In 'Climate Change and Individual Duties', Christian Baatz draws on two important features of Kant's moral philosophy: his principle that 'ought implies can', and his distinction between perfect and imperfect duties. For Baatz, morality is intrinsically limited by what can be reasonably demanded of a person, since this is built into the principle that ought implies can. Imperfect duties are cases where this intrinsic limitation is made more acute due to epistemic limitations regarding what sorts of demands are truly reasonable. For Kant, however, there is no intrinsic 'reasonable demand' limitation within morality itself; if someone has a moral obligation, they have it regardless of danger to their well-being. Only because some obligations (imperfect duties) are directly only about adopting various ends (such as the happiness of others) can Kant alleviate the stringency of these obligations, and he does so differently than Baatz. I close my discussion of these differences with two questions, first, whether Kant's flexibility regarding imperfect duties is helpful when applied to GHG emissions, and second, whether we should rethink some environmental obligations, seeing them as perfect duties.
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