scholarly journals Duties of Corrective Justice and Historical Emissions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Bowman
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Corrective Justice ◽  
In Virtue Of

This paper addresses the question of whether agents have incurred duties of corrective justice to bear the costs of climate change in virtue of having produced historical emissions, or emissions produced when it was still reasonable to be ignorant of the causes and harmful consequences of climate change. It argues that it is likely that agents have incurred duties of corrective justice in virtue of having produced some of their historical emissions, given that it is likely that they would have produced these emissions had they known, when they produced them, that the emissions would contribute to harmful climate change.

Of Harm, Culprits and Rectification: Obtaining Corrective Justice for Climate Change Displacement

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Fanny Thornton
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Unmet Needs ◽  
Climate Justice ◽  
Corrective Justice ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
The Many

Abstract In light of the accelerating nature of climate change and its effect, it is unsurprising that various entities increasingly resort to courts and tribunals to seek to address the many harms and wrongs that clearly stem from climate change. This article discusses the opportunities in this context for those who face displacement by the effects of climate change, an issue that is not necessarily at the heart of either climate justice debates or climate displacement debates. Discussions about how to respond to displacement arising in the context of climate change often focus on the ‘protection space’ or ‘assistance space’, in which those affected are conceptualized as actual or potential seekers of protection or assistance, who may or may not be owed refuge elsewhere on account of unmet needs for shelter, support or safety. This article takes a different approach and conceptualizes those affected as potential or actual seekers of justice, who may be owed rectification for inflicted harm. The article thus contributes to emerging scholarship concerning climate change litigation and climate harm reversal, by focusing on the corrective justice potential for those who face the specific issue of displacement stemming from climate change. To this end, the article provides the relevant practical and analytical background, and discusses key recent law and policy developments in both the domestic and cross-border spheres. The article considers not merely the nexus between displacement stemming from climate change and considerations of justice, but also how and where justice in this context is or may be sought.

Climate Change and People on the Move

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fanny Thornton
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
International Law ◽  
Corrective Justice ◽  
Change Context ◽  
International Responsibility ◽  
People Movement ◽  
Disproportionate Burden ◽  
Impacts Of Climate Change

The book applies a justice framework to analysis of the actual and potential role of international law with respect to people on the move in the context of anthropogenic climate change. That people are affected by the impacts of climate change is no longer doubted, including with implications for the movement of people (migration, displacement, relocation, etc.). The book tackles unique questions concerning international responsibility for people movement arising from the inequities inherent to climate change. Corrective and distributive justice provide the analytical backbone. They are explored in a substantial theoretical chapter and then applied to subsequent contextual analysis. Corrective justice supports analysis as to whether people movement in the climate change context could be conceived or framed as harm, loss, or damage which is compensable under international law, either through fault-centred regimes or no-fault regimes (i.e., insurance). Distributive justice supports analysis as to whether such movement could be conceived or framed as a disproportionate burden, either for those faced with movement or those faced with sheltering people on the move, from which duties of redistribution may stem. The book contributes to the growing scholarship and analysis concerning international law or governance and people movement in response to climate change by investigating the bounds of the law where the phenomenon is viewed as one of (in)justice.

Responsibility for climate justice: Political not moral

2020 ◽  
pp. 147488512095514
Author(s):  
Michael Christopher Sardo
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Climate Justice ◽  
Political Responsibility ◽  
Adaptation Capacity ◽  
Climate Vulnerability ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
In Virtue Of

How should responsibility be theorized in the context of the global climate crisis? This question is often framed through the language of distributive justice. Because of the inequitable distribution of historical emissions, climate vulnerability, and adaptation capacity, such considerations are necessary, but do not exhaust the question of responsibility. This article argues that climate change is a structural injustice demanding a theory of political responsibility. Agents bear responsibility not in virtue of their individual causal contribution or capacity, but because they participate in and benefit from the carbon-intensive structures, practices, and institutions that constitute the global political and economic system. Agents take responsibility by engaging in collective political action to transform these structures that generate both climate hazards and unjust relationships of power. By incorporating distributive principles within a capacious conception of political responsibility, this framework advances the theory and practice of climate justice in two ways. First, adopting a relational rather than individualistic criterion of responsibility better makes sense of how and why individuals bear responsibility for a global and intergenerational injustice like climate change. Second, framing climate justice in terms of political responsibility for unjust structural processes better orients and motivates the political action necessary for structural transformation.

scholarly journals On the Alleged Insufficiency of the Polluter Pays Principle

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Bowman
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Corrective Justice ◽  
Plausible Account ◽  
Polluter Pays Principle

Several theorists of climate change justice have argued that the polluter-pays principle fails to assign duties that, if fulfilled, would be sufficient to prevent or compensate for all climate change-induced harm to persons. This paper contends that their argument for this claim rests on a faulty account of how the costs of rectifying a collectively-caused harm or threat of harm should be allocated among agents who have incurred duties of corrective justice to bear these costs. Given a more plausible account of how these costs should be allocated, it is likely that the polluter-pays principle does in fact assign duties that, if fulfilled, would be sufficient to prevent or compensate for all climate change-induced harm to persons.

On Individual and Shared Obligations

2021 ◽  
pp. 252-280
Author(s):  
Gunnar Björnsson
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Moral Deliberation ◽  
Individual Control ◽  
In Virtue Of

People who make substantial efforts to help resolve collective practical problems such as that of catastrophic climate change often think that: (1) Together, we can resolve the problem. (2) In virtue of this, we have an obligation to resolve it. (3) In virtue of the importance of the problem and our capacity to resolve it together, we have individual obligations to help resolve it. This “activist perspective” faces philosophical problems: How can the groups that are to solve the problems have obligations given that these groups are not themselves agents? How can members of such groups have obligations to help, given that they have no individual control over whether the problem is resolved? And how can the collective ability to solve a problem be relevant for individual obligations and individual moral deliberation? This chapter develops solutions to each of these problems based on an analysis of individual and shared obligations.

Corrective Justice

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fanny Thornton
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
International Law ◽  
Corrective Justice ◽  
Compensatory Mechanisms ◽  
People Movement

The chapter builds on its predecessor in acknowledging that causality issues in the climate change and people movement context are complex. The chapter works with the premise that those who are nevertheless adversely affected and those that may wish to seek a remedy should be able to seek redress. The chapter therefore relies on the logic which has informed the establishment of no-fault compensatory mechanisms—especially those akin to insurance—in exploring alternative, ‘rougher’ mechanisms of correction through compensation. Detailed attention is paid to existing support for such mechanisms under international law and governance regimes.

Corrective Justice

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fanny Thornton
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
International Law ◽  
Corrective Justice ◽  
People Movement

One of two chapters to examine corrective justice. The chapter explores whether, from a ‘pure’ corrective justice perspective it is possible to construct climate change–related people movement in terms of a corrective justice infringement and, if so, whether international law could provide remedies. The chapter shows that a ‘pure’ corrective justice claim may be very difficult to assemble: Are there bearers of harm, loss, or damage? Is there a perpetrator (or even several) causally linked to harm, loss, or damage experienced by others? Is the harm, loss, or damage experienced in people movement scenarios remediable? The chapter shows that answering these questions in the affirmative presents significant challenges. Furthermore, opportunities under international law to respond to people movement scenarios from the perspective of ‘pure’ corrective justice are severely curtailed.

scholarly journals The Relevance of Motivations to Wrongdoing for Contributing to Climate Change

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Bowman
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Side Effect ◽  
Individual Contributions ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Do So

This paper makes progress towards an account of moral wrongdoing for individual contributions to collectively-caused harms and substantial risks of harm, like the harms and risks stemming from climate change. To do so, this paper argues that an agent’s motivations can be relevant to whether an agent’s contribution to a collectively-caused harm or risk is morally wrong. Specifically, this paper argues that an agent’s contribution to a collectively caused harm or risk can be wrong in virtue of her motivations even when she does not intend to contribute to the harm or risk, but rather contributes to the harm or risk as a foreseeable but unintended side-effect of her otherwise good end.

ENERGY FLOWS AND BIODIVERSITY IN A MODEL ECOSYSTEM

COSMOS ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (01) ◽  
pp. 57-68
Author(s):  
FANQI ZENG ◽  
WENXU WANG ◽  
JIANG ZHANG
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Food Chain ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Dynamical Analysis ◽  
Chain Model ◽  
Dynamical Equations ◽  
Energy Flows ◽  
Energy Exchanges ◽  
Food Chain Model ◽  
In Virtue Of

Climate change has caught great attention. Ecological systems co-evolve with climate systems, thus, understanding the intrinsic dynamics of ecological systems is of paramount importance for exploring and predicting climate change. Food chains, as a systematic and simplistic model, have been a paradigm for investigating the long-term evolution of ecological systems in virtue of the dynamical analysis on the inter-play between the topology and the dynamical processes occurring in a food chain. We build a food chain model by considering energy exchanges among species, which is characterized by using population dynamical equations. We will compare our model with existing food chain models based on sufficiently empirical data. Our work is expected to be able to quantitatively capture and describe the interactions among species with respect to energy exchange, then deepen the understanding of ecological systems and their coevolution with climate change.

Averting robo-bees: why free-flying robotic bees are a bad idea

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (6) ◽  
pp. 723-729
Author(s):  
Roslyn Gleadow ◽  
Jim Hanan ◽  
Alan Dorin
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Computer Simulation ◽  
Food Security ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Plant Interactions ◽  
Plant Insect Interactions ◽  
Native Habitat ◽  
Insect Pollinators ◽  
Insect Interactions

Food security and the sustainability of native ecosystems depends on plant-insect interactions in countless ways. Recently reported rapid and immense declines in insect numbers due to climate change, the use of pesticides and herbicides, the introduction of agricultural monocultures, and the destruction of insect native habitat, are all potential contributors to this grave situation. Some researchers are working towards a future where natural insect pollinators might be replaced with free-flying robotic bees, an ecologically problematic proposal. We argue instead that creating environments that are friendly to bees and exploring the use of other species for pollination and bio-control, particularly in non-European countries, are more ecologically sound approaches. The computer simulation of insect-plant interactions is a far more measured application of technology that may assist in managing, or averting, ‘Insect Armageddon' from both practical and ethical viewpoints.

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