Re-thinking political culture in climate change discourse: perspectives for the common good

While the climate crisis is regarded as one of the central political challenge, political solutions and the distribution of costs remain highly contested and polarized (Antonio and Brulle 2011; Hamilton et al. 2015; Herold et al. 2023). Notably, the discussion revolves not about the most robust scientifically backed solution to climate change, but rather about the reconciliation of the affected areas of society, the economy and the climate. Climate politics entails decisions about restrictions, the distributions of cost as well as their communication, which has been mostly framed as questions of justice in Germany. My contribution follows the notion that a justice-driven climate discourse is currently running out of power, negatively impacting the political culture around climate policies and increasingly turning it into a source of despair (Schlaudt 2024). Since the 1980s until currently by Fridays for Future (FFF), climate change has mostly been discussed in discourses of justice. FFF’s concept of justice extended from an inter-generational dimension towards the Global South and different forms of solidarity with minorities in Germany. While I aim to show that justice discourses around climate policies might negatively impact political participation and agreement around climate mitigation, I also propose that to reinvigorate ecological political culture, a shift towards the concept of the common good can prove helpful. The common good is similarly under-determined in content as the concept of justice and might serve as the epitome of climate protection: everybody is able to contribute and everybody benefits from it (Münkler and Fischer 2002; Ostrom 2019). However, not everybody is needed to contribute, opening the risk of free-riding. This article and the related PhD project follow the notion that the common good can serve as a fruitful theoretical argument in tackling climate change, providing an alternative to the argument of justice. In a first step, I develop a theoretical concept of the common good from an ecological perspective. Secondly, I analyze the current German climate change discourse with regard to the argument of justice, particularly focusing on discourse conducted by FFF and legislative texts authorized by the German parliament, especially the ruling of the Federal Constitutional Court on intergenerational rights from 2021 and the Climate Protection Act. Additionally, I will compare this analysis to a second analysis conducted on the same texts investigating notions pointing towards the common good. Eventually, I sketch out a proposal for a concept of the ecological common good. The aim of the project is to prove the under-specification of the common good and to contribute to its specification in the ecological dimension. In addition, the project provides a theoretical contribution to the role of a fundamental concept of political theory in a current debate, demonstrating the lasting relevance of this concept and providing impetus for further debate. Lastly, it addresses the highly topical question of the limits of society and solidarity in a globalized world, providing insights on how to reconcile polarized societies (Habermas 1985; Münkler and Bluhm 2001; Tietz 2002).