GLOBAL JUSTICE AND GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE: A DISCUSSION OF THE RELATIONSHIP

Global climate change has very significant implications for the theory and practice of global justice. Climate change, whether generated by natural processes or human activities, generates uneven distribution of negative and net impacts across individuals, groups, and countries. Sources of climate change due to human activities, and also capacity to respond to climate change, are similarly unevenly distributed. Distributions of sources, impacts, and capacity are likely quite different from one another. In this context, justice concerns who should bear the final real burden of climate change and of actions to mitigate, halt, and reverse climate change. This final real burden is interdependent with global poverty.