Abstract

Global climate change may result in a wide array of social and environmental harms, and this prospect has given rise to an international treaty, the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Scientific uncertainties, nation state politics, and economic resistance had to be addressed before this landmark environmental agreement could be realized. However, questions remain about the foundations and core commitments of this agreement. Ellul's characterology of technique is applied to the task of building a critique of the current international response to climate change and is allied to the proposition that ecological justice should guide the social response to climate change. It is argued that contemporary international efforts are directed at producing a “rational climate,” rather than a climate for ecological justice