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.
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© 2015 Wouter Peeters, Andries De Smet, Lisa Diependaele and Sigrid Sterckx
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Peeters, W., De Smet, A., Diependaele, L., Sterckx, S. (2015). Climate Change, Human Rights and Moral Responsibility. In: Climate Change and Individual Responsibility: Agency, Moral Disengagement and the Motivational Gap. Palgrave Pivot, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137464507_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137464507_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-49929-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-46450-7
eBook Packages: Palgrave Intern. Relations & Development CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)