ABSTRACT
The extent to which relatively privileged middle-class women, in both the global North and global South, are particularly vulnerable to and/or complicit with consumer-driven climate change is a subject of considerable debate, even among feminists themselves. This chapter examines the two principal types of feminist moral perspectives on the issue of consumer-linked global warming: cultural feminist maternal care ethics and socialist feminist counter-consumerism. The former examines various arguments for and critiques of maternal care ethics, and how women’s vulnerability to climate change—and purported virtue in resisting consumerism—tend to play out in climate emergencies. The latter, in contrast, considers the arguments outlined by socialist-feminist philosopher Kate Soper for embracing the “seductive” pleasures of an “alternative hedonism,” which she ultimately conjoins, in her recent work on climate change, with a more collectivist, cosmopolitan care ethics oriented toward the poor and future generations. The chapter concludes with some suggestions, made by feminists and others, about the need, in this era of the double crises of climate and democracy, for an ecological citizenship addressing certain limitations in Soper’s version of environmental sustainability.
