More than two decades of international negotiations have failed to stem emissions of greenhouse gases that are causing global warming and climate change. This book identifies a way to escape this ongoing tragedy of the atmospheric commons. It takes a fresh approach to the ethics and practice of international environmental justice and proposes fundamental adjustments to the climate change regime, in the process drawing support from cosmopolitan ethics and global conceptions of justice. The author argues for 'cosmopolitan diplomacy', which sees people, rather than states alone, as the causes of climate change and the bearers of related rights, duties and obligations.

Finds solutions to the world's greatest challenge climate change in global ethicsNew for this editionIncludes recent climate diplomacy and international agreementsPresents current data and information on climate scienceUpdated statistics; e.g. in chapters and sections that look at poverty and wealthExpanded learning guide for students and lecturersGlobal Ethics and Climate Change combines the science of climate change with ethical critique to expose its impact, the increasing intensity of dangerous trends particularly growing global affluence, material consumption and pollution and the intensifying moral dimensions of changes to the environment. It shows you that global justice is vital to mitigating climate change. All of the author's royalties are being paid directly to the charity Oxfam

Weve had 20 years of government-level conferences at Kyoto, Copenhagen and Cancun, but greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. Taking a cosmopolitan approach to climate change in this excellent and timely book, Paul Harris and his contributors argue that citizen action is an essential complement to state action. The challenging, unsettling and absolutely vital argument of these high quality essays is that distance makes no moral difference in our globalised world; individual high emitters have a duty to reduce their emissions, wherever they are. - Andrew Dobson, Keele, University, UK This collection of provocative essays re-evaluates the worlds failed policy responses to climate change, in the process demonstrating how cosmopolitan ethics can inform global environmental governance. A cosmopolitan worldview points to climate-related policies that are less international and more global. From a cosmopolitan perspective, national borders should not delineate obligations and responsibilities associated with climate change. Human beings, rather than the narrow interests of nation-states, ought to be at the centre of moral calculations and policy responses to climate change. In this volume, expert contributors examine questions of individual and global responsibility, burden sharing among people and states, international law and environmental justice, capitalism and voluntary action, pluralist cooperation and hegemony, and alternative approaches to climate action and diplomacy. The book helps to illuminate new principles for global environmental policy that can come from cosmopolitan conceptions of climate change.

World Ethics: The New Agenda identifies different ways of thinking about ethics, and of thinking ethically about international and global relations. It also considers several theories of world ethics in the context of issues such as war and peace, world poverty, the environment and the United Nations.Key Features:* Rejects the idea of international scepticism and the 'morality of states'* Demonstrates the distinction between a global ethic as a theory and as social reality* Defends the claim that we are world citizens with global duties The second edition has been substantially revised to take account of recent global developments. The discussion is grounded in an awareness of the post-9/11 world in which we live and offers a more detailed exploration of the idea of global citizenship and a global or cosmopolitan ethic. There are new sections on terrorism and security and on global justice, and additional material on issues such as climate change, internationalist ethics, the ethics of war, sustainability, development, globalisation, global civil society and global governance. Each chapter now has a summary box at the beginning and a set of questions for discussion at the end.

To address climate change fairly, many conflicting claims over natural resources must be balanced against one another. This has long been obvious in the case of fossil fuels and greenhouse gas sinks including the atmosphere and forests; but it is ever more apparent that responses to climate change also threaten to spur new competition over land and extractive resources. This makes climate change an instance of a broader, more enduring and - for many - all too familiar problem: the problem of human conflict over how the natural world should be cared for, protected, shared, used, and managed. This work develops a new theory of global egalitarianism concerning natural resources, rejecting both permanent sovereignty and equal division, which is then used to examine the problem of climate change. It formulates principles of resource right designed to protect the ability of all human beings to satisfy their basic needs as members of self-determining political communities, where it is understood that the genuine exercise of collective self-determination is not possible from a position of significant disadvantage in global wealth and power relations. These principles are used to address the question of where to set the ceiling on future greenhouse gas emissions and how to share the resulting emissions budget, in the face of conflicting claims to fossil fuels, climate sinks, and land. It is also used to defend an unorthodox understanding of responsibility for climate change as a problem of global justice, based on its provenance in historical injustice concerning natural resources.

His conclusions—some as demanding as they are logical—will challenge and enlighten.

Climate change is a pressing international political issue, for which a practical but principled solution is urgently required. Climate Justice in a Non-Ideal World aims to make normative theorising on climate justice more relevant and applicable to political realities and public policy. The motivation behind this edited collection is that normative theorising has something to offer even in an imperfect world mired by partial compliance and unfavourable circumstances. In the last years, a lively debate has sprung up in political philosophy about non-ideal theory and there has also been an upsurge of interest in the various normative issues raised by climate change such as intergenerational justice, transnational harm, collective action, or risk assessment. However, there has been little systematic discussion of the links between climate justice and non-ideal theory even though the former would seem like a paradigm example of the relevance of the latter. The aim of this edited volume is to address this. In doing so, the volume presents original work from leading experts on climate ethics, including several who have participated in climate policy. The first part of the book discusses those facets of the debate on climate justice that become relevant due to the shortcomings of current global action on climate change. The second part makes specific suggestions for adjusting current policies and negotiating procedures in ways that are feasible in the relatively short term while still decreasing the distance between current climate policy and the ideal. The chapters in the third and final part reflect upon how philosophical work can be brought to bear on the debates in climate science, communication, and politics.