Abstract
According to various climate justice coalitions, the ideas of justice that support the current international climate regime are not sufficiently grounded in procedures of democratic justification to qualify as fair to all interests concerned. In the absence of truly equitable international climate justice conditions, the Anthropocene enters a qualitatively new phase, one of radical inequality. Major asymmetries emerge between those who shape the nature of the global risks associated with ongoing climate destruction (i.e., decision-makers) and those who pay the ultimate price for those decisions without ever having the opportunity to prevent major catastrophes from occurring (e.g., the peoples of the Philippines, Nepal, Senegal, or Sri Lanka). The fragile nature of our dependence on the environment is such that acts of extreme resource depletion not only represent forms of ecological destruction, they also seriously delimit the capacity of humanity to secure its collective survival. Global capitalism’s insatiable appetite for natural resources promotes capability failure, that is, a restriction of the capacities of growing numbers to withstand the shocks of global climate change and prevent ‘various ills from happening to them’ (Pettit 1999: 67). The relationship between exposure to climate risk and domination could not be more explicit today. It follows a clear line with those inhabiting poorer, more underdeveloped regions exercising least control over their ecological fate and abilities to adapt. Newer generations, born into climate conditions shaped by forces over which they have little, if no authority, are severely disadvantaged through no specific fault of their own, yet their future continues to be represented in international political discourse as largely determined by the internal structures of ‘closed state systems’ (Rawls 1971: 8). In this setting, justice is seen as governed by the distribution of mutual advantages among ‘rough equals’ (Rawls 1971), not by factors beyond the immediate control of any one state community.
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Skillington, T. (2017). Resource Inequalities, Domination, and the Struggle to Reclaim Democratic Freedoms. In: Climate Justice and Human Rights. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-02281-3_3
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