3.a. Insignificance

The first—the insignificance objection—is perhaps the most familiar, and, for many, the most compelling. While there are many versions of this objection,Footnote ¹⁶ perhaps the best-known comes from Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, who argues that taking a Sunday joyride in a gas-guzzling SUV is not morally wrong because such an “individual act is neither necessary nor sufficient for global warming” (Sinnott-Armstrong, Reference Sinnott-Armstrong, Gardiner, Caney, Jamieson and Shue2010, 334).Footnote ¹⁷ Even more strongly, Sinnott-Armstrong claims that:

In support of this position, he presents an analogy:

There are at least two major flaws with this argument.

The first is that it treats “very little” as equivalent to “none.” The Sunday joyride is not, on Sinnott-Armstrong’s view, a minuscule addition to global aggregate climate harm but rather no addition at all; it is an act that makes “no difference” to anyone’s welfare. The problem with such a reductive view of causation is that it opens the door to paradox: As Richard Tuck (Reference Tuck, Forrester and Smith2018) argues, if each individual act really has no impact—that is, if the contribution to harm is not very little, but simply nil—then how can the aggregation of those zeros equal something?Footnote ¹⁸ And equal something they must, for otherwise it is unclear how climate change would occur. In other words, Sinnott-Armstrong must either deny that global warming is the product of anthropogenic activity or concede that however small the impacts of individual acts may be, they are more than nothing and thus not devoid of significance. Given that he explicitly discards the former, it is not clear how he can resist the latter.

Others have recognized this issue and offered a more coherent account of the significance of individual contributions. Säde Hormio, for example, argues that precisely because “the natural carrying capacity of the atmosphere has long been exceeded,” “there are no [longer any] harmless emissions”; rather, in every instance, “[i]ncreased emissions lead to increased temperature effects and more harm” (Hormio, Reference Hormio2023, 2). In much the same vein, Melissa Lane argues that because each additional emission contributes to aggregate causal harm, every emitting act has some moral import (Lane, Reference Lane, Forrester and Smith2018).Footnote ¹⁹ John Broome has taken this a step further by attempting to quantify these harms; he claims that the lifetime emissions of just one person in a developed country are enough to “wipe out more than six months of a healthy human life” (Broome, Reference Broome2012, 74).Footnote ²⁰ Such impacts surely seem significant.

This leads us to the second major flaw in Sinnott-Armstrong’s argument. In his flooding analogy, the harmful impacts of the climate crisis are described as occurring “downstream,” while we—the weary water wielders—are situated “upstream.” This suggests that climate change is something remote from us. Perhaps 20 years ago this was a (more) defensible view to take, although even then it would not have been without its problems.Footnote ²¹ Today, however, such a view is entirely implausible. We are not facing a situation in which harmful climate change may occur later in time or space (or perhaps not at all). Rather, harmful climate change is already occurring everywhere and growing more severe with every additional emission. Thus, the moral question we must confront is not (as Sinnott-Armstrong would have it): Would the crisis happen (or be just as bad) without our personal contributions? but: How much worse will the crisis become because of our contributions?

Thus, if we refuse to regard “small” as “none,” and if we accept that our situation is not one in which harm may or may not occur, but one in which harm is already occurring and can only grow more severe, then attributions of blameworthiness cannot be overcome by appeal to insignificance alone. For all emitting actions in the context of our already-greenhouse-gas-saturated atmosphere are necessarily harmful and thus morally significant.

This is true even for minor individual actions, like Sinnott-Armstrong’s gas-guzzling joyride. But of course, the difficulties with sustaining the insignificance objection are far more severe when applied to the actions of the Carbon Axis—as even Sinnott-Armstrong acknowledges (Reference Sinnott-Armstrong, Gardiner, Caney, Jamieson and Shue2010, 334, 336). There are any number of alarming facts and figures one might cite in evidence of this claim. Just consider, for instance, the widely discussed finding that 71% of global industrial emissions between 1988 and 2015 were attributable to just 100 companies (Riley, Reference Riley2017). Or the fact that 10 countries are responsible for over two-thirds of global emissions each year, and just three—China, the US, and India—for 42.6% (Friedrich et al., Reference Friedrich, Ge, Pickens and Vigna2023). Clearly, it would be absurd to regard these massive emissions flows as “insignificant” and thus excusable.

But straightforward emissions are not the only way in which Carbon Axis members contribute to climate harms. Rather, much like Midgley and co., the Carbon Axis devotes considerable resources toward creating and maintaining political and legal environments in which such massive emissions remain possible, despite the harm they cause (Schneiderman, Reference Schneiderman and Schneiderman2022). A striking example of this is the growing use of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) processes, which are secretive corporate tribunals—born of international trade and investment treaties—meant to adjudicate between private capital and public governments. According to a recent UN report, the “weaponized” use of ISDS presents “a major obstacle to the urgent actions needed to address the planetary environmental and human rights crises,” as “[f]oreign investors use the dispute settlement process to seek exorbitant compensation, with the fossil fuel and mining industries already winning over $100 billion in awards” (as of 2023; Boyd, Reference Boyd2023, 2). Indeed, the sums being sought are often so extreme that the mere possibility of arbitration can be enough to stymie action. For this reason, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz describes ISDS as “litigation terrorism” (Malo, Reference Malo2019). Examples are manifold:

The UN attributes cases like these—which are becoming more audacious, frequent, and costly each year—to a “catastrophic” global “regulatory chill.” As the same report explains, “regulatory chill” occurs whenever

This extorted staying of the public hand ensures that climate harms can continue to occur. Such contributions, while indirect, are nonetheless significant. Thus, the shadowy group of lawyers raising ISDS suits on behalf of carbon capital is also blameworthy in this respect.Footnote ²²

3.b. Epistemic limitations

Another standard excuse—again, both in academic and public discourseFootnote ²³—holds that many agents face (or, historically, have faced) epistemic limitations that either wholly exculpate their contributions to climate harm, or at least significantly diminish the extent to which blame could be ascribed to them for those contributions.

These constraints can take various forms. For instance, a considerable amount of skepticism and confusion exists about climate change, owing to the complexity of the crisis and, more significantly, to decades of exposure to well-funded disinformation campaigns (Oreskes & Conway, Reference Oreskes and Conway2011; Supran & Oreskes, Reference Supran and Oreskes2021; Vanderheiden, Reference Vanderheiden2008, 192–202). This has left many even well-intentioned people with uncertainty as to how to reduce emissions, or even if reductions are actually necessary. Whether or not this kind of ignorance is morally exculpating depends on the duties of scientific literacy one believes ordinary citizens to bear (Vanderheiden, Reference Vanderheiden2016). But there can be no doubt that this kind of confusion and manufactured misdirection has inhibited a great deal of climate action.

Another epistemic issue is that, in our increasingly media-saturated and deteriorating world, agents are near-constantly bombarded by conflicting information and perspectives on an enormous array of major problems, of which climate change is but one. For many, confronting such an overwhelming moral landscape—and undertaking the complex balancing and prioritization judgments that can be necessary to move forward within it—can provoke a sense of “issue overload,” and with that, feelings of personal inefficacy or helplessness.Footnote ²⁴ If the whole world is on fire, we might forgive those who are paralyzed by the question of where to point the hose first, or whether there is any point in fighting such massive and myriad fires at all.

Third, even those agents who recognize the seriousness of the climate crisis, and have a sufficiently concrete sense of what kind of response is needed, may still feel constrained by uncertainty about whether others will act in kind to the extent needed. This is an example of the “assurance problem.” As Rawls explains, this problem arises when achieving some shared, collective goal requires the cooperation of many individuals, none of whom have a guarantee that others will do their fair share (Rawls, Reference Rawls1999, 238). In such a situation, personal action—however inclined one may be to undertake it—may well seem irrational, given that it can only become effective if many others act in kind. For instance, Blake may strongly believe that air travel must significantly diminish, and accept that this would mean personally flying less or not at all; and yet he may think that, so long as there are no mass restrictions on flying in place, unilaterally foregoing air travel would be pointless, or worse. The most obvious solution to this problem is the Hobbesian one: the erection of regulation, oversight, and punishment regimes, which underwrite faith in cooperation by assuring each person involved that all others have at least an external reason to do their part (Rawls, Reference Rawls1999, 505).Footnote ²⁵ Until such regimes are established, however, the assurance problem may excuse inaction for many individuals.

But to what extent do these epistemic constraints bear on the blameworthiness of the Carbon Axis? Certainly, many members have claimed that at least their historical emissions are blameless, given that they were generated in ignorance of the harm they could cause.Footnote ²⁶ This claim has been well addressed by various ethicists and political theorists over the last two decades.Footnote ²⁷ Permitting some simplification, most now believe that, if ignorance can exculpate these actors, it can only do so up to the point at which a clear scientific consensus emerged about the extent of the climate problem and its anthropogenic origins. Most put this point at around 1990, which is probably generous. After all, academic work detailing the greenhouse effect first began to emerge in the 19th century, with surprisingly accurate predictions for how emissions would drive global warming being made as early as 1896 (Clark, Reference Clark2009; Thompson, Reference Thompson2019). In the 1960s, scientists working for US President Lyndon Johnson produced a report detailing how carbon dioxide emissions, especially those generated by burning fossil fuels, were precipitating potentially grave climatic changes (Nuccitelli, Reference Nuccitelli2015; President’s Science Advisory Committee, 1965). Similarly, it is now well known that research scientists at Exxon (now ExxonMobil)—one of the world’s largest oil and gas producers—learned of the nature and extent of the climate crisis in the 1970s,Footnote ²⁸ and were able even then to make “remarkably accurate projections of just how much burning fossil fuels would warm the planet” (Tabuchi, Reference Tabuchi2023a).

Of course, taking these examples into account only serves to narrow the temporal range of moral excusability that ignorance may afford. But there is a more general reason to doubt how much claims of ignorance can excuse. Consider: If ignorance was really the reason why the Carbon Axis has acted as it has—that is, if we are really to believe that they would not have emitted (so much) if only they had been aware—then we should expect to have seen significant changes once the problem was fully brought to light, be that in 1990 or earlier. And yet, as Simon Caney observes, “those responsible for emitting excessive amounts of greenhouse gases have continued to do so even when they have been made aware of the consequences of their actions” (Caney, Reference Caney2010a, 208). Indeed, over the last three decades, emissions have not only increased, but the rate at which they have been increasing has also increasedFootnote ²⁹—and all of this despite solid scientific consensus concerning the dangers of climate change and manifold international agreements to pursue decarbonization.

The other two epistemic constraints discussed above—issue overload and the assurance problem—similarly fall short in application to the Carbon Axis. Concerning the first: While it is true that climate change is just one issue among many that governments and public actors are tasked with addressing, given its scale and urgency, it is clearly one that ought to be prioritized (Mittiga, Reference Mittiga2024, chap. 2). Yet one of the most striking aspects of the climate crisis is just how completely it has been neglected internationally. The only obvious reason why this is so—that is, why virtually all of the Carbon Axis has failed to act, despite the resources and expertise available to them—is that meaningfully addressing it would require challenging, or even abolishing, carbon capital. Unfortunately, though, the very actors that ought to be strictly regulated have come to do the regulating in most or all of the top-polluting states.Footnote ³⁰ Inaction, then, is not the natural consequence of an overly complex moral reality, but the intended outcome of systemic global efforts to capture and corrupt political power.Footnote ³¹

The assurance problem may seem more likely to exculpate. For surely no rational governmental or commercial actors would put themselves at a disadvantage by undertaking climate action without institutional guarantees that similarly positioned others will do the same. Unilateral action, however morally desirable or even imperative it may be,Footnote ³² would again seem, at best, pointless—insofar as no state or corporation can alone reduce emissions to the extent needed to prevent catastrophe—or, at worst, suicidal—given the brutal reality of global capitalist competition. As noted earlier, however, a clear solution to this problem exists: that is, the establishment of an effective, international climate governance regime that has the power not only to monitor and regulate, but to compel and punish. That such a regime does not already exist is itself indicative of a blameworthy dereliction of moral responsibility, particularly on behalf of the most significant emitters.Footnote ³³

In short, then, there is little reason to believe that epistemic constraints can excuse the Carbon Axis—assuming that they even face such constraints in a meaningful way. The Axis has long been aware of the harmful nature of its actions, and yet—even in the cold light of that awareness—it has continued to emit, and in ever greater amounts, all while resisting (or preempting) external pressures to reform.

3.c. Necessity

Exculpatory appeals to necessity occur often in political life, especially in dire contexts like emergency or war. They aim to excuse actions that would, in more ordinary or felicitous conditions, be unacceptable (i.e., immoral or illegal). The essential claim is one about constrained choice, concerning both whether and how to act. These constraints, if severe enough, cast doubt on the autonomy of an actor or the voluntariness of an action, and thus undermine attributions of blame. After all, how could we hold someone morally responsible if she had no choice but to act, or to act as she did?

In the climate ethics literature, various thinkers have appealed, at least implicitly, to necessity as a way of excusing certain emissions-generating activities. Consider Henry Shue’s well-known distinction between “subsistence emissions”—which follow from activities that are “vital” in the sense of being “essential for survival, or human decency”—and “luxury emissions”—which correspond to activities that are “frivolous” or at least “inessential for either survival or decency” (Shue, Reference Shue1993, 55). While there is some debate over how best to understand “vital interests,”Footnote ³⁴ Shue’s distinction can clearly be understood as one between necessary and unnecessary emissions, and thus between (potentially) excusable and clearly inexcusable emissions-generating activities.Footnote ³⁵

It is not a full account, however, as we also need a sense of how constrained the means for achieving those vital interests are in any given situation. In other words, for necessity to be a valid excuse, we need reason to believe there were no (more) acceptable alternative courses of action. Göran Duus-Otterström attempts to capture this by stipulating that emissions can be counted as “subsistence emissions”: “if, and only if, (1) the emissions satisfy a vital interest and (2) at the time of emitting, there is no reasonable alternative way of satisfying this vital interest using fewer emissions” (Duus-Otterström, Reference Duus-Otterström2023, 921). While (2) is plausible, it should be formulated more broadly: We should not care just about the consequentialist logic of reduced harm, but about the broader moral imperative to avoid violating relevant moral or legal norms, rules, or principles where possible.

Taking this into account, I would propose a more expansive view, according to which “unnecessary” emissions can be understood asFootnote ³⁶: (i) those that result from actions that are themselves unnecessary for satisfying one’s most vital interests (such as driving a gas-guzzler on a Sunday afternoonFootnote ³⁷); and (ii) those that result from actions that are necessary for satisfying one’s most vital interests but that are unnecessarily undertaken in ways that result in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (such as producing energy with coal or fracked gas when clean, cost-effective alternatives like solar and wind are available).

Now, it is certainly true that not everyone has choices about whether to emit in many situations. Indeed, a lot of climate-harming appears to be essentially inertial: the ineluctable product of participating in systems that are extremely difficult to change (unilaterally, at least) and from which it is effectively impossible to extricate oneself (at least without suffering severe deprivation).Footnote ³⁸

But what about the Carbon Axis? A common view—shared even by some of capitalism’s sharpest criticsFootnote ³⁹—is that the unyielding structural logic of global market competition similarly compels these actors to engage in all sorts of harmful action as a matter of survival, and so necessity. As David Graeber explains:

In extending this to the case of climate change, we might consider the various occasions in which corporate executives, including some in the energy industry, have publicly called on political leaders to regulate their activities so as to reduce emissionsFootnote ⁴⁰—messaging that Graeber equates with a serial killer calling on cops to stop him before he strikes again.Footnote ⁴¹ The essential idea of these pleas is that commercial actors are forced—in the most existential sense—to take any advantage available to them, even when their moral scruples would incline them not to. They are mere playthings of global and inescapable market forces, or so the argument goes.

There are two problems with this “compelled-by-capitalism” view. First, there is ample reason to think that the public pleas for climate regulation made by (a handful of) commercial actors are simply insincere—more the stuff of public relations than actual advocacy for responsible governance.Footnote ⁴² Perhaps the most compelling evidence of this is how often the very same actors who publicly exhort climate action simultaneously lobby behind closed doors to prevent that action from being undertaken.Footnote ⁴³

Second, and relatedly, the “compelled-by-capitalism” view misses the extent to which many of the actors in the Carbon Axis have contributed to the design and maintenance of the very structures they claim to be bound by (Schneiderman, Reference Schneiderman and Schneiderman2022). Indeed, the Axis, perhaps uniquely, possesses the power:

1. (i) to reform the system in ways that would reduce or prevent climate-harming;

2. (ii) or, failing that, at least to organize and advocate for such reforms (e.g., to insist that they be part of international accords of all types so as to defuse collective action problems);

3. (iii) or, failing that, at least to accept such reforms when pressed upon them externally.

Doubts about the “necessity” of the Axis’s contributions arise and are compounded at each of these three points, but above all when they militate against reforms that would lessen or prevent the devastating impacts of their activities. And militate they have. For, like Midgley and co., members of the Carbon Axis are not indifferent to the propagation of their harmful products and services; quite the opposite: in the last century, they have pursued ever more encompassing and destructive forms of extraction, production, marketing, and what we might call “regulatory emancipation” (i.e., the evasion or annihilation of political and legal barriers to, or even official oversight of, their activities)—and always with a zeal that would make a missionary blush (Brewer, Reference Brewer and Martínez2015, 133–5). If the relevant agents were merely acting out of necessity, how might we account for such fervent, sustained efforts?

3.d. Demandingness

A close cousin of the necessity excuse is that from demandingness, which holds that individuals should not be blamed for the moral bads they fail to prevent or the moral goods they fail to promote when success is only achievable through great personal cost and sacrifice. The essential idea is that there is a “reasonable” limit to what morality can require of any particular agent, and burdens in excess of that limit can be excusably shirked.

The relevance of this objection to the climate crisis is perhaps obvious. Particularly in the most emissions-intensive economies in the world—those of the affluent West—acting in ways that avoid or limit contributing to climate harm can be exceedingly difficult (where it is even possible). Jose may want to install solar panels on his house, but could only do so by taking on a second job or selling off family heirlooms. Natalia may sincerely wish to forego all plane travel, but this would come at the cost of important job opportunities or cherished time with loved ones. These kinds of sacrifices are of course possible, but also undeniably hard to bear. And herein lies the essential point of the demandingness objection: that when the costs of acting morally—or of not acting immorally—become too great, this may excuse those who fall short.

However reasonable this view may seem, we must be careful not to generalize too much here. For even when the costs of undertaking moral action (or eschewing immoral action) are indeed immense, other factors may render concerns about demandingness moot. Consider the abolition of slavery. When the British government began seriously considering abolition, many involved in the industry—that is, the slaveholders and traders, along with their auxiliaries in finance, shipping, and so on—complained that emancipation without compensation (for “lost property”) would be economically ruinous for them. This may well have been true. But is that enough to render continued participation in (or toleration of) the slave trade excusable? I think not. Some practices or industries are simply so odious—so offensive to moral feeling—that there can be no valid moral excuse for preserving or participating in them. Or, at the very least, the potential costs of reform cannot serve that exculpatory function.Footnote ⁴⁴ To claim, then, that continuing to enslave people—or, from the perspective of government, to permit slavery—was blameless because the costs of doing otherwise were unduly demanding is absurd.Footnote ⁴⁵ Much the same is true, I argue, with respect to the climate crisis: Those who are most responsible for poisoning our air and water, decimating biodiversity, displacing millions from their homes, and causing millions more to die—that is, the Carbon Axis—cannot be excused simply because acting otherwise would be extremely (even ruinously) costly for them.

The moral character or consequences of a given practice are not the only things that can undercut the demandingness excuse, however. Rather, I argue, emergency situations can also necessitate and so legitimate the imposition of exceptional burdens, and thus foreclose appeals to demandingness as an excuse for not doing what is needed. Consider war, which often involves saddling individual citizens with extreme burdens—from food rationing, to displacement, to conscription. Yet, few would think the demandingness of these burdens provides a morally valid excuse for shirking them. What seems to matter most in cases like these, morally speaking, is not the weight of the relevant burdens, but people’s sense that the sacrifices asked of them are likely to be effective and are more or less equitably distributed among the relevant population.Footnote ⁴⁶ This suggests that what counts as overly or unacceptably demanding will vary in relation to the circumstances. And with the most existential threats—including wars and, I would argue, climate change—the “too-demanding” threshold is likely to be very high.

In short, demandingness may excuse some ordinary people in some ordinary circumstances. But it offers little moral cover to those participating in extremely immoral industries, or perhaps to anyone in truly exigent circumstances.

3.e. Attribution

Even accepting that the Carbon Axis’s emission-generating activities are (at least to some extent) climatically significant, deliberate, and unnecessary, one might still worry that if we cannot identify direct causal links between those activities and particular instances of climate harm, then it makes little sense to speak of blame. This is more of a practical or epistemic objection than a moral one: It is not predicated on a denial that such cause-and-effect relationships exist; rather, the claim is just that these relationships are so diffuse and complex as to preclude coherent ascriptions of culpability.

As an initial response, it bears emphasizing that attribution science has come a long way in recent years, such that it is increasingly possible to draw causal lines between discrete emissions flows and particular climate events (like heatwaves, hurricanes, or droughts).Footnote ⁴⁷ Nevertheless, whether these efforts are, or ever will be, sufficient to establish culpability in the way that conventional moral thought would seem to require is unclear. As Dale Jamieson once observed, conventional moral thought assumes that “harms and their causes are individual, that they can be readily identified, and that they are local in space and time” (Jamieson, Reference Jamieson1992, 148). Yet even the most advanced forms of attribution science are only likely to yield probabilistic estimates of how much given emissions flows exacerbated the severity or likelihood of particular climate harms. Thus, we face a thorny predicament: “Despite the fact that serious, clearly identifiable harms” are occurring “because of human agency, conventional morality” has “trouble finding anyone to blame” (Jamieson, Reference Jamieson1992, 149).

While this may prove a real difficulty for prosecuting a criminal case against a particular actor, I see little reason for accepting that it can preclude moral attributions of culpability for climate-harming. So long as we understand the basic causal relationship, and can demonstrate that a relevant agent participated in that (harm-producing) causal process both deliberately (i.e., with the relevant form and amount of awareness) and unnecessarily, this suffices for regarding that agent as blameworthy.

An analogy may help to clarify. In George Eliot’s Middlemarch, a mortally ill man, John Raffles, is left in the care of a wealthy banker, Mr. Bulstrode, who (permitting some simplification) must then decide whether (i) to tend to Raffles as prescribed by a local doctor (which may lead to his recovery), or (ii) to hasten Raffles’s death by allowing him more of the substance that made him sick. For self-interested reasons, Bulstrode elects (ii), and Raffles dies. When this is discovered, Bulstrode is (rightly, I would argue) regarded as culpable for Raffles’s death, even though Raffles was already mortally ill before Bulstrode acted. This suggests that, once a problem bearing significantly on others’ welfare is detected, willfully exacerbating it is sufficient to ground a more general responsibility for the effects of that problem.Footnote ⁴⁸

To return to the climate case, the Carbon Axis knows (and has known for decades) that climate change is real and anthropogenic in origin. In this sense, when Axis members continue to emit unnecessarily, they become figurative Bulstrodes. The very act of knowingly and unnecessarily emitting confers blame on them for the outcomes that follow, even if the problem might have occurred, if to a lesser extent, without their particular contributions (Mittiga, Reference Mittiga, Edmondson and Levy2019, 185).

Now, I do not mean to imply that all within the Carbon Axis are equally blameworthy. Some, of course, wield less power or face more severe constraints than others; some also contribute far more than others. To capture these nuances, and thus attenuate some of the inevitable ambiguity that arises in complex moral judgments such as these, we might endorse something like Caney’s power/responsibility principle (a.k.a. the “Spiderman principle”). This principle holds that “those with the power to compel or induce or enable others to act in climate-friendly ways have a responsibility to do so” (Caney, Reference Caney2014, 214).Footnote ⁴⁹ Taking this a step further, we could say that those who—unnecessarily and deliberately—fail to meet this responsibility are, for that reason and to that extent, blameworthy. This is not a narrowly retributive principle, in the sense that it does not ground blameworthiness exclusively in relation to the negative (harm-inducing) actions that an agent previously undertook or is currently undertaking. Rather, it also takes into account the positive (harm-avoiding) actions that an agent reasonably could have undertaken (or could be undertaking), but did not (or is not). On this view, every inexcusable contribution to climate harm, as well as every missed opportunity to reduce or prevent harm, is blameworthy.Footnote ⁵⁰ While this may appear to be extremely demanding, as Spiderman’s Uncle Ben reminds us, heavy moral burdens are the cost of wielding great power.Footnote ⁵¹

3.f. Intentionality (and the doctrine of double effect)

At this point, one may concede that the members of the Carbon Axis certainly are (and have long been) aware of the nature and effects of their actions (or inaction), and also grant that many of the Axis’s contributions are (and have long been) significant and unnecessary, but nonetheless reject ascriptions of culpability on the ground that the Axis never directly intended to generate climate harms—that is to say, they never wished to harm others, or to use climate change as a means of harming. Rather, so the objection goes, Axis members were simply engaging in morally legitimate activities that just so happened to have the regrettable side effect of causing harm, and thus should not be blamed.

This is essentially an objection from the doctrine of double effect (DDE), which holds that it is sometimes “permissible to cause a harm as a side effect (or ‘double effect’) of bringing about a good result even though it would not be permissible to cause such a harm as a means to bringing about the same good end” (McIntyre, Reference McIntyre, Zalta and Nodelman2023). For the DDE to apply, most believe that a number of criteria must be met, including the followingFootnote ⁵²:

1. (i) the action itself must be good or at least neutral;

2. (ii) the agent undertaking the action must only intend the good effect and not the evil one;

3. (iii) the evil effect cannot be the means by which the good effect is producedFootnote ⁵³;

4. (iv) the good effect is sufficiently good so as to permit the evil effect.Footnote ⁵⁴

Many accounts (e.g., Walzer, Reference Walzer2006, 156) also stipulate that:

1. (v) the agent must strive to minimize the foreseen harm (typically, by exhausting all reasonable, less harmful, or risky alternatives).

I will not contest (iii). Clearly, it is not the case that, say, fossil fuel companies are producing energy by means of harming or killing people. I argue, however, that the DDE’s other criteria have not been met, and thus that the Carbon Axis cannot be exculpated on this ground. We can see this by examining each point in turn.

“the action itself must be good or at least neutral.” There are many actions that contribute to climate harm, and thus it is impossible to speak generally about whether they can be considered good, bad, or neutral in themselves—that is, apart from their harmful consequences. Much depends here on the level of abstraction we adopt in describing the ends of the relevant activities. Few would doubt, for instance, that agriculture is good. But what about animal agriculture? Even setting aside the fact that animal products are responsible for approximately 12–18% of global annual emissions, we might worry that the production of meat, dairy, and eggs (i) contributes to health crises of enormous scale, including heart disease, cancer, obesity, and diabetes; and (ii) results in the extreme suffering and industrialized slaughter of billions of farmed animals every year.Footnote ⁵⁵ These are clear bads, inseparable from animal agriculture. And while one might object that these, too, are merely indirect or “double” effects of the more general end of provisioning foodstuffs, this merely shifts our evaluation to the level of means. For if the relevant end is providing food, and animal agriculture is just one means for achieving that end, then why should we prefer it to the alternative means available to us that do not produce such horrific side effects?

Likewise with energy production, transport, and many other goods and services. Most would agree that electricity and heating are very great goods. But few would accept that the extraction, refinement, and combustion of fossil fuels are good (or at least neutral) activities in themselves—that is, shorn of the climate harms they cause. Just consider how often pipelines leak, tankers spill, or coal mines sicken workers. These may be cast as yet more double effects, but as before this would only change the level of debate to one over the best means we might use to achieve the more general (and good) end of providing energy.

In short, then, there are strong reasons to question whether some of the most significant climate-harming activities and products are, in fact, good or neutral in themselves—that is, apart from their climate-harming consequences. In many cases, they appear to involve extreme bads that are impossible to separate from the performance of the action or the provision/consumption of the product itself.

“the agent undertaking the action must only intend the good effect and not the evil one.” While it is likely true that the evil effects of many of the Axis’s actions are not intended (but “merely foreseen”), we may nevertheless question the moral reasoning underpinning this criterion. At least it does not seem obvious that the suffering, death, and damage the Carbon Axis is causing are made any less morally condemnable by dint of being “mere” by-products of other activities.Footnote ⁵⁶ This is especially so in light of other factors: that is, that the bad effects have long been known to occur (such that none can reasonably claim ignorance about them), and that far less harmful alternatives exist.

It also bears consideration that, as with Midgley and co., the real and final end of the Axis’s harmful activities is not the provision of some morally good or neutral product or service (like electricity or food), but rather the enrichment of its shareholders or (some portion of) its citizenry. Although I cannot pursue this point here, I would argue that such a narrowly self-interested end renders the ostensibly “incidental” nature of the Axis’s climate-harming even more repulsive to moral feeling, not less. Crimes of passion are, after all, ordinarily thought less severe and condemnable than those that emerge from cold calculation. And it is hard to see why the same intuition would not hold at the collective level: Those who would “permit” mass suffering, displacement, and death—however “incidental” such effects may be—without much more than shoulder-shrugging indifference would seem to occupy a special class of moral villain, one more alien than most.

“the good effect is sufficiently good so as to permit the evil effect.” The proportionality criterion seems hardest to sustain for those who would appeal to the DDE, as the evil effects brought on by climate change truly are immense: including, again, millions of premature deaths, extreme “untold” suffering, severe human rights diminutions, territory loss, mass extinction, and the credible risk of complete civilizational collapse.Footnote ⁵⁷ It is hard to fathom what could ever warrant risking—let alone knowingly causing or allowing—such calamity. Certainly, the answer would have to be something more than cheap energy, Ryanair tickets, and the McDonald’s dollar menu.

“the agent must strive to minimize the foreseen harm.” Even when the Carbon Axis acknowledges these extreme side effects (which it has only recently done, and still inconsistently), it has often insisted that nothing can change (at least not immediately). And yet, the Carbon Axis has—and, in many cases, has had for decades—feasible alternatives available to it. They have, however, fiercely resisted developing or scaling up these alternatives, presumably because of the threat they may pose to prevailing business practices, the value of owned assets, or existing profit margins.Footnote ⁵⁸ (Transitioning to solar, for example, would potentially mean losing the billions spent identifying and acquiring fossil fuel reserves.)

Of course, the same actors and entities constituting the Carbon Axis could mitigate potential financial losses by leading the transitions themselves. For instance, carmakers could begin limiting production to electric vehicles; industrial animal farms could transition to producing vegan substitutes. So why have they not done this? In many cases, it appears that the operant concern has been that such a transition would require embracing technologies that are, or would potentially be, less lucrative, at least for a time (Christophers, Reference Christophers2024). We should note, though, that while this may be true for certain businesses or industries, or at least for certain products, it is not at all obvious from a broader social perspective. Rather, as a number of economists have shown, the co-benefits that would follow from transitioning to carbon neutrality may well be sufficient to cancel out any economic costs associated therewith,Footnote ⁵⁹ whereas the costs of failing to transition (or delaying it) are potentially catastrophic.Footnote ⁶⁰ It is also worth stressing that many climate-friendly alternatives to products like fossil fuels, meat and dairy, and internal combustion vehicles are now already more cost-effective for the average consumer, particularly if existing public subsidies are taken out of the picture. But even if this were not so, avoiding a dip in quarterly profits or annual GDP does not obviously constitute sufficient moral justification for devastating the natural world, killing millions, and jeopardizing human civilization.

Taking this all into account, it appears clear that the DDE cannot excuse the Carbon Axis’s core activities. Thus, we should conclude that, in many if not most cases, the Axis’s contributions to harm are intentional—or, at least, not excusably unintentional.