Climate ethics

Even though anthropogenic climate change is largely caused by industrialized nations, its burden is distributed unevenly with poor developing countries suffering the most. A common response to livelihood insecurities and destruction is migration. Using Peter Singer's ‘historical principle’, this paper argues that a morally just evaluation requires taking causality between climate change and migration under consideration. The historical principle is employed to emphasize shortcomings in commonly made philosophical arguments to oppose immigration. The article concludes that none of these arguments is able to override the moral responsibility of industrialized countries to compensate for harms that their actions have caused.

This book examines from different perspectives the moral significance of non-human members of the biotic community and their omission from climate ethics literature.

The complexity of life in an age of rapid climate change demands the development of moral frameworks that　recognize and respect the dignity and agency of both human and non-human organisms. Despite decades of careful work in non-anthropocentric approaches to environmental ethics, recent anthologies on climate ethics have largely omitted non-anthropocentric approaches. This multidisciplinary volume of international scholars tackles this lacuna by presenting novel work on non-anthropocentric approaches to climate ethics. Written in an accessible style, the text incorporates sentiocentric, biocentric, and ecocentric perspectives on climate change.

With diverse perspectives from both leading and emerging scholars of environmental ethics, geography, religious studies, conservation ecology, and environmental studies, this book will offer a valuable reading for students and scholars of these fields.

This book provides new interpretations of Heidegger’s philosophical method in light of 20th-century postmodernism and 21st-century speculative realism. In doing so, it raises important questions about philosophical method in the age of global warming and climate change. Vincent Blok addresses topics that have yet to be extensively discussed in Heidegger scholarship, including Heidegger’s method of questioning, the religious character of Heidegger’s philosophical method, and Heidegger’s conceptualization of philosophical method as explorative confrontation. He is also critical of Heidegger’s conceptuality and develops a post-Heideggerian concept of philosophical method, which provides a new perspective on the role of willing, poetry, and earth-interest in contemporary philosophy. This earth-interest turns out to be particularly important to consider and leads to critical reflections on Heidegger’s concept of Earth, the necessity of Earth-interest in contemporary philosophy, and a post-Heideggerian concept of the Earth. Heidegger’s Concept of Philosophical Method will be of interest primarily to Heidegger scholars and graduate students, but its discussion of philosophical method and environmental philosophy will also appeal to scholars in other disciplines and areas of philosophy.

Global warming isn’t coming; it is already here.  Human-induced global climate disruption is no longer a theoretical concern, neither is it an outcome that can be avoided if only the right policy is adopted or the right technology is invented. The oceans are rising and becoming more acidic, ice is melting, and droughts are becoming more prevalent. Determining how not only  to survive, but live a good life in an age of climate change is the most pressing challenge facing humanity. The fate of the human community and many of the organisms with which we have evolved hang in the balance.

In Riders in the Storm professor of philosophy and environmental studies Brian G. Henning presents a clear and accessible introduction to why global warming is happening, why it is still debated in the popular media and in congress, and what the international community is doing to try to address it. He contends that the mainstream moral frameworks of “sustainability” and “stewardship” are welcome improvements over more destructive attitudes regarding humanity’s place in nature, but that they are ultimately insufficient. Encouraging a return to the roots of ethics, which for millennia has focused on examining the nature of the good life well lived, Riders in the Storm explores the “great work” of voluntary simplicity, wide sustainability, and humble self-stewardship. Equipped with colorful graphics and images, suggestions for further research and reading, and dialogue prompts, this text is a straightforward and engaging introduction to climate change.

This report, co-released by West Coast Environmental Law and the Vanuatu Environmental Law Association, explains how well-established principles of private international law allow the courts and governments of individual countries to take action against fossil fuel polluters. The report also includes the first public proposal for the text of a Climate Compensation Act that clarifies the principles of liability for large-scale greenhouse gas emitters, and which could be enacted by countries around the world.

In climate ethics, equal per capita emissions egalitarianism (EE) is often regarded as a politically attractive but ethically shallow position, incompatible with prevailing theories of distributive justice. Recently, Caney (2012) has forcefully argued against EE along these lines. I will defend EE by showing that it should not be regarded as a doctrine of distributive climate justice but as an approach that helps to overcome a deadlock between rival conceptions of justice. In particular, EE is a second-order perspective which attempts to break the deadlock of reasonable disagreement between the defenders of rival theories of distributive justice by specifying a fair, ecologically stable end-state of emission contraction. From this perspective, equal per capita emissions egalitarianism is supported by principles of focal choice in coordination problems. In contrast to preference-based second-order approaches focal choice satisfies the requirement of ‘non-presentism’, that is, it does not favour the preferences of approachable people over the preferences of future people. This is a requirement of fairness. EE is therefore vindicated as an ethically well-founded position. As such, it can be integrated into reasonable negotiating strategies in international climate policy.

Suppose you are a moral error theorist, i.e., you believe that no moral judgment is true. What, then, ought you to do with regard to our common practice of making such judgments? Determining the usefulness of our ordinary moral practice is exacerbated by the great number and variety of moral judgments. In-depth case studies may thus be more helpful in clarifying error theory’s practical implications than reflections about morality in general. In this chapter I pursue this strategy with regard to a particularly important matter, namely climate change. First, I establish general conditions for when a moral judgement has any effect on those who accept it. Second, I show that the judgement that individuals in industrialized countries are morally obliged to act against climate change does not fulfil these conditions, and is thus neither beneficial nor harmful. Finally, I sketch several strategies for increasing people’s non-moral motivation to act against climate.

Climate justice: philosophical ideal, international failure, and cosmopolitan metamorphoses

Climate change raises profound moral problems, among which the issue of justice is paramount due to the severity of inequalities both in vulnerability and causal responsibility. As major philosophical theories turn out to be unsuited to account for global, intergenerational and environmental matters, theories of climate justice have been developed since the early 1990s to address these issues, in parallel with efforts to build international climate governance. With particular focus on interpreting the “common but differentiated responsibilities” norm, philosophers have designed various theoretical frameworks and principles to account for the fair distribution of mitigation and adaptation duties. However, as it has become increasingly obvious, international governance has failed to implement fair and efficient climate policies, and so have theories of climate justice. Still, climate justice ideals are more relevant than ever. In order to further them, theories must go beyond a purely ideal and international conception of climate justice and embrace a non-ideal, cosmopolitan and multiscalar approach. Such a paradigm shift illuminates recent metamorphoses of climate justice narratives to include questions of individual responsibility, fair transition at national and local levels, and loss and damage.

La justice climatique : idéal philosophique, échec international et métamorphoses cosmopolitiques

Le changement climatique soulève de profonds problèmes moraux : celui de la justice est d’une importance primordiale en raison de la sévérité des inégalités dans la vulnérabilité et la responsabilité causale. Les principales théories philosophiques s’avérant inadéquates pour penser les problèmes de justice mondiale, intergénérationnelle et environnementale, des théories de la justice climatique ont été développées depuis le début des années 1990, en parallèle des efforts pour construire une gouvernance climatique internationale. Cherchant en particulier à interpréter la norme des « responsabilités communes mais différenciées », des philosophes ont conçu des cadres théoriques et des principes pour penser la juste distribution des devoirs d’atténuation et d’adaptation. Cependant, il est de plus en plus manifeste que la gouvernance internationale a échoué à mettre en œuvre des politiques climatiques justes et efficaces. Cet échec est également celui des théories de la justice climatique. Les idéaux de justice climatique restent toutefois plus pertinents que jamais. Afin de les promouvoir, les théories doivent aller au-delà d’une conception purement idéale et internationale de la justice climatique et adopter une approche non idéale, cosmopolitique et multiscalaire. Un tel changement de paradigme permet d’éclairer les métamorphoses récentes des récits sur la justice climatique pour inclure les questions de responsabilité individuelle, de transition juste aux niveaux national et local, et de pertes et préjudices.

Anthropogenic climate change poses a considerable threat to human life on planet Earth. Extreme weather, water stress, crop failure and the spread of diseases are among the eff ects of climate change that are already being felt around the globe. However, climate change does not pose a threat to all life: nature can certainly adapt to new conditions. The question is if we can adapt. Since global warming is already a reality and can no longer be averted, addressing climate change involves two types of measures: mitigation (attempts to curb and regulate greenhouse gas emissions and restrain individual consumer lifestyles) and adaptation to new living conditions (fi nancially supporting farmers aff ected by droughts, relocating residents threatened by rising sea levels, addressing new epidemics and climate migration). Sadly, experience shows that the more vulnerable the population aff ected by the adverse eff ects of climate change, and the greater the danger to their subsistence and physical integrity, the less the political will to support them. Kant's ethical theory provides normative guidance concerning our duties to others and to ourselves. It is no surprise that climate ethics has also turned to Kant and to Kantian inspired theories in search of normative principles for dealing with the challenges of climate change and spelling out what we owe to each other in this regard. While I do not dispute that there are important individual ethical duties in regard to climate change, the problem is that the focus on individual virtue and individual agency seems inadequate in the face of the urgency to mitigate the impact of climate change. Although I propose in this article a Kantian approach to climate change, I will start by explaining the limitations of applying Kant's ethical theory to the problem of climate change. Climate change is a global problem that calls for urgent collective action not only at the domestic level but 9781138700000_pi-257.indd 99 9781138700000_pi-257.indd 99

Even under the most optimistic scenarios for technological improvements in livestock efficiency, nine billion humans cannot continue to eat animals at the current and projected rates and avoid catastrophic environmental harms. In the end, the more animal products one consumes, the more destructive one’s diet is to the environment. Though important and morally relevant qualitative differences exist between industrial and non-industrial methods, given the present and projected size of the human population, the morality and sustainability of one’s diet are inversely related to the proportion of animals and animal products in one’s diet. Thus, if we are to ensure adequate food and water for all humans without exceeding the Earth’s capacity to support life, we must find the courage to address directly the morality of eating meat on an increasingly small planet.
(N.B. This essay was originally published as “Standing in Livestock’s ‘Long Shadow’: The Ethics of Eating Meat on a Small Planet.” It appears here with updated statistics with the permission of the publisher.)

Geoengineering is often seen as being able to fix the problem of global warming and for a rather small price tag, at least when compared to the deeply expensive alternative of investing in clean energy, or so the frame goes. However, this type of framing is representative of a problematically short-sighted and narrowly defined analysis of the problem, whereby consideration is only given to the short-term costs of reducing global surface temperatures. What such a framing fails to include is the broader context of the various strategies and all of the costs benefits and risks associated with them. In response to the problematic framing I argue that clean energy and rapid emission reductions is a deeply preferable strategy to stratospheric sulfate injection on multiple grounds including saved fuel costs, reduced climate impacts, and reduced costs from expensive and risky forms of geoengineering.

Résumé:
Cet article s'intéresse à l'impact du facteur démographique sur la limite planétaire du système climatique. Il adopte une démarche éthique visant à examiner les politiques qui semblent justifiables dans le contexte d'une réflexion démocratique sur les moyens les plus efficaces de lutter contre le changement climatique. Il se place dans le cadre des débats en éthique climatique sur la question des choix procréatifs individuels et se focalise sur les pays développés. Il examine ainsi les principales approches et évalue les politiques de réduction de la croissance démographique en développant les possibles justifications qui accompagneraient certaines mesures incitatives ainsi que les réponses aux objections communément faites à ces dernières.

Abstract:
This article focuses on the impact of population growth on the planetary boundary of the climate system. It develops an ethical approach examining policies that seem justifiable within the context of democratic reflection on the most effective means to combating climate change. It critically engages with climate ethics debates on the issue of individual reproductive choices in the context of developed countries. By doing so, it investigates the main philosophical approaches and evaluates population growth reduction policies. It aims at justifying incentive measures and at defending them against common objections.

"At eight times the size of the human population, livestock cast a very long shadow indeed. A primary contribution of this essay is to provide a survey of the human and environmental impacts of livestock production. We will find that, considering both the direct and indirect effects, the overconsumption of animal meat is now a (if not the) leading cause of or contributor to both malnourishment and obesity, chronic disease, antibiotic resistance, and the spread of infectious disease; the livestock sector may now be the single greatest source of freshwater use and pollution, the leading cause of rainforest deforestation, and the driving force behind spiraling species extinction; finally, livestock production is among the largest sectoral sources of greenhouse gas emissions contributing to global climate change.

Recognizing the inefficient and environmentally destructive nature of intensive livestock production, this essay will consider various solutions being proposed to “shrink” livestock’s long shadow, including “technical” or “market” fixes, a transition to “new agrarian” methods, and the movement to a vegetarian or vegan diet. Though important and morally relevant qualitative differences exist between industrial and non-industrial methods, this essay will conclude that, given the present and projected size of the human population, the morality and sustainability of one’s diet is inversely related to the proportion of animals and animal products one consumes."

Despite knowledge of the projected harmful impacts of the climate crisis, there has been a long history of failure in acting sufficiently to limit anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions at a level that would avoid dangerous human interference with climate systems. The scientific community agrees that immediate and fast-acting measures must be taken to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2040 for a likely chance of avoiding the most dangerous impacts of the climate crisis, including risks to energy, food, and water security, extreme weather, and loss of home and livelihood to many of the world’s most vulnerable communities.

In this paper, I aim to establish paternalism as a normative governmental response to the climate crisis. I argue that on their own, people are unlikely to voluntarily make the lifestyle and behavioural changes that are necessary to limit global heating to under 1.5 °C, despite those changes being morally compelling if we are to fulfil our collective moral duty not to harm others. We should therefore and are morally justified in applying Mill’s Harm Principle, which allows us to limit an individual’s liberty in order to restrict their carbon emissions and thereby prevent or mitigate harm to others. Applying Rawls’s conception of justice, I argue that governments have a duty to ensure that the climate crisis is resolved as they relate to just society; it is this goal of justice that provides government with the political and social legitimacy to intervene. Paternalistic intervention is therefore imperative in order to ensure that lifestyle and behavioural changes are adopted with the necessary speed and efficiency to limit global carbon and greenhouse gas emissions to a level that would avoid catastrophic harm.

Tackling climate change has often been considered the responsibility of national governments. But do individuals also have a duty to act in the face of this problem? In particular, do they have a duty to adopt a greener lifestyle or to press their government to act? This review critically examines the arguments provided for and against such duties in the relevant philosophic literature. It first discusses the problem of causal inefficacy – namely the fact that individual GHG emissions seem to make no difference to the harmful consequences of climate change – and whether it clears individuals from any moral obligations related to climate change. Then, it considers various other arguments for the existence of such duties, including integrity, fairness, universalizability or virtue. Finally, it assesses the existence of a duty to promote collective action through active citizenship. The conclusion emphasizes that most writers agree on the fact that individuals have at least some duties to take action against climate change, but that disagreement remains about the exact nature and, above all, the extent of these duties.

This chapter begins with an overview of Levinas’s ethics of difference and singularity and then explores a Levinasian approach to the ethical dimension of climate change.  Dale Jamieson argues that climate change and other collective action environmental problems pose a challenge to our traditional conceptions of moral responsibility.  But Levinas’s account of responsibility, because it is not grounded in intention or causal relations, suggests that I am indeed responsible for those who suffer from a changing climate.  Indeed, their vulnerability and suffering disclose my own resources to work for mitigation and adaptation, and my complicity in their situation.  Moreover, Levinas’s understanding of the work of ethics as a service for a time in which I do not benefit, provides a framework for conceptualizing my responsibility to future generations.  And grounding justice in the ethical relation, as Levinas does, motivates collective agreements aimed at mitigating and adapting to climate change while simultaneously resisting the ways in which these agreement inevitably justify present and future suffering.  Thus, I argue, Levinas’s work provides an apt description of ethical life in the Anthropocene: I have inescapable responsibilities that increase with my awareness and attention and are always beyond my capacities to meet.

Climate policies and ethics have been crucial aspects of distributive justice in climate change. Atmosphere, being the global common, requires a global agreement on mitigation and adaptation to climate change. But such agreements face ethical issues that are prone to moral corruption(Gardiner, 2011). In the words of Stephen Gardiner (2006), climate change is a “perfect moral storm”. Ethical issues like commoditization of the social and environmental values via carbon reduction markets, intergenerational ethics, sustainability, etc have been studied in this paper, concerning the transition in climate regime from Kyoto Protocol to Paris Agreement. The climate agreement’s evaluation is based on ethical values.
The paper analyses and compares the ethical perspectives of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Sustainable Development Mechanism (SDM). It has been observed in the study that the policy transition cannot bridge the climate change gap without safeguards for human rights, gender equality, inter/intra-generation equity, etc. The Paris Agreement provides a new shell of sustainability to carbon markets of the Kyoto Protocol, but the market mechanism remains the same in principle. Recommendations have been proposed which shall enhance the climate change mitigation efforts and build policy safeguards. As the parameters defining the SDM are not finalized yet, reforms are proposed to be incorporated from the experiences and shortcomings of CDM.

This paper examines what agents should do when others fail to comply with their responsibilities to prevent dangerous climate change. It distinguishes between six different possible responses to noncompliance. These include what I term (1) 'target modification' (watering down the extent to which we seek to prevent climate change), (2) ‘responsibility reallocation’ (reassigning responsibilities to other duty bearers), (3) ‘burden shifting I’ (allowing duty bearers to implement policies which impose unjust burdens on others, (4) 'burden shifting II’ (allowing some to protect peoples rights in ways which impose otherwise unjustified burdens on the duty bearers, (5) 'compromising moral ideals' (permitting agents to compromise non-justice ideals that they are otherwise bound by); and (6) ‘promoting compliance (implementing policies and creating institutions which reduce noncompliance). Having constructed a taxonomy of possible responses, I then outline the kind of normative and empirical considerations that would be needed to evaluate which responses should be adopted and by whom.  I conclude by advancing 5 normative hypotheses about what should be done.

In this paper l argue that in order to avoid grave, substantial and unnecessary harm, there is a collective moral responsibility to transition away from fossil fuels in line with the Paris Agreements targets of keeping global warming well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels with the aspiration of holding warming to 1.5°C. I use that argument as the basis for the following three distinct but reinforcing moral arguments in favour of divesting from fossil fuels: (1) investing in fossil fuels contributes to grave, substantial, and unnecessary harm and injustice; (2) divesting from fossil fuels helps fulfil our moral responsibility to promote climate action; and (3) investing in fossil fuels morally tarnishes those who do so by making them complicit in the injustices of the fossil fuel industry.

This is a draft chapter for an upcoming collection entitled Climate Justice: Economics and Philosophy, to be published in Oxford University Press, edited by Henry Shue and Ravi Kanbur

Portrayals of the anthropocene period are often dystopian or post-apocalyptic narratives of climate crises that will leave humans in horrific science-fiction scenarios. Such narratives miss the populations of people, such as Indigenous peoples, who approach climate change having already been through transformations of their societies induced by colonial violence. This essay discusses how some Indigenous perspectives on climate change can situate the present time as already dystopian. Instead of dread of an impending crisis, Indigenous approaches to climate change are motivated through dialogic narratives with their descendants and ancestors. In some cases, these narratives are like science fiction in which Indigenous peoples work to empower their own protagonists to address contemporary challenges. Yet within literatures on climate change and the Anthropocene, Indigenous peoples often get placed in historical categories designed by non-Indigenous persons, such as the holocene. In some cases, these categories serve as the backdrop for allies’ narratives that privilege themselves as the protagonists who will save Indigenous peoples from colonial violence and the climate crisis. I speculate that this tendency among allies could possibly be related to their sometimes denying that they are living in times their ancestors would have likely fantasized about. I will show how this denial threatens allies’ capacities to build coalitions with Indigenous peoples. [open access @ http://journals.sagepub.com/toc/enea/0/0]

The effects of anthropogenic climate change will be devastating. Nevertheless, most people do not seem to be seriously concerned. We consume as much as we always did, drive as much as we always did, eat as much meat as we always did. What can we do to overcome this collective apathy? In order to be able to develop effective measures, we must first get clear about the causes of climate change inaction. In this paper I ask whether moral nihilism (the denial of moral truths) is a significant cause of climate change inaction. The answer to this question depends mainly on the extent to which being a moral nihilist reduces one’s likelihood of taking action against climate change. At first sight, the extent seems to be considerable. I will argue, however, that this assumption is false. Only slightly more non-nihilists than nihilists are led to climate-friendly actions by moral considerations. And in absolute terms, morality plays such a minor role in leading people to act that the difference is barely noticeable.

The world we live in is unjust. Preventable deprivation and suffering shape the lives of many people, while others enjoy advantages and privileges aplenty. Cosmopolitan responsibility addresses the moral responsibilities of privileged individuals to take action in the face of global structural injustice. Individuals are called upon to complement institutional efforts to respond to global challenges, such as climate change, unfair global trade, or world poverty. Committed to an ideal of relational equality among all human beings, the book discusses the impact of individual action, the challenge of special obligations, and the possibility of moral overdemandingness in order to lay the ground for an action-guiding ethos of cosmopolitan responsibility.

Personal carbon footprints have become a subject of major concern among those who worry about global climate change. Conventional wisdom holds that individuals have a duty to reduce their impacts on the climate system by restricting their carbon footprints. However, I defend a new argument for thinking that this conventional wisdom is mistaken. Individuals, I argue, have a duty to take actions to combat the world’s problems. But since climate change is only one of a nearly endless list of such problems, individuals’ obligations to take action as activists do not specifically require reductions in personal carbon footprints. Moreover, this is true even in spite of the fact that we are personally implicated in causing climate change. This paper also argues that many of those who decide to combat climate change by reducing their carbon footprints are likely doing more than they can justify in this regard. Although most people are not doing enough to combat world problems, a proper devotion to activism would seek a balance with other life demands that many climate activists currently eschew.

Climate change puts pressure on a distinction that is at the heart of liberal theory: that between the public and the private. Many of the GHGs-emitting behaviors that contribute to the disruption of the climate system—such as using computers, taking hot showers, eating this or that, driving cars, investing here or there, and having children—are traditionally regarded as private. Yet today, through climate change, these apparently private behaviors can have very
public consequences, however indirect, across spatial, temporal, and genetic boundaries. The chapter introduces the public/private distinction and discusses the various ways in which it has figured in liberal theory. It goes on to show how climate change threatens the viability of the distinction, both by intensifying old tensions and by bringing new pressures to bear. It then considers some options for relieving the pressure, none of which seems particularly promising by liberal lights.

This dissertation makes the moral case for equitably transitioning away from fossil fuels in line with the Paris Climate Agreement’s more stringent target of keeping global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. It argues that we should do so while relying as little as possible on risky and uncertain negative emissions and geoengineering technologies, so as to avoid unnecessarily prolonging the fossil fuel era and posing grave potential costs both to the present and future generations. The dissertation addresses a central objection to the moral imperative to transition away from fossil fuels, namely that it will detrimentally impact the poor and vulnerable. It argues in response that protecting the interests of the poor and vulnerable can be best achieved through a rapid yet just transition away from fossil fuels. Additionally, based on the moral case to transition away from fossil fuels in line with 1.5°C, the dissertation also explores what personal moral responsibility agents have to reduce fossil fuel usage and act on climate change more broadly. It situates our moral responsibility in the context of what the author argues is an emergency situation where we need to rapidly and comprehensively move away from fossil fuels to avert catastrophic climate change and the substantial, widespread and unnecessary harms associated with continued fossil fuel dependence. Based on the development of an Anti-Pollution Principle, the author concludes that in the face of this emergency we do have morally demanding moral responsibilities to act on climate change and reducing fossil fuel dependence. The author argues that while we do have some responsibilities to reduce our personal emissions and consumption, the more important task which can often outweigh the need to reduce personal emissions, is the need to push collectively for deep, rapid, and comprehensive structural 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).

Indigenous peoples are among the most audible voices in the global climate justice movement. Yet, as I will show in this chapter, climate injustice is a recent episode of a cyclical history of colonialism inflicting anthropogenic (human-caused) environmental change on Indigenous peoples (Wildcat). Indigenous peoples face climate risks largely because of how colonialism, in conjunction with capitalist economics, shapes the geographic spaces they live in and their socio-economic conditions. In the North American settler colonial context, which I focus on in this chapter, U.S. settler colonial laws, policies and programs are ‘both’ a significant factor in opening up Indigenous territories for carbon-intensive economic activities and, at the same time, a significant factor in why Indigenous peoples face heightened climate risks. Climate injustice, for Indigenous peoples, is less about the spectre of a new future and more like the experience of déjà vu.

Is authoritarian power ever legitimate? The contemporary political theory literature -- which largely conceptualizes legitimacy in terms of democracy or basic rights -- would seem to suggest not. I argue, however, that there exists another, overlooked aspect of legitimacy, concerning a government's ability to ensure safety and security. While, under normal conditions, maintaining democracy and rights is typically compatible with guaranteeing safety, in emergency situations, conflicts between these two aspects of legitimacy can and often do arise. A salient example of this is the COVID-19 pandemic, during which severe limitations on free movement and association have become legitimate techniques of government. Climate change poses an even graver threat to public safety. Consequently, I argue, legitimacy may require a similarly authoritarian approach. While unsettling, this suggests the political importance of climate action. For if we wish to avoid legitimating authoritarian power, we must act to prevent crises from arising that can only be resolved by such means.

This is a syllabus from an undergraduate course on environmental ethics I taught in the Fall of 2018 at the University of Washington, which was co-listed in the environmental studies and philosophy departments.
Here's the summary description:
We live in a time of unprecedented environmental change, with multiple global environmental challenges unfolding simultaneously from climate change, air and water pollution, ecosystem degradation, biodiversity loss, and ocean change. How we respond to these interconnected problems raises important questions of ethics, values, justice and fairness. In this course, we will develop philosophical skills and theories to explore how to identify, articulate and think critically about the ethical dimensions of such environmental challenges. We will ask questions such as: What is the extent and nature of our individual and collective moral responsibility to act on environmental challenges? How do we integrate questions of justice and concern for the most vulnerable into environmental work? What moral responsibilities do we have to future generations, distant others, nonhuman animals, plants and ecosystems? What are the benefits and limitations of economic considerations in environmental policy making?

There is a common belief that genuine awareness and acceptance of the existence of anthropogenic climate change (as opposed to either ignorance or denial) automatically leads one to develop political and moral positions which advocate for collective human action towards minimizing suffering for all and adapting human societies towards a fossil free future. This is a mistake. Against the idea that scientific awareness of the facts of climate change is enough to motivate a common ethical project of humanity towards a unifying good, I argue that climate change awareness can just as well equally motivate heightened divisions of humanity into anti-egalitarian, xenophobic, class-differentiated zones of competitive survival. I call this climate barbarism, and seek to explain its conceptual grounds.

Ecocide is the missing 5th Crime Against Peace in detail:

The first of a series of academic research papers examining various aspects of a law of Ecocide. A groundbreaking piece of research, this paper sets out the evidence that the United Nations had for a period of at least 11 years been working on Ecocide as a Crime Against Peace. This research paper is relevant to: all academics, lawyers and practitioners involved in the human rights implications of climate change, environmental refugees and environmental destruction.

[Updated 7-19-15 to connect more with UNFCCC "loss and damage" discourse]. Indigenous peoples must adapt to a number of losses and damages from climate change impacts that threaten to harm their cultural and political self-determination. Industrial settler states, such as the U.S. or Canada, have responsibilities to indigenous peoples to address loss and damage that flow from how their industrial activities have factored into anthropogenic climate change. This essay describes two kinds of responsibility, impending and pending. Impending responsibility requires settler states to live up to the ramifications of developmental paths that they continue to pursue and that are at odds with indigenous cultural and political self-determination. Yet concepts of impending responsibility can tend to propose solutions that remain silent on the underlying political relations between indigenous peoples and settler states that threaten the viability of such solutions. Pending responsibility demands that settler states acknowledge that today’s political relations with indigenous peoples descend from structures of settler colonialism designed to limit indigenous adaptation to environmental change. Pending responsibility requires settler states to engage in a long needed process of political reconciliation with indigenous peoples that would radically restructure such political relations in ways that are flexible enough to facilitate styles of indigenous adaptation that accord with indigenous cultural and political self-determination.

Recently many environmental ethicists have argued that tackling climate change requires addressing the growth in the world's population.  This paper critically examines two different versions of this argument.  One which I term Restrictivism argues that there should be limits on people's procreative choice.  Sarah Conly, for example, maintains that each couple has a right to one child, no more, and that this limit can be coercively enforced.  I argue that such Restrictivist accounts suffer from three serious problems.  First, in order to determine how many children people could permissibly limit Restrictivists like Conly would need to provide an account of intra- and inter-generational justice and they would then need to show empirically that realizing this requires that people have a right to one child and no more.  Since, however, they do not provide the normative or empirical analysis the numbers they give are arbitrary.  Second, Restrictivist accounts are objectionably monocausal and fail to take into account the role of other determinants of ecological sustainability (notably the levels of consumption and the kind of technology available).  Third, their imposition of equal procreative limits is unfair.  They penalize the poor for the high-emissions lifestyles of the rich.

A second strategy adopts what I term the Byproduct Approach.  This maintains that realizing human rights to reproductive choice, education, employment and to a decent standard of living would reduce population growth and, indeed, are sufficient to establish ecological sustainability.  I argue that this is a more attractive approach and that such measures are necessary.  However, I argue, we lack any reason to think that they are sufficient.  For to know whether they would be sufficient we would need to know what we owe future generations, what limits on ecological impacts this would in practice require, and whether the net effects of such human rights policies would result in the necessary limits on ecological impacts.  In the absence of this we have no reason to think that the Byproduct Approach would be enough.

In the final part of the paper I outline a third more promising approach.  This holds that humanity must live within certain ecological limits - where these limits are derived from (i) an understanding of our responsibilities to current and future generations and (ii) an empirical analysis of what is needed to comply with these responsibilities.  Together (i) and (ii) define what I term the Sustainability Frontier.  I then draw on the observation that humanity's environmental impact is a function of three kinds of factor (people's levels of consumption, the technology available and the number of people alive) to argue that there is a plurality of different ways in which people can comply with their responsibility to live within the Sustainability Frontier.  They can choose different combinations of procreation, consumption and technological investment and diffusion.  This ecological liberalism thus combines a commitment to ecological sustainability with a commitment to individual liberty.

In short: Those who emphasize the role of demographic change as a causal factor in climate change are right to do so.  However, it is important that we do not treat population in isolation, but rather treat it together with levels of consumption, global inequalities, the role of the built environment in determining energy use, the political economy of energy, and the unequal access to, and control of, clean technology.