Climate direct action as other-defence

FRANCISCO GARCÍA GIBSON

Taller; Normative Energy Workshop; 2021

Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis. University of Karlsruhe

Climate activists sometimes blockade coal power plants, occupy oil pipeline construction grounds, and stop coal trains on their tracks. This imposes substantial costs on fossil fuel companies. This cost can be thought of as an imperfect surrogate of a carbon pricing scheme, which governments aren’t establishing but is urgently needed to prevent serious climate losses. Despite transgressing several rights, including rights to property, I argue that this ‘activist carbon pricing’ can be morally justified as a form of other-defense of potential climate change victims. There are three main challenges to the claim that fossil fuel companies are liable to defensive harm. First, the climate harm that these companies cause is temporally distant and surrounded by substantial uncertainty in terms of who and to what extent will be harmed. I argue in reply that… Secondly, fossil fuel companies do not produce climate harms intentionally. In response, I argue that… Thirdly, fossil fuel companies merely provide the fossil fuel, but don’t burn it themselves. In this paper I reply that...