The Possibility of a Joint Communiqué: My Response to Hourdequin

Abstract

This article is a response to Marion Hourdequin, ‘Climate, Collective Action and Individual Ethical Obligations', Environmental Values 19 (2010): 443–464. As Hourdequin argues, we have an obligation to reduce our individual emissions of greenhouse gases. This obligation is not, however, to reduce to the level that would be sustainable if everyone else did likewise. We are obligated to make limited reductions in the service of our primary obligation to organise and embrace collective schemes to ensure that everyone reduces emissions and that benefits to the environment are proportionate to the sacrifices made. She and I can agree on the existence of an obligation if she recognises that there is a fundamental difference between the obligations we have to avoid individually harmful actions and our obligations in a tragedy of the commons.