Abstract

The problem of global climate changes has raised fundamental questions of justice in world politics centered around the vast discrepancies between the causes and the effects of global warming and the uneven levels of consumption/enjoyment of fossil fuels. The overwhelming majority of approaches in environmental ethics have focused on either distributive justice or rights-based frameworks. Climate change justice, however, can be explored through an alternative framework, an approach based on the recognition theory of Axel Honneth that has not been systematically engaged with in this field. A critique of John Rawls’ The Law of Peoples as an exemplar of distributive approaches reveals a number of limitations inherent in Rawlsian models of climate-change justice. Honneth’s theory of recognition is an advance on distributive models toward a notion of climate justice in which the conditions necessary for the “functioning and flourishment” of human freedom includes climatic stability as a basic social condition. The ideal of mutual recognition provides a basis for environmental protections, including but not limited to the global atmosphere as a necessary condition for the realization of self-autonomy for all human kind.