Climate Change and Free Riding

Journal of Moral Philosophy 11 (4):1-27 (2014)
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Abstract

Does the receipt of benefits from some common resource create an obligation to contribute toward its maintenance? If so, what is the basis of this obligation? I consider whether individual contributions to climate change can be impugned as wrongful free riding upon the stability of the planet's climate system, when persons enjoy its benefits but refuse to bear their share of its maintenance costs. Two main arguments will be advanced: the first urges further modification of H.L.A. Hart’s “principle of fairness” as the basis for demanding that would-be free riders pay their fair share in the context of climate change, while the second claims that remedial action on climate change is better captured through collective action analysis than through harm principles that seek to connect individual actions to bad environmental outcomes

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Steve Vanderheiden
University of Colorado, Boulder

Citations of this work

COVID-19 vaccine refusal as unfair free-riding.Joshua Kelsall - 2024 - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy (1):1-13.
Climate Justice Beyond International Burden Sharing.Steve Vanderheiden - 2016 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 40 (1):27-42.

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References found in this work

Are there any natural rights?H. L. A. Hart - 1955 - Philosophical Review 64 (2):175-191.
Responsibility and Global Labor Justice.Iris Marion Young - 2004 - Journal of Political Philosophy 12 (4):365-388.
Legal obligation and the duty of fair play.John Rawls - 1964 - In Sidney Hook (ed.), Law and Philosophy. New York University Press.
Subsistence Emissions and Luxury Emissions.Henry Shue - 1993 - Law and Policy 15 (1):39–59.

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