Christmas Specials | The green man’s burden

What responsibilities do individuals have to stop climate change?

The nature of climate change makes that a tricky question

An illustration of a small person trying to hold up a large globe.
Illustration: Ryan Chapman
|Permatopia

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.

This article appeared in the Christmas Specials section of the print edition under the headline “The green man’s burden”

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From the December 23rd 2023 edition

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