Darrel Frank Moellendorf

Transforming the global economy’s energy basis from its longstanding dependence on fossil fuels to a system based on renewable sources is an immense and urgent undertaking. In 2024, world GDP exceeded $111 trillion, and according to the International Energy Agency, more than 80 percent of this economic activity is still powered by fossil fuels. This dependence must be reduced rapidly to limit the rise in global mean temperature to 1.5°C or, at most, 2°C. Meeting the 1.5°C target requires achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, while a 2°C pathway allows only a few additional decades. By way of comparison, during the 19th and early 20th centuries, it took roughly a century for coal to surpass traditional biomass as the favored mode of energy consumption. Today, however, the pace of transition to renewable energy remains far slower than climate targets demand. This paper draws on the arguments I make in Mobilizing Hope to discuss how philosophers should theorize climate justice in the present context, why activism is especially important in the effort to achieve net-zero emissions, why forms of technology that could supplement mitigation should be researched, and some of the moral considerations such technology raises.

Anthropogenic climate change is a global process affecting the lives and well-being of millions of people now and countless number of people in the future. For humans, the consequences may include significant threats to food security globally and regionally, increased risks of from food-borne and water-borne as well as vector-borne diseases, increased displacement of people due migrations, increased risks of violent conflicts, slowed economic growth and poverty eradication, and the creation of new poverty traps. Principles of justice are statements of what persons are owed either by others or by institutions and policies. Climate change gives rise to many concern of justice. This article briefly summarizes some of the most important of these, including claims to have climate change mitigated, claims regarding the sharing of the costs of climate change mitigation, claims for investment into adaptation, and claims to be compensated

In this paper I critically engage with Hennie Lötter’s impressive book, Poverty, Ethics and Justice. I discuss his conception of poverty, and offer an interpretation of his claim that poverty is a uniquely human scourge. I exam the various harms of poverty that Lötter discusses. I consider two reasons that he offers for why we have a moral duty to end poverty, and I argue that the reason based on what we can justify to others if we take their human dignity seriously is most compelling. Finally, I argue that Lötter overemphasizes of the moral importance of aid and downplays in the importance of the justice of institutional and structural change. I close by considering the prospects for social equality given our experience of capitalist development as a means for poverty eradication. I consider the moral importance of limits to the achievement of robust equality.

Global ethics focuses on the most pressing contemporary ethical issues - poverty, global trade, terrorism, torture, pollution, climate change and the management of scarce recourses. It draws on moral and political philosophy, political and social science, empirical research, and real-world policy and activism. The Routledge Handbook of Global Ethics is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems and debates in this exciting subject, presenting an authoritative overview of the most significant issues and ideas in global ethics. The 31 chapters by a team of international contributors are structured into six key parts: normative theory conflict and violence poverty and development economic justice bioethics and health justice environment and climate ethics. Covering the theoretical and practical aspects of global ethics as well as policy, The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Global Ethics provides a benchmark for the study of global ethics to date, as well as outlining future developments. It will prove an invaluable reference for policy-makers, and is essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy, international relations, political science, environmental and development studies and human rights law

The principle of global equality of opportunity is an important part of the commitment to global egalitarianism. In this paper I discuss how a principle of global equality of opportunity follows from a commitment to equal respect for the autonomy of all persons, and defend the principle against some of the criticism that it has received. The particular criticisms that I address contend that a moral view based upon dignity and respect cannot take properties of persons—such as their citizenship—as morally arbitrary, that any justification of what counts as equal opportunity sets must be based upon national cultural understandings, that a positive account of equality of opportunity cannot adequately handle the fact of value pluralism across the globe, and that the principle of equality of opportunity is incompatible with national self-determination. In the course of defending the principle of equality of opportunity from these criticisms, I make revisions to my previously published defense of the principle

In this paper I argue that hope is best understood as a compound psychological state. When we take hope according to the details of this account, we are in a good position to understand why it is a political virtue of persons. I also argue that securing the institutional bases of hope is a virtue of state institutions, particularly in states in transition from severe injustice. And, finally, when the bases are secure, a person who fails to hope for the political future is in that regard prima facie blameworthy.

In The Idea of Justice (2009), Amartya Sen distinguishes between ?transcendental institutional? approaches to justice and ?realization-focused comparisons,? rejecting the former and recommending the latter as a normative approach to global justice. I argue that Sen?s project fails for three principal reasons. First, he misdiagnoses the problem with accounts that he refers to as transcendental-institutionalist. The problem is not with these kinds of accounts per se, but with particular features of prominent approaches. Second, Sen?s realization-focus does not account well for the value of institutions of global justice. And even Sen agrees that reforms to institutions are urgently needed. And third, the distinction between transcendentalism and comparative approaches is implausible. I close by suggesting a strategy for an alternative institutionalist approach that can offer the kind of guidance for reforming the global order that Sen rightly takes as urgent

Ten years on from the first issue of the Journal of Global Ethics, Darrel Moellendorf and Heather Widdows reflect on the current state of research in global ethics. To do this, they summarise a recent comprehensive road map of the field and provide a map of research by delineating the topics and approaches of leading scholars of global ethics collected together in the recently published Routledge Handbook of Global Ethics which they have co-edited. Topics fall under issues of war, conflict and violence; poverty and development; economic justice; bioethics and health justice; and environmental and climate justice. In all these areas, ethicists are becoming ever more engaged in the details and mechanisms of actually delivering justice in the real world

“Will which is actually free is the unity of theoretical and practical spirit.” So opens the section of Hegel’s Encyclopedia known as “Free Spirit.” This text as well as both its immediate textual predecessor “Practical Spirit” and the introduction to the Philosophy of right comprise the mature Hegel’s attempt to give an account of freedom of the will, and mark a full departure from the Kantian standpoint on the matter. While Kant sees the evidence of freedom of the will in the moral ought, Hegel contends that the evidence lies in the actions of individuals within certain social arrangements.

After briefly surveying the mission and principles of the World Trade Organization (WTO), I argue that international trade may be assessed from the perspective of justice, and that the correct account of justice for these purposes is egalitarian in fundamental principle. I then consider the merits of the WTO's basic commitment to liberalized trade in the light of egalitarian considerations. Finally, I discuss the justice of several WTO policies. While noting the complexity of the empirical issues relating to the effects of trade institutions and policies, I conclude that egalitarians have reasons to object to certain of the principles and policies of the WTO.

This book examines the threat that climate change poses to the projects of poverty eradication, sustainable development, and biodiversity preservation. It offers a careful discussion of the values that support these projects and a critical evaluation of the normative bases of climate change policy. This book regards climate change policy as a public problem that normative philosophy can shed light on. It assumes that the development of policy should be based on values regarding what is important to respect, preserve, and protect. What sort of climate change policy do we owe the poor of the world who are particularly vulnerable to climate change? Why should our generation take on the burden of mitigating climate change that is caused, in no small part, by emissions from people now dead? What value is lost when natural species go extinct, as they may well do en masse because of climate change? This book presents a broad and inclusive discussion of climate change policy, relevant to those with interests in public policy, development studies, environmental studies, political theory, and moral and political philosophy

This critical commentary on the three sections of the philosophy of subjective spirit as it appears in Hegel's final Berlin Encyclopedia uses them to come to a better understanding and evaluation of his general philosophical perspective. This is in contrast to two sorts of dangers which Hegel scholarship faces. One is getting so caught up in summarizing and interpreting the troublesome texts that no evaluation is provided. The other is to view Hegel unsympathetically through the criteria of contemporary Anglo-America philosophy, so that very little is learned from him except that on most counts he falls short of the standards that this philosophy sets for itself. ;Contrary to these methods I present and evaluate the philosophy of subjective spirit in terms of its fulfillment of the aims of Hegel's system, and in terms of the questions that he suggests it is adequate to answer. There are three such questions. These concern the nature of the relationship between the mind and the body, the compatibility of free human will and natural determination, and the unity of the mind in light of its many activities. ;I also frequently compare Hegel to Kant for two reasons. One is pedagogical, the other intimately related to Hegel's project. We can gain greater understanding of Hegel by illuminating his departures from Kant, about whom much is known. What is more important philosophically, however, is Hegel's criticism of the limits which Kant's transcendental idealism places upon knowledge. The origins of these limits lie in Kant's view of the human mind, the forms of intuition and the spontaneity of understanding. However, if Hegel is to overcome the limits which Kant places upon knowledge, he must provide an account of the mind which circumvents what he considers to be the problems that arise out of Kant's account. ;On most of these counts Hegel's philosophy of subjective spirit is a failure, even if his vision is a captivating one. This analysis, however, does reveal certain advantages that Hegel's conception of freedom has over Kant's

In this paper I shall argue that due to the constructivist procedure which John Rawls employs in “The Law of Peoples,” he is unable to justify his claim that there is a relationship between limiting the internal and external sovereignty of states. An alternative constructivist procedure is viable, but it extends the ideal theory of international justice to include liberal democratic and egalitarian principles. The procedure and principles have significant implications for non‐ideal theory as well, insofar as they justify a principle of international resource redistribution and weaken general prohibitions against intervention.