Open Peer Commentary Self-Defense, Harm to Others, and Reasons for Action in Collective Action Problems MARK BRYANT BUDOLFSON Center for Ethics in Society, Stanford University, Stanford, California Baatz’s excellent discussion moves the debate forward in two ways that I will focus on here: first, by articulating an attractive view based on the notion of what can reasonably be demanded of individuals, and second, by providing a helpful overview of much of the existing literature. 1 In what follows I suggest three ways Baatz and others might further clarify and build on these contributions in future research. 1. Clarifying ‘Reasonable Demands’, and Integrating the Existing Literature on Distributing Burdens and Self-Defense A central issue in climate ethics is ‘where to draw the line’ between permissible and impermissible individual emissions, and Baatz’s idea is to use the notion of what can reasonably be demanded of individuals in order to draw this line. I believe that this is a fruitful idea, and is superior to most of the existing alternatives. There are a number of different ways of giving this idea more precise content that merit further examination in future work, including several based on different views in the existing literature in normative ethics and political philosophy about how burdens should be distributed, and in particular about how a burden that would by default fall on an individual may be redistributed by that individual onto others depending on a variety of factors. The last issue is arguably the general philosophical issue behind the self-defense literature, and I focus on it in what follows in order to illustrate one way that integrating such theories into the discussion can also provide further insight into the details of reasonable demands for emissions reductions. With that in mind, consider a proposal: Subsistence Emissions as Self-Defense Emissions: Emissions reductions can be reasonably demanded up to the point at which an individual can justify a refusal to make further reductions on grounds of self-defense. These remaining emissions might then be identified as ‘subsistence emissions’, giving more precise content to that familiar rhetorical notion. 2 q 2014 Taylor & Francis Correspondence Address: Mark Bryant Budolfson, Center for Ethics in Society, Stanford University 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, CA 94305. Email: budolfson@stanford.edu Ethics, Policy & Environment, 2014 Vol. 17, No. 1, 31–34, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21550085.2014.885162