TY - JOUR
T1 - Climate Change and Moral Excuse
T2 - The Difficulty of Assigning Responsibility to Individuals
AU - Scavenius, Theresa
PY - 2018/2
Y1 - 2018/2
N2 - A prominent argument in the climate ethical literature is that individual polluters are responsible for paying the costs of climate change.
1 By contrast, I argue that we have reason to excuse individual agents morally for their contributions to climate change. This paper explores some of the possible constraints agents may face when they try to avoid harming the climate, constraints that might be acceptable reasons for excusing people’s contributions to climate change. Two lines of arguments are discussed. The first concerns the soft internal constraint: that democratic citizens do not experience their individual failures as failures per se. In other words, they do not psychologically ‘feel’ they are doing anything wrong.
2 The second argument concerns the soft external constraint: a number of studies have shown that many consumers report that while they are concerned about environmental issues, they struggle to translate their concern into green acts.
3 Put differently, while individual citizens may think they are morally obliged to avoid harming the climate, they struggle to fulfill these obligations. I argue that these constraints do not constitute reasons for not blaming individual agents. Instead, individual agents can be morally excused for contributing to climate change because external constraints on agency make climate change a case of imperfect duty, that is, a duty that is hard to fulfill.
AB - A prominent argument in the climate ethical literature is that individual polluters are responsible for paying the costs of climate change.
1 By contrast, I argue that we have reason to excuse individual agents morally for their contributions to climate change. This paper explores some of the possible constraints agents may face when they try to avoid harming the climate, constraints that might be acceptable reasons for excusing people’s contributions to climate change. Two lines of arguments are discussed. The first concerns the soft internal constraint: that democratic citizens do not experience their individual failures as failures per se. In other words, they do not psychologically ‘feel’ they are doing anything wrong.
2 The second argument concerns the soft external constraint: a number of studies have shown that many consumers report that while they are concerned about environmental issues, they struggle to translate their concern into green acts.
3 Put differently, while individual citizens may think they are morally obliged to avoid harming the climate, they struggle to fulfill these obligations. I argue that these constraints do not constitute reasons for not blaming individual agents. Instead, individual agents can be morally excused for contributing to climate change because external constraints on agency make climate change a case of imperfect duty, that is, a duty that is hard to fulfill.
KW - Climate politics
KW - Imperfect duties
KW - Moral excuse
KW - Responsibility
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85040234425&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s10806-018-9705-z
DO - 10.1007/s10806-018-9705-z
M3 - Journal article
SN - 1187-7863
VL - 31
SP - 1
EP - 15
JO - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics
JF - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics
IS - 1
ER -