'Kantian Climate Justice'

Abstract

Is there anything the individual ought to do in light of the climate catastrophe and insufficient political leadership in addressing it? I argue that we can find in Kant a collectivist conception of individual obligation that provides an answer: each of us, as an individual, has climate obligations, but the nature of these obligations is made determinate only with reference to the collective of which the individual is a part. I suggest that Kant’s collectivism sheds light on the relations between the individual and the collective and the ethical and political in the climate crisis.