Publications

^{Kiental, Switzerland, 2022}

Peer-reviewed articles in journals (selection)

Scherz, A., & García-Portela, L. (2025). Climate scientists as trustees in public reason: the legitimacy of political institutions amid non-epistemic values. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 1–26.

Addressing global challenges like climate change requires both national action and international collaboration. However, it remains unclear under what conditions international institutions, such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), can legitimately demand compliance from individuals and states in regulating climate change. One might assume that their legitimacy is derived from the epistemic authority of climate scientists, supporting a belief-based account of political legitimacy. However, the pervasive role of non-epistemic values in climate science challenges this view, necessitating an alternative source of legitimacy. In this paper, we argue that will-based accounts – such as democratic or public reason approaches – better reconcile the technocratic role of climate scientists with democratic decision-making in establishing the legitimacy of international climate institutions. Specifically, we contend that institutions like the UNFCCC should derive their legitimacy from the appropriate role of climate scientists as trustees, who must be held accountable through mechanisms governed by public reason.

García-Portela, L. and Düvel, E. (2024) The Ethics of Loss and Damage, WIREs Climate Change [online first]

In the last decade, the international community has become increasingly aware that some negative impacts of climate change cannot be prevented. During the COP19 in Warsaw in 2013, the parties who agreed to the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) acknowledged that there were already greater climate impacts than could be reduced by adaptation. These impacts have been called “loss and damage”, and the policies and measures that deal with them are usually referred to as L&D, or L&D measures or policies. Since then, examples of loss and damage have unfortunately become abundant, but we lack a systematic approach to the ethical issues surrounding loss and damage. This article provides an overview of some of the ethical issues surrounding loss and damage in the context of climate change. We discuss what should count as loss and damage, how access to justice for loss and damage should be granted and their different rationale, as well as issues of noneconomic and nonanthropocentric loss and damage

García-Portela, L. (2024) A minimal capabilities-based approach for loss and damage. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities Vol. 25, N1

The topic of loss and damage has generated contentiousdebates in international policymaking and climatenegotiations. Up until now, political agreements have beenpossible because of the use of ambiguous language indeﬁning loss and damage. However, with the agreement ofcreating a speciﬁc fund for loss and damage reached in thelast COP27, the need to deﬁne loss and damage becomesmore pressing. This deﬁnition will not only determine towhom the funds will ﬂow, but also what kind of measureswill be funded. This paper contributes to clarifying thesetwo issues. First, it proposes what should count, minimally,as loss and damage by specifying a minimal account of lossand damage based on the capabilities approach. Thisminimal account develops and justiﬁes an ex-postperspective on loss and damage that is coherent with theUNFCCC discourse. Moreover, it proposes to diﬀerentiatebetween economic damage, non-economic losses, andnon-economic damage. Second, it proposes a variety ofreparative measures (material and symbolic) that should beimplemented in response to diﬀerent forms of loss anddamage

García-Portela, L and Maraun, D. (2023) Overstating the efects of anthropogenic climate change? A critical assessment of attribution methods in climate science. European Journal for Philosophy of Science 13:17

Climate scientists have proposed two methods to link extreme weather events and anthropogenic climate forcing: the probabilistic and the storyline approach. Proponents of the first approach have raised the criticism that the storyline approach could be overstating the role of anthropogenic climate change. This issue has important implications because, in certain contexts, decision-makers might seek to avoid information that overstates the effects of anthropogenic climate change. In this paper, we explore two research questions. First, whether and to what extent the storyline approach overstates the effects of anthropogenic climate change. Second, whether the objections offered against the storyline approach constitute good reasons to prefer the probabilistic approach. Concerning the first question, we show that the storyline approach does not necessarily overstate the effects of climate change, and particularly not for the reasons offered by proponents of the probabilistic approach. Concerning the second question, we show, independently, that the probabilistic approach faces the same or very similar objections to those raised against the storyline approach due to the lack of robustness of climate models and the way events are commonly defined when applying the probabilistic approach. These results suggest that these objections might not constitute good reasons to prefer the probabilistic approach over the storyline approach.

García-Portela, L (2023) Backward-looking principles of climate justice: the unjustified move from the Polluter Pays Principle to the Beneficiary Pays Principle. Res Publica: a journal of moral, legal and social philosophy.

Climate change involves changes in the climate system caused by polluting human activities and the social and natural effects of these changes. The historical and anthropogenic grounds of climate change play an important role in climate justice claims. Many climate justice scholars believe that principles of climate justice should account for the historical and anthropogenic sources of climate change. Two main backward-looking principles have been proposed: the polluter pays principle (PPP) and the beneficiary pays principle (BPP). The BPP emerged in the literature on climate justice in response to certain objections raised against the PPP. In this paper, I focus on two of these objections: the causation objection and the excusable ignorance objection. Defenders of the BPP have traditionally assumed that this principle is not vulnerable to those objections, which renders the BPP superior to the PPP. In this paper, I challenge this underlying assumption. My argument here is simple: moving from the PPP to the BPP in response to any of these objections might be unjustified because the BPP is affected by at least some of the considerations giving rise to these objections.

García-Portela, L (2022) Can Consumption-Based Emissions Accounting solve the problem of historical emissions? Some skeptical remarks. Ethics, Policy and the Environment. 25 (3). Response by Torpman, O. (2022)

In this paper, I argue that it is not clear whether Consumption-Based Emissions Accounting (CBEA) can account for historical emission sand, even if it could, whether it can account for more overall emissions than Production-Based Emissions Accounting (PBEA). First, the common justificatory rationale for CBEA (i.e. that consumers’ demand is an essential causalinput for emissions) cannot ground the application of CBEA to historical emissions if‘consumption’ is interpreted as ‘use’. For users (qua users) do not provide this causalinput. Alternatively, if ‘consumption’ is interpreted as ‘purchase’, CBEA cannot cover histor-ical emissions because purchasers of many products are also dead. Therefore, the onlyinterpretation of CBEA that could possibly cover historical emissions (‘consumption’ as ‘use’)lacks justificatory rationale. Second, it is doubtful whether CBEA can account for moreemissions than PBEA because CBEA cannot account for recent past and contemporaryemissions and because the problem of blameless emissions might also affect CBEA

Garcia-Portela, L. (2020) Moral Responsibility for Climate Change Loss and Damage: A response to the Excusable Ignorance Objection. Teorema. International Journal of Philosophy , 39 (1) :7-24 [Essay Prize SWIP-Analytic Spain]

The Polluter Pays Principle (PPP) states that polluters should bear the burdens associated with their pollution. This principle has been highly contested because of the putative impossibility of considering individuals morally responsible for an important amount of their emissions. For the PPP faces the so-called excusable ignorance objection, which states that polluters were for a long time non-negligently ignorant about the negative consequences of greenhouse gas emissions and, thus, cannot be considered morally responsible for their negative consequences. This paper focuses on the concept of moral responsibility as it appears in the excusable ignorance objection. I claim that this objection stems from a narrow notion of moral responsibility and that a more fundamental notion of moral responsibility would pave the way to overcome it. I show that it should be out of the question whether historical polluters should bear some burdens associated with climate change because of their historical emissions. The relevant question is which kind of burdens they can legitimately be asked to bear. I argue that this notion of moral responsibility allows us to assign burdens of symbolic reparation, which are at the core of ‘Loss and Damage’ policies.

Garcia-Portela, L. (2019) Individual Compensatory Duties for Historical Emissions and the Dead-Polluters Objection, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics , 32

Debates about individual responsibility for climate change revolve mainly around individual mitigation duties. Mitigation duties concern future impacts of climate change. Unfortunately, climate change has already caused important harms and it is foreseeable that it will cause more in the future, in spite of our best efforts. Thus, arguably, individuals might also have duties related to those harms. In this paper, I address the question of whether individuals are obligated to provide compensation for climate related harms that have already occurred. I explore two possible strategies to answer that question. The straightforward strategy answers in the affirmative. Two approaches embrace this strategy: the ‘ecological citizenship’ approach and the benefits-based approach. I challenge those two approaches and rule out an affirmative answer. The alternative strategy answers in the negative but provides a way to respond to why currently living individuals should pay for burdens created for past individuals. Two possible approaches embrace this alternative: the community-based approach and my own state-based benefits approach. I will argue that individual duties do not fall under the realm of compensatory justice, but they have nonetheless a duty to bear compensatory burdens allocated to their states.

Garcia-Portela, L. (2019) Two Mutually Exclusive Concepts of Harm? Retrospective and Structural Wrongful Harm at the Bases of a Compensatory-Based Approach for Loss and Damage. Ethics, Policy & Environment, 21 (3)

Response by Boran, I (2019)

Compensatory approaches to climate justice rely on powerful intuitions regarding responsibility and injustice. They appeal to one of our most deeply ingrained moral principles: those who have caused harm are those who should prima facie bear the responsibility of remedying it. However, in the context of climate change there are important epistemic and normative arguments that speak against applying this sort of principles. In this paper, I use the new developments of the science of attribution to reply to the epistemic concerns. I also provide countervailing normative reasons (based on recognition and self-respect) for the application of compensatory principles. I argue that the combination of two notions of wrongful harm — interactional and structural — would enable us to make the most of the normative force of an argument in favour of a compensatory view of climate justice.

Encyclopedia Entries

García-Portela, L. (2022) ‘Ética y generaciones futuras’. Enciclopedia de la Sociedad Española de Filosofía Analítica.

Esta entrada constituye una introducción a los problemas éticos relacionados con las generaciones futuras. Está pensada para el público general, aunque contiene referencias en castellano para adentrarse más en profundidad en el tema

Book chapters (selection)

Garcia-Portela, L. (2024) “Daño climático” en Gómez Ramos, A., y Velasco Arias, G. Atlas político de emociones, Trotta, Madrid.

Esta entrada propone una definición de daño climático. También se discuten varios problemas filosóficos ligados a este concepto, como el problema de la no-identidad o cómo deben distribuirse la responsabilidad por el daño climático entre todos los actores involucrados en el cambio climático. De nuevo, esta entrada constitute una introdución a este concepto para un público general y especializado de habla castellana.

Garcia-Portela, L. (2017) “El papel de las emisiones histórica en la justicia climática: el pensamiento de Lukas Meyer” en Truconne Borgogno, S. (comp.) Justicia intergeneracional. Ensayos desde el pensamiento de Lukas H. Meyer, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina.

Este capítulo tiene un doble objetivo. En primer lugar, está destinado a presentar los debates en torno a las diferentes concepciones de la justicia climática en lo que respecta al papel que las emisiones históricas deben jugar en ella. En segundo lugar, tiene como objetivo presentar el pensamiento de Lukas Meyer relativo al rol de las emisiones históricas en el diseño de un régimen climático justo.

Garcia-Portela, L. (2016) “El debate en torno a la fundamentación filosófica de nuestra responsabilidad hacia las generaciones futuras y sus consecuencias para la democracia verde”, en Valencia, A. (ed.) Democracia verde, Porrúa.

Los últimos informes del IPCC confirman la hipótesis rectora de todos los desarrollados desde 1990: la intervención del ser humano sobre la Tierra es la responsable del cambio climático global que afecta a las generaciones presentes y cuyos efectos serán devastadores para el futuro de la humanidad y del resto de especies. Este hecho carga a los seres humanos actuales con la responsabilidad de ampliar los límites de la consideración moral tradicionales y, por tanto, de empujar sus sistemas políticos hacia una ampliación de los límites de l a comunidad política. Este capítulo está dirigido a analizar el papel que el debate filosófico en torno a la fundamentación de nuestra responsabilidad hacia las generaciones futuras puede jugar en la construcción teórica de la democracia verde. Éste adquiere importancia por su objeto particular (las generaciones futuras), por su carácter de representatividad discursiva en tanto debate filosófico, y por el modo en que podemos evaluar cómo las distintas posiciones filosóficas contribuyen a una concepción democrática del pensamiento verde.

*Before starting publishing in English, I also wrote some pieces in Spanish on history of philosophy (e.g., on Thomas Hobbes and María Zambrano) and philosophy of history (esp. on the American Revolution).

You can find these and other papers on Philpeople, Academia.edu, Google Scholar and Research Gate. However, this webpage contains the most up-to-date information about me and my work.