While the importance of social and political trust has been well documented, there is a lack of scholarly consensus over where trust originates. This article tests three theoretical arguments – social-psychological, social-cultural, and political institutional – on the origin of political trust against three East Asian democracies. The empirical analysis from the AsiaBarometer survey illustrates that political institutional theory best explains the origin of political trust in East Asian cases. Citizens of these East Asian democracies have a high level of (...) political trust when they believe that their governments perform well in management of the national economy and political representation of elected officials. Meanwhile, social-psychological and social-cultural theories explain the origins of social trust, but not political trust. The evidence reveals that socially trusting people are not automatically politically trusting; social trust and political trust originate from different sources and do not transform from one to the other.Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

This study examined the relationship between person–organization (PO) fit on prosocial identity (prosocial PO fit) and various employee outcomes. The results of polynomial regression analysis based on a sample of 589 hospital employees, which included medical doctors, nurses, and staff, indicate joint effects of personal and organizational prosocial identity on the development of a sense of organizational identification and on the engagement in prosocial behaviors toward colleagues, organizations, and patients. Specifically, prosocial PO fit had a curvilinear relationship with organizational identification, (...) such that organizational identification increased as organizational prosocial characteristics increased toward personal prosocial identity and then decreased when the organizational prosocial characteristics exceeded the personal prosocial identity. In addition, organizational identification and prosocial behaviors increased as both personal and organizational prosocial identity increased from low to high. (shrink)

[Opinion] This aims to begin deliberation about investing in negative emissions technologies (NETs) by suggesting that the investment could be responsive to two particular values: need and efficiency—and that these values point us towards taking different actions. For negative emissions technologies, I suggest, we face a Need-Efficiency Tradeoff, i.e. a “NET effect”. This tradeoff also highlights several contrasts: responding to need focuses on regional and short-term moral considerations; responding to efficiency focuses on global and long-term moral considerations. [Open access].

Ideal carbon tax policy is internationally coordinated, fully internalizes externalities, redistributes revenues to those harmed, and is politically acceptable, generating predictable market signals. Since nonideal circumstances rarely allow all these conditions to be met, moral issues arise. This paper surveys some of the work in moral philosophy responding to several of these issues. First, it discusses the moral drivers for estimates of the social cost of carbon. Second, it explains how national self-interest can block climate action and suggests international policies—carbon (...) border tax adjustments and carbon clubs—that can help address these concerns. Third, it introduces some of the social science literature about the political acceptability of carbon taxes before addressing a couple common public concerns about carbon taxes. Finally, it introduces four carbon revenue usage options, arguing that redistributive and climate compensation measures are most morally justified. [Open access]. (shrink)

In Spinoza’s system, the identity of mental modes and extended modes is suggested, but a formal argument for its truth is difficult to extract. One prima facie difficulty for the claim that mental and extended modes are identical is that substitution of co-referential terms in contexts which are specific to thought or extension fails to preserve truth value. Della Rocca has answered this challenge by claiming that Spinoza relies upon referentially opaque contexts. In this essay, I defend this solution by (...) analyzing what is required to establish that Spinoza recognizes referentially opaque contexts as part of his system One objection that has been made to Della Rocca’s account is that he only establishes the intelligibility, not the actuality, of such mode-identity. In this essay, I argue that the intelligibility of mode-identity is sufficient to establish the existence of opaque attribute-specific contexts. (shrink)

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis ought to serve as a reminder about the costs of failure to consider another long-term risk, climate change. For this reason, it is imperative to consider the merits of policies that may help to limit climate damages. This essay rebuts three common objections to carbon taxes: (1) that they do not change behaviour, (2) that they generate unfair burdens and increase inequality, and (3) that fundamental, systemic change is needed instead of carbon taxes. The (...) responses are (1) that there is both theoretical and empirical reason to think that carbon taxes do change behaviour, with larger taxes changing it to a greater extent; (2) that undistributed carbon taxes are regressive but distributing the tax receipts can alleviate that regressivity (and, in many cases, make the overall effect progressive); and (3) that while small changes for increasing democratic decision-making may be helpful, (fundamental) change takes time and the climate crisis requires urgent action. [Open access] //// -/- La crise de lamaladie à coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) devrait servir de rappel sur les coûts de la non-prise en compte d’un autre risque à long terme, les changements climatiques. Pour cette raison, il est impératif de considérer lesmérites des politiques susceptibles de contribuer à limiter les changements climatiques. Cet essai réfute trois objections courantes aux taxes sur le carbone : (1) qu’elles ne changent pas les comportements (2) qu’elles génèrent des charges injustes et augmentent les inégalités, et (3) qu’un changement fondamental et systémique est nécessaire au lieu de taxes sur le carbone. Les réponses sont (1) qu’il existe des raisons à la fois théoriques et empiriques de penser que les taxes sur le carbone modifient effectivement les comportements, et que des taxes plus élevées les modifient dans une plus grande mesure; (2) que les taxes sur le carbone non distribuées sont régressives,mais que la distribution des recettes fiscales peut atténuer cette régressivité (et, dans de nombreux cas, rendre l’effet global progressif); et (3) que, bien que de petits changements pour l’amélioration de la prise de décision démocratique peuvent être utiles, un changement (fondamental) prend du temps et la crise climatique exige une action urgente. (shrink)

Climate ethics has been concerned with polluter pays, beneficiary pays and ability to pay principles, all of which consider climate change as a single negative externality. This paper considers it as a constellation of externalities, positive and negative, with different associated demands of justice. This is important because explicitly considering positive externalities has not to our knowledge been done in the climate ethics literature. Specifically, it is argued that those who enjoy passive gains from climate change owe gains not to (...) the net losers, but to the emitters, just as the emitters owe compensation to the net losers for the negative externality. This is defended by appeal to theoretical virtues and to the social benefits of generating positive externalities, even when those positive externalities are coupled with far greater negative externalities. We call this the Polluter Pays, Then Receives ('PPTR', or 'Peter') Principle. This principle is then applied at two levels in the context of Canada. [Open access]. (shrink)

Though many philosophers and scientists have been tried to define life, the view of materialism is substantiated by modern bioscience. Reductive approach of biology, however, cannot explain the holistic nature of life. As the science of complexity showed, life form is appeared on earth by emergence with self-organized criticality. From the interdependency of emergent life on others, man could be called as 'Homo interdependant' on network of biosphere. Phylogeny of life in evolutionary process showed 'difference and repetition'. With the emergent (...) nature of life, difference caused the individuality, which is a one of most distinguished features of life. Furthermore, because Individual experience cannot be replaced by others, responsibility of each daily life was also emerging. (shrink)

The three main types of policies for addressing climate change are command and control regulation, carbon taxes (or price instruments), and cap and trade (or quantity instruments). The first question in the ethics of carbon pricing is whether the latter two (price and quantity instruments) are preferable to command and control regulation. The second question is, if so, how should we evaluate the relative merits of price and quantity instruments. I canvass relevant arguments to explain different ways of addressing these (...) important policy questions, suggesting that carbon pricing is preferable to command and control regulation, and that price instruments have the theoretical edge over quantity instruments. [Open access]. (shrink)

A question arising from the COVID-19 crisis is whether the merits of cases for climate policies have been affected. This article focuses on carbon pricing, in the form of either carbon taxes or emissions trading. It discusses the extent to which relative costs and benefits of introducing carbon pricing may have changed in the context of COVID-19, during both the crisis and the recovery period to follow. In several ways, the case for introducing a carbon price is stronger during the (...) COVID-19 crisis than under normal conditions. Oil costs are lower than normal, so we would expect less harm to consumers compared to normal conditions. Governments have immediate need for diversified new revenue streams in light of both decreased tax receipts and greater use of social safety nets. Finally, supply and demand shocks have led to already destabilized supply-side activities, and carbon pricing would allow this destabilization to equilibrate around greener production for the long-term. The strengthening of the case for introducing carbon pricing now is highly relevant to discussions about recovery measures, especially in the context of policy announcements from the European Union and United States House of Representatives. Key Policy Insights: • Persistently low oil prices mean that consumers will face lower pain from carbon pricing than under normal conditions. • Many consumers are more price-sensitive during the COVID-19 context, which suggests that a greater relative burden from carbon prices would fall upon producers as opposed to consumers than under normal conditions. • Carbon prices in the COVID-19 context can introduce new revenue streams, assisting with fiscal holes or with other green priorities. • Carbon pricing would contribute to a more sustainable COVID-19 recovery period, since many of the costs of revamping supply chains are already being felt while idled labor capacity can be incorporated into firms with lower carbon-intensity. (shrink)

I discuss three families of methodologies that could be used to assign values to the normative parameters relevant to social discounting in welfare economics generally, and climate economics more specifically. First, I argue that in particular circumstances, there cannot be philosophical argumentation for normative questions; specifically, this occurs when the particular values being sought are both non-critical and from a quantitative range. Second, I argue that social preferences are insufficient if we take the problem to be normative and that proposals (...) for informed social preferences face significant challenges in implementation. Finally, I argue in favour of expert elicitation for experts in welfare economics, construed as those who understand the theoretical implications of adopting particular judgments. Those who understand the theoretical implications of adopting particular judgments will be better placed to develop coherent social plans while integrating relevant empirical data. (shrink)

While mitigation and adaptation will help to protect us from climate change, there are harms that are beyond our ability to adapt. Some of these harms, which may have been instigated from historical emissions, plausibly give rise to duties of compensation. This chapter discusses several principles that have been discussed about how to divide climate duties—the polluter pays principle, the beneficiary pays principle, the ability to pay principle, and a new one, the polluter pays, then receives principle. The chapter introduces (...) several challenges to these principles from the literature, before discussing which policies and institutions might be relevant to compensation, whether internationally (e.g. the Green Climate Fund) or intergenerationally (e.g. Broome and Foley’s World Climate Bank). It also describes some recent successful climate cases which require both the Dutch government and a private firm to act in accordance with climate targets to avoid potential rights-violations. Finally, it discusses one of the most important international concepts with respect to compensation: the Loss & Damage pillar of climate policy. (shrink)

This chapter introduces several distinctions relevant to what is called the “discounting problem”, since the issue is how (future) costs and benefits are discounted to make them comparable in present terms. The author defends the claim that there are good reasons to adopt Ramsey-style discounting in the context of climate change: the Ramsey rule is robust, flexible, and well-understood. An important distinction involved in discounting—“descriptivism” and “prescriptivism”—is discussed. It is argued that, even if we adopt prescriptivism, and accept that this (...) means there is need for moral experts in parameter assignments, there is a significant issue. The type of moral expertise required for the discounting problem will not involve knowledge of moral theory—thus making moral philosophy unhelpful in terms of making particular parameter assignments, despite these being substantive moral judgments. (shrink)

Parfit denies that the introduction of reasons into our ontology is costly for his theory. He puts forth two positions to help establish the claim: the Plural Senses View and the Argument from Empty Ontology. I argue that, first, the Plural Senses View for ‘exists’ can be expanded to allow for senses which undermine his ontological claims; second, the Argument from Empty Ontology can be debunked by Platonists. Furthermore, it is difficult to make statements about reasons true unless these statements (...) include reference to objects in reality. These arguments show the instability of Parfit’s claimed metaethical advantages over naturalism. [Open access]. (shrink)

When probability discounting (or probability weighting), one multiplies the value of an outcome by one's subjective probability that the outcome will obtain in decision-making. The broader import of defending probability discounting is to help justify cost-benefit analyses in contexts such as climate change. This chapter defends probability discounting under risk both negatively, from arguments by Simon Caney (2008, 2009), and with a new positive argument. First, in responding to Caney, I argue that small costs and benefits need to be evaluated, (...) and that viewing practices at the social level is too coarse-grained. Second, I argue for probability discounting using a distinction between causal responsibility and moral responsibility. Moral responsibility can be cashed out in terms of blameworthiness and praiseworthiness, while causal responsibility obtains in full for any effect which is part of a causal chain linked to one's act. With this distinction in hand, unlike causal responsibility, moral responsibility can be seen as coming in degrees. My argument is, given that we can limit our deliberation and consideration to that which we are morally responsible for and that our moral responsibility for outcomes is limited by our subjective probabilities, our subjective probabilities can ground probability discounting. (shrink)

Utility discounting in intertemporal economic modelling has been viewed as problematic, both for descriptive and normative reasons. However, positive utility discount rates can be defended normatively; in particular, it is rational for future utility to be discounted to take into account model-independent outcomes when decision-making under risk. The resultant values will tend to be smaller than descriptive rates under most probability assignments. This also allows us to address some objections that intertemporal considerations will be overdemanding. A principle for utility discount (...) rates is suggested which is rooted in probability discounting. Utility discounting is defended against objections from Parfit (1984) and Broome (2005); Broome (2012). A sample utility discount rate is estimated. [Open access]. (shrink)

This paper puts forward two claims about funding carbon capture and storage. The first claim is that there are moral justifications supporting strategic investment into CO2 storage from global and regional perspectives. One argument draws on the empirical evidence which suggests carbon capture and storage would play a significant role in a portfolio of global solutions to climate change; the other draws on Rawls' notion of legitimate expectations and Moellendorf's Anti-Poverty principle. The second claim is that where to pursue this (...) strategic investment poses a morally non-trivial problem, with considerations like near-term global distributive justice and undermining legitimate expectations favouring investing in developing regions, especially in Asia, and considerations like long-term climate impacts and best uses of resources favouring investing in the relatively wealthy regions that have the best prospects for successful storage development. [Open access]. (shrink)

[Comment] Donald Trump’s executive order on energy limits the costs and benefits of carbon to domestic sources. The argument for this executive order is that carbon policies should not be singled out from other policies as globally inclusive. Two independent arguments are offered for adopting a global social cost of carbon. The first is based on reinforcing norms in the face of commons tragedies. The second is based on the limitations of consequentialist analyses. We can distinguish consequences for which probabilistic (...) indifference is appropriate. The mechanisms for global effects for carbon are well-understood, whereas most policy effects are primarily domestic. [Open access]. (shrink)

It is a hallmark of a good model to make accurate a priori predictions to new conditions (Busemeyer & Wang, 2000). This study compared 8 decision learning models with respect to their generalizability. Participants performed 2 tasks (the Iowa Gambling Task and the Soochow Gambling Task), and each model made a priori predictions by estimating the parameters for each participant from 1 task and using those same parameters to predict on the other task. Three methods were used to evaluate the (...) models at the individual level of analysis. The first method used a post hoc fit criterion, the second method used a generalization criterion for short‐term predictions, and the third method again used a generalization criterion for long‐term predictions. The results suggest that the models with the prospect utility function can make generalizable predictions to new conditions, and different learning models are needed for making short‐versus long‐term predictions on simple gambling tasks. (shrink)

This Correspondence argues in response to Coolsaet et al. (2024) that there is an important role to play for stance-independent justice discussions that are not tied to specific social, political or critical perspectives. These can be valuable for climate research audiences, but also as a basis upon which to critically debate and research injustices.

The current consensus is that most natural categories are not organized around strict definitions (a list of singly necessary and jointly sufficient features) but rather according to a family resemblance (FR) principle: Objects belong to the same category because they are similar to each other and dissimilar to objects in contrast categories. A number of computational models of category construction have been developed to provide an account of how and why people create FR categories (Anderson, 1990; Fisher, 1987). Surprisingly, however, (...) only a few experiments on category construction or free sorting have been run and they suggest that people do not sort examples by the FR principle. We report several new experiments and a two‐stage model for category construction. This model is contrasted with a variety of other models with respect to their ability to account for when FR sorting will and will not occur. The experiments serve to identify one basis for FR sorting and to support the two‐stage model. The distinctive property of the two‐stage model is that it assumes that people impose more structure than the examples support in the first stage and that the second stage adjusts for this difference between preferred and perceived structure. We speculate that people do not simply assimilate probabilistic structures but rather organize them in terms of discrete structures plus noise. (shrink)

While there are a variety of moral issues that relate to carbon pricing policies, I will focus on one that has received a large amount of attention: is carbon pricing unjust? Campaigners and civil society groups, especially those involved in environmental and climate justice spaces, have rejected carbon pricing as unjust. This claim deserves some discussion and, in this perspective, I discuss a few potential dimensions of justice that could be relevant to this claim. My goal is to show that, (...) for the most important dimensions of justice, distributive and procedural, carbon pricing is not unjust as a policy instrument for addressing climate change. [Open access]. (shrink)

While mitigation and adaptation will help to protect us from climate change, there are harms that are beyond our ability to adapt. Some of these harms, which may have been instigated from historical emissions, plausibly give rise to duties of compensation. This chapter discusses several principles that have been discussed about how to divide climate duties – the polluter pays principle, the beneficiary pays principle, the ability to pay principle, and a new one, the polluter pays, then receives principle. The (...) chapter introduces several challenges to these principles from the literature, before discussing which policies and institutions might be relevant to compensation, whether internationally (e.g., the Green Climate Fund) or intergenerationally (e.g., Broome and Foley’s World Climate Bank). It also describes some recent successful climate cases that require both the Dutch government and a private firm to act in accordance with climate targets to avoid potential rights violations. Finally, it discusses one of the most important international concepts with respect to compensation: the Loss & Damage pillar of climate policy. (shrink)

This article delves into the examination of the similarities and disparities between education and enhancement, with a particular focus on enhancement within the realm of NBIC (Nano-Bio-Information Technology, Cognitive Science). After scrutinizing how proponents of enhancement have delineated the concept of education, our investigation unfolds along two primary dimensions: the anthropological underpinnings of education and enhancement discourse and their respective objectives. Through this analysis, we assert that education and enhancement exhibit distinct characteristics and objectives, defying easy comparison for determining which (...) approach is more conducive to human improvement, notwithstanding their superficially analogous theoretical frameworks and objectives. Furthermore, we aim to highlight the perceptual illusions that blur the demarcation lines between education and enhancement, in order to establish a clear and distinctive role for education amid the plethora of enhancement discourses. (shrink)

The current experiments examine mental health clinicians’ beliefs about biological, psychological, and environmental bases of the DSM‐IV‐TR mental disorders and the consequences of those causal beliefs for judging treatment effectiveness. Study 1 found a large negative correlation between clinicians’ beliefs about biological bases and environmental/psychological bases, suggesting that clinicians conceptualize mental disorders along a single continuum spanning from highly biological disorders (e.g., autistic disorder) to highly nonbiological disorders (e.g., adjustment disorders). Study 2 replicated this finding by having clinicians list what (...) they thought were the specific causes of nine familiar mental disorders and rate their bio–psycho–environmental bases. Study 3 further found that clinicians believe medication to be more effective for biologically based mental disorders and psychotherapy to be more effective for psychosocially based mental disorders. These results demonstrate that even expert mental health clinicians make strong distinctions between psychological and biological phenomena. (shrink)

Luke Elson defends carbon offsetting on the basis that it is not morally objectionable to shift harms or risks around. As long as emitting and offsetting does not increase the overall harms or risks—and merely shifts them—compared to refraining from emitting, he suggests there is no injustice involved. I respond in several ways, suggesting that the time delay involved in offsetting can increase these risks but, regardless, there is a defensible default which could justify refraining from emitting, even when planning (...) to offset. [Open access]. (shrink)

Nishida in his writings pursued two main lines of thought, which are almost equally pervasive and persistent. These are the philosophy of self-consciousness, which is mainly religious and soteriological, and the philosophy of history-politics, which is fundamentally historical and political. Both philosophies are essentially ontologies, by virtue of the application of ontological operators. These operators function in almost every phase of Nishida's philosophy, with the notable exception of his discussion of the sciences, and in the main include activity, self-determination, actuality, (...) one-qua-many logic, and immanent-qua-transcendent logic. Once they are at work, whatever entity they apply to will have full reality in Nishida's texts. In general, the operators are applied in turn to pure experience, an artistic creation, an act of self-consciousness, a historical epoch, the state, and the Emperor, in their chronological order in Nishida's texts. The extension of his ontological operators from acts of self-consciousness to a historical epoch is what I call the turn in Nishida's philosophy. This occurred about 1931 and is the most decisive shift in Nishida's philosophy, because it paved the way for Nishida's return to the world which he had once rejected and called transitory. This turn signifies that the applications of these ontological operators are turned from conscious phenomena to non-conscious phenomena, and also reflects Nishida's own critical stance toward his earlier religious-soteriological philosophy. ;Nishida's extension of ontological operators to his historical-political thinking, or his assertion of a direct union of self-consciousness and the historical world, is seen as fundamentally inappropriate. It fails to appreciate the incompleteness of a historical epoch and the culpability of the state. I call this union a category mistake, since acts of self-consciousness and a historical epoch are not similar enough to be treated by similar ontological operators. Nishida's later philosophy may be seen as his effort to overcome his earlier sharp distinction between homo interior and homo exterior by giving fuller reality to the latter. But the manner in which Nishida overcomes his internalism remains fundamentally internal, since the ontological operators themselves, which he uses to overcome that internalism, are originated from his discussion of aesthetic creativity and creative acts of self-consciousness. (shrink)

One branch of the responsible innovation literature involves the direction of innovation: if the public or decision-makers can or should direct innovation, how should innovation be directed? This paper explicates a case study where directionality – the plurality of plausible values for innovation – is directly implicated. In this case, a key technology may require a strategy for innovation, but there are contrasting normative reasons to drive that innovation in different ways, reflecting two distinct moral values, ‘effectiveness’ and responsiveness to (...) ‘need’. In this case, carbon dioxide removal, these values may well conflict. Strategically deploying carbon dioxide removal in a cost-effective manner would tend to support siting it in regions where there are significant oil and gas operations. In contrast, strategically deploying carbon dioxide removal in response to need would tend to support siting it in regions where expected demand for the technology is required for development. [Open access]. (shrink)

Worldwide populations are aging with economic development as a result of public health initiatives and advances in therapeutic discoveries. Since 1850, life expectancy has advanced by 1 year for every four. Accompanying this change is the rapid development of anti‐aging science. There are three schools of thought in the field of aging science. One perspective is the life course approach, which considers that aging is a good and natural process to be embraced as a necessary and positive aspect of life, (...) where the aim is to improve the quality of existing lifespan and “compress” morbidity. Another view is that aging is undesirable, and that rejuvenation and indeed immortality are possible since the biological basis of aging is understood, and therefore, strategies are possible for engineering negligible senescence. Finally, a hybrid approach is that life span can be extended by anti‐aging medicines but with uncertain effects on health. While these advances offer much promise, the ethical perspectives are seldom discussed in cross‐disciplinary settings. This article discusses some of the key ethical issues arising from recent advances in biogerontology. (shrink)

This chapter qualitatively lays out some of the ways that climate change impacts are evaluated in integrated assessment models (IAMs). Putting aside the physical representations of these models, it first discusses some key social or structural assumptions, such as the damage functions and the way growth is modeled. Second, it turns to the moral assumptions, including parameters associated with intertemporal evaluation and interpersonal inequality aversion, but also assumptions in population ethics about how different-sized populations are compared and how we think (...) about distributing goods across or within times. The intention is to survey the morally important assumptions that go into estimates of the social cost of carbon, the marginal cost of an additional tonne of carbon dioxide to society. (shrink)

As one aspect of China's modernization, the importation of Western psychiatric ideas poses a mystery. How are such ideas integrated with traditional assumptions? The apparently wholesale adoption of Western psychiatric categories runs counter to the fact that the Chinese have been generally reluctant to define problems in highly individualized psychiatric terms. Our lack of knowledge as to how the Chinese and Western medical models interface raises questions about the cross-cultural applicability of psychiatric theory. Ironically, the very conceptual categories intended to (...) facilitate professional discourse obscure cultural, political, and epistemological differences between Chinese and Western thought.This paper focuses on certain incongruities in psychiatric theory and practice in order to underscore many unresolved issues that still exist with respect to our cross-cultural understandings of mental illness. Insofar as the trend has been towards standardizing methodology, taxonomies have been generated without a corresponding development in textured comparison. Originating from Western theoretical frameworks, comparative analyses have been otherwise devoid of culture-specific knowledge. (shrink)

Non-technical summary: -/- When developing and deploying negative emissions technologies (NETs), little attention has been paid to where. On the one hand, one might develop NETs where they are likely to contribute most to global mitigation targets, contributing to a global climate solution. On the other hand, one might develop NETs where they can help support development on a regional basis, justified by regional demands. I defend these arguments and suggest that they reflect the values of efficiency and responding to (...) need, respectively. To the extent that these values conflict, they introduce what I call the Need-Efficiency Trade-off Effect (‘NET Effect’). -/- Technical summary: -/- Unlike other geoengineering methods, the effectiveness of negative emissions technologies (NETs) tends to be sensitive to regional siting. This paper argues that this point raises morally and legally important implications by identifying a trade-off between ‘efficiency’ and ‘need’. First, it introduces two arguments justifying NETs: one focused on contributions to global mitigation and the other focused on contributions to regional development. Second, reflecting the two arguments, the paper discusses the moral values of efficiency and need, respectively. For instance, if the strategy is to try to use NETs to maximize expected mitigation contributions to reflect efficiency, then deployment should occur in regions with the best prospects for success (e.g. Western countries). However, if the strategy is to try to use NETs to improve the chances of simultaneous development and mitigation to respond to need, then deployment should occur in regions with limited development and expected growth of demand for NETs (e.g. Asian countries). When these values conflict, I call that a Need-Efficiency Trade-off Effect (‘NET Effect’). The paper concludes by considering the NET Effect in the context of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage as well as direct air carbon capture and storage. [Open access]. (shrink)

First, with respect to our personal relationship to fossil fuels, this chapter introduces arguments about whether we should or even can address our own usage of fossil fuels. This involves determining whether offsetting emissions is morally required and practically possible. Second, with respect to our relationship with fossil fuels at the national level, it discusses forms of local resistance, especially divestment and pipeline protesting. Finally, with respect to our relationship with fossil fuels at the international level, it considers two types (...) of policy. On the one hand, some have argued that we should stop most trade in oil, on the basis that most oil that is traded is not subject to the control of citizens. On the other hand, some have argued that we should price the costs of fossil fuels so that there are market incentives to avoid digging them out of the ground. (shrink)

This teaching and learning guide accompanies the following article: Mintz-Woo, K., 2022. Carbon Pricing Ethics. Philosophy Compass 17(1):article e12803. doi:10.1111/phc3.12803. [Open access].

[Dissertation summary] When performing intertemporal cost-benefit analyses of policies, both in terms of climate change and other long-term problems, the discounting problem becomes critical. The question is how to weight intertemporal costs and benefits to generate present value equivalents. This thesis argues that those best placed to answer the discounting problem are domain experts, not moral philosophers or the public at large. It does this by arguing that the discounting problem is a special case of an interesting class of problems, (...) those which are both what I call morally complex and quantitative. [Open access]. (shrink)

[Comment] Jonathan Herington argues that harms can occur whether or not there is actually a loss. He claims that subjectively or objectively merely being at risk of losing access to basic goods is sufficient for lowering that individual’s well-being for the value of ‘security’. I challenge whether losing access to basic goods is sufficient to justify the introduction of this value. I also point to some issues in his interpretation of IPCC risk categories and the social science research he relies (...) on. [Open access]. (shrink)