Dr. Alyssa R. Bernstein, Associate Professor of Philosophy, published an article in the Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. XL, dedicated to Ethics and Global Climate Change.
Her article is titled “No Justice in Climate Policy? Broome versus Posner, Weisbach, and Gardiner.”
“The urgent importance of dealing with the climate crisis has led some influential theorists, including at least one philosopher, to argue that at least some demands for justice must give way to pragmatic and strategic considerations. These theorists contend that the failures of international negotiations and other efforts to change economic policies and practices have shown that moral exhortations are worse than ineffective. Cass Sunstein, Eric Posner, and David Weisbach (all academic lawyers) have argued that a climate treaty should reflect neither principles of distributive justice nor principles of corrective justice, and that climate negotiators should not try to solve problems of unfair distribution of wealth. John Broome (an academic philosopher) argues that the aim of reducing emission of greenhouse gas should be separate from the aim of improving distribution of resources, and that we should not aim to mitigate climate change by appealing to the moral duties of individuals and states, because such efforts fail,” Bernstein writes in her introduction. In her article, Bernstein offers “a critical analysis of the position taken by Posner and Weisbach in their book, Climate Change Justice,” as well as an analysis of Broome’s proposal for a World Climate Bank, through the lens of John Rawls’ Law of Peoples, “which is a conception of the moral basis of a just international order, including states’ obligations to secure basic human rights for all.”
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