Climate Justice and Historical Emissions

This volume investigates who can be considered responsible for historical emissions and their consequences, and how and why this should matter for the design of a just global climate policy. The authors discuss the underlying philosophical issues of responsibility for historical emissions, the unjust enrichment of the earlier developed nations, and questions of transitional justice. By bringing together a plurality of perspectives, both in terms of the theoretical understanding of the issues and the political perspectives on the problem, the book also presents the remaining disagreements and controversies in the debate. Providing a systematic introduction to the debate on historical emissions and climate change, this book provides an unbiased and authoritative guide for advanced students, researchers and policymakers in climate change justice and governance, and more widely, for anyone interested in the broader issues of global justice.

List of contributors; Introduction. On the significance of historical emissions for climate ethics Lukas Meyer and Pranay Sanklecha; 1. Climate ethics, affirmative action and unjust enrichment David Heyd; 2. Historical responsibility and climate change Janna Thompson; 3. Historical emissions: does ignorance matter? Daniel Butt; 4. How legal systems deal with issues of responsibility for past harmful behavior Daniel A. Farber; 5. Asking beneficiaries to pay for past pollution Anja Karnein; 6. Benefiting from unjust acts and benefiting from injustice: historical emissions and the beneficiary pays principle Brian Berkey; 7. A luck-based moral defense of grandfathering Rudolf Schuessler; 8. In defense of emissions egalitarianism Konrad Ott and Christian Baatz; 9. In the name of political possibility: a new proposal for thinking about the role and relevance of historical greenhouse gas emissions Sarah Kenehan; 10. Right to development and historical emissions: a perspective from the particularly vulnerable countries (PVCs) Mizan R. Khan; Index.

Lukas H. Meyer is a professor in the Department of Philosophy and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, Austria. Professor Meyer's research focuses on intergenerational justice, the ethics of climate change, and historical justice. He was leader of the research project 'Climate Change and Justice. The Significance of Historical Emissions from 2010 to 2014', and one of the lead authors of the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Pranay Sanklecha is an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, Austria. Professor Sanklecha's teaching and research interests cover topics including the meaning of life, intergenerational justice, the ethics of climate change, methods of justification in normative philosophy, and philosophy as a way of life. He has written articles on intergenerational justice, particularly as it relates to climate change in Politics, Philosophy and Economics and Analyse and Kritik, amongst others.