Forthcoming in Environmental Values ©The White Horse Press http://www.whpress.co.uk 1 The implications of psychological limitations for the ethics of climate change T.J. Kasperbauer ABSTRACT: Most philosophers and psychologists who have explored the psychology of climate change have focused only on motivational issues—getting people to act on what morality requires of them. This is misleading, however, because there are other psychological processes directed not at motivation but rather our ability to grasp the implications of climate change in a general way—what Stephen Gardiner has called the ‘grasping problem’. Taking the grasping problem as my departure point, I draw two conclusions from the relevant psychological literature: 1) ethicists and policy makers should focus less on changing individuals’ behaviors and more on changing policy; and 2) even though solutions to climate change must come at the level of policy, progress on this front will be limited by incompatible moral norms. Keywords: Climate change; Psychological limitations; Psychological constraints; Stephen Gardiner; Jonathan Haidt 1. Introduction The philosophical literature on the ethics of climate change tends to give the impression that the main problem is motivational, getting people to act on what morality requires of them. This is misleading. While motivational problems certainly exist, they are part of a larger set of psychological processes that shape our response to climate change. These psychological processes, in turn, complicate the question of what we should ask, morally, of agents responding to climate change. The first section of this paper introduces what Stephen Gardiner calls the ‘grasping problem,’ or the problem that human beings, either as citizens or policy makers, might be incapable of understanding climate change in even a basic way. I use the grasping problem to argue that there are broader psychological considerations relevant to climate change beyond the role of motivation. The subsequent sections are broken into two parts: first I discuss psychological processes relevant to climate change at the level of individual behaviors, followed by a discussion of psychological limitations at the level of policy and international negotiations. With respect to the psychology of individuals, I argue that the relevant research offers a bleak outlook on the prospects of adequately responding to climate change. Instead, I argue, ethicists