Towards a Practical Climate Ethics: Combining Two Approaches to Guide Ethical Decision-Making in Concrete Climate Governance Contexts

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper discusses two approaches to climate ethics for practical reflection and decision-making in concrete local climate change governance. After a brief review of the main conceptual frameworks in climate ethics research, we show that none of these leading approaches is sufficiently context specific and pluralistic to provide guidance appropriate for concrete local climate governance. As alternatives, we present principlism as a methodology of mid-level principles and environmental pragmatism as an ethical approach. We argue that the two methodologies of principlism and pragmatism offer a new pluralistic framework that allows real-world conditions and contexts to be properly integrated into ethical analysis and decision-making in climate governance.