Climate Change and Individual Responsibility

Agency, Moral Disengagement and the Motivational Gap

Wouter Peeters,A. De Smet,L. Diependaele,S. Sterckx,Kenneth A. Loparo,Kenneth A. Loparo

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137464507
• Topic: Filosofia
• Subtopic: Filosofia ed etica nella scienza

This book discusses the agency and responsibility of individuals in climate change, and argues that these are underemphasized, enabling individuals to maintain their consumptive lifestyles without having to accept moral responsibility for their luxury emissions.

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Introduction

Abstract: This chapter introduces the key issue addressed in this book, namely the fact that, even though climate change constitutes a severe threat to humankind, response to it is characterized by inaction at all levels. Hence, the severity of climate change and its consequences does not appear to sufficiently motivate people to tackle it. There are two complementary explanations for this motivational gap: first, our moral judgement system might be unable to identify the complex problem of climate change as an important moral problem; and second, people can employ psychological mechanisms of moral disengagement, which allow them to evade individual responsibility for the consequences of their materialistic pursuits. The main aim of this book is to expand upon the second explanation.

Peeters, Wouter, Andries De Smet, Lisa Diependaele and Sigrid Sterckx. Climate Change and Individual Responsibility: Agency, Moral Disengagement and the Motivational Gap. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: 10.1057/9781137464507.0006.

1.1Is someone responsible?

Climate change represents one of the most serious and far-reaching challenges facing humankind in the 21st century. The recent Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2013; 2014a; 2014b) has updated the scientific consensus regarding the impact of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions on the climate.

On the occasion of the publication of the Working Group I contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report (IPCC 2013), the satirical news website The Onion (2013) carried the headline New report finds climate change caused by 7 billion key individuals. The article quotes IPCC lead author John Bartlett, suggesting that ‘now that we’ve done the hard work of identifying the key players responsible for this crisis, we can move forward with holding them accountable’ (The Onion 2013).

The satire resides in its hyper-realistic representation of the main problem involved in identifying people as responsible for tackling climate change. The conditions (especially the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere) causing climate change and its harmful effects are clearly predominantly anthropogenic (see Section 3.1.1). Those seven billion individuals are indeed all culpable since every single one of them emits greenhouse gases. Some may only emit small amounts, simply by breathing and eating, but others emit substantially more by heating or cooling their houses, driving cars, consuming luxury products, flying and so on.

Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the harmful effects of climate change are outrightly denied or blamed on natural processes, scientific uncertainties are overly emphasized and it is alleged that it won’t be that bad. Many claim either ignorance or that it is not their fault.¹ Regarding their engagement in greenhouse gas emitting activities, emitters maintain that it makes no difference whether they do it or don’t and that any way, everybody does it.² They also claim not to have any alternative because their economy is completely dependent on fossil fuels, or because the social and cultural context in which they are embedded imposes values and expectations that inescapably influence their choices and actions. Finally, many people believe that addressing climate change is exclusively the job of others – primarily the government and supranational institutions.

Hence, holding everyone responsible for climate change appears to be less straightforward than The Onion suggests.³ Interestingly, the conundrum has instead become that no one appears to be responsible for climate change.⁴

The facts are such that, even though climate change constitutes a severe threat to humanity, the response to it is characterized by inaction at all levels. For this gap between the judgement that climate change is a moral harm and the observed inaction or lack of motivation to tackle it, two explanations come to mind. The first holds that our moral judgement system is not well equipped to identify climate change as an important moral imperative, since it is a complex problem that does not have the characteristics of a paradigm moral problem (Jamieson 2006, 475–7; 2010, 436–8; 2014, 148–50). In his famous article If only gay sex caused global warming, Gilbert (2006) observes that climate change ‘doesn’t violate our moral sensibilities. It doesn’t cause our blood to boil ... Yes, global warming is bad, but it doesn’t make us feel nauseated or angry or disgraced, and thus we don’t feel compelled to rail against it’. In other words, climate change fails to generate strong moral intuitions. Since it is a complex issue, it does not motivate us to act (Markowitz and Shariff 2012, 243).

The second explanation for the widespread inaction is less well established, but is compellingly defended by Gardiner (2006, 407–9; 2011a, 301–38). He asserts that people face strong temptations to pass the buck onto future people, the poor and nature, and that this is facilitated by the complexity of climate change (Gardiner 2011a, 301). Gardiner labels this moral corruption. We will instead focus on the propensity to employ psychological mechanisms of moral disengagement by which people reconstruct their moral judgement of climate change and their contribution to it in order to evade individual responsibility.

In this book, we will argue that these two explanations are not mutually exclusive. The first explanation – the apparent inability of our moral judgement system to identify climate change as an important moral imperative – provides important insights into the problem of inaction. However, we will argue that the more specific arguments offered in support of this explanation cannot justify the quasi-complete inaction on the part of today’s most obvious culprits. More specifically, at least regarding superfluous, frivolous and profligate greenhouse gas emissions, we will argue that our conventional moral framework, involving concepts of harm and moral responsibility, is adequate to identify those who are most responsible for tackling climate change. It is instead the case that the complexity of climate change facilitates moral disengagement. Although we will not ignore the implications of the first explanation, our main aim is to expand upon the second explanation – namely, the evasion of responsibilities through moral disengagement.

1.2Overview

The aim of the following chapter, Chapter 2, will be to paint a clearer picture of the problem of climate change and the concepts involved in assigning responsibility for tackling it. We will discuss the threat observed and projected climatic changes pose to some key human rights. Subsequently, we will turn to the question of which principle(s) should guide the allocation of the responsibilities for tackling climate change and discuss the principle of moral responsibility that is central to common-sense morality. Moreover, we will explain that while much attention has focused on the responsibilities of states and supranational institutions, the role and responsibilities of individual emitters as moral agents have been underestimated. An important reason for this is that there are important doubts about the agency of individuals in complex global dynamics such as climate change. We will contrast this view with the observation that people psychologically reconstruct their contribution to climate change, in order to evade moral responsibility for it.

In Chapter 3, we will critically assess some of the most pervasive doubts with respect to treating individual emitters as the primary bearers of responsibility in the case of climate change. The chapter is structured according to the three features of the dominant phenomenology of agency – the way in which people experience themselves as agents with causal powers. We will describe how each of these features affects our thinking about individual responsibility for climate change. However, rather than exonerating emitters from moral responsibility for the contribution of their luxury emissions to climate change, we will show that these arguments turn out to facilitate strategies of moral disengagement.

There is then a motivational gap – reluctantly we may accept that there is a problem, but why should we take action to address it? In Chapter 4, building on the observations in the previous chapter, we will explore the two explanations for this motivational gap – namely, the inadequacy of our moral concepts, and the temptation to evade responsibility through moral disengagement. We will argue that the doubts about individual agency in climate change have become overly emphasized, giving individual emitters a convenient opportunity to obscure their responsibilities. Moral disengagement enables them to act upon self-interested motives without having to face the inconsistency between such conduct and their moral standards. We contend that through the influence of the prevailing liberal-capitalist worldview self-interested pursuits have tacitly become equated with the apparently socially desirable ends of wealth accumulation and consumption that are safeguarded from moral assessment.

Chapter 5 will tentatively suggest some strategies to increase emitters’ motivation to accept moral responsibility for their contributions to climate change, and to accordingly acknowledge their responsibilities for remedying it. In view of the explanations for the motivational gap discussed in the previous chapter, we will submit that there are three broad directions in which our efforts to increase motivation might take us. The most obvious strategy is to increase emitters’ motivation by enhancing their moral judgement on the basis of common-sense morality, or by invoking alternative moral values. Second, the motivational force of the underlying reasons for deploying mechanisms of moral disengagement can be reduced by encouraging people to evaluate and redefine their self-interested motives or by addressing the perceived demandingness of morality. These strategies can already reduce the opportunity for deploying moral disengagement and the need thereto, but we will argue that the propensity for moral disengagement can itself be tackled as well.

Finally, Chapter 6 will highlight the main points of our discussion.

Notes

  1   The title of Sinnott-Armstrong’s 2005 paper reads: It’s not my fault: Global warming and individual moral obligations.

  2   In his 1994 book Everybody does it!: Crime by the public, Gabor explores justifications and excuses ordinary people provide for their transgressions.

  3   As we will argue in Section 2.2, precisely the fact that everyone is responsible confronts us with a major problem. Moreover, we will argue that there are necessary qualifications for holding everyone responsible, qualifications that must be defensible from an ethical perspective.

  4   This paraphrases the main title of Gardiner’s important 2011(b) paper.

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Climate Change, Human Rights and Moral Responsibility

Abstract: This chapter sketches the problems of climate change and allocation of the responsibility for tackling it. In view of the threats to key human rights posed by observed and projected climatic changes, climate change is conceptualized as a moral harm. We explore how the burdens involved in remedying the problem should be allocated, focusing on the principle of moral responsibility that plays a central role in common-sense morality. The responsibilities of individual emitters have been underestimated because important doubts exist about the agency of individuals in complex global dynamics such as climate change. We contrast this view with the observation that people can psychologically reconstruct their contribution to climate change, in order to evade moral responsibility for it.

Peeters, Wouter...