•  2541
    'Distributive Justice and Climate Change'
    In Serena Olsaretti (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Distributive Justice, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
    This paper discusses two distinct questions of distributive justice raised by climate change. Stated very roughly, one question concerns how much protection is owed to the potential victims of climate change (the Just Target Question), and the second concerns how the burdens (and benefits) involved in preventing dangerous climate change should be distributed (the Just Burden Question). In Section II, I focus on the first of these questions, the Just Target Question. The rest of the paper examine…Read more
  •  1278
    Responding to global injustice: On the right of resistance
    Social Philosophy and Policy 32 (1): 51-73. 2015.
    Imagine that you are a farmer living in Kenya. Though you work hard to sell your produce to foreign markets you find yourself unable to do so because affluent countries subsidize their own farmers and erect barriers to trade, like tariffs, thereby undercutting you in the marketplace. As a consequence of their actions you languish in poverty despite your very best efforts. Or, imagine that you are a peasant whose livelihood depends on working in the fields in Indonesia and you are forcibly displa…Read more
  •  1274
    The Struggle for Climate Justice in a Non‐Ideal World
    Midwest Studies in Philosophy 40 (1): 9-26. 2016.
    Many agents have failed to comply with their responsibilities to take the action needed to avoid dangerous anthropogenic climate change. This pervasive noncompliance raises two questions of nonideal political theory. First, it raises the question of what agents should do when others do not discharge their climate responsibilities. (the Responsibility Question) In this paper I put forward four principles that we need to employ to answer the Responsibility Question (Sections II-V). I then illustra…Read more
  •  1200
    Justice beyond borders: a global political theory
    Oxford University Press. 2005.
    Which political principles should govern global politics? In his new book, Simon Caney engages with the work of philosophers, political theorists, and international relations scholars in order to examine some of the most pressing global issues of our time. Are there universal civil, political, and economic human rights? Should there be a system of supra- state institutions? Can humanitarian intervention be justified?
  •  912
    Climate change and the duties of the advantaged
    Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 13 (1): 203-228. 2010.
    Climate change poses grave threats to many people, including the most vulnerable. This prompts the question of who should bear the burden of combating ?dangerous? climate change. Many appeal to the Polluter Pays Principle. I argue that it should play an important role in any adequate analysis of the responsibility to combat climate change, but suggest that it suffers from three limitations and that it needs to be revised. I then consider the Ability to Pay Principle and consider four objections …Read more
  •  843
    Political Institutions for the Future: A Five-Fold Package (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
    Governments are often so focused on short-term gains that they ignore the long term, thus creating extra unnecessary burdens on their citizens, and violating their responsibilities to future generations. What can be done about this? In this paper I propose a package of reforms to the ways in which policies are made by legislatures, and in which those policies are scrutinised, implemented and evaluated. The overarching aim is to enhance the accountability of the decision-making process in ways …Read more
  •  692
    Coercion, Justification, and Inequality: Defending Global Egalitarianism
    Ethics and International Affairs 29 (3): 277-288. 2015.
    Michael Blake’s excellent book 'Justice and Foreign Policy' makes an important contribution to the ongoing debates about the kinds of values that should inform the foreign policy of liberal states. In this paper I evaluate his defence of the view that egalitarianism applies within the state but not globally. I discuss two arguments he gives for this claim - one appealing to the material preconditions of democracy and the other grounded in a duty to justify coercive power. I argue that neither ar…Read more
  •  339
    Climate Change, Human Rights and Moral Thresholds
    In Stephen Humphreys (ed.), Human Rights and Climate Change, Cambridge University Press. 2010.
    This essay examines the relationship between climate change and human rights. It argues that climate change is unjust, in part, because it jeopardizes several core rights – including the right to life, the right to food and the right to health. It then argues that adopting a human rights framework has six implications for climate policies. To give some examples, it argues that this helps us to understand the concept of “dangerous anthropogenic interference” (UNFCCC, Article 2). In addition to…Read more
  •  320
    Climate change and the future: Discounting for time, wealth, and risk
    Journal of Social Philosophy 40 (2): 163-186. 2009.
    This paper examines explore the issues of intergenerational equity raised by climate change. A number of different reasons have been suggested as to why current generations may legitimately favor devoting resources to contemporaries rather than to future generations. These - either individually or jointly - challenge the case for combating climate change. In this paper, I distinguish between three different kinds of reason for favoring contemporaries. I argue that none of these arguments is pers…Read more
  •  318
    Cosmopolitan Justice and Institutional Design
    Social Theory and Practice 32 (4): 725-756. 2006.
    What kind of political systems should there be? In this paper I examine two competing principles of institutional design — an instrumental view, which maintains that one should design institutions so as to realize the most plausible conception of justice, and a democratic view, which maintains that one should design institutions so as to enable persons to participate in the decisions that impact their lives. I argue for a mixed view that combines these two principles. In the second stage of the …Read more
  •  313
    Humanity, Associations, and Global Justice
    The Monist 94 (4): 506-534. 2011.
    This paper defends an egalitarian conception of global justice against two kinds of criticism. Many who defend egalitarian principles of justice do so on the basis that all humans are part of a common 'association' of some kind. In this paper I defend the humanity-centred approach which holds that persons should be included within the scope of distributive justice simply because they are fellow human beings. The paper has four substantive sections - the first addresses Andrea Sangiovanni's re…Read more
  •  275
    Justice and the distribution of greenhouse gas emissions
    Journal of Global Ethics 5 (2): 125-146. 2009.
    The prospect of dangerous climate change requires Humanity to limit the emission of greenhouse gases. This in turn raises the question of how the permission to emit greenhouse gases should be distributed and among whom. In this article the author criticises three principles of distributive justice that have often been advanced in this context. He also argues that the predominantly statist way in which the question is framed occludes some morally relevant considerations. The latter part of the ar…Read more
  •  274
    Just Emissions
    Philosophy and Public Affairs 40 (4): 255-300. 2012.
    This paper examines what would be a fair distribution of the right to emit greenhouse gases. It distinguishes between views that treat the distribution of this right on its own (Isolationist Views) and those that treat it in conjunction with the distribution of other goods (Integrationist Views). The most widely held view treats adopts an Isolationist approach and holds that emission rights should be distributed equally. This paper provides a critique of this 'equal per capita' view, and the …Read more
  •  244
    Cosmopolitan Justice, Responsibility, and Global Climate Change
    Leiden Journal of International Law 18 (4): 747-775. 2005.
    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 ‘polluterpays’ principle). It argues thatwhilethishasconsiderable appeal it cannot provide a co…Read more
  •  210
    Climate change, intergenerational equity and the social discount rate
    Politics, Philosophy and Economics 13 (4): 320-342. 2014.
    Climate change is projected to have very severe impacts on future generations. Given this, any adequate response to it has to consider the nature of our obligations to future generations. This paper seeks to do that and to relate this to the way that inter-generational justice is often framed by economic analyses of climate change. To do this the paper considers three kinds of considerations that, it has been argued, should guide the kinds of actions that one generation should take if it is to t…Read more
  •  197
    Carbon Trading: Unethical, Unjust and Ineffective?
    Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 69 201-234. 2011.
    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 and Australia. 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…Read more
  •  176
    Cosmopolitan Justice and Equalizing Opportunities
    Metaphilosophy 32 (1-2): 113-134. 2001.
    This paper defends a global principle of equality of opportunity, which states that it is unfair if some have worse opportunities because of their national or civic identity. It begins by outlining the reasoning underpinning this principle. It then considers three objections to global equality of opportunity. The first argues that global equality of opportunity is an inappropriate ideal given the great cultural diversity that exists in the world. The second maintains that equality of opportunity…Read more
  •  136
    Climate Change and Non-Ideal Theory: Six Ways of Responding to Noncompliance
    In Clare Heyward & Dominic Roser (eds.), Climate Justice in a Non-Ideal World, Oxford University Press. pp. 21-42. 2016.
    This paper examines what agents should do when others fail to comply with their responsibilities to prevent dangerous climate change. It distinguishes between six different possible responses to noncompliance. These include what I term (1) 'target modification' (watering down the extent to which we seek to prevent climate change), (2) ‘responsibility reallocation’ (reassigning responsibilities to other duty bearers), (3) ‘burden shifting I’ (allowing duty bearers to implement policies which imp…Read more
  •  117
    Justice and the duties of the advantaged: a defence
    Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 14 (4): 543-552. 2011.
    In a recent paper in this journal I argued that the distribution of the burdens involved in combating climate change should be determined by a combination of a particular version of the Polluter Pays Principle (PPP) and a particular version of the Ability to Pay Principle. Carl Knight has presented three objections to my analysis. In what follows, I argue that he largely misinterprets my arguments
  •  113
    Morality and Climate Change
    with Derek Bell
    The Monist 94 (3): 305-309. 2011.
  •  108
    (2007). Justice, Borders and the Cosmopolitan Ideal: A Reply to Two Critics. Journal of Global Ethics: Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 269-276. doi: 10.1080/17449620701456178
  •  107
    Cosmopolitanism, Democracy and Distributive Justice
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy (sup1): 29-63. 2005.
    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 principle…Read more
  •  106
    Impartiality and Liberal Neutrality
    Utilitas 8 (3): 273. 1996.
    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…Read more
  •  86
    Consequentialist defences of liberal neutrality
    Philosophical Quarterly 41 (165): 457-477. 1991.
  •  81
    This collection gathers a set of central papers from the emerging area of ethics and climate change.
  •  80