Collective Responses to Covid-19 and Climate Change

Authors

  • Andrea S. Asker Stockholm University and Institute for Futures Studies, Sweden
  • H. Orri Stefánsson Stockholm University and Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Sweden

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.23941/ejpe.v14i1.548

Abstract

Both individuals and governments around the world have willingly sacrificed a great deal to meet the collective action problem posed by Covid-19. This has provided some commentators with newfound hope about the possibility that we will be able to solve what is arguably the greatest collective action problem of all time: global climate change. In this paper we argue that this is overly optimistic. We defend two main claims. First, these two collective action problems are so different that the actions that individuals have taken to try to solve the problem posed by Covid-19 unfortunately provide little indication that we will be able to solve the problem posed by climate change. Second, the actions that states have taken in response to Covid-19 might—if anything—even be evidence that they will continue to fail to cooperate towards a solution to the climate crisis.

Author Biographies

Andrea S. Asker, Stockholm University and Institute for Futures Studies, Sweden

Andrea S. Asker is a PhD candidate at Stockholm University and research assistant at the Institute for Futures Studies in Stockholm. She has an interdisciplinary background with degrees in philosophy and economics from Stockholm University and Lund University. She works on topics in normative and applied ethics and decision theory. Her PhD thesis is on the topic of individual decision making in collective action problems.

H. Orri Stefánsson, Stockholm University and Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Sweden

Orri Stefánsson is an associate professor of practical philosophy at Stockholm University and Pro Futura Scientia fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. He holds a PhD in philosophy from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and has published a number of journal articles, chapters, and a book (together with Katie Steele), mostly on topics in decision theory, normative ethics, and Bayesian epistemology.

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Published

2021-07-14

How to Cite

Asker, A. S., & Stefánsson, H. O. (2021). Collective Responses to Covid-19 and Climate Change. Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics, 14(1), 152–166. https://doi.org/10.23941/ejpe.v14i1.548