Diotima: The Marist Undergraduate Philosophy Journal
framework to govern the morality of individual GHG emissions. Focusing on the development of virtuous traits simplifies decision-making and alleviates equity concerns that arise when attempting to apply a generalizable rule to specific cases. The virtues of justice, compassion, and responsibility are relevant to how individuals ought to manage their individual GHG emissions. Justice and compassion work in tandem to create a profound aversion to emitting GHGs, while responsibility permits an agent to consider their individual GHG emissions in a global context. Justice is defined by Plato as fulfilling one's agreements and not inflicting wrong on others. He also argues that societal justice depends on justice being upheld at the individual level. 16 It follows that an individual possessing the virtue of justice is opposed to the maldistribution of goods, including common goods. 17 Climate change is an unjust process because it has global impacts that negatively impact individuals irrespective of their role in generating emissions. Additionally, climate change disproportionately impacts the socially vulnerable, coastal communities, outdoor laborers, etc. According to Davidson, complicity in unjust systems can lead to magnified harm beyond the scale of any one individual. 18 Therefore, non-subsistence individual GHG emissions represent complicity in the unjust system of climate change. An individual possessing the virtue of justice would be opposed to participating in unjust systems and therefore averse to generating GHG emissions.
16 Mark LeBar, “Justice as a Virtue,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2025/entries/justice-virtue/. 17 Lebar, “Justice as a Virtue.” 18 Marc Davidson, “Individual Responsibility to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions from a Kantian Deontological Perspective,” Environmental Values 32 (6), 2023: 683-699.
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