Toward a Virtue Based Ethic for Nonessential Greenhouse Gas Emissions
international scales, there is insufficient evidence on how ethical principles should be applied at the individual level. The existing principles for individual application are largely deontological or consequentialist and are hampered by equity issues because they cannot account for the myriad contexts in which individuals make choices with GHG implications. However, little attention has been given to what virtue ethics offers in response to climate change. 12 This paper will suggest that a moral framework grounded in virtue is best suited to provide individuals with clarity on how to behave ethically with respect to their individual GHG emissions. Virtue Ethics as Grounds for an Individual Obligation to Reduce GHG Emissions In virtue-ethical theory, virtues are thought of as ideal moral character traits from which moral action will naturally follow. 13 Virtue ethics are distinct from other major approaches in normative ethics (e.g., deontology, utilitarianism) because instead of identifying universal principles that can be applied to specific situations, virtue ethics focuses on honing virtuous traits that will lead individuals to make moral choices “all the time.” 14 Possession of a virtue is “a matter of degree;” an individual must wholeheartedly embody virtue through their motives, dispositions, and actions. 15 Applying a virtue ethics framework transfers the focus of moral decision making from specific dilemmas to the cultivation of character traits over a lifetime. This transfer is desirable when attempting to apply an ethical
12 Dominic Lenzi, “How Should We Respond to Climate Change? Virtue Ethics and Aggregation Problems,” Journal of Social Philosophy , 54 (3), 2023: 421–436. 13 Nafsika Athanassoulis, “Virtue Ethics,” in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy ,
https://iep.utm.edu/virtue/#SH6b. 14 Athanassoulis, “Virtue Ethics.” 15 Rosalind Hursthouse, “Virtue Ethics.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, October 2022, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/.
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