Title: (PDF) Individual Responsibility for Climate Change | Gianfranco Pellegrino - Academia.edu
Headings: Individual Responsibility for Climate Change
Individual Responsibility for Climate Change
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Individual Responsibility for Climate Change

Content: This result might be regarded as not very significant. After all, if a consequentialist approach to the morality of climate change turns out to be conceptually impossible, so much the worse for consequentialists. However, this is a hasty conclusion. Any conceptual assumption that narrows down the realm of ethical options that can be employed to deal with a specific issue is a suspicious starting point. The best way to conceptualize an issue in moral philosophy is one that allows every substantive stance. Arguments against a given approach should concern the content of the theory considered, not its conceptual assumptions. Assumptions able to exclude from the outset a given substantive solution should be avoided. Assuming that climate change does never involve individual responsibilities rules out consequentialism from the realm of the options that can be employed in the morality of climate change. This consequence of the assumption may well provide an argument against it, in the light of the considerations contained in the 5  See   G. Pellegrino – Individual Responsibility for Climate Change f3  previous paragraph. However, here I'll not pursue this line of argument.