The Phenomenology of Agency in Climate Change

Abstract

Most objections against holding individual emitters responsible for climate change are closely related to the characteristic way in which people experience themselves as agents with causal powers. Within this phenomenology of agency, acts have primacy over omissions; near effects have primacy over remote effects; and individual effects have primacy over group effects. We describe how these features affect our thinking about individual responsibility for climate change and argue that the predominant characterization of climate change as a matter of omissions, remote effects and group effects is deceitful. Arguments along these lines do not convincingly exonerate individual emitters from moral responsibility for their luxury emissions; although the complexity of climate change undeniably challenges our moral judgement system, it also provides a convenient opportunity for moral disengagement.