Climate change and justice

Understanding the complex set of processes collected under the heading of climate change represents a considerable scientific challenge. But it also raises important challenges for our best moral theories. For instance, in assessing the risks that climate change poses, we face profound questions about how to weigh the respective harms it may inflict on current and future generations, as well as on humans and other species. We also face difficult questions about how to act in conditions of uncertainty, in which at least some of the consequences of climate change—and of various human interventions to adapt to or mitigate it—are difficult to predict fully. Even if we agree that mitigating climate change is morally required, there is room for disagreement about the precise extent to which it ought to be mitigated (insofar as there is room for underlying disagreement about the level of temperature rises that are morally permissible). Finally, once we determine which actions to take to reduce or avoid climate change, we face the normative question of who ought to bear the costs of those actions, as well as the costs associated with any climate change that nevertheless comes to pass