CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE CHALLENGE OF （气候变化和挑战的）.pdf

ethics and the life sciences CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE CHALLENGE OF MORAL RESPONSIBILITY STEVE VANDERHEIDEN UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA DULUTH Abstract : The phenomenon of anthropogenic climate change—in which weather patterns and attendant ecological disruption result from increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere through human activi- ties—challenges several conventional assumptions regarding moral responsibility. Multifarious individual acts and choices contribute (often imperceptibly) to the causal chain that is expected to produce profound and lasting harm unless signifi- cant mitigation efforts begin soon. Attributing responsibility for such harmful consequences is complicated by what Derek Parfit terms “mistakes in moral mathematics,” or failures to cor- rectly assess the various individual contributions to collectively produced harm. Combined with the difficulties in attributing responsibility to agents for spatially and temporally distant harmful effects and that of holding agents culpable for effects (resulting from socially-acceptable acts) about which they may be ignorant, this paper attempts to sort out several ethical problems surrounding the identification of responsible parties contributing to climate change. T he phenomenon of anthropogenic climate change—in which weather pat- terns and attendant ecological disruption result from increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere through human activities—chal- lenges several conventional assumptions regarding moral responsibility. Mult