The Ethics and Politics of Climate Change – Theoretical and Empirical Investigations

Climate change is a highly interdisciplinary issue, both in research and international policy. This necessitates connecting researchers all over Europe from whatever perspective they approach the challenge. Against the background of the Paris Agreement, this Section includes theoretical as well as empirical perspectives on the following themes related to climate change. Mitigation: Ambition, Transparency, and Accountability after Paris The Paris Agreement of the UNFCCC is the first international climate change agreement incorporating agreements to mitigate climate change from all participating parties. This was made possible by the bottom up process allowing countries to formulate their own Intended Nationally Determined Contributions. But the sum of the contributions is insufficient to limit warming within the ambitious temperature targets affirmed in Paris. How can parties to the Paris agreement be made contributing more and as much as possible? To what norms of justice should they be bound demanding more ambitious INDCs? Adaptation: Aims and Responsibility The mean surface temperature of the Earth has already warmed nearly 0.8º. Even under best case projections it will warm another 0.7-1.2º this century. This will affect sea levels, water supplies, storm incidence and intensities, growing patterns, droughts, heatwaves, and vectors. How should planning for adaptation be directed? Should the most vulnerable be identified and how is vulnerability best identified? Or is generalized development assistance best? What is the best principle for assigning responsibility for funding adaptation? What institutions could do the work? How well are we doing so far? Loss and Damages: Identification and Responsibility Climate change causes economic and non-economic losses, eco-systemic and community destruction, and morbidity. Not all of these losses and damages are easily monetarized (perhaps some cannot be at all) and it is a difficult challenge to understand the kinds of institutions and procedures needed to provide appropriate compensation for them. How should compensation for these losses and damages be made? How can climate change caused losses and damages be detected and attributed? What principle of responsibility is best for assigning duties of compensation? What institutions could do the work? Geo-engineering: Much Needed Supplement or a Distraction? Nearly all the research surveyed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change regarding limiting warming to 2ºC employs models assuming the significant use of Carbon Dioxide Removal technology. Solar radiation management holds the promise of an inexpensive temporary complement to mitigation. Both technologies are currently not very well developed. What policies could provide the appropriate incentives for the development of the needed technology? Can worries about the risks of these technologies be adequately addressed? Should research continue despite these concerns? Biographies of Section Chairs Darrel Moellendorf is Cluster Professor of International Political Theory at the Excellence Cluster Normative Orders and Professor of Philosophy at Johann Wolfgang Universität Frankfurt am Main. He is the author of Cosmopolitan Justice (2002), Global Inequality Matters (2009), and The Moral Challenge of Dangerous Climate Change: Values, Poverty, and Policy (2014). He co-edited (with Christopher J. Roederer) Jurisprudence (2004), (with Gillian Brock) Current Debates in Global Justice (2005), (with Thomas Pogge) Global Justice: Seminal Essays (2008) and (with Heather Widdows) The Routledge Handbook of Global Ethics (2014). Dr. Ivo Wallimann-Helmer is Director of the program for Advanced Studies in Applied Ethics and a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Ethics. He is the author of Chancengleichheit im Liberalismus. Bedeutung und Funktion eines überschätzten Ideals (2013). He edited Chancengleichheit und “Behinderung” im Bildungswesen (2012), and he co-edited (with Christine Clavien and Julien Deonna) European Journal of Analytic Philosophy (2006), (with Christine Clavien and Julien Deonna) Dialectica (2007), (with Carina Fourie and Fabian Schuppert) Social Equality. On What It Means to Be Equals (2015), and (with Christian Huggel, Markus Ohndorf and Dominic Roser) Climatic Change (2015).