The Costs of Moralizing. How About a ‘Government House Climate Ethics’?
Abstract
Given a non-ideal world in which decision-makers are insufficiently moved by moral demands, how ought we to reform institutions of global climate governance in order to increase prospects for an effective and just treaty on climate change? The Received View holds that moralizing—explicitly raising and discussing the moral dimensions of climate change within UNFCCC negotiations—is part of the answer. This chapter questions this Received View and suggests moralizing negotiations might actually harden the deadlock in international climate policy, because it introduces extremely elastic concepts and may trigger an antagonizing psychological mechanism (anticipated moral reproach). It explores what might be said in favour of a neglected alternative in institutional design (Government House Climate Ethics), in which discussion of the moral dimensions of climate change enter negotiations more covertly ‘through the back door’, and it examines how this alternative might be defended against the charges of democratic deficits and elitism.
