The Struggle for Climate Justice in a Non‐Ideal World

Many agents have failed to comply with their responsibilities to take the action needed to avoid dangerous anthropogenic climate change. This pervasive noncompliance raises two questions of nonideal political theory. First, it raises the question of what agents should do when others do not discharge their climate responsibilities. (the Responsibility Question) In this paper I put forward four principles that we need to employ to answer the Responsibility Question (Sections II-V). I then illustrate my account, by outlining four kinds of action that should be undertaken (Section VI). Pervasive noncompliance also raises a second question: Given the lack of progress in combating climate change, should existing governance structures be maintained or changed (and if they should be changed, in what ways)? (the Governance Question). The paper briefly outlines a methodology for addressing this question and outlines what a nonideal response to the existing institutional structures would be (Section VII). It does so with reference to the Paris Agreement, and in particular the creation of a "global stocktake" (Article 14, Paris Agreement) and the "facilitative dialogue" (paragraph 20 of the ‘Adoption of the Paris Agreement’). The aim, then, is to set out an account of a nonideal theory of climate justice

'Distributive Justice and Climate Change'

This paper discusses two distinct questions of distributive justice raised by climate change. Stated very roughly, one question concerns how much protection is owed to the potential victims of climate change (the Just Target Question), and the second concerns how the burdens (and benefits) involved in preventing dangerous climate change should be distributed (the Just Burden Question). In Section II, I focus on the first of these questions, the Just Target Question. The rest of the paper examines the second question, the Just Burden Question. To answer this question, I argue, it is necessary to address two important methodological questions (one concerning the choice between what I term Integrationism and Isolationism and the other concerning the choice between what I term Holism and Atomism). Sections III-V, thus, set out and explore these two methodological issues. Having done so, the paper then turns from methodological issues to substantive analysis, and in Section VI it examines three principles of distributive justice that, it has been suggested, should determine how the burden of addressing dangerous climatic changes should be distributed (the Polluter Pays Principle, the Ability to Pay Principle and the Beneficiary Pays Principle)

Political Institutions for the Future: A Five-Fold Package

Governments are often so focused on short-term gains that they ignore the long term, thus creating extra unnecessary burdens on their citizens, and violating their responsibilities to future generations. What can be done about this? In this paper I propose a package of reforms to the ways in which policies are made by legislatures, and in which those policies are scrutinised, implemented and evaluated. The overarching aim is to enhance the accountability of the decision-making process in ways that take into account the interests of persons in the future

Justicia distributiva internacional

Esta reseña examina trabajos recientes sobre justicia distributiva internacional. Dentro de la bibliografía sobre justicia global, se puede distinguir entre varios enfoques contrapuestos. En este trabajo, me concentraré en cuatro de ellos, comúnmente expresados. En particular, analizaré el presupuesto cosmopolitista de que los principios distributivos deberían aplicarse globalmente (primera sección) para luego analizar tres respuestas a esta postura; a saber: el énfasis nacionalista en deberes especiales hacia los con-nacionales (segunda sección), el argumento de la sociedad de estados de que los principios de justicia distributiva global violan la independencia de los estados (tercera sección), y los argumentos realistas de que la justicia global es utópica y que los estados deberían promover el interés nacional (cuarta sección)

Emissions and Emergence: a new index comparing relative contributions to climate change with relative climatic consequences

We develop a new index which maps relative climate change contributions to relative emergent impacts of climate change. The index compares cumulative emissions data with patterns of signal-to-noise ratios (S/N) in regional temperature (Frame et al., 2017). The latter act as a proxy for a range of local climate impacts, so emergent patterns of this ratio provide an informative way of summarising the regional disparities of climate change impacts. Here we combine these with measures of regional/national contributions to climate change to develop an “emissions-emergence index” (EEI) linking regions’/countries’ contributions to climate change with the emergent regional impacts of climate change. The EEI is a simple but robust indicator which captures relative contributions to and regional impacts from climate change. We demonstrate the applicability of the EEI both for discussions of historical contributions and impacts, and for considering future relative contributions and impacts, and examine its utility in the context of existing related metrics. Finally, we show how future emissions pathways can either imply a growth or reduction of regional climate change inequalities depending on the type and compositions of socioeconomic development strategie