Marion Hourdequin

Climate, Collective Action and Individual Ethical Obligations

Both Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Baylor Johnson hold that under current circumstances, individuals lack obligations to reduce their personal contributions to greenhouse gas emissions. Johnson argues that climate change has the structure of a tragedy of the commons, and that there is no unilateral obligation to reduce emissions in a commons. Against Johnson, I articulate two rationales for an individual obligation to reduce ones greenhouse gas emissions. I first discuss moral integrity, which recommends congruence between ones actions and positions at the personal and political levels. Second, I draw on a Confucian, relational conception of persons to offer a critique of the collective action/tragedy of the commons framework itself. Under the relational conception, commons problems can be reconceptualised so as to dissolve the stark contrast between the individually and the collectively rational. This perspective can inform our approach to climate change and help reconcile individual and political action to mitigate it.

Ecological Restoration in Context: Ethics and the Naturalization of Former Military Lands

The philosophy of ecological restoration has focused primarily on three issues: the question of what to restore, whether and why restoration “fakes” nature, and how restoration shapes human-nature relationships. Using “M2W conversion sites” – former military lands recently redesignated as U.S. national wildlife refuges – as a case study, we examine how the restoration of these lands challenges existing philosophical frameworks for restoration. We argue that a contextual, case-based analysis best reveals the key ethical and philosophical questions related to restoration at M2W sites, and that such an approach may be useful in developing more nuanced philosophical analyses of ecological restoration more generally.

Engagement, Withdrawal, and Social Reform: Confucian and Contemporary Perspectives

Concern with social and moral reform plays an important thematic role in the Analects, and the text discusses a number of possible responses to a morally failing society. This essay offers an account of engagement, withdrawal, and social reform in the Analects, then places the issue of social reform in a contemporary context through a comparative and critical discussion of the Analects and the book Habits of the Heart, by Robert Bellah et al. It is argued that Confucius rejects the option of complete withdrawal from society, even where such withdrawal aims to preserve personal moral integrity. However, Confucius also cautions against deep involvement with corrupt regimes and suggests that reformers must withdraw from particular institutions when moral engagement is impossible within them. The recommendations found in Habits of the Heart strikingly parallel many of those in the Analects, particularly in emphasizing individual engagement and reinvigoration of tradition as sources of social renewal. Although traditions require critical examination in contemporary contexts, the idea—found in both texts—that engagement in social reform can benefit the reformer as well as society more broadly remains important and relevant today.

Revising Responsibility in a Proposal for Greenhouse Development Rights

The Greenhouse Development Rights (GDRs) developed by Paul Baer, Sivan Kartha, Tom Athanasiou, and Eric Kemp-Benedict (2008; Baer, 2009) are grounded in two fundamental ethical considerations: causal responsibility and capacity to pay. Both are common grounds for allocating moral and financial responsibility. Causal responsibility figures centrally in common law—in tort cases, for example—while capacity to pay is embedded in most income tax structures. Both factors deserve consideration in establishing a global climate change mitigation (and adaptation) regime, and the authors make an interesting move by working to ground GDRs in a cosmopolitan moral perspective, in which rights and responsibilities are determined in relation to individuals rather than to nation states. The basic idea of the GDRs framework, to establish a climate agreement based in fundamental moral egalitarianism, is important and promising. Below I suggest some ways in which the framework could be refined. In particular, I focus on the framework’s ability to meet a key desideratum for an ethical climate regime: alignment between the moral principles on which the framework is based and the mechanisms by which it is implemented. In this regard, I recommend changes to the responsibility component of the Responsibility–Capacity Index (RCI), which determines each nation’s share of costs for climate mitigation and/or adaptation. These changes include: first, an alternative method of calculating responsibility; and second, an alternative way of conceiving responsibility that loosens its cosmopolitan roots. The first change is a technical refinement, while the second involves a more philosophical shift. Both changes would produce a greater alignment between the framework’s moral grounding and its implementation.

Restoration and Authenticity Revisited

In this chapter, Marion Hourdequin and David Havlick focus on one of the central worries raised in relation to ecological restoration: the problem of authenticity. Robert Elliot, for example, has argued that restoration ‘fakes nature’. On this view, restoration is like art forgery: it deceptively suggests that its product was produced in a certain way, when in fact, it was not. Restored landscapes present themselves as the product of ‘natural processes’, when in actuality, they have been significantly shaped by human intervention. For Elliott, there seem to be two sources of inauthenticity in ecological restoration. First, the restored landscape is inauthentic because its natural genealogy has been disrupted by the intervention of humans: it has lost its authentic natural identity. Second, the restored landscape is inauthentic because it pretends to be something it is not; it obscures its own history. Hourdequin and Havlick argue that the first sense of inauthenticity is problematic; however, the second concern – about obscuring history – is important. Using case studies involving the naturalization of former military lands, Hourdequin and Havlick tease out more fully the ways in which landscapes can be ‘inauthentic’ by misleading observers about their genealogy. In such landscapes, it is not departure from ‘the original’ per se that is the source of inauthenticity; rather, restored landscapes fail to be authentic when they deceptively obscure critical elements of their past.

Geoengineering Justice: The Role of Recognition

Global-scale solar geoengineering raises critical ethical questions, including questions of distributive, procedural, and intergenerational justice. Although geoengineering is sometimes framed as a response to injustice, insofar as it might benefit those most vulnerable to climate-related harms, geoengineering also has the potential to exacerbate climate injustice, especially if control of research, governance, and potential plans for deployment remains concentrated in the hands of a few. The scope and scale of solar geoengineering, the diverse concerns it raises, and the lack of consensus surrounding it pose particular challenges for justice. I argue that addressing these challenges requires an inclusive, dialogical approach that takes seriously diverse perspectives, particularly the perspectives of those who are most affected by climate change and those who have had the least voice in decisions surrounding it. The concept of recognition––as developed in the work of Nancy Fraser, David Schlosberg, and others––offers a normative ground for this approach and can help guide the development of institutions and practices directed toward geoengineering justice.

Varieties of Non-Anthropocentricism: Duty, Beauty, Knowledge and Reality

The complexity of understanding and navigating human–nature relations calls for diverse angles of philosophical approach, and the articles in this issue exemplify that diversity, engaging questions of ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics and epistemology. They are connected, however, by a thread that runs through environmental philosophy: a desire to broaden or reframe understandings of humans’ places in, perceptions of, and obligations to the natural world. Relatedly, each of the contributions can be seen as an effort to push beyond narrow forms of anthropocentrism: Jake Monaghan defends biocentric individualism against a key objection; Yasha Rowher considers the potential implications of taking seriously obligations to prevent extinction and biodiversity loss; Fernando Arribas Herguedas seeks to extend Allen Carlson’s environmental aesthetics to agricultural landscapes; and Roope Oskari Kaaronen draws on process philosophy and the epistemology of Michael Polanyi to reconceptualise humans’ place in nature. What is striking about these contributions are the distinct ways in which they develop non-anthropocentric environmental philosophies1: whereas early discussions of non-anthropocentrism focused heavily on questions of intrinsic value, those questions do not dominate the discussion here, and there is significant attention to implications and applications in contemporary contexts. Monaghan’s article cleaves most closely to traditional debates, seeking to support the view that any living thing can have interests, and thereby, intrinsic value. Monaghan defends biocentric individualism by arguing that all living things have interests; this is because all living things are susceptible to death, which is an intrinsic bad. On this view, having interests does not require sentience, nor does it depend on desires. Monaghan also sidesteps controversial ethical debates over the concept of harm. He argues simply (p. 123): 1. Death is a prima facie harm; 2. Harm is a setback of interests; 3. Non-minded creatures can die; 4. So, non-minded creatures can be harmed; 5. So, non-minded creatures have interests.

Addressing the Harms of Climate Change: Making Sense of Loss and Damage

It has become increasingly obvious that efforts to mitigate emissions and adapt to our changing world may not be sufficient to address the consequences of our changing climate. As part of an effort to address this gap, at the 18th Conference of the Parties (COP 18), held in Doha, Qatar, an agreement was reached ‘to address loss and damage associated with the impacts of climate change in developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effect of climate change’ (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC], 2012). One year later, at COP19 in Warsaw, the UNFCCC formally launched the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) for Loss and Damage (UNFCCC, 2013a). This policy instrument represented a shift in our understanding of the harms that will result from climate change, and an acknowledgement that we must address those harms as a part of our policy response to climate change. The WIM constitutes both an attempt on the part of the UNFCCC to address one of the great challenges faced by vulnerable populations today, and an acknowledgement that no matter what we do, as a species, we will not be able to mitigate our emissions or adapt to changes fast enough or well enough to avoid real harm. But the connection between the moral notion of harm and the language of loss and damage, now seen throughout the UNFCCC pantheon, remains vague and unclear. While it is obvious that a changing climate will result in loss and damage, it is perhaps equally obvious that a very wide range of concerns could fall under the purview of ‘loss and damage’. Direct economic losses from extreme events associated with climate change are of clear relevance, but the WIM also addresses non-economic losses, including loss of life and culture. It includes losses related to concerns as diverse as ecosystem services, territorial integrity and indigenous knowledge (UNFCCC, 2013b). Yet, while the WIM references the broad reach of loss and damage, there is little analysis of how to conceptualize ‘loss and damage’ and its connection to harm and related moral concerns. The essays in this special issue address the wide range of under-explored concerns that lie beneath the loose concept of ‘loss and damage’ and constitute an effort to provide some depth to the connection between harm and loss and damage.