“Climate Ethics and Economics” is a three-year project (2014-2016) based at the Social and Moral Philosophy discipline in the Department of Political and Economic Studies, University of Helsinki.

The project focuses on the relationship between climate economics and ethics by providing a conceptual analysis of specific economic parameters and an explicit discussion of the ethical underpinnings of modelling choices. First, the project aims to study the methodological problems of economic analyses and natural-scientific climate change predictions so as to be able to identify the relevant ethical considerations for climate change. Second, the project evaluates how considerations of equity and justice could be incorporated in an economic analysis of climate change, and, finally, how existing philosophical theories of justice could be amended in order to respond to the new normative challenges that climate change raises.

These general aims translate into the following three more specific areas of research:
1. Uncertainty and evidence in confirming climate models
2. Uncertainty, time discounting and intergenerational justice
3. Collective action problems, responsibility, and real world requirements of ethics.

The project leader is Aki Lehtinen and project researchers are Alessandra Basso, Säde Hormio and Simo Kyllönen.