Towards a global justice vision for climate law in a time of ‘unreason’

Abstract

It seems that there are parallel realities when it comes to the threats that global climate change poses, not only to the sustainable development agenda, but to the survival of the planet. On the one hand, climate science has become ever more compelling. Yet at the international negotiations, under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), countries have failed to make the commitments necessary to achieve their stated objective of keeping the rise in global temperatures below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. The Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development concluded in June 2012 with ‘The Future We Want’ as the principal outcome of the Conference. Not surprisingly, ‘The Future We Want’ makes frequent reference to global climate change as being a key disruptor of sustainable development and states ‘that the scale and gravity of the negative impacts of climate change affect all countries and undermine the ability of all countries, in particular, developing countries, to achieve sustainable development and the Millennium Development Goals and threaten the viability and survival of nations’. This article seeks to articulate the reasoning upon which the international community should base its responses to climate change. It will argue that there is an urgent need for a process of impartial public reasoning and discussion on the issue of climate change to emerge, so as to limit the imperatives of national interest and move towards a global justice approach. In so doing it will rely upon Amartya Sen's The Idea of Justice and Stephen Gardiner's A Perfect Moral Storm: Climate Change, Intergenerational Ethics and the Problem of Moral Corruption. In developing this thesis, the author will of necessity refer to a contrary view offered by Eric Posner and David Weisbach in Climate Change Justice where the authors allow national, or local, preferences to dictate the parameters of a climate change treaty.