This paper proposes an answer to what Sandler calls ‘the problem of inconsequentialism’; the problem of providing justification for the claim that individuals should engage in unilateral reductions of their personal consumption, even though doing so will make an inconsequential contribution to mitigating the harmful impacts of the global environmental problems that the aggregate of such consumption causes. I provide an answer to this problem by developing a virtue ethics-based argument that a limited but significant class of consumption actions performed by typical consumers in rich, industrialised economies in the global North are moral wrongdoings, and the corresponding unilateral reductions in personal consumption are morally obligatory. I make this argument by drawing an analogy between a typical Northern consumer and a member of a golf club who has discovered that his club causes harm—by dumping used golf balls into a nature reserve—to which he inconsequentially contributes. I advance a moral evaluation of remaining a member of a harming group, based on the attitudes to the harm expressed by so remaining, and on Sandler’s virtue-grounded agent-relative target principle of right action. I examine a number of objections to this argument. I use Elizabeth Cripps’s notion of a ‘harming putative group’ to respond to the objection that the set of individuals whose aggregated consumption causes environmental problems is merely an arbitrary abstract set, membership of which is not justifiable grounds for moral evaluation. I then present two responses to the objection that withdrawal from this harming putative group—by refraining to perform those consumption actions which constitute membership—is unduly demanding.

中文翻译：

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对全球环境问题的微不足道的贡献：美德伦理帐户

这篇论文对桑德勒所说的“无关紧要主义问题”提出了一个答案；为个人应单方面减少其个人消费的主张提供理由的问题，即使这样做对减轻此类消费总量造成的全球环境问题的有害影响的贡献微不足道。我通过提出一个基于美德伦理学的论点来回答这个问题，即在全球北方富裕的工业化经济体中，典型消费者所进行的一类有限但重要的消费行为是道德错误，相应地单方面减少个人消费是道德义务。我通过在典型的北方消费者和发现他的俱乐部造成伤害的高尔夫球俱乐部成员之间进行类比来提出这个论点——将用过的高尔夫球倾倒到自然保护区——而他却无足轻重地做出了贡献。我基于对这种留下来所表达的伤害的态度，以及桑德勒的基于美德的代理人相对于正确行动的目标原则，提出了对留在伤害群体中的成员的道德评价。我检查了对这个论点的一些反对意见。我使用 Elizabeth Cripps 的“有害假定群体”的概念来回应这样一种反对意见，即其聚合消费导致环境问题的个人集合仅仅是一个任意的抽象集合，其成员资格不是道德评价的正当理由。