WP5:
Climate Justice
The phenomenon of post-truth, conspiracy theories, and, in general, rejection of the scientific method has disruptive effects on the assumption of collective responsibility for anthropogenic climate change, manifesting itself mainly in the specific form of climate denialism. Indeed, the challenge of anthropogenic climate change is the most daunting and existential of our time, and addressing it requires rethinking our models of production, distribution, and consumption, especially in the wealthiest and most industrialized countries. It is a challenge that faces the primary obstacle of racing against time.
To limit the increase in temperature to no more than 1.5 degrees or at most 2 degrees by 2050, an ambitious reduction in global CO2 emissions is required (WMO 2022; IPCC 2023). It is not surprising that the issue of climate justice is becoming increasingly relevant, encompassing many aspects that would be impossible to address all at once.
However, three of them certainly seem particularly significant and pressing:
(a) Justice at the Edge of Anthropogenic Climate Change: Intrinsic Value of Nature and Intergenerational Ethics
We will investigate from which perspective anthropogenic climate change is a moral and political problem. For example, we can advocate an ethical idea of justice that attributes intrinsic value to nature and, in this light, reconsider the human relationship with nature (Kopenawa and Albert 2013; Krenak 2019, 2020; Wienhues 2020). Or we can endorse a deontological concept of justice identifying the moral and political reasons for combating climate change in the harm to current younger generations – synchronic intergenerational justice – and, above all, to future generations – diachronic intergenerational justice (Mckinnon 2012; Gosseries and Meyer 2012; Karnein 2015; Gosseries 2016).
(b) Fairness in Climate Justice:
Toward a Better Distribution of Socio-economic Costs for a Green Transition
The costs of Green Transition will be increasingly greater, especially for developed countries which are the ones that should reduce their share of the carbon budget the most. The recent (more or less grounded) protests by farmers against the EU and national governments have shown how a fair distribution of the costs of the transition is essential if we want to avoid social instability and loss of trust in democratic institutions. In light of this non-ideal scenario, we aim to assess which distributive principles are more appropriate and feasible to share the costs of Green Transition (Robeyns 2019; Dooley et al. 2021; Williges et al. 2022) and how we should reshape our socioeconomic structures of production and consumption.
In this respect, particular attention is paid to the phenomenon of impoverishment of the population who are already in a condition of poverty (absolute or relative) or who risk falling into it due to the effects of climate change and corresponding mitigation measures (Moellendorf 2014).
(c) Greening Citizens: Balancing State Intervention, Democratic Consent, and Individual Motivation
One of the main questions of our time is how citizens' habits can be modified towards green and sustainable practices.
First, one needs to understand the extent to which a state's power can be exercised to incentivize sustainable individual conduct while maintaining a solid commitment to pluralism and citizens' autonomy (Moore and Roberts 2022; Mittiga 2022; Piroli 2023).
Second, we focus on the largely discussed motivational question: how can one inspire and mobilize green individual conduct and collective political action against the widespread tendency to consider the problem as either already irreparable or too big to be affected by micro bits of virtuous individual conduct or in need of a degree of international cooperation higher than what is reasonable to expect (Shue 2014, 2022; Moellendorf 2022)?