Frdric-Paul Piguet 2014 www.institutbiosphere.ch www.Globethics.

net 2 December 2014

Frdric-Paul Piguet (PhD)

JUSTICE CLIMATIQUE ET INTERDICTION DE NUIRE

(Climatic Justice and the no Harm Principle)
Globethics.net, Geneva, 2014, 560 p.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT
The different schools of distributive justice allocate emission rights on gases threatening
numerous ecosystems and their inhabitants. Political communities generating considerable
amounts of greenhouse gases are legitimized if they diminish them to sustainable levels,
within the next four or eight decades. During this time, their flows will push up the atmospheric
carbon dioxide concentration and may create a prejudice to numerous victims, if not a
disastrous climatic upheaval. The situation is harsher than expected due to increasing
uncertainty and risk.
The answers of the schools of distributive justice compose a narrative whose significance is
contradictory for the emitters as well as for their victims. As we will point out, emission
rights take part in an unacceptable risk. Within the framework of distributive justice, it is
nonsense to admit the right to share in an unacceptable risk to many people. So, the schools of
distributive justice express an inaccurate account of the human challenge despite an adequate
understanding of climatological scientific papers.
However, the no harm principle expounds clearly that these emission levels are excessive and
that above a certain level no emission right is warrantable. The objective is not the immediate
interruption of emissions because it is impossible, but the truthfulness of the narrative. We
will show that this principle reveals precisely the real situation of humanity within its lifesupport commons, the Biosphere. Due to uncertainty, the situation is partially out of control and
allows us to interpret the principle in a flexible but accurate way. Only a scrupulous story
allows individuals and political communities to consider their actions with regard to one
another and to the common good.
This perspective is Aristotelian. The no harm principle articulates distributive justice and
corrective justice. It is crucial to distinguish the allocation of rights on economic advantages
which fall within the scope of distributive justice as one species of right (particular justice),
from the determination of values and common good by the general justice, which is also
distributive (to a higher level). The no harm principle has to be interpreted in the perspective of
the homeostasis of the Biosphere as first condition of the common good due to its primacy over
the economy from the viewpoint of the whole system.
The final questions are why and how the no harm principle could change the way countries and
their governments fight to grasp legitimacy within the international arena. How to interpret this
principle when many countries are unable to lower quickly their emissions? Is any country able
to criticize those who feint not to believe in the anthropogenic cause of climate change and are
indeed negligent and contemptuous towards the potential victims? To what extent the no harm
principle can change the game so one could get authority and power in complying with the
ecological thresholds of the Biosphere? On which rule and moral hierarchy of values potential
victims would and could frame the new international legitimacy game and global governance?
This book answers these questions.