Individual climate obligations and non-subsistence emissions

摘要

Do private individuals have a moral obligation to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions? In his rich and timely paper, Christian Baatz answers this question in the affirmative. People who emit over their fair share are morally obligated to emit less, he argues. This follows from the principle that, 'taking more than one's fair share [of the atmosphere's absorptive capacity] is immoral because one contributes to a harmful activity and deprives others of their fair share' (p.).