Individual Environmental Duties: Questions from an Institution-Oriented Perspective

摘要

Many people are struggling with the question whether they should make their lifestyle more environmentally friendly, and they are looking to philosophers for guidance when dealing with questions such as: should we buy organic vegetables, take shorter showers and avoid air travel? Several authors have argued that we have an individual duty to reduce our environmental footprint in general, and our GHG emissions in particular (Dobson, 2003; Hourdequin, 2010; Singer, 2002). So, while Christian Baatz (2014) is not the first to defend such a duty, his contribution is interesting because he argues that the content of the duty should take into account that people have certain needs (e.g. people in poor countries, people with a handicap) and that their capacity to reduce emissions depend on the local infrastructure, the 'carbon-dependent structures' (e.g. possibility of visiting friends without using a car). Based on these considerations, Baatz concludes that individuals have the duty 'to reduce emissions in their responsibility as far as can be reasonably be demanded of them' (Baatz, 2014, p. ) and it is 'reasonable' to reduce when a carbon-emitting action '(a) has no moral weight or (b) an alternative course of action [...] causing less emissions exist' (Baatz, 2014, p.).