ABSTRACT
The second philosophical feature of the problem with motivation for sustainable action concerns the lack of a sharply defined addressee of the moral requirement to take up Humanity’s Challenge. The division of labour between individual agents and institutions should be clarified. Is it defensible to leave Humanity’s Challenge in the hands of institutions only, or ought individuals in the affluent countries to accept some responsibility for reducing their luxury emissions, irrespective of the institutional policies? It is argued that individual agents bear some responsibility to take sustainable action. Combined with evidence from psychology, this position leads to choosing the experience of the individual agent as the methodological starting point for the research. In order to structure the analysis of the agent’s experience of performing a morally complicated action, a mainstream descriptive model from the psychology of motivation is chosen: the Rubicon model of action phases. This model divides human action into the phases of deliberation, commitment, and execution. The structure of Part II is thereby determined: a chapter is devoted to each of the Rubicon phases with an accompanying analysis of the motivational characteristics of taking sustainable action that can be assigned to that phase.
