Climate Justice and Moral Burdens
Justice climatique et fardeaux moraux
Résumé
The challenge of climate justice is to avoid, reduce and/or remedy the harms caused by
climate change in an efficient and fair way. The burden of climate action is multidimen-
sional: while the most obvious and discussed dimensions are economic, social and cultur-
al, in this paper it is the moral dimension of this burden, quite absent from the climate
ethics literature, that I wish to address. By moral burden what is meant here is the con-
frontation, imposed by external – natural or anthropogenic – factors, of an agent with a
moral conflict. In this paper I argue (1) that imposing substantial avoidable or unfair
moral burdens on others is unjust, (2) that climate change poses serious risks of such
injustices, and (3) that consequently duties of climate justice include those to prevent,
reduce and if necessary, remedy avoidable moral burdens. My argument thus presents an
additional, until now little noticed consideration in the climate justice debate.