Climate Change and Individual Responsibility Agency, Moral Disengagement and the Motivational Gap

'The mysteries of motivation that have bamboozled many students of climate change are confronted head-on in this ground-breaking and valuable exploration of the psychological mechanisms of moral disengagement that underlie our mystifying inaction in the face of the growing dangers. The authors thoroughly demonstrate how deeply misleading our conventional phenomenology of moral agency is as ordinarily applied to climate change and suggest positive strategies for tackling moral disengagement while time remains.' - Henry Shue, University of Oxford, UK

'Is anyone responsible for climate change? Slippery politicians and clever philosophers often argue that no one is. This book takes on the arguments and finds them wanting. A timely, engaging and insightful contribution to a vital debate.' - Stephen M. Gardiner, University of Washington, Seattle, USA.

'Climate change jeopardizes people's enjoyment of fundamental human rights. It is imperative, then, to be able to identify who is responsible for avoiding dangerous climatic changes and to understand why people are not motivated to take action. This valuable and welcome book provides an illuminating defence of the role of individual responsibility, and a powerful and sustained response to those who think that such an account cannot cope with problems like climate change.' - Simon Caney, University of Oxford, UK

"Climate ethicists typically assert individual responsibility for climate-related harm without acknowledging the pervasive moral disengagement by which many deny personal complicity in predicted impacts, exaggerate uncertainties, or otherwise minimize its moral significance. This important book develops an innovative phenomenology of agency through which such responsibility becomes philosophically plausible, providing a more robust defense of and motivation for its imperatives." - Steve Vanderheiden, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA