Swapping your gas-guzzling SUV for an electric car will not make a difference to the overall state of the environment. Since our individual efforts to combat cli-mate change are usually futile, a number of philosophers have suggested that we have no duty to cut our emissions; instead, we have a duty to promote effective environmental policy. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues that acting on an individual level “does little or nothing to stop global warming, nor does this focus fulfill our real moral obligations, which are to get governments to do their job to prevent the disaster of excessive global warming. It is better to enjoy your Sunday driving while working to change the law so as to make it illegal for you to enjoy your Sunday driving.” Mark Budolfson writes, “individuals are not required to reduce emissions, although individuals are required to favor effective public policy solu-tions to climate change.” Along similar lines, John Broome says,

[t]he needed reductions will not be achieved by the private initiatives of each of us; it will be achieved by governments using their powers of coercion over us, including their power to regulate and their power to tax. By these means, they can induce all of us together to reduce our emissions. Reductions on the required scale cannot be achieved in any other way.

My argument in this paper is straightforward: we can’t have it both ways. Individual political action is typically as futile as individual environmental action. If the futility objection undermines an individual obligation to reduce emissions, then it undermines an individual obligation to promote effective environmental policy.

Continue reading Is It All For Nothing? On the Futility Objection to Individual Environmental and Political Action