Who is to blame?
Who is to blame?
This chapter discusses the responsibility of individuals, groups, and countries for rising emissions leading to climate change. The ethics of climate change require judgments to be made about the relative claims of different individuals, groups, and countries. The environmental concern begins with the family and the home, steps out into our local community, and then takes account of the nation state. The recognition of partiality has an implication for the attempts to address global warming. Partiality suggests that we should address climate change primarily because it is in our self-interest to do so. Ethics need to be grounded in human nature and the circumstances that pervade today, rather than in some future utopia. Progress on this level requires a rejection of the Kyoto-based carbon-production approach and a serious shifting of the burden toward the developed countries.
Keywords: responsibility, emissions, climate change, environmental concern, global warming, partiality, self-interest
Yale Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
