ABSTRACT
Climate action of different sorts is possible for national governments, for individual persons, and for various other intermediate agents – collective agents operating at a subnational level, such as regional governments, cities, corporations, and non-government associations of various kinds. The climate duties of intermediate agents are duties of influence: duties to perform those actions that, through incentive and example, can influence national agents to solve the global problem. In the case of climate action, it is only national governments that are qualified to be parties to an international treaty; intermediate agents, whatever their economic size, are not. The constraints that the rights of individual citizens place on the actions of representative governments add to the moral as well as the political complexity of the climate action challenge. National governments (as well as those of regions and cities) have duties of representative responsibility, owed to those who vest them with authority.
