Causing Global Warming

Do I cause global warming, climate change and their related harms when I go for a leisure drive with my gas-guzzling car? The current verdict seems to be that I do not; the emissions produced by my drive are much too insignificant to make a difference for the occurrence of global warming and its rel...

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1. VerfasserIn: Gunnemyr, Mattias (VerfasserIn)
Medienart: Elektronisch Aufsatz
Sprache:Englisch
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Veröffentlicht: Springer Science + Business Media B. V [2019]
In: Ethical theory and moral practice
Jahr: 2019, Band: 22, Heft: 2, Seiten: 399-424
IxTheo Notationen:NCG Ökologische Ethik; Schöpfungsethik
VA Philosophie
weitere Schlagwörter:B Causal influence
B Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
B Causation
B Causing harm
B Global warming
B David Lewis
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Zusammenfassung:Do I cause global warming, climate change and their related harms when I go for a leisure drive with my gas-guzzling car? The current verdict seems to be that I do not; the emissions produced by my drive are much too insignificant to make a difference for the occurrence of global warming and its related harms. I argue that our verdict on this issue depends on what we mean by 'causation'. If we for instance assume a simple counterfactual analysis of causation according to which 'C causes E' means 'if C had not occurred, E would not have occurred', we must conclude that a single drive does not cause global warming. However, this analysis of causation is well-known for giving counterintuitive results in some important cases. If we instead adopt Lewis's (2000) analysis of causation, it turns out that it is indeterminate whether I cause global warming (etc.) when I go for a single drive. Still, in contexts where we seek to control or understand global warming, there is a pressure to adopt a more fragile view of this event. When we adopt such a view, it turns out that a single drive does cause global warming (etc.). This means that we cannot like Sinnott-Armstrong (2005) and Kingston and Sinnott-Armstrong (2018) reject the idea that I should refrain from going for a leisure drive simply because such a drive does not cause global warming.
ISSN:1572-8447
Enthält:Enthalten in: Ethical theory and moral practice
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10677-019-09990-w