Why Offsetting is Not Like Shaking a Bag: A Reply to Barry & Cullity

Abstract

ABSTRACT Barry and Cullity argue that when morally assessing a person’s climate actions, we should ask how these actions affect other people’s prospects, understood in terms of the actor’s episemic probabilities. In this comment we argue, first, that even though Barry and Cullity are right in that we should use a person’s epistemic probabilities when assessing her climate actions, it is not clear that their conclusion follows. The reason is that important questions remain about what should be the object of these epistemic probabilities. Second, we argue that emitting and offsetting is morally analogous to drawing from one ‘harm’ bag and one ‘benefit’ bag even though one has the option of drawing from neither bag.