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The Demandingness of Individual Climate Duties: A Reply to Fragnière

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2021

Colin Hickey Open the ORCID record for Colin Hickey [Opens in a new window]
Colin Hickey*
Affiliation:
Utrecht University
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: c.j.hickey@uu.nl
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Abstract

In this article, I respond to Augustin Fragnière's recent attempt to understand the demandingness of individual climate duties by appealing to the difference between “concentrated” harm and “spread” harm and the importance of “moral thresholds”. I suggest his arguments don't succeed in securing the conclusion he is after, even from within his own commitments, which themselves are problematic. As this is primarily a critical project, the upshot of this discussion is that if there is a defensible way to justify the intuition that the duty to reduce emissions can't be overly demanding, it has to be found elsewhere.

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Reply
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Utilitas , Volume 33 , Issue 3 , September 2021 , pp. 353 - 360
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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