Ethics and Global Climate Change

You might expect climate change ethics to be simple. Science tells us that greenhouse gas emissions cause the world to warm up, and warming will cause great harm for people through floods, droughts and heat waves. Since our actions currently depend on greenhouse gas emissions and we can change this, ethics surely says that we should prevent these harms. Furthermore, economics tells us how this can be done politically. Externality theory suggests that taxing or marketising carbon would reduce emissions. Meanwhile, if we all become vegetarians and fly less, or if we offset our emissions, then this would also help.

Despite this, philosophers disagree deeply about what we should do.

Stephen Gardiner believes that the unequal distribution of burdens and...