Frédéric-Paul Piguet

The latest news from our planet is threatening: climate change, pollution, forest loss, species extinctions. All these words are frightening and there is no sign of improvement. Simple logic leads to the conclusion that humanity has to react, for its own survival. But at the scale of a human being, it is less obvious. Organizing one’s daily life in order to preserve the environment implies self-questioning, changing habits, sacrificing some comfort. In one word, it is an effort. Then, what justifies such an effort? The personal choice to act in order to preserve our environment is often made by simple altruism. This choice is based on our love for other human beings: our love for the others grounds our effort. Our moral values, our ethical reflections and our religious beliefs are the deep core of these choices. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” (John 15.12 NRSV). This Charter shows the moral and religious values that can help us react regarding the current environmental crisis and it should empower us to transcend the ideas of effort and sacrifice in order to consider the respect of the shared house, in a prophetic fulfillment of the being.

Justice climatique et interdiction de nuire constitue une synthèse interdisciplinaire d’une ampleur rare. L’auteur a médité les thèmes clés des sciences de l’environnement dont il agence le propos de façon organique et structurée, l’érudition servant toujours à cerner sa question principale. Il montre les insuffisances de la justice distributive et la pertinence de l’intervention du principe d’interdiction de nuire dans le dossier climatique. En reconnaissant la biosphère comme support de vie commun des êtres humains, ce livre introduit une rupture épistémologique que la philosophie morale n’avait pas encore répercutée avec une telle puissance. Saura-t-il lancer et soutenir un débat nécessaire ?

When translated into concrete policy, any allocation of emissions leads to the attribution of emissions rights based on distributive justice. Consequently, the distributive justice approach legitimizes the corresponding amount of emissions. If a certain level of emissions can receive emissions rights, provided they are compatible with a certain emissions budget, to allocate emissions rights when the dangerous concentration level has been overshot could understate the need to preserve the functioning of a “balanced” climate system. From the perspective of Foucault’s archaeology of knowledge, and with the purpose of assessing the epistemology of climate justice, it will be possible to question the possible importation of the mode of production of norms of social law into climate mitigation justice. Additionally, it will be questioned whether the amount of anthropogenic emissions rights can be provided by “the laws of nature” and whether and how the no‑harm principle can contribute to the epistemological relevance of the narrative of climate justice.