Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy

Volume 12, 2018

Ethics

Climate Change Induced Risk Imposition – Challenging Sufficientarianism

Climate change induced uncertainties put forward important challenges to normative theory, as we cannot say that we harm future generations directly, but rather impose risks of harms on them by our actions. In the paper I will take up this challenge by outlining a risk-averse interpretation of intergenerational sufficientarianism. I will show that even though such an approach seems promising it gives rise to different problems. As an example I will refer to the Climate Engineering technique of stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI). Even though it seems realistic to assume due to the great uncertainties and the severe risks that a possible deployment of SAI would extend below the sufficiency threshold, we cannot exclude SAI as a possible legitimate option based on the permissibility of non-avoidable risk imposition, ‘worngless harmdoing‘, and distributive aspects of taking and imposing risks. This clearly indicates – or so I will argue – the need for developing a more complex account of a sufficientarian approach, one that allows the weighing of risks and to make trade-offs between losses and benefits.