Climate Change, Catastrophe, and the Circumstances of Justice

Abstract

Abstract The most efficacious allocation of burdens is not always the fairest. In cases of conflict, which value should take priority? How we resolve this dilemma has vast implications for how we respond to climate change. For after decades of inaction we may simply be unable to prevent climate catastrophe without imposing unfair burdens on some parties. After examining and rejecting two potential solutions to this dilemma, this chapter advances an alternative, which holds that precautionary efficacy may take priority over fairness whenever the material conditions that make justice possible are themselves at risk—i.e. when faced with (credible threats of) political catastrophe. Put more plainly, in certain exigent cases, injustice may be permissible for the sake of justice itself. The chapter then defends the claim that climate change poses such a threat, before examining what efficacious precaution against politically catastrophic climate change might involve.