Responsibility reloaded

Two posts ago I examined how stopping profligate bread waste could reduce C02 emissions. Earlier in a comment to my post on climate change responsibility, Jordan had astutely noted that while consumers bear some responsibility in reducing emissions major corporations should also be held accountable. Today I will explore how assigning responsibility to both consumers …

Climate change and FMGCs

Following up on my last post, today I want to examine the importance of narratives in getting people – especially Europeans since I’m Austrian – involved in climate change activism. First, it is important to note that current inaction is not because people reject climate science. Europeans overwhelmingly agree that “the climate is probably or …

Climate Change Responsibility

In my last post I posed the question: Who specifically is responsible for addressing climate change and reducing GHG emissions? Today I provide one possible answer. I believe that considerable, if not the brunt of, responsibility ought to lie with consumers. However, it is unlikely that individuals accustomed to unlimited choice among a glut of …

Who is responsible?

When I started studying political, economic, and legal philosophy at the University of Graz just for fun, little did I know that climate change would play a prominent role in the curriculum. Now in my fourth semester, I have had the opportunity to examine the urgings and arguments of diverse researchers – philosophers, economists, climate …

Can EBPM work?

Recently an article by Gudula Walterskirchen in the Austrian daily Die Presse about evidence based policy making (EBPM) caught my eye. EBPM has been kicking around since the 1980s. Essentially it is the idea that policy decisions should be based on comprehensive, meticulously established, objective evidence as opposed to intuition, ideology, or common sense. It …