Michel Bourban

This paper draws on the emerging field of innovation ethics to complement the more established field of responsible innovation by focusing on key ethical issues raised by technological innovations. One key limitation of influential frameworks of RI is that they tend to neglect some key ethical issues raised by innovation, as well as major normative dimensions of the notion of responsibility. We explain how IE could enrich RI by stressing the more important role that ethical analysis should play in RI. We focus on two transversal issues of IE: the issue of redrawing conceptual boundaries, especially the topic of the artificialization of the world, and the issue of responsibility, especially the notion of total responsibility. We address these two issues from the thematic perspective of IE, thereby generating lessons learnt for RI. These two examples are taken as illustrations and blueprint of the dialogue that should take place between the two fields.

Le présent article vise à reconstruire la lecture que Rawls fait du Second Discours et du Contrat social de Rousseau sur les thèmes de l’amour-propre, de l’autonomie, de la volonté générale et de la stabilité. L’objectif est ainsi de mieux comprendre l’héritage rousseauiste dans la pensée politique rawlsienne. Lorsque Rawls développe les notions de liberté et de sens de la justice dans Théorie de la justice, de raison publique et de citoyenneté dans Libéralisme politique et d’utopie réaliste dans Le Droit des peuples, il s’inspire en grande partie de sa lecture de la philosophie sociale et politique du penseur du xviii e siècle. L’idée est donc de lire Rawls dans le sillage de Rousseau, de montrer comment il s’est réapproprié certaines de ses thèses et certains de ses concepts afin d’en proposer quelque chose d’original et de profondément riche.

We challenge effective altruism (EA) on the basis that it should be more inclusive regarding the demands of altruism. EA should consider carefully agents’ intentions and the role those intentions can play in agents’ moral lives. Although we argue that good intentions play an instrumental role and can lead to better results, by adopting a Hutchesonian perspective, we show that intentions should, first and foremost, be considered for their intrinsic value. We examine offsetting and geoengineering, two so-called solutions to climate change supported by EA, to highlight the limitations of a narrow understanding of altruism.

Pierre André,Michel Bourban | : Dans un contexte d’urgence, les philosophes ne peuvent plus se contenter d’élaborer des théories idéales de la justice climatique fondées sur des motivations purement morales. Il est désormais nécessaire d’envisager des approches non idéales. Nous proposons ici de prendre au sérieux le problème de la motivation à l’action et nous mettons en avant certains motifs prudentiels pour lutter contre le changement climatique, en vue non pas de remplacer, mais de renforcer les motivations morales existantes, mais insuffisantes. Nous commençons par présenter trois grandes approches idéales qui ont prévalu jusqu’ici dans la recherche sur la justice climatique et sont fondées respectivement sur l’éthique déontologique, sur l’éthique des vertus et sur l’utilitarisme. Nous mettons en évidence leurs limites pratiques, en ciblant le problème de la motivation à l’action. Nous proposons ensuite quelques pistes pour résoudre ce problème en esquissant une approche non idéale de la justice climatique. Cette approche est centrée sur les motivations amorales ressortant de l’examen attentif des perturbations systémiques globales et des contextes nationaux et locaux spécifiques. Elle est à notre sens incontournable pour motiver les États-nations, les entreprises et les individus. Il s’agit cependant moins de la substituer totalement aux théories idéales de la justice climatique que de compléter celles-ci pour établir une vision plus compréhensive qui distingue le problème de la justification morale de celui de la motivation. | : In a situation of urgency, philosophers can no longer rely exclusively on ideal theories of climate justice grounded on purely moral motives. It has become necessary to build nonideal approaches. We propose to give serious consideration to the problem of motivation to act by putting forward some prudential reasons for tackling climate change—with the aim not of replacing existing but inadequate moral motivations, but of strengthening them. First, we identify three major ideal approaches that have so far prevailed in climate justice research, grounded respectively on deontological ethics, on virtue ethics, and on utilitarianism. We highlight their practical limitations, particularly with regards to the problem of motivation to act. Second, we open the way for an alternative nonideal approach to climate justice based on amoral motivations issuing from a careful examination of global systemic disruptions as well as of specific national and local situations. This approach cannot be ignored if one wishes to motivate nation-states, corporations, and individuals to act. However, our goal is not to replace ideal theory with nonideal theory, but rather to complete the former with the latter for a more comprehensive account of climate justice that distinguishes the problem of moral justification from the problem of motivation.

This article explains how strong sustainability ethics has emerged and developed as a new field over the last two decades as a critical response to influential conceptions of weak sustainability. It investigates three competing, normative approaches to strong sustainability: the communitarian approach, the Rawlsian approach, and the capabilities approach. Although these approaches converge around the idea that there are critical, non-substitutable natural resources and services, they diverge on how to reconcile human development and environmental protection. The aim of the paper is to provide a critical overview of these three perspectives, but also and mostly to show that when we put them into dialogue with each other, we can clarify the demands of sustainability. The paper concludes that the capabilities approach is the most suitable way to think about sustainability, but only if it goes beyond its dominantly anthropocentric view.

This article investigates new convergences between animal ethics and environmental ethics by focusing on the effects as well as the causes of climate change. Its main objective is to show how a non-anthropocentric approach to climate ethics can increase the potential of collaboration between animal ethics theorists and environmental ethics theorists. It develops an approach that explains how animal ethics, environmental ethics and climate ethics can converge at the theoretical level on the common problem of livestock farming. Then it explains how, from a practical point of view, the vegetarian and vegan diet as well as the vegan lifestyle can be a solution to this common problem. Finally, it replies to major objections in order to develop arguments in favour of a duty not to consume animal products.

This article outlines key developments in the philosophical literature on climate change. The allocation of the costs and benefits of greenhouse gas emissions between states and individual duties of climate justice are two major topics that climate ethics scholars have discussed by drawing on deontological theory, consequentialism, and virtue ethics. This article explores the connections between ethics and climate justice to present these two topics. In addition, it introduces three emerging sub-fields in climate ethics: the ethics of climate engineering, non-anthropocentric climate ethics, and the ethics of procreation. It concludes that as the remaining global carbon budget dwindles, radical lifestyle changes become more and more pressing and should move to the forefront of the debate.

This article investigates new convergences between animal ethics and environmental ethics by focusing on the effects as well as the causes of climate change. Its main objective is to show how a non-anthropocentric approach to climate ethics can increase the potential of collaboration between animal ethics theorists and environmental ethics theorists. It develops an approach that explains how animal ethics, environmental ethics and climate ethics can converge at the theoretical level on the common problem of livestock farming. Then it explains how, from a practical point of view, the vegetarian and vegan diet as well as the vegan lifestyle can be a solution to this common problem. Finally, it replies to major objections in order to develop arguments in favour of a duty not to consume animal products.

This article explores the main features of ecological citizenship and explains why this form of post-national citizenship is better adapted to facing current environmental issues than traditional forms of bounded citizenship. It draws on Andrew Dobson’s Citizenship and the Environment (2003), one of the most sustained attempts to examine citizenship from an ecological perspective, but also suggests modifying and complementing this influential account using three approaches: cosmopolitanism, limitarianism, and the planetary boundary framework. These three elements could contribute to giving a fresh start to ecological citizenship, a notion that was much debated from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, but that has been gradually marginalized in discussions within citizenship theory.

To avoid dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, drastic mitigation measures have become necessary. But who should do what and how much of it should they do to help the global effort to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions? This chapter addresses this question by specifying the identity of duty-bearers, the content of their mitigation duties, and how demanding these duties are. It identifies five families of agents and explains that each individual and collective agent has specific duties to contribute to mitigation measures: individual agents, nation-states, subnational jurisdictions, supranational formations, and economic corporations. For each family of agents, arguments for and against mitigation duties are scrutinized, with the objective of presenting a detailed account of burden-sharing climate justice. In addition to investigating the duties held by individual agents and nation-states, the two families of agents that have attracted most attention from climate justice scholars so far, this chapter also proposes to focus on three new agents in order to turn philosophical discussions on climate change in new directions: cities, the World Trade Organization, and carbon majors. The polycentric approach to climate change governance and the related normative framework of multiscalar justice seem particularly promising in terms of finding new ways to promote climate justice in a context of failure to bring climate change under political control at the national and international levels.

To avoid dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, two mitigation measures are possible: reducing greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing greenhouse gas sinks. This paper starts by explaining that there are strong ethical reasons for favoring the former over the latter. The moral risks raised by a large-scale deployment of negative emissions technologies are much greater than the ethical issues raised by replacing fossil fuels with renewables. Although small-scale negative emissions projects have become necessary because of the scarce remaining global carbon budget, the first moral imperative today is still to reduce global emissions rapidly and drastically through a global energy transition. But what is the content of this energy transition? First, to be fair, the energy transition should phase out both fossil energy and nuclear energy from the global energy mix. Both sources of energy come with insurmountable ethical issues. Second, the energy transition is only possible if the prices of fossil fuels increase while the prices of renewables decrease thanks to government subsidies. But to avoid a potential clash between climate justice and social justice, the energy transition should also include compensatory measures to compensate communities and workers who depend on fossil fuel extraction, as well as to offset the potentially regressive effects of carbon pricing policies. Third, given that there are limits on the extent to which fossil fuels can be replaced by renewables, the energy transition ultimately includes a behavioral component at the individual level. To reduce their carbon footprint, it is not sufficient for individuals to consume differently by buying green energy; they should also consume less by adapting their lifestyles, especially in terms of transportation and diet. To think about these behavioral changes which are necessary to make a full energy transition possible, this paper adopts the normative framework of ecological citizenship and a virtue ethics approach supporting ‘energy sobriety’ as a green virtue characteristic of the ecological citizen.

In this paper, I discuss some of the human rights that are threatened by the impact of global warming and the problem of motivation to comply with the duties of climate justice. I explain in what sense human rights can be violated by climate change and try to show that there are not only moral reasons to address this problem, but also more prudential motives, which I refer to as quasi-moral and non-moral reasons. I also assess some implications of potentially catastrophic impacts driven by this ecological issue. My aim is to locate, by outlining a normative perspective based on sound empirical findings, urgent climate injustices, and explain why well-off citizens in developed countries have strong reasons to avert the potentially massive violation of the rights of present and future victims of climate change.