Climate Justice in a Non-Ideal World

This volume seeks to make normative theorising on climate justice more relevant and applicable to political realities and public policy.

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Climate change is a pressing international political issue, for which a practical but principled solution is urgently required. Climate Justice in a Non-Ideal World aims to make normative theorising on climate justice more relevant and applicable to political realities and public policy.

The motivation behind this edited collection is that normative theorising has something to offer even in an imperfect world mired by partial compliance and unfavourable circumstances. In the last years, a lively debate has sprung up in political philosophy about non-ideal theory and there has also been an upsurge of interest in the various normative issues raised by climate change such as intergenerational justice, transnational harm, collective action, or risk assessment. However, there has been little systematic discussion of the links between climate justice and non-ideal theory even though the former would seem like a paradigm example of the relevance of the latter. The aim of this edited volume is to address this. In doing so, the volume presents original work from leading experts on climate ethics, including several who have participated in climate policy.

The first part of the book discusses those facets of the debate on climate justice that become relevant due to the shortcomings of current global action on climate change. The second part makes specific suggestions for adjusting current policies and negotiating procedures in ways that are feasible in the relatively short term while still decreasing the distance between current climate policy and the ideal. The chapters in the third and final part reflect upon how philosophical work can be brought to bear on the debates in climate science, communication, and politics.