Abstract: Many societies are now having to live with the impacts of climate change and are being confronted with heat waves, wildfires, droughts, and rising sea levels. Without radical action, future generations will inherit an even more degraded planet. This raises the question: How can political institutions be reformed to promote justice for future generations and to leave them an ecologically sustainable world? In this essay, I address a particular version of this question; namely: How can supra–state institutions and transnational political processes be transformed to realize climate justice for future generations? The essay seeks to make two contributions. First, it considers what criteria should guide the evaluation of proposals for reform. It proposes four criteria, and analyzes how they should be interpreted and applied. Second, it considers a raft of different proposals, commenting on their strengths and weaknesses. It presents ten proposals in all, including, among others, establishing a UN high commissioner for future generations, appointing a UN special envoy for future generations, creating a UN agency mandated to protect future generations, instituting representatives for the future in all key UN bodies, ensuring greater youth participation in transnational political decision-making processes, and further developing a global citizens’ assembly. In short, my aim is to outline some of the options available and to defend a normative framework that we can use to evaluate them.

In the debates surrounding global justice, the overwhelming focus has been on the duties that fall to the affluent and powerful, and the emphasis has been on their duties to comply with various principles of justice. In this essay, I examine what those who bear the brunt of global injustice are entitled to do to secure their own entitlements and those of others. In particular, I defend an account of what I term the “right of resistance against global injustice.” To do so I advance several methodological and substantive claims. On the methodological level: I argue that in deriving and defining this right of resistance we can (a) learn from the normative accounts developed to analyze war, humanitarian intervention, civil disobedience, revolution and anti colonialism. However, (b) the right to resist global injustice raises some distinct problems; and, thus, the normative principles that should inform any right of resistance against global injustice are not reducible to those that govern the appropriate kinds of response to other kinds of injustice. Turning now to the substantive component, I propose an account of resisting global injustice that specifies (i) who may engage in resistance, (ii) what would constitute a just cause for engaging in resistance, (iii) against whom those engaging in resistance may impose burdens, (iv) what methods resistors can employ, and (v) in what circumstances resistance is permissible.

The paper has the following structure. In Section I, I introduce some important methodological preliminaries by asking: How should one reason about global environmental justice in general and global climate change in particular? Section II introduces the key normative argument; it argues that global climate change damages some fundamental human interests and results in a state of affairs in which the rights of many are unprotected: as such it is unjust. Section III addresses the complexities that arise from the fact that some of the ill effects of global climate change will fall on the members of future generations. Section IV shows that some prevailing approaches are unable to deal satisfactorily with the challenges posed by global climate change. If the argument of this paper is correct, it follows that those who contribute to global climate change through high emissions are guilty of human rights violations and they should be condemned as such.

In this article I propose to explore two issues. The first concerns what kinds of contributions academics can make to reducing poverty. I argue that academics can contribute in a number of ways, and I seek to spell out the diversity of the options available. I concentrate on four ways in which these contributions might differ.

My second aim is to outline some norms that should inform any academic involvement in activities that seek to reduce poverty. I set out six proposals. These concern: (1) the need to construct coalitions among people with different ethical frameworks; (2) the value of constructing nonideal theory on the basis of our best understanding of an ideal world; (3) the need for integrated analysis that connects antipoverty initiatives to other areas of moral concern; (4) the vital importance of interdisciplinarity; (5) the need for epistemic modesty and revisability; and (6) the need for accountability.

Cap-and-trade systems for greenhouse gas emissions are an important part of the climate change policies of the EU, Japan, New Zealand, among others, as well as China (soon) and Australia (potentially). However, concerns have been raised on a variety of ethical grounds about the use of markets to reduce emissions. For example, some people worry that emissions trading allows the wealthy to evade their responsibilities. Others are concerned that it puts a price on the natural environment. Concerns have also been raised about the distributional justice of emissions trading. Finally, some commentators have questioned the actual effectiveness of emissions trading in reducing emissions. This paper considers these three categories of objections – ethics, justice and effectiveness – through the lens of moral philosophy and economics. It is concluded that only the objections based on distributional justice can be sustained. This points to reform of the carbon market system, rather than its elimination.

Liberal theorists have traditionally emphasized the importance of rights and just institutions. Recently liberalism and the liberal emphasis on rights have been criticized on the grounds that they are individualistic and overlook the importance of community and fraternity. In this Note I look at two particular arguments, made by the communitarian Michael Sandel, that have been levelled at the liberal emphasis on rights, namely, what I shall call the ‘circumstances of justice’ argument and the ‘crowding out’ argument.

It is a commonplace that in many societies people adhere to profoundly different conceptions of the good. Given this we need to know what political principles are appropriate. How can we treat people who are committed to different accounts of the good with fairness? One recent answer to this pressing question is given by Brian Barry in his important work Justice as Impartiality. This book, of course, contains much more than this. It includes a powerful and incisive discussion of several accounts of distributive justice (‘justice as mutual advantage’ and ‘justice as reciprocity’), a critique of other attempts to defend liberal neutrality and a rebuttal of those who are critical of the ideal of impartiality. In this paper I wish, however, to focus on Barry's defence of liberal neutrality. The paper falls into three parts. Section I outlines the thesis that Barry wants to defend and gives a brief sketch of the argument he employs to defend it. Barry's argument makes two claims – what I have termed the Sceptical Thesis and the Agreement Thesis. Section II therefore critically assesses Barry's defence of the sceptical thesis and Section III examines the agreement thesis.

It is widely recognized that changes are occurring to the earth's climate and, further, that these changes threaten important human interests. This raises the question of who should bear the burdens of addressing global climate change. This paper aims to provide an answer to this question. To do so it focuses on the principle that those who cause the problem are morally responsible for solving it (the ‘polluter pays’ principle). It argues that while this has considerable appeal it cannot provide a complete account of who should bear the burdens of global climate change. It proposes three ways in which this principle needs to be supplemented, and compares the resulting moral theory with the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibility’.

Charles Beitz's Political Theory and International Relations has had an enormous impact on analyses of the ethical issues raised at the global level. It was the first systematic discussion of such ethical issues in the last 50 years if not more. It remains a landmark for a number of different reasons. First, it stands out for the sophistication of its philosophical argument and the meticulous argumentation throughout. The latter is deployed not simply to provide powerful critiques of other perspectives (such as realism and the morality of states). It also puts forward and defends with considerable ingenuity a cosmopolitan theory of distributive justice. A second striking and impressive feature of the book is that it successfully integrates philosophical argument with a deep grasp of the nature of world politics and the empirical and theoretical literatures on salient aspects of world politics.

In recent years a powerful case has been made in defence of a system of global governance in which supra-state institutions are accountable directly to the citizens of the world. This political vision- calling for what is commonly termed a ‘cosmopolitan democracy‘- has been defended with considerable imagination by thinkers such as Daniele Archibugi, Richard Falk, David Held, and Tony McGrew. At the same time, a number of powerful arguments have been developed in favour of cosmopolitan principles of distributive justice. Philosophers such as Brian Barry, Charles Beitz, Onora O'Neill, Thomas Pogge, Henry Shue, and Peter Singer have developed formidable arguments against wholly local theories of distributive justice and have argued for cosmopolitan conceptions of distributive justice.