and defend a ‘beneficiary pays’ account of forestry mitigation burden sharing that requires affluent states to finance measures supporting avoided deforestation while less affluent states, within whose territory these forests tend to be located, implement these measures. The normative basis for this account, I argue, is a principle of ‘unjust enrichment’ according to which developed states must bear much of the cost of avoided deforestation for its climate mitigation potential because of the huge economic benefits their citizens have accumulated from productive activities that have contributed to climate change. (shrink)

Many have begun to despair that climate justice will prevail even in a minimal form. The affective dimensions of such despair, we suggest, threaten to make climate action appear too demanding. Thus, despair constitutes a moral challenge to individual climate action that has not yet received adequate attention. In response, we defend a duty to act in hope for a more just (climate) future. However, as we see it, this duty falls differentially upon the shoulders of more and less advantaged (...) agents in society. From arguments by Black thinkers like Derrick Bell, we draw a set of distinctions between two types of hope: one for ideal justice, and one for more modest change; and between two types of hopeful actions, those undertaken through formal political channels and those we call 'extra-political' actions; and between two sites of differential moral burdens, those of the privileged and those of the oppressed. Ours is a case for facing even bleak realities, demanding otherwise, and acting in hope to achieve a better future. (shrink)

The effects of climate change lead to increasing social injustice and hence justice is intrinsically linked to a socio-ecological transformation. In this study, we investigate whether justice sensitivity motivates pro-environmental intention and behavior and, if so, to what extent emotions and moral disengagement determine this process. For this purpose, we conducted two quota-sampling surveys. Multiple regression analyses in both studies suggest that a higher perception of injustice from a perpetrator’s, beneficiary’s, and observer’s perspective is associated with an increased PEI. However, (...) moral disengagement best predicted PEB and PEI. Guilt and authentic pride were found to be emotional predictors of PEI. Additionally, mediation analyses demonstrated that guilt mediates the connection between both perpetrator and beneficiary sensitivity and PEI. These results suggest that when the predominant originators of climate change perceive global climate injustice from the perspective of a beneficiary or a perpetrator, they experience guilt and have a higher PEI. Based on this mechanism, it seems promising to render global injustice more salient to those responsible for activities that lead to climate change to motivate them to adapt their behavior. The role of moral disengagement and victim sensitivity as barriers to pro-environmental behavior is discussed in this context. (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)

This article revisits a principle of distributive justice accepted by most, if not all, scholars of climate justice. The principle at stake, the limit, protects those who are very badly off from bearing the costs of climate change mitigation. The persistent noncompliance of developed states with their obligations toward burden sharing, however, means that this principle is increasingly in tension with successful climate change mitigation, given it seems to require that those in poverty have continued access to emissions in cases (...) where alternative forms of energy are not provided. In the first half of the paper I outline this tension and show how the dominant expression of the limit in the literature, advanced by Henry Shue, must be abandoned. I argue that any attempt to articulate the limit in current circumstance, where the carbon budget is very scarce, must consider the climate harm associated with continued subsistence emissions. The second half of the article defends a principle, the exemption, which is best able to maintain the strong commitment to shielding those below the minimal threshold from the costs of mitigation, even in light of the potential harm that will result if they require emissions to fuel their energy needs. (shrink)

The view that innocent beneficiaries of injustice bear special duties to victims of injustice has recently come under attack. Luck egalitarian theorists have argued that thought experiments focusing on the way innocent beneficiaries should distribute the benefits they’ve received provide evidence against this view. The apparent special duties of innocent beneficiaries, they hold, are wholly reducible to general duties to compensate people for bad brute luck. In this paper we provide empirical evidence in defense of the view that innocent beneficiaries (...) have genuine special duties to victims of injustice. Through a series of four experiments, we show that judgments about the kinds of cases that luck egalitarian critics have provided do not undermine but rather support this view. We also explore a number of other questions that theorists working in this area have yet to discuss and provide suggestions for further research on the moral significance of benefiting from injustice. (shrink)

Human consumption of pharmaceuticals often leads to environmental release of residues via urine and faeces, creating environmental and public health risks. Policy responses must consider the normative question how responsibilities for managing such risks, and costs and burdens associated with that management, should be distributed between actors. Recently, the Polluter Pays Principle (PPP) has been advanced as rationale for such distribution. While recognizing some advantages of PPP, we highlight important ethical and practical limitations with applying it in this context: PPP (...) gives ambiguous and arbitrary guidance due to difficulties in identifying the salient polluter. Moreover, when PPP does identify responsible actors, these may be unable to avoid or mitigate their contribution to the pollution, only able to avoid/mitigate it at excessive cost to themselves or others, or excusably ignorant of contributing. These limitations motivate a hybrid framework where PPP, which emphasizes holding those causing large-scale problems accountable, is balanced by the Ability to Pay Principle (APP), which emphasizes efficiently managing such problems. In this framework, improving wastewater treatment and distributing associated financial costs across water consumers or taxpayers stand out as promising responses to pharmaceutical pollution from human use. However, sound policy depends on empirical considerations requiring further study. (shrink)

The politics of climate change is marked by the fact that countries are dragging their heels in doing what they ought to do; namely, creating a binding global treaty, and fulfilling the duties assigned to each of them under it. Many different agents are culpable in this failure. But we can imagine a stylised version of the climate change case, in which no agents are culpable: if the bad effects of climate change were triggered only by crossing a particular threshold, (...) and it was reasonably, but mistakenly, believed by each country that insufficiently many other countries were willing to cooperate in order for that threshold to remain uncrossed, no country would be required to make a unilateral contribution. Yet even without culpability, we can diagnose a moral ill: the world has gone other than it should have. If not for the mistaken beliefs, there would have been a global climate treaty, and all the avoidance of future suffering that would come with it. In this article I argue that this moral ill has implications for the non-culpable agents, in that it generates duties to disgorge actual holdings over and above the counterpart holdings in the relevant counterfactual: those holdings the agents would have had, were the world to have gone as it should. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWe consider whether and under what conditions it is morally illicit to profit from poverty. We argue that when profit counterfactually depends on poverty, the agent making the profit is morally obliged to relinquish it. Finally, we argue that the people to whom the profit should be redirected are those on whom it counterfactually depends.

Emissions grandfathering holds that a history of emissions strengthens an agent’s claim for future emission entitlements. Though grandfathering appears to have been influential in actual emission control frameworks, it is rarely taken seriously by philosophers. This article presents an argument for thinking this an oversight. The core of the argument is that members of countries with higher historical emissions are typically burdened with higher costs when transitioning to a given lower level of emissions. According to several appealing views in political (...) philosophy (utilitarianism, egalitarianism, prioritarianism, and sufficientarianism) they are therefore entitled to greater resources, including emission entitlements, than those in similar positions but with lower emissions. This grandfathering may play an especially important role in allocating emission entitlements among rich countries. (shrink)

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)

Our thesis is that there is no moral requirement to refrain from emitting reasonable amounts of greenhouse gases solely in order to enjoy oneself. Joyriding in a gas guzzler provides our paradigm example. We first distinguish this claim that there is no moral requirement to refrain from joyguzzling from other more radical claims. We then review several different proposed objections to our view. These include: the claim that joyguzzling exemplifies a vice, causes or contributes to harm, has negative expected value, (...) exceeds our fair share of global emissions, and undermines political duties. We show why none of these objections succeeds and conclude that no good reason has yet been proposed that shows why joyguzzling violates a moral requirement. (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 article we argue that duties towards future generations are situated on the collective level and that they should be understood in terms of collective responsibility for structural injustice. In the context of climate change, it seems self‐evident that our moral duties pertain not only to the current generation but to future generations as well. However, conceptualizing this leads to the non‐identity problem: future persons cannot be harmed by present‐day choices because they would not have existed if other choices (...) had been made. Recently, Charlotte Franziska Unruh has proposed a solution that places the duties not on the individual level but on the collective level. The current generation has a responsibility for future generations as a whole. This solution is promising, but we argue that it problematically overlooks the existence of unjust relations within the contemporary collective, as we all contribute differently to bringing future generations into existence. Therefore, we propose to graft Iris Marion Young's Social Connection Model, which is concerned with structural injustice, on to the discussion of responsibility for future generations. Our proposal incorporates the strengths of Unruh's arguments, while also allowing for a differentiated responsibility based on different implications in unjust structures. (shrink)

This paper argues that the Lockean proviso can be utilized as a relevant principle of justice for food security under global climate change. Since reducing GHG emissions is key to enhancing food security, we suggest a global food security scheme that systematically allots, among all people, access to GHG sinks in food systems impacted by global climate change. For consideration of the scheme, it is important to have a principle of justice. Furthermore, it should incorporate the value of fairness. A (...) relevant principle of climate justice for food security should meet the following criteria: (1) the parties concerned under the scheme are states; (2) fairness does not undermine the requirement that the basic needs of all people must be met; (3) when determining fair burdens, a fair distribution of the rights to use GHG sinks should be sensitive both to each state’s responsibility for its GHG emissions and to (4) each state’s effort to reduce such emissions. With them in mind, first, we argue that the Lockean proviso can provide legitimate guidance for each state. Second, the Lockean proviso reasonably enjoins that a state has a right to a food system that secures its citizens’ basic needs, and a duty to meet the basic needs of other people. Third, the Lockean proviso can be deployed as a principle of both global justice and intergenerational justice for food security. Finally, the Lockean proviso enables us to count the reduction of GHG emissions by each state as “the fruits of its labors”. (shrink)

Many theorists claim that if an agent benefits from an action that harms others, that agent has a moral duty to compensate those who are harmed, even if the agent did not cause the harm herself. In the debate on climate justice, this idea is commonly referred to as the beneficiary-pays principle . This paper argues that the BPP is implausible, both in the context of climate change and as a normative principle more generally. It should therefore be rejected.

Many theorists claim that if an agent benefits from an action that harms others, that agent has a moral duty to compensate those who are harmed, even if the agent did not cause the harm herself. In the debate on climate justice, this idea is commonly referred to as the beneficiary-pays principle. This paper argues that the BPP is implausible, both in the context of climate change and as a normative principle more generally. It should therefore be rejected.