Losing your moral concepts during climate breakdown

This paper explains the current disorientation climate activists, climate scientists and others struggling against climate breakdown as a loss of moral concepts. The climate movement's moral concepts are gradually becoming unintelligible, even if still used in moral deliberation with others. The paper articulates this loss of moral concepts by (1) showing a loss of embeddedness in moral practice, causing climate activists to be disoriented, and (2) a loss of comprehension through a narrowing of their moral horizons due to the climate crisis limiting the scope of their moral concepts. The paper argues that one way to escape this loss, the path of radical hope, is unavailable to climate activists and scientists, or anyone struggling against climate breakdown.

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Publication Details

Journal
Environmental Values
Published
2025-10-22
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1177/09632719251387471
Primary Topic
Climate Change and Geoengineering
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00
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article

Losing your moral concepts during climate breakdown

Anh-Quân Nguyen
Environmental Values
Climate Change and Geoengineering
article

Losing your moral concepts during climate breakdown

Anh-Quân Nguyen
article en

Abstract

This paper explains the current disorientation climate activists, climate scientists and others struggling against climate breakdown as a loss of moral concepts. The climate movement's moral concepts are gradually becoming unintelligible, even if still used in moral deliberation with others. The paper articulates this loss of moral concepts by (1) showing a loss of embeddedness in moral practice, causing climate activists to be disoriented, and (2) a loss of comprehension through a narrowing of their moral horizons due to the climate crisis limiting the scope of their moral concepts. The paper argues that one way to escape this loss, the path of radical hope, is unavailable to climate activists and scientists, or anyone struggling against climate breakdown.

Environmental Values
University College Dublin (IE)
Openalex Percentile: Top 72%
Climate Change and Geoengineering
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