Is authoritarian power ever legitimate? The contemporary political theory literature—which largely conceptualizes legitimacy in terms of democracy or basic rights—would seem to suggest not. I argue, however, that there exists another, overlooked aspect of legitimacy concerning a government’s ability to ensure safety and security. While, under normal conditions, maintaining democracy and rights is typically compatible with guaranteeing safety, in emergency situations, conflicts between these two aspects of legitimacy can and often do arise. A salient example of this is the (...) COVID-19 pandemic, during which severe limitations on free movement and association have become legitimate techniques of government. Climate change poses an even graver threat to public safety. Consequently, I argue, legitimacy may require a similarly authoritarian approach. While unsettling, this suggests the political importance of climate action. For if we wish to avoid legitimating authoritarian power, we must act to prevent crises from arising that can only be resolved by such means. (shrink)

China's political environment offers limited space for critical debates on domestic politics. In such a constrained environment, people tend to represent and articulate climate change issues without explicitly addressing their political aspects. The aim of this paper is to examine this political ambiguity in climate change discourses. Q methodology was employed to elicit the subjective positions of forty-five young and educated Chinese individuals. Three discourses were extracted: namely, prosaic environmentalism, co-operative economic optimism and actor scepticism. These discourses (...) do not indicate critical intent and deep engagement in the political arguments regarding climate change. This raises concern about the growth of climate citizenship within the country. (shrink)

Climate change, pollution, and deforestation have a negative impact on global mental health. There is an environmental justice dimension to this challenge as wealthy people and high-income countries are major contributors to climate change and pollution, while poor people and low-income countries are heavily affected by the consequences. Using state-of-the art data mining, we analyzed and visualized the global research landscape on mental health, climate change, pollution and deforestation over a 15-year period. Metadata of papers were exported from PubMed®, and (...) both relevance and relatedness of terms in different time frames were computed using VOSviewer. Co-occurrence graphs were used to visualize results. The development of exemplary terms over time was plotted separately. The number of research papers on mental health and environmental challenges is growing in a linear fashion. Major topics are climate change, chemical pollution, including psychiatric medication in wastewater, and neurobiological effects. Research on specific psychiatric syndromes and diseases, particularly on their ethical and social aspects is less prominent. There is a growing body of research literature on links between mental health, climate change, pollution, and deforestation. This research provides a graphic overview to mental healthcare professionals and political stakeholders. Social and ethical aspects of the climate change-mental health link have been neglected, and more research is needed. (shrink)

This paper argues that climate migration-in case of climate refugees in a strict sense-differs from other forms of migration not only by its finality but also by the fact that entire communities are forced to resettle elsewhere. For such communities to migrate with dignity-that is in a way that protects the social bases of their self-respect-their host countries are required to ensure the necessary institutional arrangements enabling these people to become full and equal members within a reasonably short time. Ensuring (...) that their equal participation rights are not merely formal but have ‘fair value’ requires taking cultural differences into account to ensure that they do not pose substantial disadvantages for participation in the political and social sphere. (shrink)

In the face of accelerating climate change and the parlous state of its politics, despair is tempting. This paper analyses two manifestations of despair about climate change related to (1) the inefficacy of personal emissions reductions, and (2) the inability to make a difference to climate change through personal emissions reductions. On the back of an analysis of despair as a loss of hope, the paper argues that the judgements grounding each form of despair are unsound. The paper concludes with (...) consideration of the instrumental value of hope in effective agency to tackle climate change. Overall, the paper’s assessment of personal despair about climate change as philosophically unjustified provides a fresh perspective on aspects of the debate about how to frame climate change in public debate. (shrink)

Climate change is ‘a complex problem raising issues across and between a large number of disciplines, including physical and life sciences, political science, economics, and psychology, to name just a few’ (Gardiner 2006: 397). It is also a moral problem. Therefore, in this chapter, I will consider what kind of a contribution an ethical theory called ‘contractualism’ can make to the climate change debates. This chapter first introduces contractualism. It then describes a simple climate change scenario. The third section (...) explains what kind of moral obligations we would have in that situation according to contractualism. Finally, the last section discusses some of the advantages and problems of the sketched view. These discussions should help us to better understand contractualism and illustrate how contractualism could perhaps enable us to come to grips with some of the more difficult moral aspects of climate change. (shrink)

Climate change intersecting with complex socio-economic and political processes has produced distinctive patterns of crisis migration. However there exists a significant gap in understanding and theorizing these forms of migration creating significant policy challenges. Using a case study of an interstate migrant settlement in Bengaluru, India this article unpacks migration as an adaptation strategy through the lens of emotions. The article offers significant insights into how emotions affect the choice of migration as an adaptation strategy and shapes the differential (...) experiences of risks and vulnerability for different groups of people. Emphasizing such relational aspects of migration, the article calls for more research that develops a nuanced understanding of the emotional landscapes of migrants across migration pathways. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose meaningfulness as one important evaluative criterion in individual climate ethics and suggest that most of our greenhouse gas emitting actions, behaviours, and lives are the opposite of meaningful: anti-meaningful. We explain why such actions etc. score negatively on three important dimensions of the meaningfulness scale, which we call the agential, narrative, and generative dimensions. We suggest that thinking about individual climate ethics also in terms of (anti-) meaningfulness illuminates important aspects of our troubled ethical involvement (...) with CC and can make a fresh and fruitful contribution to existing discussions, which tend to focus on moral responsibility and obligations. (shrink)

Offers readers an alternative way of conceptualising humanism in relation to global change, one that draws in particular from black studies as opposed to one located in the ontological fold of European humanism.

Examines climate change, military intervention and financial collapse to reveal how truth is used by competing interests to shape individual behaviour, attitudes and identity.

This book reflects on Indonesia's recent experience with REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation), all set within a broader discussion of neoliberal environmentalism, hyper-capitalism and Indonesian carbon politics. Drawing on the author's political ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Jakarta, Central Sulawesi and Oslo, where the author examined Norway's interests and role in implementing REDD, this book discusses the long evolution of the idea that foreign state and private financing can be used to protect tropical forests and the carbon (...) stored within them, resulting in both local economic development and global climate benefits. It shows how neoliberal environmental approaches to climate change, of which REDD is a leading example, increases the severity of political contestations that must be overcome to reach global climate mitigation goals, and how recent incarnations of REDD have tended to forget earlier scholarly advice to couple anti-deforestation approaches with policies that reduce industrial carbon emissions. In Indonesia, tectonic political and economic forces are shown to have negatively impacted REDD implementation. Using a political ecology approach, the book links the literature on REDD with that covering Indonesia's recent democratic regression, highlighting how the country's environmental performance is inextricably linked to the timbre of its political governance. Given the severity of the political contestations that must be overcome to reach its stated goals, REDD cannot replace global policies that drastically reduce industrial carbon emissions. This book will be of great interests to students and scholars of political ecology, deforestation, climate change, environmental politics, natural resource management and environmental conservation. (shrink)

In this article I discuss a recent proposal according to which human beings are in need of moral enhancement by novel biomedical means in order to reduce the risk of catastrophes that could threaten the very possibility of continued human existence on this planet. I raise two objections to this proposal. The first objection claims that the idea that human beings could be morally enhanced by altering our emotional psychological inclinations, such as altruism, is misguided. In the line with Kantian (...) understanding of morality I argue that our morality is based on rationality and not on inclinations. If we take this view of morality it becomes clear that the proposed enhancement by biomedical means cannot be moral enhancement. What is enhanced is emotional aspect of our character, not our morality. People enhanced in this way would not act on the basis of their deliberate choices but on basis of preprogramed psychological inclination. This would in turn undermine our basic moral concept of freedom and, thereby, of moral responsibility. The second objection to the proposal show how the idea that moral enhancement by biomedical means should be mandatory violates political freedom of citizens. Faced with the objection that moral enhancement by biomedical means could be necessary in order to prevent catastrophic destruction of environment, in the final part of this chapter I try to point to education and liberal democracy as the alternative and morally acceptable ways of changing our behaviour. (shrink)

This book is a guide for understanding climate change. The guide takes an interdisciplinary approach because climate change is simultaneously a matter of science, engineering, economics, politics, culture, ethics, and more. The guide thus follows the contours of climate change as it appears in the world—as a tangle of problems. It builds climate literacy as a form of problem-posing by offering a set of tools for understanding how problems get framed, debated, and resolved. Through developing climate literacy, students gain the (...) ability to think critically about how facts are constructed and mobilized in the pursuit of values. Part One (Big Picture and Fundamentals) provides basic definitions and broad orientation by situating climate change within larger contexts like the Anthropocene, international climate diplomacy, sustainable development, and “green growth.” Part Two (Climate Sciences) offers tools for understanding climate science, its historical development, and its place in society by asking: who knows, what do we know, and how do we know it? Part Three (Politics, Ethics, and Policy) shows how to analyze debates about climate change policies from mitigation to rewilding. (shrink)

Getting to grips with the problem -- Just do it -- Persuasion -- Political exchange -- Changing the terms of political exchange -- The way ahead.

The climate change mitigation effort is being translated into several actions and discourses that make collateral benefits and their rationale increasingly relevant for sustainability, in such a way that they are now a constant part of the political agenda. Taking a broader and consensual perspective, co-benefits are considered here to be emerging advantages of implementing measures to lower greenhouse gases. Starting with the analysis of policy documents referring to two European urban transportation strategies, the emergent co-benefits are problematized and (...) discussed to better understand their moral aspect. Further ethical reflection is conducted after an analysis of some unintended consequences of the co-benefits rationale arising from the examples. The discussion focuses primarily on the challenges of an integrative moral justification for co-benefits and also for their role in the climate change mitigation effort. We also discuss the limitations of the current normative models that frame a co-benefits rationale, both from a moral viewpoint and in relation to the overall climate change mitigation strategy. In this article, we propose the concepts of well-being and freedom, as portrayed by the Capability Approach, as possible guiding notions for the moral and social evaluation of goodness of these emergent benefits as well as their rationale. Additionally, some preliminary conclusions are drawn regarding the potential of the presented concepts to support climate change mitigation action. Finally, we outline a scenario where the Capability Approach is the moral guideline for a co-benefits rationale and illustrates its potential in terms of enhancing climate change mitigation strategy. (shrink)

In 2020, COVID-19, the Australia bushfires, and other global threats served as vivid reminders that human and nonhuman fates are increasingly linked. Human use of nonhuman animals contributes to pandemics, climate change, and other global threats which, in turn, contribute to biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and nonhuman suffering. Jeff Sebo argues that humans have a moral responsibility to include animals in global health and environmental policy. In particular, we should reduce our use of animals as part of our pandemic and (...) climate change mitigation efforts and increase our support for animals as part of our adaptation efforts. Applying and extending frameworks such as One Health and the Green New Deal, Sebo calls for reducing support for factory farming, deforestation, and the wildlife trade; increasing support for humane, healthful, and sustainable alternatives; and considering human and nonhuman needs holistically. Sebo also considers connections with practical issues such as education, employment, social services, and infrastructure, as well as with theoretical issues such as well-being, moral status, political status, and population ethics. In all cases, he shows that these issues are both important and complex, and that we should neither underestimate our responsibilities because of our limitations, nor underestimate our limitations because of our responsibilities. Both an urgent call to action and a survey of what ethical and effective action requires, Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves is an invaluable resource for scholars, advocates, policy-makers, and anyone interested in what kind of world we should attempt to build and how. (shrink)

Climate change mitigation effort is being translated into several actions and discourses that make collateral benefits and their rationale increasingly relevant for sustainability, in such a way that they are now a constant part of the political agenda. Taking a border and consensual perspective, co-benefits are considered here to be emerging advantages of the implementation of measures regarding the lowering of greenhouse gases.Departing from the analysis of policy documents referring to two European urban transportation strategies, the emergent co-benefits are (...) problematized and discussed to better understand their moral aspect. Further ethical reflection is conducted after an analysis of some unintended consequences of co-benefits rationale coming from the mentioned examples. The focus is primarily on the challenges of an integrative moral justification for co-benefits and also for their role in the climate change mitigation effort. We also discuss the limitations of the current normative models that frame co-benefits rationale, from a moral viewpoint and in relation to the overall climate change mitigation strategy.In this article, we propose the concepts of well-being and freedom, as portrayed by Capabilities Approach, as possible guiding notions for the moral and social evaluation of goodness of these emergent benefits and their rationale too. Additionally, some preliminary conclusions are drawn regarding the potential of the presented concepts to favour the climate change mitigation action. Finally, a scenario is drawn where Capabilities Approach is the moral guideline for co-benefits rationale showing this way its potential in terms of enhancing climate change mitigation strategy. (shrink)

This article compares two dominating conceptual frameworks of the current global environmental crisis, the Anthropocene and climate change, with respect to how they can be deployed to think about the dynamics of political action. Whereas the Anthropocene has attracted the attention of audiences beyond specialists and has radically expanded the temporal horizon for politics, its temporal characteristics risk rendering it unhelpful for thinking critically about how the current environmental crisis can be addressed. Most importantly, by establishing a reference point (...) in a distant future from which the present is evaluated, the Anthropocene framework gives the impression that the future is already determined and that the course of future environmental degradation is set. The Anthropocene thus fails to specify what is at stake for politics in the current crisis. As a contrast, the climate-change framework is structured as a range of scenarios. It establishes a temporal structure that opens the present to different potential futures and manifests the fact that the level of emissions in the coming decades is decisive for future climate change but not yet determined. Further, the presence of tipping points in the climate system can be understood in temporal terms as a risk in some scenarios of falling into a temporality of unfolding, a mode in which game-changing events that lead to even more emissions proceed beyond human influence. The risk of entering such a temporality that closes down the possibility to meaningfully deliberate on fundamental aspects of the future increases with the rate of emissions. The climate-change framework in this way helps us understand the environmental crisis in a new way, namely by conceptualizing the open future as a finite resource that has to be distributed globally and across generations. In sum, as a framework for engaging with environmental derangement, the climate-change framework offers a more specific and politically useful temporality than the Anthropocene. (shrink)

Dieter Flader explores how current social and cultural concerns are connected to the unconscious, and how this affects our responses to them. Flader focuses on the role of the ego, assessing how our feelings about these issues in adulthood grow from childhood fears and desires, and integrating the existing psychoanalytic theories of Winnicott, Lacan, Kohut and others with sociological and political theory. The interdisciplinary approach not only analyses current social issues but also generates new perspectives and solutions, and examines (...) examples including climate change, bullying and vegetarianism. (shrink)

Subjunctive Aesthetics argues for the importance of ecocritical approaches within Mexican Studies. This monograph engages with established and up-and-coming Latin American ecocritical scholars who argue that Latin America offers an important corrective to Anglocentric approaches to the Anthropocene by foregrounding colonialism and empire.

Political liberals refuse that there are biophysical limits to human wealth accumulation. Coal fuelled the first liberal political economy — England’s — for 800 years before coal smoke was legally regulated in London. The English also have an enduring love for the diverse and scenic quality of their island nation, and a long history of commons governance that predates the acts of land theft which accompanied the emergence of political liberalism. By contrast the United States is a (...) modern liberal polity with little collective memory of commons. American political economists therefore refuse that commons can be collectively governed, or even that atmospheric pollution may be conceived as a problem of commons governance. The historically unsituated character of North American liberals — and liberalism more generally — also explains their inability adequately to describe moral connections between past, present and future generations implicated in anthropogenic climate change. The Christian account of the spiritual communion of saints remains a more powerful intergenerational narrative than political liberalism. As interpreted by Tolstoy, Gandhi and John Howard Yoder, true spiritual communion is characterised by the Christ-shaped refusal to render evil for evil. This refusal is an essential corrective to the realist and violent frame of international relations in which the international implications of climate change is conventionally conceived. (shrink)

Global climate change raises profound questions for social and political theorists. The human impacts of climate change are sufficiently broad, and generally adverse, to threaten the rights and freedoms of existing and future members of all countries. These impacts will also exacerbate inequalities between rich and poor countries despite the limited role of the latter in their origins. Responding to these impacts will require the implementation of environmental and social policies that are both environmentally effective and consistent with the (...) equality and liberty of populations to which they are applied. This article considers whether global emissions trading, namely, the creation of a global market for tradable allowances conferring the right to emit a certain amount of greenhouse gas over a specified time period, is normatively defensible from a liberal egalitarian perspective. After a brief review of the theory and practice of emissions trading, a number of normative objections to the international trade in emissions allowances are analysed. These objections appeal to one, or a combination, of two claims. First, emissions trading schemes are likely to produce undesirable outcomes, such as environmental neglect, in the further future. I call these ‘instrumental objections’. Second, emissions trading schemes violate non‐consequential norms of justice and fairness. I call these ‘intrinsic objections’. It is argued that, when combined, instrumental and intrinsic objections indicate that instituting a global network of emissions trading schemes, as envisioned by a number of parties to the Kyoto Protocol and Copenhagen Accord, would be illegitimate in absence of significant procedural and consequential safeguards. (shrink)

When ancient Chinese philosophy culminated in the sixth to third centuries BCE, “hundreds of flowers [intellectual schools] were blooming”, yet not many theoreticians were particularly interested in questions regarding the relationship between animal and human life — despite their profuse discussion of, and heated debates about, both “nature” and “human nature” in their writings. This indifferent attitude towards creatures lower than humans is best illustrated by Confucius (551–479 BCE), who observed: “It is impossible to associate with birds and beasts, as (...) if they were the same as us.” Later, however, this condescending attitude of the Sage would be challenged by the Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi (370 to 301 BCE), who untiringly advocates the equity of all creatures in the universe — a place where both living and fabulous organisms cohabit and co-evolve with one another, as well as with their environments. Morever, even Confucius’s descendent Mencius (c.372–289 BCE) did not endorse his mentor’s position, for the latter’s own writings are likewise inhabited by all kinds of creatures which not only serve the passive role of poetic figuration, but actually also construct their respective Umwelten, paralleled by the umwelt-construction of human beings. Recent advances in biosemiotics and ecosemiotics have enabled us to reread some of these philosophical texts, and to shed new light on this obscure aspect of Chinese thinking. This paper will draw upon the sign reflections of C. S. Peirce (1839–1914) and Jakob von Uexküll (1864–1944), and make use of a composite analytical method of text semiotics and dialogue studies, to examine a number of political and ethical allegories by Zhuangzi and Mencius. Acknowledging the necessarycircularity of interpretation and the homogeneity of observer and observed, the essay explores the ways in which ancient philosophical texts can be made compatible with contemporary biological and semiotic thinking. (shrink)

An inquiry into how to build the political force to make a global Green New Deal a reality.

This article examines the efforts of the Obama administration and many other actors-ranging from non-governmental organizations, municipalities, and state governments to some Congressional representatives-to put the United States back on track towards international climate leadership. Efforts to shift policy direction, however, still face many hurdles. Over the course of the better part of a decade or more, climate skeptics and policy change opponents were able to seed doubt about the urgency of the issue in the public’s mind, establish new organizations (...) and strategies to fight against climate action, and institutionalize serious obstacles to meaningful policy change. (shrink)

Traditional concern for the gradual, incremental effects of climate change remains; but now greater attention is being paid to the possibility of breaching major thresholds in the climate system with catastrophic consequences. It might be thought that the potential for abrupt climate change (a) undermines the usual (economic, psychological, and intergenerational) analyses of the climate change problem, and (b) in doing so helps us to act. Against this, I argue both that much of the psychological and intergenerational analyses remains in (...) place, and that abrupt climate change may make action more difficult, perhaps even setting off an intergenerational arms race. (shrink)

Global climate change raises profound questions for social and political theorists. The human impacts of climate change are sufficiently broad, and generally adverse, to threaten the rights and freedoms of existing and future members of all countries. These impacts will also exacerbate inequalities between rich and poor countries despite the limited role of the latter in their origins. Responding to these impacts will require the implementation of environmental and social policies that are both environmentally effective and consistent with the (...) equality and liberty of populations to which they are applied. This article considers whether global emissions trading, namely, the creation of a global market for tradable allowances conferring the right to emit a certain amount of greenhouse gas over a specified time period, is normatively defensible from a liberal egalitarian perspective. After a brief review of the theory and practice of emissions trading, a number of normative objections to the international trade in emissions allowances are analysed. These objections appeal to one, or a combination, of two claims. First, emissions trading schemes are likely to produce undesirable outcomes, such as environmental neglect, in the further future. I call these ‘instrumental objections’. Second, emissions trading schemes violate non‐consequential norms of justice and fairness. I call these ‘intrinsic objections’. It is argued that, when combined, instrumental and intrinsic objections indicate that instituting a global network of emissions trading schemes, as envisioned by a number of parties to the Kyoto Protocol and Copenhagen Accord, would be illegitimate in absence of significant procedural and consequential safeguards. (shrink)

In the fall of 2019, Trøndelag County Council, Norway, organized a Climate Workshop for children and youth. The intention of the workshop was to include children’s and youth’s perspectives as a foundation for a policy document titled “How we do it in Trøndelag. Strategy for transformations to mitigate climate change”. The workshop involved a range of creative and discussion tools for input on sustainable development and climate politics. In this article, we aim to describe and discuss innovative practices that include (...) children and youth in policymaking related to climate action, and discuss the theoretical implications of such policymaking in relation to children’s rights, young citizenship, and intergenerational justice. We employ a generational framework and perceive climate politics as inherently ingrained in intergenerational justice, where no generation has a superior claim to the earth’s resources, yet power is unfairly concentrated and accumulated among adult generations. We draw on contributions by various stakeholders involved: Two young workshop participants, two county council policymakers, and an interdisciplinary team of researchers from Childhood Studies and Design. (shrink)

Historically, the preconditions for the emergence of bioethics in China. were political reforms and their applications. The Hanzhong Euthanasia Case and the publication of Qiu Ren-zong's academic work Bioethics played a significant role in the development of bioethics in China. Other contributory factors include the establishment of the Chinese Society of Medical Ethics/Chinese Medical Association (C.M.A), the publication of the Journal of Chinese Medical Ethics, and the teaching and education of bioethics in China. Major achievements of bioethics in China (...) include the establishment of ethics committee and ethics review system, active international communication and cooperation among the academic circles, and the successful management of the 8th World Congress of Bioethics in Beijing in 2006. Chinese bioethics focus on native Chinese realities and conditions, absorb the international research achievements in relevant fields, and combine international ideas with traditional Chinese doctrines. Admittedly, there are still some aspects to be improved, yet bioethics has attracted a lot of attention from the core leadership in China and has gained sound financial support, which augers well for its further development. This article also briefly introduces the development of bioethics in Hong Kong and Taiwan, China. (shrink)

Climate change diplomacy is routinely characterized by preoccupation with narrow and short-term perceived national interests rather than the pressing need to mitigate global warming and respond agg...

Climate change diplomacy is routinely characterized by preoccupation with narrow and short-term perceived national interests rather than the pressing need to mitigate global warming and respond agg...

Climate change threatens to infringe the human rights of many. Taking an optimistic stance, climate engineering might reduce the extent to which such rights are infringed, but it might also bring about other rights infringements. This Forum, leading off the special issue on climate engineering governance, engages three scholars in a discussion of three core issues at the intersection of human rights and climate engineering. The Forum is divided into three sections, each authored by a different scholar and discussing a (...) distinct aspect of this relationship. First, Toby Svoboda gives an overarching view of three competing approaches to human rights, grounded in philosophy; then, Holly Jean Buck looks at lessons from how the climate migration conversation brings a human rights approach to a climate policy issue; and finally, Pablo Suarez illustrates how a humanitarian approach to climate engineering works with a human rights framework. The conclusion of the Forum draws together points of overlap across the three sections and suggests a path forward for policy and research on this topic. Together, the sections show that climate engineering, should it materialize, will pose novel human rights challenges, and may well force reconsideration of how human rights are applied as a guide to action. (shrink)

Scholars have argued that we have compelling reasons to combat climate change because it threatens human rights, referred to here as ‘climate rights’. The prospects of climate rights are analysed assuming two basic desiderata: its accuracy in capturing the normative dimension of climate change ; and its ability to generate political measures. In order for climate rights to meet these desiderata certain conditions must be satisfied: important human interests are put at risk by global climate change; there is an (...) identified rights-holder and obligation-bearer; this relationship is codified in a legitimate formal structure; it is feasible to claim the rights; an ‘enforcement mechanism’ could strengthen compliance. When asserting climate rights it is insufficient to consider the moral ground or actual enforcement possibilities by themselves. Normative and practical aspects are closely interlinked and must be studied in tandem. (shrink)

Climate change poses a serious problem for established ethical theories. There is no dearth of literature on the subject of climate ethics that break down the complexity of the issue, thereby enabling one to arrive at partial conclusions such as: 'historical justice demands us to do this...' or 'intergenerational justice demands us to do that...'. In contrast, this article attempts to face up to this complexity, that is: to end with a synthesis of the arguments into what can be considered (...) to be the most reasonable and fairest approach to the politics of climate change on a global scale. A significant part of the paper is devoted to the questions whether or not a) historical emissions and b) population changes are relevant to how emissions rights should be distributed. I discuss the merits and drawbacks of each perspective and briefly outline the normative justifications. (shrink)

Climate change has historically been an evolutionary determinant for our species, affecting both hominin evolutionary innovations and extinction rates, and the early waves of migration and expansion outside Africa. Today Homo sapiens has turned itself into a major geological force, able to cause a biodiversity crisis comparable to previous mass extinction events, shaping the Earth surface and impacting biogeochemical cycles and the climate at a global level. We argue that anthropogenically-driven climate change must be understood in terms of a monumental (...) niche construction process, generating long-term ecological inheritance and eco-evolutionary feedbacks that are putting our health and well-being and those of future generations at risk. We then list five major sources of climate change counter-intuitiveness, highlighting how evolved cognitive biases and heuristics may stand in the way of providing effective responses within tight deadlines. Drawing on our framing of the climate breakdown, we finally call for an evolutionary perspective in approaching the adaptive challenge posed by climate change: we argue that putting the brakes on a genuine self-endangering evolutionary trap ultimately depends on our counteractive niche constructing abilities, played at the level of our institutional and innovation capacity. (shrink)

Climate change has become one of the most pressing problems that can threaten the existence and development of humans around the globe. Almost all climate scientists have agreed that climate change is happening and is caused mainly by greenhouse gas emissions induced by anthropogenic activities. However, some groups still deny this fact or do not believe that climate change results from human activities. This essay discusses the causes, significance, and skeptical arguments of climate change denialism, as well as the roles (...) of scientists and science communication in addressing the issues. Through this essay, we call for the active participation of scientists in science communication activities with the public, the opening of new science communication sectors specified for climate change, and more attention to social sciences and humanities in addressing climate change issues. (shrink)

Although climate change has become the dominant concern of the twenty-first century, global powers refuse to implement the changes necessary to reverse these trends. Instead, they have neoliberalized nature and climate change politics and discourse, and there are indications of a more virulent strain of capital accumulation on the horizon. Adrian Parr calls attention to the problematic socioeconomic conditions of neoliberal capitalism underpinning the world's environmental challenges, and she argues that, until we grasp the implications of neoliberalism's interference in (...) climate change talks and policy, humanity is on track to an irreversible crisis. Parr not only exposes the global failure to produce equitable political options for environmental regulation, but she also breaks down the dominant political paradigms hindering the discovery of viable alternatives. She highlights the neoliberalization of nature in the development of green technologies, land use, dietary habits, reproductive practices, consumption patterns, design strategies, and media. She dismisses the notion that the free market can solve debilitating environmental degradation and climate change as nothing more than a political ghost emptied of its collective aspirations. Decrying what she perceives as a failure of the human imagination and an impoverishment of political institutions, Parr ruminates on the nature of change and existence in the absence of a future. The sustainability movement, she contends, must engage more aggressively with the logic and cultural manifestations of consumer economics to take hold of a more transformative politics. If the economically powerful continue to monopolize the meaning of environmental change, she warns, new and more promising collective solutions will fail to take root. (shrink)

Although climate change has become the dominant concern of the twenty-first century, global powers refuse to implement the changes necessary to reverse these trends. Instead, they have neoliberalized nature and climate change politics and discourse, and there are indications of a more virulent strain of capital accumulation on the horizon. Adrian Parr calls attention to the problematic socioeconomic conditions of neoliberal capitalism underpinning the world's environmental challenges, and she argues that, until we grasp the implications of neoliberalism's interference in (...) climate change talks and policy, humanity is on track to an irreversible crisis. Parr not only exposes the global failure to produce equitable political options for environmental regulation, but she also breaks down the dominant political paradigms hindering the discovery of viable alternatives. She highlights the neoliberalization of nature in the development of green technologies, land use, dietary habits, reproductive practices, consumption patterns, design strategies, and media. She dismisses the notion that the free market can solve debilitating environmental degradation and climate change as nothing more than a political ghost emptied of its collective aspirations. Decrying what she perceives as a failure of the human imagination and an impoverishment of political institutions, Parr ruminates on the nature of change and existence in the absence of a future. The sustainability movement, she contends, must engage more aggressively with the logic and cultural manifestations of consumer economics to take hold of a more transformative politics. If the economically powerful continue to monopolize the meaning of environmental change, she warns, new and more promising collective solutions will fail to take root. (shrink)

Climate change and other global environmental problems constitute a significant challenge to contemporary political philosophy, especially with respect to complacency. This paper assesses Rawls? theory, and argues for three conclusions. First, Rawls does not already solve such problems, and simple extensions of his theory are unlikely to do so. This is so despite the rich structure of Rawls? philosophy, and the appeal of some of its parts. Second, the most promising areas for extension ? the circumstances of justice, the (...) duty to maintain and promote just institutions, and his vision of social development ? are those that have not yet been explored. Third, unfortunately, Rawls? views on these topics are both seriously underdeveloped, and largely stipulative. Hence, in trying to meet climate change, Rawlsians are more likely to add new theories to Rawls, and perhaps even to transform his original account, than to generate an approach ?from the inside out? (shrink)

"Political hierarchies and ecological crises are often considered to be two different problems. For example, many speak in the present of parallel concerns : climate change and racial injustice. Parker argues rather that these concerns share a common cause in the polis. Polis is an ancient Greek term for the city-state, from which the English term political derives. But polis is more than a term. It is a philosophy according to which there is one complete human body, and (...) that body is meant to govern all other things. In that sense there are not two concerns, but instead one concern : to perceive the ways in which this tradition of the polis constrains the present. Emily Anne Parker bridges the insights of social constructionism and new materialisms to create a philosophy of elemental difference. Difference, rather than needing to be either dismissed based on it social construction or reified in keeping with the hierarchies of the polis, is crucial for addressing the contemporary crises of the polis.""--taken from back cover. (shrink)

Climate change poses grave threats to many people, including the most vulnerable. This prompts the question of who should bear the burden of combating ?dangerous? climate change. Many appeal to the Polluter Pays Principle. I argue that it should play an important role in any adequate analysis of the responsibility to combat climate change, but suggest that it suffers from three limitations and that it needs to be revised. I then consider the Ability to Pay Principle and consider four objections (...) to this principle. I suggest that, when suitably modified, it can supplement the Polluter Pays Principle. (shrink)

Outside the philosophy classroom, global skeptics – skeptics about all (purported) knowledge of the external world – are rare. But there are people who describe themselves as “skeptics” about various more specific domains, including self-professed “skeptics” about the reality of anthropogenic climate change. There is little to no philosophical literature that juxtaposes the climate change skeptic with the external world skeptic. While many “traditional” epistemologists assume that the external world skeptic poses a serious philosophical challenge in a way that the (...) climate change skeptic doesn’t, many “applied” or “social” epistemologists assume that there isn’t much to be learned from debates about the external world skeptic, finding her challenge to be distant from both common sense and real-world concerns. I try to show that both of these views are mistaken. The external world skeptic raises deep questions that are important for our everyday deliberation about what to believe, and there are significant structural parallels between the arguments for external world skepticism and those for at least a form of climate change skepticism that is idealized – but not too idealized! – from the views of flesh-and-blood climate change skeptics. As such, we have strong reasons to think in parallel about how to reply to both skeptics’ challenges. I thus finish by (briefly) considering how different widespread responses to the external world skeptic might or might not generalize happily to the climate change skeptic’s challenge. (shrink)

Tackling climate change is one of the most demanding challenges of humanity in the 21st century. Still, the efforts to mitigate the current environmental crisis do not seem enough to deal with the increased existential risks for the human and other species. Persson and Savulescu have proposed that our evolutionarily forged moral psychology is one of the impediments to facing as enormous a problem as global warming. They suggested that if we want to address properly some of the most pressing (...) problems that cause catastrophic harm to our existence, we should enhance our moral behavior by biomedical means. The objective of this paper is, precisely, to reflect on whether a Moral Bio-Enhancement (henceforth MBE) program would be a viable option to confront the climate emergency. To meet this goal, I will propose the Ultimate Mostropic (hereafter UM) thought experiment, a hypothetical situation where we have already discovered the UM, an available, safe (without any deleterious secondary effects), extremely cheap and effective pill to enhance our cognitive, affective and motivational abilities related to morality. After briefly presenting the main argument of Persson and Savulescu regarding MBE and climate change, I will point out some of the difficulties that make MBE a daunting but exciting philosophical and scientific debate. In order to overcome these complications, I will describe the UM thought experiment, which involves two scenarios of the MBE program: (a) the state-driven, compulsory and universal enterprise, and (b) the initiative of voluntary individuals. I will show that the shortcomings of MBE programs through the UM in both scenarios make Persson and Savulescu’s proposal a not appealing pathway to mitigate climate change. In the final section, I will suggest that an inaccurate attribution of responsibilities underlies their proposal and that the collective inaction problem should be redirected primarily through a reinforcement of the political nature of the solutions. (shrink)

ArgumentDr. James Hansen's 1988 testimony before the U.S. Senate was an important turning point in the history of global climate change. However, no studies have explained why Hansen's scientific communication in this deliberative setting was more successful than his testimonies of 1986 and 1987. This article turns to Hansen as an important case study in the rhetoric of accommodated science, illustrating how Hansen successfully accommodated his rhetoric to his non-scientist audience given his historical conditions and rhetorical constraints. This article provides (...) a richer explanation for the rhetorical/political emergence of global warming as an important public policy issue in the United States during the late 1980s and contributes to scholarly understanding of the rhetoric of accommodated science in deliberative settings, an often overlooked area of science communication research. (shrink)

In the United States, public opinions about climate change have become polarized, with a stark difference in the belief in climate change. Climate change denialism is pervasive among Republicans, especially conservatives, contrasting the high recognition of human-induced climate change issues among Democrats. As the water crisis is closely linked to climate change, the current study aims to examine how the belief in climate change’s impacts on future water supply uncertainty affects water conservation behaviors and whether the effect is conditional on (...) being a Republican. The Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics was performed on a dataset of 1831 water users in an arid region (Albuquerque, New Mexico). The analysis shows that water users’ belief in climate change’s impacts on future water supply uncertainty positively affects the number of water conservation behaviors they adopt, regardless of whether they are Republicans. Although being a Republican does not significantly negatively moderate the association between climate change belief and water conservation behaviors, the result still underscores the importance of fighting climate change denialism. Otherwise, it will not only hinder the climate change alleviation efforts but also exacerbate the water crisis. Several strategies to reduce climate change denialism are also recommended. (shrink)

While debates over the existence of climate change rage on, impacts thereof have begun to unfold. Yet such impacts are uneven: for some, the impacts of climate change comprise direct threats, while for others it remains a relatively abstract idea. In this essay, I suggest that conceptualizing climate change as violence rather than exclusively an environmental or technological problem brings it closer to everyday life by exposing it as a concrete social and political issue, and that film provides a (...) medium through which audiences might profitably grapple with climate change as violence. I first situate climate change amidst theories of structural violence and slow violence. I then argue that film represents the violence of climate change in a way that invites its audiences to locate their own corporeal and psychic lives in relation to climate change impacts. I demonstrate these claims through readings of The Day after Tomorrow and Half-Life. (shrink)

When the policies and activities of one country or generation harm both other nations and later generations, they constitute serious injustices. Recognizing the broad threat posed by anthropogenic climate change, advocates for an international climate policy development process have expressly aimed to mitigate this pressing contemporary environmental threat in a manner that promotes justice. Yet, while making justice a primary objective of global climate policy has been the movement's noblest aspiration, it remains an onerous challenge for policymakers. -/- Atmospheric Justice (...) is the first single-authored work of political theory that addresses this pressing challenge via the conceptual frameworks of justice, equality, and responsibility. Throughout this incisive study, Steve Vanderheiden points toward ways to achieve environmental justice by exploring how climate change raises issues of both international and intergenerational justice. In addition, he considers how the design of a global climate regime might take these aims into account. Engaging with the principles of renowned political philosopher John Rawls, he expands on them by factoring in the needs of future generations. Vanderheiden also demonstrates how political theory can contribute to reaching a better understanding of the proper human response to climate change. By showing how climate policy offers insights into resolving contemporary controversies within political theory, he illustrates the ways in which applying normative theory to policy allows us to better understand both. -/- Thoroughly researched and persuasively argued, Atmospheric Justice makes an important step toward providing us with a set of carefully elaborated first principles for achieving environmental justice. (shrink)

Part 1. Introduction -- Introduction: Navigating the Perfect Moral Storm in Light of a Thirty-Five Year Debate -- Thirty-Five Year Climate Change Policy Debate -- Part 2. Priority Ethical Issues -- Ethical Problems with Cost Arguments -- Ethics and Scientific Uncertainty Arguments -- Atmospheric Targets -- Allocating National Emissions Targets -- Climate Change Damages and Adaptation Costs -- Obligations of Sub-national Governments, Organizations, Businesses, and Individuals -- Independent Responsibility to Act -- Part 3. The Crucial Role of Ethics in Climate (...) Change Policy Making -- Why Has Ethics Failed to Achieve Traction? -- Conclusion: Navigating the Perfect Moral Storm. (shrink)