Philosophical Foundations of Climate Change Policy

By far the most influential philosophical position has been the variant of utilitarianism most popular among economists, which maintains that we have an obligation to maximise the well-being of all people, from now until the end of time. Climate change represents an obvious failure of maximisation. Many environmental philosophers, however, find this argument unpersuasive, because it also implies that we have an obligation to maximise economic growth. Yet their attempts to provide alternative foundations for policy have proven unpersuasive. Joseph Heath presents an approach to thinking about climate change policy grounded in social contract theory, which focuses on the fairness of existing institutions, not the welfare of future generations, in order to generate a set of plausible policy prescriptions.