Breena Holland
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780199692071
- eISBN:
- 9780191799488
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199692071.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Environmental Politics, Political Economy
This book advances a new distributional framework to guide the evaluation and design of environmental policies. Drawing on capabilities theory, and especially on Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities ...
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This book advances a new distributional framework to guide the evaluation and design of environmental policies. Drawing on capabilities theory, and especially on Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach to justice, the book proposes that environmental policies should aim to secure the basic capabilities that make it possible for people to live a flourishing and dignified human life. Holland establishes the protection of the natural environment as central to securing these capabilities and then goes on to consider the implications for debates in environmental valuation, policy justification, and administrative rulemaking. In each of these areas, she demonstrates how her “capabilities approach to social and environmental justice” can minimize substantive and procedural inequities that result from how we evaluate and design environmental policies in contemporary society. Holland’s proposals include valuing environmental goods and services as comparable—but not commensurable—across the same dimension of wellbeing of different people, justifying environmental policies with respect to both the capability thresholds they secure and the capability ceilings they establish, and subjecting the outcomes of participatory decisions in the administrative rulemaking process to stronger substantive standards. In developing and applying this unique approach to justice, Holland primarily focuses on questions of domestic environmental policy. However, in the closing chapter she turns to theoretical debates about international climate policy and sketches how her approach to justice could inform both the philosophical grounding and practical application of efforts to achieve global climate justice. Engaging current debates in environmental policy and political theory, the book is a sustained exercise of both applied and environmental political theory.Less
This book advances a new distributional framework to guide the evaluation and design of environmental policies. Drawing on capabilities theory, and especially on Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach to justice, the book proposes that environmental policies should aim to secure the basic capabilities that make it possible for people to live a flourishing and dignified human life. Holland establishes the protection of the natural environment as central to securing these capabilities and then goes on to consider the implications for debates in environmental valuation, policy justification, and administrative rulemaking. In each of these areas, she demonstrates how her “capabilities approach to social and environmental justice” can minimize substantive and procedural inequities that result from how we evaluate and design environmental policies in contemporary society. Holland’s proposals include valuing environmental goods and services as comparable—but not commensurable—across the same dimension of wellbeing of different people, justifying environmental policies with respect to both the capability thresholds they secure and the capability ceilings they establish, and subjecting the outcomes of participatory decisions in the administrative rulemaking process to stronger substantive standards. In developing and applying this unique approach to justice, Holland primarily focuses on questions of domestic environmental policy. However, in the closing chapter she turns to theoretical debates about international climate policy and sketches how her approach to justice could inform both the philosophical grounding and practical application of efforts to achieve global climate justice. Engaging current debates in environmental policy and political theory, the book is a sustained exercise of both applied and environmental political theory.
Cass R. Sunstein and Martha C. Nussbaum (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195305104
- eISBN:
- 9780199850556
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195305104.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Environmental Politics
This book explores the legal and political issues that underlie the campaign for animal rights and the opposition to it. Addressing ethical questions about ownership, protection against unjustified ...
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This book explores the legal and political issues that underlie the campaign for animal rights and the opposition to it. Addressing ethical questions about ownership, protection against unjustified suffering, and the ability of animals to make their own choices free from human control, its chapters offer numerous different perspectives on animal rights and animal welfare. They show that whatever one's ultimate conclusions, the relationship between human beings and nonhuman animals is being fundamentally rethought. The book offers a modern treatment of that rethinking.Less
This book explores the legal and political issues that underlie the campaign for animal rights and the opposition to it. Addressing ethical questions about ownership, protection against unjustified suffering, and the ability of animals to make their own choices free from human control, its chapters offer numerous different perspectives on animal rights and animal welfare. They show that whatever one's ultimate conclusions, the relationship between human beings and nonhuman animals is being fundamentally rethought. The book offers a modern treatment of that rethinking.
Byron Williston
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780198746713
- eISBN:
- 9780191808975
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198746713.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Environmental Politics
The Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC is now out and it contains a detailed analysis of the threats climate change poses to human security. IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri put the matter succinctly ...
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The Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC is now out and it contains a detailed analysis of the threats climate change poses to human security. IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri put the matter succinctly in stating recently that the new report shows how our persistent inaction on climate change presents a grave threat to ‘the very social stability of human systems’. Williston’s book is an attempt to make philosophical sense of this. We are now in ‘the human age’—the Anthropocene—but he argues that this is no mere geological marker. It is instead best viewed as the latest permutation of an already existing moral and political project rooted in Enlightenment values. Williston shows that it can be fruitful to do climate ethics with this focus because in so many aspects of our culture we already endorse Enlightenment principles about progress, equality, and the value of knowledge. But these principles must be robustly instantiated in the dispositions of moral agents, and so we require a climate ethics focused on the virtues of justice, truthfulness, and rational hope. One of the book’s most original claims is that our moral failure on this issue is, in large part, the product of motivated irrationality on the part of the world’s most prosperous people. We are not living up to our commitments to justice and truthfulness because we are, respectively, morally weak and self-deceived. Understanding this provides the basis for the rational hope that we might yet find a way to avoid climate catastrophe.Less
The Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC is now out and it contains a detailed analysis of the threats climate change poses to human security. IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri put the matter succinctly in stating recently that the new report shows how our persistent inaction on climate change presents a grave threat to ‘the very social stability of human systems’. Williston’s book is an attempt to make philosophical sense of this. We are now in ‘the human age’—the Anthropocene—but he argues that this is no mere geological marker. It is instead best viewed as the latest permutation of an already existing moral and political project rooted in Enlightenment values. Williston shows that it can be fruitful to do climate ethics with this focus because in so many aspects of our culture we already endorse Enlightenment principles about progress, equality, and the value of knowledge. But these principles must be robustly instantiated in the dispositions of moral agents, and so we require a climate ethics focused on the virtues of justice, truthfulness, and rational hope. One of the book’s most original claims is that our moral failure on this issue is, in large part, the product of motivated irrationality on the part of the world’s most prosperous people. We are not living up to our commitments to justice and truthfulness because we are, respectively, morally weak and self-deceived. Understanding this provides the basis for the rational hope that we might yet find a way to avoid climate catastrophe.
Steve Vanderheiden
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195334609
- eISBN:
- 9780199868759
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195334609.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Environmental Politics
When policies of or activities within one country and generation cause deleterious consequences for those of other nations and later generations, they can constitute serious injustices. Hence, ...
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When policies of or activities within one country and generation cause deleterious consequences for those of other nations and later generations, they can constitute serious injustices. Hence, anthropogenic climate change poses not only a global environmental threat, but also one to international and intergenerational justice. The avoidance of such injustice has been recognized as a primary objective of global climate policy, and this book aims to comprehend the nature of this objective–to explore how climate change raises issues of international and intergenerational justice and to consider how the design of a global climate regime might these aims into account. Enlisting conceptual tools from ethics as well as legal and political theory, it treats justice as concerned with equity and responsibility and considers how each is undermined by climate change but might be incorporated into climate policy. Various theoretical problems in applying norms of equity and responsibility across borders, over time, and to nations for their greenhouse emissions are considered, and responses are given to these challenges. Finally, an outline for a global climate policy that adequately incorporates norms of justice is articulated and defended, along with a case for procedural fairness in policy development processes. Demonstrating how political theory can usefully contribute toward better understanding the proper human response to climate change as well as how the climate case offers insights into resolving contemporary controversies within political theory, the book offers a case study in which the application of normative theory to policy allows readers to better understand both.Less
When policies of or activities within one country and generation cause deleterious consequences for those of other nations and later generations, they can constitute serious injustices. Hence, anthropogenic climate change poses not only a global environmental threat, but also one to international and intergenerational justice. The avoidance of such injustice has been recognized as a primary objective of global climate policy, and this book aims to comprehend the nature of this objective–to explore how climate change raises issues of international and intergenerational justice and to consider how the design of a global climate regime might these aims into account. Enlisting conceptual tools from ethics as well as legal and political theory, it treats justice as concerned with equity and responsibility and considers how each is undermined by climate change but might be incorporated into climate policy. Various theoretical problems in applying norms of equity and responsibility across borders, over time, and to nations for their greenhouse emissions are considered, and responses are given to these challenges. Finally, an outline for a global climate policy that adequately incorporates norms of justice is articulated and defended, along with a case for procedural fairness in policy development processes. Demonstrating how political theory can usefully contribute toward better understanding the proper human response to climate change as well as how the climate case offers insights into resolving contemporary controversies within political theory, the book offers a case study in which the application of normative theory to policy allows readers to better understand both.
Andrew Dobson
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- April 2004
- ISBN:
- 9780199258444
- eISBN:
- 9780191601002
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0199258449.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Environmental Politics
Ecological citizenship cannot be fully articulated in either liberal or civic republican terms. It is, rather, an example and an inflection of ‘post‐cosmopolitan’ citizenship. Ecological citizenship ...
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Ecological citizenship cannot be fully articulated in either liberal or civic republican terms. It is, rather, an example and an inflection of ‘post‐cosmopolitan’ citizenship. Ecological citizenship focuses on duties as well as rights, and its conception of political space is not the state or the municipality, or the ideal speech community of cosmopolitanism, but the ‘ecological footprint’.Ecological citizenship contrasts with fiscal incentives as a way of encouraging people to act more sustainably, in the belief that the former is more compatible with the long‐term and deeper shifts of attitude and behaviour that sustainability requires. This book offers an original account of the relationship between liberalism and sustainability, arguing that the former's commitment to a plurality of conceptions of the good entails a commitment to so‐called ‘strong’ forms of the latter.How to make an ecological citizen? The potential of formal high school citizenship education programmes is examined through a case study of the recent implementation of the compulsory citizenship curriculum in the UK.Less
Ecological citizenship cannot be fully articulated in either liberal or civic republican terms. It is, rather, an example and an inflection of ‘post‐cosmopolitan’ citizenship. Ecological citizenship focuses on duties as well as rights, and its conception of political space is not the state or the municipality, or the ideal speech community of cosmopolitanism, but the ‘ecological footprint’.
Ecological citizenship contrasts with fiscal incentives as a way of encouraging people to act more sustainably, in the belief that the former is more compatible with the long‐term and deeper shifts of attitude and behaviour that sustainability requires. This book offers an original account of the relationship between liberalism and sustainability, arguing that the former's commitment to a plurality of conceptions of the good entails a commitment to so‐called ‘strong’ forms of the latter.
How to make an ecological citizen? The potential of formal high school citizenship education programmes is examined through a case study of the recent implementation of the compulsory citizenship curriculum in the UK.
Fanny Thornton
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- November 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198824817
- eISBN:
- 9780191863509
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198824817.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory, Environmental Politics
The book applies a justice framework to analysis of the actual and potential role of international law with respect to people on the move in the context of anthropogenic climate change. That people ...
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The book applies a justice framework to analysis of the actual and potential role of international law with respect to people on the move in the context of anthropogenic climate change. That people are affected by the impacts of climate change is no longer doubted, including with implications for the movement of people (migration, displacement, relocation, etc.). The book tackles unique questions concerning international responsibility for people movement arising from the inequities inherent to climate change. Corrective and distributive justice provide the analytical backbone. They are explored in a substantial theoretical chapter and then applied to subsequent contextual analysis. Corrective justice supports analysis as to whether people movement in the climate change context could be conceived or framed as harm, loss, or damage which is compensable under international law, either through fault-centred regimes or no-fault regimes (i.e., insurance). Distributive justice supports analysis as to whether such movement could be conceived or framed as a disproportionate burden, either for those faced with movement or those faced with sheltering people on the move, from which duties of redistribution may stem. The book contributes to the growing scholarship and analysis concerning international law or governance and people movement in response to climate change by investigating the bounds of the law where the phenomenon is viewed as one of (in)justice.Less
The book applies a justice framework to analysis of the actual and potential role of international law with respect to people on the move in the context of anthropogenic climate change. That people are affected by the impacts of climate change is no longer doubted, including with implications for the movement of people (migration, displacement, relocation, etc.). The book tackles unique questions concerning international responsibility for people movement arising from the inequities inherent to climate change. Corrective and distributive justice provide the analytical backbone. They are explored in a substantial theoretical chapter and then applied to subsequent contextual analysis. Corrective justice supports analysis as to whether people movement in the climate change context could be conceived or framed as harm, loss, or damage which is compensable under international law, either through fault-centred regimes or no-fault regimes (i.e., insurance). Distributive justice supports analysis as to whether such movement could be conceived or framed as a disproportionate burden, either for those faced with movement or those faced with sheltering people on the move, from which duties of redistribution may stem. The book contributes to the growing scholarship and analysis concerning international law or governance and people movement in response to climate change by investigating the bounds of the law where the phenomenon is viewed as one of (in)justice.
Elizabeth Cripps
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199665655
- eISBN:
- 9780191753039
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199665655.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Environmental Politics
Global climate change challenges standard theories of moral accountability. Many of us take it for granted that we ought to cooperate to tackle it, but where does this requirement come from? Climate ...
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Global climate change challenges standard theories of moral accountability. Many of us take it for granted that we ought to cooperate to tackle it, but where does this requirement come from? Climate change does very great harm, to our fellow humans and to the non-human world, but no one causes it on their own and it isn’t the result of intentionally collective action. What, moreover, should each of us be doing in the absence of effective global-level cooperation? Is there anything we can do, as individuals, that will leave us able to live with ourselves? This book responds to these challenges. It makes the moral case for collective action on climate change by appealing to moralized collective self-interest, collective ability to aid, and an expanded understanding of collective responsibility for harm. On top of these, it argues that collective action is something we owe to ourselves, as moral agents, because without it we are left facing marring choices. In the absence of collective action, it is argued that the primary individual duty is to promote such action, with a supplementary duty to aid victims directly. The argument is not that we should not be cutting our own emissions: this can be a necessary part of bringing about collective action or alleviating harm. However, such ‘green’ lifestyle choices cannot be straightforwardly defended as duties in their own right, and they should not take priority over trying to bring about collective change.Less
Global climate change challenges standard theories of moral accountability. Many of us take it for granted that we ought to cooperate to tackle it, but where does this requirement come from? Climate change does very great harm, to our fellow humans and to the non-human world, but no one causes it on their own and it isn’t the result of intentionally collective action. What, moreover, should each of us be doing in the absence of effective global-level cooperation? Is there anything we can do, as individuals, that will leave us able to live with ourselves? This book responds to these challenges. It makes the moral case for collective action on climate change by appealing to moralized collective self-interest, collective ability to aid, and an expanded understanding of collective responsibility for harm. On top of these, it argues that collective action is something we owe to ourselves, as moral agents, because without it we are left facing marring choices. In the absence of collective action, it is argued that the primary individual duty is to promote such action, with a supplementary duty to aid victims directly. The argument is not that we should not be cutting our own emissions: this can be a necessary part of bringing about collective action or alleviating harm. However, such ‘green’ lifestyle choices cannot be straightforwardly defended as duties in their own right, and they should not take priority over trying to bring about collective change.
Frank Fischer
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- July 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780199594917
- eISBN:
- 9780191842108
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199594917.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Environmental Politics
Can contemporary democratic governments tackle climate crisis? Some say that democracy has to be a central part of a strategy to deal with climate change. Others say that experience shows it not to ...
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Can contemporary democratic governments tackle climate crisis? Some say that democracy has to be a central part of a strategy to deal with climate change. Others say that experience shows it not to be up to the challenge in the time frame available—that it will require a stronger hand, even a form of eco-authoritarianism. This work seeks to sort out and assess the competing answers to a question that is not easily resolved. While the book supports the case for environmental democracy, it argues that establishing and sustaining democratic practices will be difficult during the global climate turmoil ahead, especially if confronted with permanent states of emergency. This inquiry undertakes a search for an appropriate political-ecological strategy capable of preserving a measure of democratic governance during hard times. Without ignoring the global dimensions of the crisis, the analysis finds an alternative path in the theory and practices of participatory environmental governance embodied in a growing relocalization movement, and a form of global eco-localism. Although these movements largely operate under the radar of the social sciences, the media, and the political realm generally, such vibrant socio-ecological movements not only speak to the crisis ahead, but are already well established and thriving on the ground, including ecovillages, eco-communes, eco-neighborhoods, and local transition initiatives. With the help of these ideas and projects, the task is to shift the discourse of environmental political theory in ways that can assist those who will face the climate crisis in its full magnitude in real terms.Less
Can contemporary democratic governments tackle climate crisis? Some say that democracy has to be a central part of a strategy to deal with climate change. Others say that experience shows it not to be up to the challenge in the time frame available—that it will require a stronger hand, even a form of eco-authoritarianism. This work seeks to sort out and assess the competing answers to a question that is not easily resolved. While the book supports the case for environmental democracy, it argues that establishing and sustaining democratic practices will be difficult during the global climate turmoil ahead, especially if confronted with permanent states of emergency. This inquiry undertakes a search for an appropriate political-ecological strategy capable of preserving a measure of democratic governance during hard times. Without ignoring the global dimensions of the crisis, the analysis finds an alternative path in the theory and practices of participatory environmental governance embodied in a growing relocalization movement, and a form of global eco-localism. Although these movements largely operate under the radar of the social sciences, the media, and the political realm generally, such vibrant socio-ecological movements not only speak to the crisis ahead, but are already well established and thriving on the ground, including ecovillages, eco-communes, eco-neighborhoods, and local transition initiatives. With the help of these ideas and projects, the task is to shift the discourse of environmental political theory in ways that can assist those who will face the climate crisis in its full magnitude in real terms.
Matthew J. Hoffmann
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195390087
- eISBN:
- 9780199894352
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195390087.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Environmental Politics, International Relations and Politics
The global governance of climate change is in flux. Conventional strategies of addressing climate change through universal, interstate negotiations—the most prominent of which is the Kyoto ...
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The global governance of climate change is in flux. Conventional strategies of addressing climate change through universal, interstate negotiations—the most prominent of which is the Kyoto Protocol—have been stymied by the gaps that exist between the negotiating powers of states, rendering such initiatives stagnant and ineffectual. In response, a number of new actors and processes have begun to challenge the traditionally exclusive authority of nation-states to create rules and manage environmental problems via multi-national treaties. Dozens of innovative climate response initiatives, or “governance experiments,” have emerged at multiple levels of politics and across multiple jurisdictions: individuals, cities, states/provinces, corporations, and even new multilateral initiatives. This book explains how and why these new governance experiments have emerged, drawing upon a database of such initiatives to ascertain how these initiatives fit together and how they influence what is defined as environmental governance. In assessing the relational impact of these initiatives (whether they complement each other or clash; whether they can be scaled up or down; and whether they can be expanded beyond their current jurisdictional and geographic boundaries), the book provides insight into whether this experimentation is likely to result in an effective response to climate change. Additionally, it draws broader conclusions about how we understand global governance, addressing questions of how we understand authority and what we accept as modes of rule-making in global political spaces.Less
The global governance of climate change is in flux. Conventional strategies of addressing climate change through universal, interstate negotiations—the most prominent of which is the Kyoto Protocol—have been stymied by the gaps that exist between the negotiating powers of states, rendering such initiatives stagnant and ineffectual. In response, a number of new actors and processes have begun to challenge the traditionally exclusive authority of nation-states to create rules and manage environmental problems via multi-national treaties. Dozens of innovative climate response initiatives, or “governance experiments,” have emerged at multiple levels of politics and across multiple jurisdictions: individuals, cities, states/provinces, corporations, and even new multilateral initiatives. This book explains how and why these new governance experiments have emerged, drawing upon a database of such initiatives to ascertain how these initiatives fit together and how they influence what is defined as environmental governance. In assessing the relational impact of these initiatives (whether they complement each other or clash; whether they can be scaled up or down; and whether they can be expanded beyond their current jurisdictional and geographic boundaries), the book provides insight into whether this experimentation is likely to result in an effective response to climate change. Additionally, it draws broader conclusions about how we understand global governance, addressing questions of how we understand authority and what we accept as modes of rule-making in global political spaces.
Clare Heyward and Dominic Roser (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198744047
- eISBN:
- 9780191804038
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198744047.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory, Environmental Politics
Climate change confronts humanity with a challenge it has never faced before. It combines issues of global justice and intergenerational justice on an unprecedented scale. In particular, it stands to ...
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Climate change confronts humanity with a challenge it has never faced before. It combines issues of global justice and intergenerational justice on an unprecedented scale. In particular, it stands to adversely affect the global poor. So far, the global community has failed to reduce emissions to levels that are necessary to avoid unacceptable risks for the future. Nor are the burdens of emission reductions and of coping with climate impacts fairly shared. The shortcomings of both political and individual climate action thus seem like a paradigmatic case for non-ideal theory. Non-ideal theory can be understood as a form of political theorizing that compares different responses to (i) failures of agents to comply with the demands of justice and (ii) unfavourable circumstances. Insofar as non-ideal theory also aims to be action-guiding, it asks normative theorists for a more thorough engagement with the empirical context so as to arrive at practical recommendations for the ‘here and now’. This volume examines the normative issues that become relevant when the non-ideal circumstances of the climate context are fully taken into account. It comprises three parts. The first collects chapters that reflect on general issues in responding to the shortcomings of current climate action. Chapters in the second part propose more specific practical reforms. The third part examines how moral values ought to be brought into the scientific, political, and public debates under the non-ideal circumstances of this world.Less
Climate change confronts humanity with a challenge it has never faced before. It combines issues of global justice and intergenerational justice on an unprecedented scale. In particular, it stands to adversely affect the global poor. So far, the global community has failed to reduce emissions to levels that are necessary to avoid unacceptable risks for the future. Nor are the burdens of emission reductions and of coping with climate impacts fairly shared. The shortcomings of both political and individual climate action thus seem like a paradigmatic case for non-ideal theory. Non-ideal theory can be understood as a form of political theorizing that compares different responses to (i) failures of agents to comply with the demands of justice and (ii) unfavourable circumstances. Insofar as non-ideal theory also aims to be action-guiding, it asks normative theorists for a more thorough engagement with the empirical context so as to arrive at practical recommendations for the ‘here and now’. This volume examines the normative issues that become relevant when the non-ideal circumstances of the climate context are fully taken into account. It comprises three parts. The first collects chapters that reflect on general issues in responding to the shortcomings of current climate action. Chapters in the second part propose more specific practical reforms. The third part examines how moral values ought to be brought into the scientific, political, and public debates under the non-ideal circumstances of this world.