Abstract
The environmental crisis challenges the adequacy of traditional moral theories, particularly in the case of act consequentialism – the view that an act is morally right if and only if it brings about the best available outcome. Although anthropogenic climate change threatens the well-being of billions of humans and trillions of non-human animals, it is difficult for an act consequentialist to condemn actions that contribute to it, as each individual action makes no difference to the probability of whether climate change will occur. Or so one argument goes. This chapter examines the limits and possibilities of a consequentialist approach to climate ethics. It discusses various types of consequentialist theories applicable to the current environmental situation. It outlines outcome-based strategies to address the no-difference problem and to promote individual climate action. Finally, it considers environmental cases of evaluative uncertainty and how a consequentialist could deal with them.
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Acknowledgments
For very helpful comments, I am grateful to Roger Crisp, Theron Pummer, Tom Kaspers, Gianfranco Pellegrino, Louise Mackie, Luca Stroppa, Kida Lin, Boryana Todorova, Patrick Williamson, Gary O’Brien, and Ewan White. I am finally thankful for the support of an Open Philanthropy Scholarship.
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Cecchinato, M. (2023). Consequentialism and Climate Change. In: Pellegrino, G., Di Paola, M. (eds) Handbook of the Philosophy of Climate Change. Handbooks in Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07002-0_59
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