Climate Ethics and the Everyday Lifeworld

Abstract

AbstractOur everyday lifeworlds, the environments in which we spend our daily lives, in which we exercise agency and control and to which we are bound through practical knowledge and routines, receive little attention in contemporary climate ethics. This is unfortunate, as climate ethics can benefit from an in-depth analysis of the lifeworld-perspective—especially when it comes to evaluating the individual’s role in the face of climate change. This paper focuses on two key problems, the problem of individual climate responsibility and the problem of the individual’s motivation to support climate protection policies. Currently discussed strategies to solve both problems face serious objections. A lifeworld-oriented perspective, so I argue, helps us to better understand both problems as well as the reasons why they are practically resistant to solutions proposed in the philosophical literature. My main claim is that climate change’s serious consequences cannot be experienced in the current everyday lifeworlds of most people who live in the Western hemisphere. In consequence, appeals to conscience lack adequate grounding in everyday contexts. These contexts, however, have a decisive impact on the individual’s motivation and moral behavior. Based on this critique, I give some suggestions how the problems of individual responsibility and motivation could be handled from a lifeworld-oriented perspective.