Abstract
The likely adverse effects of climate change call for political action. In this paper, we argue that the public reason framework—with its insistence on justifiability to all reasonable citizens, in spite of their profound disagreements—despite initial misgivings recommends itself as a framework for debate and decisions pertaining to climate change. We address two possible stumbling blocks: the exclusion of non-anthropocentric points of view, and the controversy over intergenerational justice. We argue that public reason can deal with these problems. Moreover, we argue that both strongly idealized (in Rawls's vein) and moderately idealized (using Gaus as a foil) versions are able to address these issues. Moreover, public reason, as a family of views emphasizing disagreement and justifiability to all reasonable citizens, can help secure the stability of political orders, and hence contribute to sustained and demanding efforts to combat the adverse effects of climate change.
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Notes
We follow here the list of assumptions made by Sinnott-Armstrong (Sinnott-Armstrong 2011).
We do not mean that any and all aspects of state action concerning abatement and adaptation need to be seen as fundamental. We only claim that a not-negligible portion of those actions should (and can) be seen as such.
It may be queried whether the distinction between strong and moderate idealization holds in the way we assume, and whether Rawls's project relies on strong idealization. We thank an anonymous referee for pointing this out. First, we admit that idealization comes in degrees, but that there are genuine differences. The juxtaposition of Rawls and Gaus as using ‘strong’ and ‘moderate’ has precedents in the literature (Quong 2017; see also Vallier 2019, pp. 98ff.). Second, it is arguable that Rawls towards the very end of his career relied less on the Original Position (surely a device of strong idealization) and more on a less idealized Public Reason view, even allowing some degree of pluralism as concerns justice; yet it is also arguable that mainstream Rawlsianism leans more towards the strong idealization view, whereas figures such as Gaus and Vallier should be seen as proponents of a less idealized view. See, e.g., Gaus on Rawls in Gaus (2011, pp. xvii, 38f., 284).
There have been several attempts to align Rawls and climate change action. However, we have found no papers that directly addresses the public reason dimension of Rawls's work and climate change as we do here. Also, many have criticized Rawls's programme for being unable to adequately deal with the challenges of climate change, viz. Bell (2004), Buchanan (2000), Gardiner (2011a).
There are of course other ways of showing that Rawlsian theory without modifications is up to the task. Sarah Kenehan presents an interesting defence of the robustness of the duty of assistance in this regard.
For a thorough and critical account of the evolution of Rawls's thoughts on this account see Heyd (2009).
This is admittedly vague. Gaus does not demand of deliberators that they are highly sophisticated, ‘post-conventional’ (Kohlbergian stage 5 or 6) reasoners (Gaus 2011, p. 277).
We thank an anonymous referee for this and the following point.
As a final line of thought, Gaus’s framework may be compatible with climate action on grounds of non-interference: If adverse effects of climate change can be construed as (illegitimate) interference, then the members of the public would be justified in pursuing policies to mitigate or even cancel out these effects. We are thankful for an anonymous referee for this suggestion, but for reasons of space we cannot pursue it further here; see, however, e.g., Gaus (2011 pp. 341ff.).
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The authors would like to thank the practical philosophy research group at Copenhagen University and the anonymous referees at Res Publica.
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Nielsen, M.E.J., Hauge-Helgestad, A. Come as you are? Public Reason and Climate Change. Res Publica 28, 17–32 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-021-09517-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-021-09517-0