•  705
    The Circumstances of Intergenerational Justice
    Moral Philosophy and Politics 2 (1): 33-56. 2015.
    Some key political challenges today, e.g. climate change, are future oriented. The intergenerational setting differs in some notable ways from the intragenerational one, creating obstacles to theorizing about intergenerational justice. One concern is that as the circumstances of justice do not pertain intergenerationally, intergenerational justice is not meaningful. In this paper, I scrutinize this worry by analysing the presentations of the doctrine of the circumstances of justice by David Hume…Read more
  •  579
    Non-ideal climate justice
    Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 22 (2): 221-234. 2019.
    Based on three recently published books on climate justice, this article reviews the field of climate ethics in light of developments of international climate politics. The central problem addressed is how idealised normative theories can be relevant to the political process of negotiating a just distribution of the costs and benefits of mitigating climate change. I distinguish three possible responses, that is, three kinds of non-ideal theories of climate justice: focused on (1) the injustice o…Read more
  •  502
    This dissertation is a contribution to the debate about ‘climate justice’, i.e. a call for a just and feasible distribution of responsibility for addressing climate change. The main argument is a proposal for a cautious, practicable, and necessary step in the right direction: given the set of theoretical and practical obstacles to climate justice, we must begin by making contemporary development practices sustainable. In times of climate change, this is done by recognising and responding to the …Read more
  •  417
    The savings problem in the original position: assessing and revising a model
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 47 (2): 269-289. 2017.
    The common conception of justice as reciprocity seemingly is inapplicable to relations between non-overlapping generations. This is a challenge also to John Rawls’s theory of justice as fairness. This text responds to this by way of reinterpreting and developing Rawls’s theory. First, by examining the original position as a model, some revisions of it are shown to be wanting. Second, by drawing on the methodology of constructivism, an alternative solution is proposed: an amendment to the primary…Read more
  •  70
    The concept of sustainable welfare
    with Maria Emmelin
    In Max Koch & Oksana Mont (eds.), Sustainability and the Political Economy of Welfare, Routledge. pp. 15-28. 2016.
    The meaning of welfare and the conditions for making it sustainable seemingly are related. This is at least a common idea in current discussions with the implicit assumption that conditions conducive to general welfare improvements also will secure certain sustainability objectives. In this chapter, we challenge this by way of a conceptual analysis of welfare, focused on its descriptive adequacy. Although there are different substantial theories about welfare, they all have to account for its su…Read more
  •  57
    The Just Savings Principle
    The Oxford Handbook of Intergenerational Ethics. 2021.
    This chapter situates John Rawls’ just savings principle in a discussion about how much a nation-state should save. The main question addressed is whether this principle is a viable alternative to the dominant utilitarian theory of optimal growth. Rawls certainly gives savings a different aim (i.e., to create and maintain just institutions) and introduces additional permissibility conditions on reaching this goal (i.e., the necessary burdens should be fairly shared between generations). He there…Read more
  •  47
    Climate Rights : Feasible or Not?
    with Anna-Karin Bergman
    Environmental Politics 22 (3): 394-409. 2013.
    Scholars have argued that we have compelling reasons to combat climate change because it threatens human rights, referred to here as ‘climate rights’. The prospects of climate rights are analysed assuming two basic desiderata: its accuracy in capturing the normative dimension of climate change ; and its ability to generate political measures. In order for climate rights to meet these desiderata certain conditions must be satisfied: important human interests are put at risk by global climate chan…Read more
  •  39
    Engaged Climate Ethics
    Journal of Political Philosophy 29 (4): 539-563. 2020.
    Journal of Political Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 4, Page 539-563, December 2021.
  •  39
    Towards a Theory of Pure Procedural Climate Justice
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 36 (5): 785-799. 2019.
    A challenge for the theorising of climate justice is that even when the agents whose actions are supposed to be regulated are cooperative and act in good faith, they may still disagree about how the burdens and benefits of dealing with climate change should be distributed. This article is a contribution to the formulation of a useful role for normative theorising in light of this bounded nature of climate justice. We outline a theory of pure procedural climate justice; its content, function in r…Read more
  •  33
    Any future-oriented work, whether of academic or policy kind, needs a vision of the future, however vague. It is well known that such predictions are bound to be wrong, at least on the margin. The question is how to minimise that threat and make reliable assumptions. In this chapter we discuss a strategy of hypothetical retrospection. By imagining a future state of the world that is radically different from the present, we scrutinise hidden assumptions and suppositions taken for granted in philo…Read more
  •  33
    Review article: the ethics of population policies
    Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 1. 2021.
  •  31
    Why are we waiting? The logic, urgency, and promise of tackling climate change (review)
    Ethics, Policy and Environment 21 (3): 405-408. 2018.
    With The Stern Review, Nicholas Stern positioned himself as a leading climate economist and, unlike most others, willing to exert an influence over the political debate. With his follow-up,...
  •  31
    Rawlsian Constructivism: A Practical Guide to Reflective Equilibrium
    The Journal of Ethics 24 (3): 355-373. 2020.
    Many normative theorists want to contribute to making the world a better place. In recent years, it has been suggested that to realise this ambition one must start with an adequate description of real-life practices. To determine what should be done, however, one must also fundamentally criticise existing moral beliefs. The method of reflective equilibrium offers a way of doing both. Yet, its practical usefulness has been doubted and it has been largely ignored in the recent practical turn of no…Read more
  •  16
    Some ethical imperatives pertaining to climate change are mostly uncontroversial. Humanity has caused the problem and must do something to mitigate it and this job must to a large extent be carried by the current generations, as time is short. There is also wide agreement, at least among climate justice scholars, that the reason for why this is so is a combination of causal responsibility and ability to pay, and that the affluent therefore must lead the transition away of fossil fuels. However, …Read more
  •  14
    William MacAskill: What We Owe the Future: A Million-Year View (review)
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 26 (3): 481-483. 2023.
  •  3
    When Energy Justice is Contested: A Systematic Review of a Decade of Research on Sweden's Conflicted Energy Landscape
    with Vasna Ramasar, Henner Busch, and Krisjanis Rudus
    Energy Research and Social Science 94 1-13. 2022.
    The way in which we produce and consume energy has profound implications for our societies. How we configure our energy systems determines not only our chances of successfully dealing with climate change but also, how benefits and burdens of these systems are distributed. In this paper, we set out to map the literature on conflicts related to the energy system in Sweden using a framework of energy justice. The purpose of this exercise is twofold: first, to identify and understand energy conflict…Read more
  •  1
    Comment on 'The climate mitigation gap: education and government recommendations miss the most effective individual actions'
    with Philippe van Basshuysen
    Environmental Research Letters 13 (4): 1-3. 2018.
    Wynes and Nicholas (2017) argue that the most effective action to reduce individual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is to have one fewer child. We raise methodological concerns about the way in which the authors attribute responsibility for emissions: they rely on multiple counting when calculating the emissions of future generations, and they exclude scenarios in which global emission trajectories become net-zero or negative. This may distort recommendations from policy makers and educators who …Read more
  •  1
    Winds of change: An engaged ethics approach to energy justice
    with Busch Henner, Lycke Ellen, and Ramasar Vasna
    Energy Research and Social Science 110 (April 2024): 103427. 2024.
    Theories of energy justice are standardly used to evaluate decision-making and policy-design related to energy infrastructure. All too rarely attention is paid to the need for a method of justifying principles of justice as well as justice-based judgments that are appealed to in this context. This article responds to this need by offering an engaged ethics approach to normative justification useful for energy justice theory. More specifically, it presents a method of public reflective equilibriu…Read more
  • Population ageing is a fact of all advanced economies. Fewer people are born all the while current members live longer. The support which old people have come to depend on, for example through elderly care and pensions, thus becomes increasingly expensive. This accentuates an assurance problem. Although it has been and still is the case that the young are willing to support the currently old, this support is not unconditional. In return they trust that coming generations will support them one da…Read more