Collective Harm and Responsibility in the Climate Crisis

A SOPhiA-2023-Workshop

University of Salzburg, 07. September 2023, 16:00-19:30 (CET)

The climate crisis is a central societal problem of our time. The harms related to climate change are collective in several senses: first, they arise from billions of tiny contributions that arguably are entrenched in large-scale structural and political issues that are collectively caused. Second, they affect everyone collectively, albeit not equally. Third, we collectively have both the ability and obligation to mitigate them.

At the same time, each individual’s ability to address the challenges of the climate crisis is severely limited. Even in sum, all actions an individual may take to mitigate the climate crisis appear hopelessly ineffective. The workshop is concerned with this tension between collective viability and individual inefficacy in the climate crisis.

Programm:

Matthias Rolffs (Bern) and Kian Salimkhani (Cologne): “Collective Ability and Individual Inefficacy”
Kathrin von Allmen (Fribourg): “Advocating remedial responsibility for mitigating climate change harm”
Huzeyfe Demirtas (Chapman): “Take a Stand, You Don’t Have to Make a Difference”
Angela Kallhoff (Wien): “How to handle inefficacy when attributing climate duties”