Open AccessClimate Change Mitigation Justice and the No-Harm Principle
Author(s) -
Frédéric-Paul Piguet
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
humanistyka i przyrodoznawstwo
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2956-3836
pISSN - 1234-4087
DOI - 10.31648/hip.2597
Subject(s) - utilitarianism , harm , distributive justice , economic justice , climate justice , law and economics , distributive property , environmental justice , climate change , perspective (graphical) , greenhouse gas , attribution , political science , economics , environmental ethics , public economics , sociology , law , social psychology , psychology , computer science , philosophy , ecology , biology , mathematics , artificial intelligence , pure mathematics
When translated into concrete policy, any allocation of emissions leads to the attribution of emissions rights based on distributive justice (even if the policy was previously examined in terms of utilitarianism at the philosophical level). Consequently, the distributive justice approach legitimizes the corresponding amount of emissions. If a certain level of emissions can receive emissions rights, provided they are compatible with a certain emissions budget, to allocate emissions rights when the dangerous concentration level has been overshot could understate the need to preserve the functioning of a “balanced” climate system. From the perspective of Foucault’s archaeology of knowledge, and with the purpose of assessing the epistemology of climate justice, it will be possible to question the possible importation of the mode of production of norms of social law into climate mitigation justice. Additionally, it will be questioned whether the amount of anthropogenic emissions rights can be provided by “the laws of nature” and whether and how the no‑harm principle can contribute to the epistemological relevance of the narrative of climate justice.