Multi-causal global harms invite disputed responsibility, sustaining moral disengagement

Evidence

Because global effects are the products of multiple determinants, codetermination provides fertile ground for disputes about the true causes of detrimental outcomes. To further complicate assessment of effects, minor changes can set in motion cyclic processes that feed on each other in ways that eventuate in large-scale changes. For example, as previously noted, global warming thaws vast Arctic regions of permafrost, releasing methane and carbon dioxide that had been trapped in the frozen soil for thousands of years (Walter et al., 2006). Although methane is not so long lasting, it is better able than carbon dioxide to trap heat in the atmosphere. The trapped heat thaws more permafrost, which, in turn, further raises the earth’s temperature in a vicious positive feedback cycle. The rate of methane release is much faster than expected, and the amount of carbon dioxide released vastly exceeded the amount emitted annually by burning fossil fuels (Bora, 2013). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2722

Categorization

• XREF: Directly supports the vault’s pool of claims on how diffusion of responsibility and disputed causation let ordinary people rationalize harmful collective outcomes. — connects to: Slow, diffuse causal chains obscure personal responsibility for environmental harm
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2722