What responsibilities do individuals have to stop climate change? (2024)

The vast majority of readers of The Economist would recoil at the idea of stealing from a poor Malian goatherd or a struggling Bangladeshi farmer. Next to none would countenance murdering such a person. They would feel little differently if they committed these crimes as part of a mob, rendering the responsibility diffuse. Nor would they feel much better if their actions were only likely, but not certain, to do blameless strangers serious harm: they would not scatter landmines in a populated area, for instance.

How, then, should we think about readers’ (and your correspondent’s) responsibility for global warming? Almost every human activity involves some emissions of greenhouse gases. Global warming is already harming the livelihoods of many people, including lots of poverty-stricken goatherds and farmers. At the extremes, the increasing frequency and intensity of droughts, floods, storms and heatwaves brought on by global warming is killing people—a tragedy that will get worse as the planet bakes. Are rich Western consumers thus conniving in theft and murder?