Climate justice is a framework that is commonly used to conduct political campaigns for reform which are trying to help people adapt to, and mitigate, climate change.
The problem for me, is that the framing is not clear, and that I suspect it is not constructive.
Firstly, it appears that nearly all contemporary refusals to act on the ecological crisis depend on ‘justice’ or ‘fairness’ arguments.
For example, people often say that Australia issues just over 1% of all emissions, therefore we have negligible effect on the world and it is not ‘just’ nor fair to ask us to do anything. People can also say this will put up the cost of electricity, cause social processes to collapse and so on. why should ordinary Australians pay all the cost? Sure we can answer that Australia has much less than 1% of the world’s population, that it has a very high emissions rate per head, and that it exports lots of fossil fuels which are not counted in this total, but the argument can still stand: it’s not ‘just’ to act, especially given the bad consequences of action are not known in detail.
People in India and China, or other developing countries can argue that while it is true their emissions are likely to tilt the globe over the edge, it is ‘just’ to let them continue. The West had years of unconstrained growth, so should the developing nations so they can catch up. Attempts to stop them from polluting are evidently attempts to stop poverty reduction, and attempts by the West to maintain their world domination. Allowing this pollution is a matter of justice. The West should cut back to zero first, otherwise it is unfair.
Given that China and India are not cutting back, then people can argue that the US should not cut back, because where is the justice or fairness in crippling their economy and hurting their people, to allow others to pollute massively?
‘Justice’ means finding someone to blame, and people will reject the blame when it hits them: “we are not criminal, we are just acting as we have always done. Other people are worse than us.” People will usually deny there is a problem long before they will admit that they are the problem, and so it delays their action even further if they think they might actually be behaving badly, and others they don’t like disapprove.
Justice, as it is normally practiced, depends on a system of violence. People who are ‘convicted’ are forced to accept punishment, and there is enough respect for the violence deployed that sympathetic people will not actively object to the sentence. There is no ideal to justice that does not depend on this kind of violence. There is no international violence that is respected in that way. If Country x is convicted of climate injustice by other countries, then we have no way of enforcing the decision except for war, or possibly trade sanctions, but given history, it is unlikely that either will work, and they will disrupt the apparent virtue of the justice format.
In other words, justice does not motivate people to act, leads to people providing excuses for not acting, and for waiting until others act and acting becomes fair. It primarily implies a rhetoric for keeping things as they are and very few countries do anything.
Wanting a purely ‘equitable’ and ‘just’ situation to arise will take for ever. It is a mode of exchange which does not work while people do not trust each other.
However, there are other ways of proceeding.
It might be better to agitate for “Climate Generosity”. This is the idea that we give to others, we act without waiting for fairness, we act because it is the way we do things to get things done.
This is pretty standard human behaviour. Parents give to children without demanding equal return immediately. People in many societies give generously to others in order to persuade the others to give in return. Sometimes the deal does not work; sometimes no obligation is built up, sometimes people break the deal, but mostly it works and works well.
In seeing others acting, people come to think they can act themselves. Generosity is usually defined as good, hence people may tend to emulate those being generous, and add to the climate gifts that are becoming available and solving the problem.
Yes some people will attempt to take advantage of generosity, but if you are in a generous frame of mind this does not stop you, or bother you that much – things are happening. You might give more carefully in future, but you keep giving, keep getting the emulation, keep getting the status, and keep getting the results you are aiming for.
With justice you have to wait for a framework for justice, but with generosity you just go out and do what you need to fulfil the aim. If you give solar panels or wind turbines, nobody loses, everybody benefits including yourself. The idea we don’t need harmful pollution to live becomes more common and acceptable, and eventually it seems odd not to support it.
Climate justice digs a pit, climate generosity builds a way out.
Climate, technology and chaos Blog 
May 26, 2019 at 10:36 am |
Always remember that “justice” in any of these contexts always means the subjugation of the White Race and the stripping of their wealth, rights, and earned privileges so as to bring them down to the levels of the other Races.
May 26, 2019 at 8:06 pm |
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