Abstract
Without doubt, the global challenges we are currently facing—above all world poverty and climate change —require collective solutions: states, national and international organizations, firms and business corporations as well as individuals must work together in order to remedy these problems. In this chapter, I discuss climate change mitigation as a collective action problem from the perspective of moral philosophy. In particular, I address and refute three arguments suggesting that business firms and corporations have no moral duty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions : (i) that business corporations are not appropriate addressees of moral demands because they are not moral agents , and (ii) that to the extent that they are moral agents their primary moral obligation is to their owners or shareholders, and (iii) the appeal to the difference principle: that individual business corporations cannot really make a significant difference to successful climate change mitigation.
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- 1.
List and Pettit write that: “We make no assumptions about the precise physical nature of intentional states. They may be of a wide variety of kinds. … We only require that hey be configurations of the agent … that play the appropriate functional role.” (2011: 21).
- 2.
It should perhaps be noted that List and Pettit’s account of group agency is modelled on business corporations, less so on small firms or family businesses. However, there is no reason why the latter should not display the same level of group rationality and intentions as a corporation .
- 3.
Admittedly, there is some controversy around this issue, but I am not able to discuss it here. Existing discussions include List, Christian, and Philip Pettit. 2011. Group Agency: The Possibility, Design, and Status of Corporate Agents. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, chapter 6 and pp. 159–163, “The control desideratum”, Strand, A. (2013). “Group Agency, Responsibility, and Control.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 43(2): 201–224; Szigeti, A. (2014). Collective Responsibility and Group-Control. Rethinking the Individualism-Holism Debate. J. Zahle and F. Collin, Springer: 97–116.
- 4.
Another possible option is the view that different rules apply to business operations than to the actions of moral agents generally or that ‘ordinary’ ethical rules do not apply to business. For a rebuttal of this view see Frederick (2014: 193ff).
- 5.
An obligation is pro tanto when it delivers a moral reason for a certain cause of action, but not necessarily conclusive moral reason for that action. A pro tanto obligation is not an ‘all things considered’ obligation, but one which can be overridden by other concerns.
- 6.
For a different kind of argument against Friedman see Frederick (2014: 196ff).
- 7.
Frederick (2014: 211) thinks that Friedman’s view is motivated by the worry that morality would demand much more than that from firms. Norman Bowie adheres to the view that businesses have only minimum moral obligations to avoid harm by adhering to environmental laws. However, he grants that they also have an obligation not to interfere with the political process of establishing stringent environmental legislation (Bowie 2014). Morality, Money , and Motor Cars. Business Ethics : readings and cases in corporate morality. W. M. Hoffman, R. Frederick and M. S. Schwartz. Chichester, West Sussex, Wiley-Blackwell: 514–520.
- 8.
For instance, William Frankena distinguishes between obligations to inflict no evil or harm, prevent evil or harm, remove evil and do or promote good (1973: 47), in a descending order of stringency. It should be noted, however that not all philosophers agree with the moral difference between negative and positive duties and the lesser stringency of the latter compared to the former (Frankena, W. K. (1973). Ethics . Englewood Cliffs, N.J, Prentice-Hall.)
- 9.
The difficulty, of course, is that not all GHG emissions, in particular, not all CO2 emissions are harmful. Plants need CO2 to live. But this should not distract from the fact that CO2 emissions above certain levels are harmful (see also Shue 2010).
- 10.
Rule consequentialists need not worry about the difference principle because they consider actions morally wrong or right depending on whether or not they comply with a rule that generates the best consequences. This means that it is the consequences of general rules rather than of individual actions that matter; as long as the general rule (if abided by) makes a difference individual actions need not. Non-consequentialist ethical theories escape the difference-principle dilemma precisely because they do not consider the consequences of an action uniquely decisive for its moral rightness or wrongness. Therefore, the fact that an action does not improve (or worsen) some particular state of affairs is either irrelevant or at least not always decisive, depending on the theory .
- 11.
See discussions of the knowledge condition and group beliefs in Harbin, A. (2014). “The Disorientations of Acting against Injustice.” Journal of Social Philosophy 45(2): 162–181, Tomalty, J. (2014). “The force of the claimability objection to the human right to subsistence.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 44(1): 1–17, Doan, M. D. (2016). “Responsibility for Collective Inaction and the Knowledge Condition.” Social Epistemology 30(5–6): 532–554.
- 12.
On what are considered avoidable emissions see Shue, H. (2010). Deadly Delays, Saving Opportunities: Creating a More Dangerous World? Climate Ethics : Essential Readings. S. M. Gardiner, S. Caney, D. Jamieson and H. Shue. Oxford, Oxford University Press: 146–162.
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Schwenkenbecher, A. (2018). Why Business Firms Have Moral Obligations to Mitigate Climate Change. In: Brueckner, M., Spencer, R., Paull, M. (eds) Disciplining the Undisciplined?. CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71449-3_4
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