THREE INTERPRETATIONS OF THE ANTHROPOCENE: HOPE AND ANXIETY AT THE END OF NATURE

Após uma breve introdução ao recente debate sobre o Antropoceno apresentarei três interpretações diferentes do Antropoceno: o Antropoceno como prometeico, como destruição e como inigualitário. Estas interpretações não se baseiam só e exclusivamente em factos, pois dizem respeito também ao desenvolvimento futuro das atuais circunstâncias. Com base nesta premissa, argumentarei que não se trata nestas interpretações de meras previsões baseadas na razão teórica. Uma vez que as interpretações estão ligadas a interesses humanos e preocupações morais, elas são melhor descritas como prospeções baseadas na razão prática e vinculadas à esperança. Na parte final do artigo pretendo mostrar que temos razões para manter a esperança na época do Antropoceno.After a short introduction into the recent discourse on the Anthropocene, I will discuss three different interpretations of the Anthropocene: the Anthropocene as promethean, as destruction and as inegalitarian. These interpretations cannot simply be settled by the facts since they concern the direction in which things might develop. Therefore, I will argue, they are not mere predictions based on theoretical reason. Because of the very fact that they are bound up with fundamental human interests and human moral concerns, they involve prospection based on practical reason and prospection is itself deeply associated with hope. The final part of my paper aims to show that we are justified to hold hope in the epoch of the Anthropocene

Hope in political philosophy

The language of hope is a ubiquitous part of political life, but its value is increasingly contested. While there is an emerging debate about hope in political philosophy, an assessment of the prevalent scepticism about its role in political practice is still outstanding. The aim of this article is to provide an overview of historical and recent treatments of hope in political philosophy and to indicate lines of further research. We argue that even though political philosophy can draw on recent analyses of hope in analytic philosophy, there are distinct challenges for an account of hope in political contexts. Examples such as racial injustice or climate change show the need for a systematic normative account that is sensitive to the unavoidability of hope in politics as much as its characteristic dangers

Can Dangerous Climate Change Be Avoided?

This article discusses obstacles to overcoming dangerous climate change. It employs an account of dangerous climate change that takes climate change and climate change policy as dangerous if it imposes avoidable costs of poverty prolongation. It then examines plausible accounts of the collective action problems that seem to explain the lack of ambition to mitigate. After criticizing the merits of two proposals to overcome these problems, it discusses the pledge and review process. It argues that pledge and review possesses the virtues of encouraging broad participation and of providing a procedural safeguard for the right of sustainable development. However, given the perceptions of the marginal short term costs of mitigation, pledge and review is unlikely, at least initially, to issue in an agreement to make deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Because there is no rival approach that seems likely to better instantiate the two virtues, pledge and review may be the best available policy for mitigation. Moreover, recent economic research suggests that the co-benefits of mitigation may be greater than previously assumed and that the costs of renewable energy may be less than previously calculated. This would radically undermine claims that the short term mitigation costs necessarily render mitigation irrational and produce collective action problems. Given the circumstances, pledge and review might be our best hope to avoid dangerous climate change

On the Role of the Political Theorist Regarding Global Injustice

Interview of Katrin Flikschuh, Rainer Forst and Darrel Moellendorf by Valentin Beck and Julian Culp for Global Justice: Theory Practice Rhetoric

Der Wandel ideologischer Orientierungsmuster zwischen 1971 und 1991 am Beispiel des Links-Rechts-Schemas

'In dem vorliegenden Beitrag wird untersucht, wie sich die inhaltliche Bedeutung der politischen Begriffe Links und Rechts in der Bevölkerung 1971 und 1991 gewandelt hat. Der Bekanntheitsgrad des Links-Rechts-Schemas ist im Untersuchungszeitraum außerordentlich stark gestiegen. Zu beiden Zeitpunkten war das Links-Rechts-Schema bei Personen mit höherem Bildungsniveau bekannter als in den unteren Bildungsgruppen. Der Begriff Links steht 1991 in wesentlich höherem Maß als 1971 für soziale Inhalte und positiv bewertete Eigenschaften, während er zwanzig Jahre zuvor vor allem mit politischen Ideologien verknüpft wurde. Der Begriff Rechts hat seine Bedeutung dagegen im Untersuchungszeitraum insgesamt weniger verändert. Er steht nach wie vor insbesondere für konservativ-traditionelle Inhalte sowie für politischen Rationalismus und Extremismus. 1991 verbanden die Anhänger der beiden Volksparteien CDU/CSU einerseits und SPD andererseits unterschiedlichere Inhalte mit den Begriffen Links und Rechts als 1971, wobei sich die inhaltlichen Differenzen im Verständnis von Links zwischen den Parteianhängern stärker auseinanderentwickelt haben als im Verständnis von Rechts.' (Autorenreferat)'In this paper the question is examined how the political concepts of 'Left' and 'Right' in the German population have changed between 1971 and 1991. The Left-Right-concept became exceedingly well-known during this period. At both times people with a higher level of education were more familiar with this concept than those of lower education. In 1991 the concept of 'left' was more specially connected with social welfare and positive attributes than in 1971, whereas twenty years before it was primarily associated with political ideology. On the other hand, the concept of 'Right' has scarcely changed during the period examined here. As before, it implicates conservative-traditional values or political radicalism and extremism. In 1971, the supporters of the two big 'catch-all-parties' CDU/CSU and SPD shared a more or less homogeneous comprehension of these concepts of 'Left' and 'Right'; in 1991, however, more different values were associated with the two ideas.' (author's abstract)

Political membership in the contractarian defense of cosmopolitanism

This article assesses the recent use of contractarian strategies for the justification of cosmopolitan distributive principles. It deals in particular with the cosmopolitan critique of political membership and tries to reject the claim that political communities are arbitrary for the scope of global justice. By focusing on the circumstances of justice, the nature of the parties, the veil of ignorance, and the sense of justice, the article tries to show that the cosmopolitan critique of political membership modifies the contractarian premises in a way that is both unwarranted and unnecessary. While failing to establish principles of global distributive justice, existing cosmopolitan adaptations of the social contract device simply weaken the method’s justificatory potential

In defence of global egalitarianism

This essay argues that David Miller's criticisms of global egalitarianism do not undermine the view where it is stated in one of its stronger, luck egalitarian forms. The claim that global egalitarianism cannot specify a metric of justice which is broad enough to exclude spurious claims for redistribution, but precise enough to appropriately value different kinds of advantage, implicitly assumes that cultural understandings are the only legitimate way of identifying what counts as advantage. But that is an assumption always or almost always rejected by global egalitarianism. The claim that global egalitarianism demands either too little redistribution, leaving the unborn and dissenters burdened with their societies' imprudent choices, or too much redistribution, creating perverse incentives by punishing prudent decisions, only presents a problem for global luck egalitarianism on the assumption that nations can legitimately inherit assets from earlier generations – again, an assumption very much at odds with global egalitarian assumptions

Allocating the Burdens of Climate Action: Consumption-Based Carbon Accounting and the Polluter-Pays Principle

Action must be taken to combat climate change. Yet, how the costs of climate action should be allocated among states remains a question. One popular answer—the polluter-pays principle (PPP)—stipulates that those responsible for causing the problem should pay to address it. While intuitively plausible, the PPP has been subjected to withering criticism in recent years. It is timely, following the Paris Agreement, to develop a new version: one that does not focus on historical production-based emissions but rather allocates climate burdens in proportion to each state’s annual consumption-based emissions. This change in carbon accounting results in a fairer and more environmentally effective principle for distributing climate duties