Climate Change and Individual Decision Making: An Examination of Knowledge, Risk Perception, Self-interest and Their Interplay

In this essay, three separate yet interconnected components of pro-environmental decision making are considered: (a) knowledge, in the form of basic scientific understanding and procedural knowledge, (b) risk perception, as it relates to an individual’s direct experience of climate change and (c) self-interest, either monetary or status-driven. Drawing on a variety of sources in public policy, psychology, and economics, I examine the role of these concepts in inducing or discouraging pro-environmental behavior. Past researches have often overemphasized the weight of just one of those variables in the decision making. I argue, instead, that none of them alone is capable of bringing about the behavioral change required by the environmental crisis. Evidence shows that increasing the public’s scientific knowledge of climate change cannot unilaterally bring about a strong behavioral change. The same can be noticed even when knowledge is joined by risk-perception: deep psychological mechanisms may steer people towards inaction and apathy, despite their direct experience of the detrimental effects of climate change on their lives. Focusing on self-interest alone is similarly unable to induce pro-environmental behavior, due to a host of psychological factors. Instead, in all of the above cases an important missing ingredient may be found in providing the public with locally contextualized procedural knowledge in order to translate its knowledge and concern into action. The importance of this kind of practical knowledge has solid empirical and theoretical underpinnings, and is often overlooked in the climate-change debate that tends to focus on more high-level issues. Yet, for all its essential simplicity, it may carry important public-policy implications.Individual Behavior, Climate-Change, Psychology, Uncertainty

The key role of causal explanation in the climate change issue

In the context of climate change, the adoption of pro-environment behaviour is favoured by the understanding of causal passages within climate science. The understanding of the causes of climate change is necessary in order to be able to take mitigation actions (the subject needs to be aware of its role as a causal agent). Conversely, the understanding of the consequences of climate change is essential for rationally managing the risks, especially in cases where adaptation is needed rather than simple mitigation. The case of ozone depletion confirms this view: the understanding of its causal dynamics played a major role in people’s behavioural response. Para afrontar el cambio climático, la adopción de un comportamiento en favor del medio ambiente se verá favorecida por la comprensión de los argumentos causales de la climatología. La comprensión de las causas del cambio climático es necesario para que seamos capaces de mitigarlo (cada individuo debe ser consciente de su papel como agente causal). La comprensión de las consecuencias del cambio climático es esencial para gestionar racionalmente los riesgos, especialmente en casos en los que más que mitigarlo, debemos intentar adaptarnos. El caso del agujero de la capa de ozono confirma este punto de vista: la comprensión de la dinámica causal desempeñó un papel principal en el cambio de conductas de la gente

Mandeville on Charity-Schools : happiness, social order and the psychology of poverty

Peer reviewe

Vulnerability, Responsibilities and Migration

Vulnerability is commonly considered as a feature of human beings on which our duties towards each other are grounded: we ought to help the vulnerable in virtue of their being such. Our duties seem rather clear when those in need are close to us, both physically and culturally, but less so when they are distant in either of the two senses. In this essay we wish to investigate the strength of our duties towards migrants, who are often either culturally or physically distant, yet vulnerable by definition – fleeing from wars, dictatorships, poverty, climate change, or other calamities. The view we aim to defend, is that our duties towards them, unlike what has been suggested by David Miller, are duties of justice, not of beneficence, and involve duties to host. This, we claim, is owed to migrants’ very vulnerability, which is not due to some kind of misfortune, but, eventually, to some form of injustice. We will also claim that taking into account migrants’ own responsibility, either as individuals or as members of a collectivity, is of no practical use when establishing our duties to host them

On the Notion of Political Agency

AAV

Is It All a Matter of Selfishness? Towards the Formulation of Moral Blame for Anti- Environmental Behavior

The moral evaluation of actions that disregard climate change, in individual as well as public ethics, is complex. A clear moral judgment itself is difficult to reach in both contexts, as we are far from paradigm moral cases where specific people provoke harm to easily identifiable others. However, for people to seriously engage in climate change mitigation, it has to be clear why it is wrong not to do so. There is therefore a need to frame moral responsibility for anti-environmen-tal behavior using language and concepts that are understandable to a broad public. This paper will argue that the concept of selfishness, properly construed, is the most appropriate tool for describing and morally evaluating human behavior that disregards climate change. A specific consequentialist definition of selfishness will be provided to this purpose. Some objections to framing the environmental decision in this way will be raised in public as well as individual ethics. In the public sphere, moral deliberations are complicated by the conflict between the rights of the present generation and those of future ones. In individual ethics, the inconsequentiality of individual emissions calls into question the very existence of a moral imperative to act pro-envi-ronmentally. The paper will thus investigate the grounds on which we can hold accountable pol-icy makers who refuse to take action on climate change, focusing on the concept of future dis-counting. With regard to the individual dimension, a proposal will be advanced on the basis of a non-superfluous causal contribution to collective-impact cases. In both contexts, the paper will eventually argue that anti-environmental actions can be defined as selfish according to the defini-tion provided

Climate Change and Individual Decision Making: An Examination of Knowledge, Risk Perception, Self-interest and Their Interplay

In this essay, three separate yet interconnected components of pro-environmental decision making are considered: (a) knowledge, in the form of basic scientific understanding and procedural knowledge, (b) risk perception, as it relates to an individual’s direct experience of climate change and (c) self-interest, either monetary or status-driven. Drawing on a variety of sources in public policy, psychology, and economics, I examine the role of these concepts in inducing or discouraging pro-environmental behavior. Past researches have often overemphasized the weight of just one of those variables in the decision making. I argue, instead, that none of them alone is capable of bringing about the behavioral change required by the environmental crisis. Evidence shows that increasing the public’s scientific knowledge of climate change cannot unilaterally bring about a strong behavioral change. The same can be noticed even when knowledge is joined by risk-perception: deep psychological mechanisms may steer people towards inaction and apathy, despite their direct experience of the detrimental effects of climate change on their lives. Focusing on self-interest alone is similarly unable to induce pro-environmental behavior, due to a host of psychological factors. Instead, in all of the above cases an important missing ingredient may be found in providing the public with locally contextualized procedural knowledge in order to translate its knowledge and concern into action. The importance of this kind of practical knowledge has solid empirical and theoretical underpinnings, and is often overlooked in the climate-change debate that tends to focus on more high-level issues. Yet, for all its essential simplicity, it may carry important public-policy implications