Climate Ethics Research Articles

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.

Radically Hopeful Thinking for a Wicked Covid-19 Pandemic Problem

This paper explores the prospects of radical hope for addressing the devastation of the Covid-19 pandemic. Hope is useful for conceptualizing the proper balance between too much fear and too little about our uncertain future. First, I describe the ethical challenge of the pandemic as a wicked problem. Because accepted ethical theories fail to motivate solutions, wicked problems pressure us to develop our value systems, exercise moral imaginations, and discover creative solutions. Second, I develop an Aristotelian account of radical hope, drawing from ancient philosophy, virtue ethics, and recent climate ethics. Radical hope is a novel form of courage, which balances the goal of external success, that something good will emerge from the tragedy, against the goal of living well for its own sake through practical wisdom. I conclude by applying some lessons to our present situation.

The End of Factory Farming

The End of Factory Farming

A Fair Distribution of Responsibility for Climate Adaptation-Translating Principles of Distribution from an International to a Local Context

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.

Homo Sapiens Sapiens Progressive Defaunation During The Great Acceleration: The Cli-Fi Apocalypse Hypothesis

Homo Sapiens Sapiens Progressive Defaunation During The Great Acceleration: The Cli-Fi Apocalypse Hypothesis

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.

Debating Debating Climate Ethics

In Debating Climate Ethics, Stephen Gardiner and I offer our views on how ethics or theories of justice more generally apply to climate change and possibly help inform climate change policy. It is ...

Debating Climate Ethics Revisited

ABSTRACT In Debating Climate Ethics, David Weisbach and I offer contrasting views of the importance of ethics and justice for climate policy. I argue that ethics is central. Weisbach advocates for climate policy based purely on narrow forms of self-interest. For this symposium, I summarize the major themes, and extend my basic argument. I claim that ethics gets the problem right, whereas dismissing ethics risks getting the problem dangerously wrong, and perpetuating profound injustices. One consequence is that we should reject the alleged “feasibility constraint” of short-term, economic self-interest.

What do climate change winners owe, and to whom?

AbstractClimate 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.

Insurance and the temporality of climate ethics: Accounting for climate change in US flood insurance

How is knowledge about future climate change operationalized in governance of the present? This paper addresses this question by examining efforts to repurpose the US National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) for climate change adaptation. Policymakers and officials initially imagined the challenge to be principally a technical one of accounting for uncertainty in risk assessments and insurance tools. But the conduct and outcome of their efforts reflected instead politically charged normative tensions related to the temporality of climate ethics. NFIP policyholders, constituted as a ‘risk public’ by the instruments of flood insurance, exposed these tensions in mobilizations targeting practices of risk governance. The case shows that practices of ‘accounting for’ climate change and governing it through insurance work out—in however tentative or provisional a fashion—larger moralized disputes over the distribution of burdens, benefits and responsibilities over time.

‘Somewhere that’s green’: Towards a dramaturgical ethics of climate change

This reflection questions the materialism that drives professional and educational theaters in the United States. Dramaturgs could contribute an ethics of climate change to provide necessary interventions to contemporary theatrical practices.

Das klimaethische Selbst als Subjektivierungsform

In diesem Beitrag wird in einem theoretisch-normativen Diskurs aus der Perspektive der angewandten Ethik den Moralisierungstendenzen im Kontext der Klimawandelproblematik nachgegangen. Ziel ist es, sich den Ausdrucksformen der Moral und des Moralisierens in klimaethischer und verantwortungstheoretischer Sicht zu nähern. Die im Alltagsdiskurs zunehmende, normativ fordernde Moralisierung hin zu einem klimaverantwortlich handelnden Individuum ist an Verantwortungsdiskurse und Argumentationen der Klimaethik gebunden. Diese gilt es zu explizieren und zu prüfen, um die Ansprüche der Klimamoral als Selbstthematisierung zu ergründen. Fokussierend wird auf die in diesem Beitrag idealtypisch konstruierte Subjektivierungsform des klimaethischen Selbst hingearbeitet, um eine theoretische Fundierung dieser spezifisch normativen Subjektivierungsform als Diskussionsgegenstand und Ansatzpunkt für weitere moralpsychologische Forschung und transdisziplinäre Diskurse zu skizzieren.

Eine Kantische Begründung individueller Klimapflichten

Abstract According to a well-known problem in climate ethics, individual actions cannot be wrong due to their impact on climate change since the individual act does not make a difference. By referring to the practical interpretation of the categorical imperative, the author argues that certain actions lead to a contradiction in conception in light of the climate crisis. Universalizing these actions would cause foreseeable climate impacts, making it impossible to pursue the original maxim effectively. According to the practical interpretation, such actions are morally wrong. The wrongness of these actions does not depend on making a difference, rather these actions are wrong because they make it impossible for others to act accordingly. Thus, apart from imperfect duties, for which has been argued convincingly elsewhere (Henning 2016; Alberzart 2019), we also have perfect duties to refrain from certain actions in the face of the climate crisis.

Engaged Climate Ethics*

Engaged Climate Ethics*

Clement to the Corinthians (on climate change?): sojourning as a theologico-political alternative to environmental emergency rhetoric

After decades of critical scholarship calling attention to the dangers of emergency powers, many critical theorists and political activists are now turning to those same tools to combat climate change. The Climate Emergency Declaration movement advocates directly for the declaration of political states of emergency in jurisdictions across the globe. This article intervenes to recall the danger of emergency powers, with particular attention paid to the crucial role played by the political state of emergency (originally l’etat de siege fictif) in nineteenth-century France in the development of emergency power doctrine and twentieth-century authoritarian sovereignty. The second half of the article looks for an alternative, arguing that the radical and emancipatory response to the threat of climate change ought to be grounded in a political theology of ‘sojourning’, rather than the exception, drawing on the First Epistle of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians, as well as the commentary on that letter by Giorgio Agamben. This theologico-political response to the ethics of climate change furthers the scholarly debate on political theology and International Relations theory by engaging one of the crucial challenges of the twenty-first century and by developing a potential model for theological discussions of ethical problems beyond religious moralizing.

Isolationism and the equal per capita view

ABSTRACT In climate ethics, there is a debate about how the carbon budget, in terms of emissions permits, should be divided between people. One popular proposal, sometimes called The Equal per Capita View, says that everyone should have an equal share of the available emissions permits. Several authors have objected to this view, arguing that: (i) the equal per capita view implies isolationism since it treats emissions permits in isolation from other considerations of justice such as development, poverty and trade; and (ii) isolationism is implausible since it yields a number of problematic implications; therefore (iii) the equal per capita view is implausible. I examine this argument against the equal per capita view by scrutinizing the presumed problematic implications of isolationism. I show that they are either mistakenly inferred from isolationism or irrelevant as to whether isolationism is plausible or not. I conclude that the equal per capita view should not be discarded for being an isolationist approach. Rather, both isolationism and the equal per capita view should be considered as potential action guides. This result is of relevance to the climate political debate, since it could promote progress in the climate negotiations that are needed for limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as set by the Paris Agreement.

Contemporary Approaches in World Politics, Book Review of Daniel Biro (Coord.), Relații Internaționale Contemporane. Teme Centrale În Politica Mondială (Contemporary International Relations. Central Themes in World Politics), Iași: Polirom, 2013, Isbn 978-973-46-2227-6 În Analele Universității Din Oradea. Relații Internaționale Și Studii Europene, Tom V/2013, P. 233-241.

The volume coordinated by Daniel Biro entitled Relațiile Internaționale Contemporane. Teme centrale in politica mondiala (Internațional Contemporary Relations. Central themes in World Politics) contains articles signed by authors such as: Daniel Biro, Simona R. Soare, Radu-Sebastian Ungureanu, Olivia Toderean, Bogdan Ștefanachi, Mihai Zodian, Șerban Filip Cioculescu, Octavian Milevschi and Stanislav Secrieru, Paula Gânga, Valentin Quintus Nicolescu, Victor Negrescu, Diana Andersson Biro, Mihaela Raileanu, Diana Elena Neaga. The topics approached cover a wide variety of subjects: From the theory of international relations to central themes of world politics; transition of power, Identities and political communities, Diplomacy, International Economic System, the Transfer of arms, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; terrorism as an ancient phenomenon but in the same time new and surprising, “frozen conflicts” in post-Soviet space; Energy in international relations, Failed states and state construction. The radiography of some concepts and practice contested; Global governance; the Third World; The international development: between politics of development and international public relations; On ethics of climate change, The problem of gender in International Relations.

A Responsibility to Revolt? Climate Ethics in the Real World

Mainstream ethical debates concerning responsibility for climate change tend to overemphasise emissions and consumption while ignoring or downplaying the structural drivers of climate change and vulnerability. Failure to examine the political-economic dynamics that have produced climate change and made certain people more susceptible to its harms results in inapposite accounts of responsibility. Recognition of the structural character of the problem suggests duties beyond emissions reduction and redistribution – including, potentially, a responsibility to fundamentally restructure our political and economic institutions.

Towards a broader climate ethics: Confronting the oil industry with morally relevant facts

To establish and justify the oil industry's responsibilities for climate change in a non-arbitrary way, it is necessary to formulate a solid morally relevant factual basis. Analysing the morally relevant facts helps clarify the conduct of oil and gas companies, understand the moral context within which they operate, evince their intentions and, overall, it provides a normative foundation for the actions such responsibilities would compel them to undertake, as well as for their possible liability.After outlining the dimensions of the responsibility oil and gas companies should assume with regards to climate change and their relationship with morally relevant facts, this article will analyse them in detail. Oil and gas companies have known for decades that their activities caused climate change (Fact A – Awareness); they did not take steps to modify their fossil-fuel centred behaviour (Fact B – Behaviour), even though less carbon-intensive alternatives were possible (Fact C – Capacity). Additionally, oil and gas companies funded and orchestrated climate change denial campaigns, through which they successfully opposed political action against climate change (Fact D – Denial), while at the same time amassing and distributing fabulous wealth (Fact E – Enrichment) to the privileged few.

Climate Ethics and Climate Politics: Current Challenges and Potential Solutions

Climate change is not only one of the major (economic-)ethical issues of the 21st century; it is also an existential threat for many populations around the world. Yet, climate action and politics – both at the individual, corporate, and government levels – are oftentimes considered to be lagging behind and/or being inadequate and inefficient. What are the main reasons for this so-called ‘promise-performance gap’ or ‘disconnect’ and what could be done to overcome this social dilemma? The following paper explores both the ethical and politico-economic aspects and implications of climate change and provides a novel look at climate change from a business- and climate-ethics perspective. It does so by providing, first of all, an overview of the latest research findings of climate science. It examines then the socio-economic and especially the ethical implications of climate change and analyzes the most prevalent socio-economic and political challenges of climate action and politics at the micro (individual), meso (corporate), and macro (governmental) levels. The paper ends with a couple of suggested reform measures that could help to resolve the promise-performance gap and the ‘climate (action) dilemma’.