In this paper, I address the question of whether aerosol geoengineering (AG) ought to be deployed as a response to climate change. First, I distinguish AG from emissions mitigation, adaptation, and other geoengineering strategies. Second, I discuss advantages and disadvantages of AG, including its potential to result in substantial harm to some persons. Third, I critique three arguments against AG deployment, suggesting reasons why these arguments should be rejected. Fourth, I consider an argument that, in scenarios in which all available (...) climate change strategies would result in net harm to persons, we ought to adopt that response to climate change which would result in the least net harm. I suggest that under .. (shrink)

In the years to come, a great number of people are going to be displaced due to climate change. Climate refugees are going to migrate to find somewhere more hospitable to live. In light of this, many countries are likely to try to prevent the influx of climate refugees, and more specifically argue that they cannot reasonably be required to take in large numbers of refugees as this is simply too demanding. This objection—the demandingness objection to taking in climate refugees—is (...) the focus of the present article. The ‘demandingness objection’ is clarified in greater detail. And it is pointed out that it relies on agent-relative options and that, according to what is dubbed ‘Kagan’s conditional’, agent-relative options require an agent-relative constraint against harming. This constraint, however, is violated when states significantly contribute to climate change and thus cause people to be harmed by the effects thereof. On this basis, it is argued that such states forfeit their right to invoke the demandingness objection. Roughly, when a state violates an individual’s right not to be harmed, it owes that individual to undo the harmful condition, or if that is not possible at least some form of compensation, and it cannot be relieved from that obligation by simply pointing out that it is costly to comply with it. (shrink)

Despite the substantial research into the peculiar political and legal status of climate migrants, there is comparatively little exploration of the particular forms of loss such migrants might face or how efforts might mitigate such loss. This paper aims to begin filling that void by characterizing such loss, using the framework of the UNFCC’s Warsaw Mechanism, as agential harm. Using existing models for thinking about the preservation of values and links with the past, I aim to use this idea of (...) a threat to agency to discuss how migration could occur to better preserve the agential control of displaced populations. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

This paper sets out a research agenda for a political theory of climate displacement, by critically examining one prominent proposal—the idea of a normative status for ‘climate refugees’—and by proposing an alternative. Drawing on empirical work on climate displacement, I show that the concept of the climate refugee obscures the complexity and heterogeneity of climate displacement. I argue that, because of this complexity and heterogeneity, approaches to climate displacement that put the concept of the climate refugee at their centre will (...) fail to treat like cases alike and relevantly different cases differently. In response to these failings, I outline an alternative—the pluralist theory of climate displacement—which confronts the specific challenges that climate displacement poses in different practical and institutional contexts, whilst also treating climate displacement as a unified phenomenon at the second-order level of burden-sharing. (shrink)

Inhabitants of low-lying islands flooded due to anthropogenic climate change will lose their territory and thereby their ability to exercise their right to political self-determination. This paper addresses the normative questions which arise when climate change threatens territorial rights. It explores whether the loss of statehood supports a claim to territorial compensation, and if so, how it can be satisfied. The paper concludes that such claims are well founded and that they should be met by providing compensatory territories. After introducing (...) a differentiation between land rights and territorial rights, previous theoretical responses to the problem of sinking islands are criticized. It is argued that states may be required to give up parts of their territory as compensation. The paper develops criteria of sufficiency for compensatory territories and proposes to base their selection process on a negative auction. Since it is unlikely that unsettled compensatory territories that meet the specified requirements are available, the rights of their original inhabitants are discussed. (shrink)

This paper sketches an account of reparative justice for climate refugees, focusing on total land loss due to sea-level rise. I begin by outlining the harm of this loss in terms of self-determination and cultural heritage. I then consider, first, who is owed these reparations? Second, who should pay such reparations? Third, in what form should the reparations be paid? I end with thoughts on the project of reparative justice more generally, arguing that such obligations do not depend upon a (...) perfect account of how reparations might be fulfilled; we simply have an obligation to shoot the arrow as close to the target as we can. (shrink)

This paper suggests a way to elaborate the ethical implications of the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) as decided at COP 19 from the perspective of justice. It advocates three pro-posals. First, in order to fully understand the responsibilities and liabilities implied in the WIM, adaptation needs to be distinguished from loss and damage (L&D) on the basis of the different goals which should be attributed to adaptation and to L&D approaches. Second, the primary concern of the WIM should be compensatory (...) justice. In case of climate L&D, three aspects of compensatory justice should be kept separate: corrective liability, remedial responsibility, and with regard to the resources available, fair remedy. Third, it is crucial to distinguish between recov-erable damage and irrecoverable or at least not fully recoverable loss. This distinction is crucial because it informs the principles of fair remedy and because damage and loss may differ in their relevance for the stability and functioning of a human system. (shrink)