Civil Disobedience, Climate Protests and a Rawlsian Argument for 'Atmospheric' Fairness

Abstract

Activities protesting against major polluters who cause climate change may cause damage to private property in the process. This paper investigates the case for a more international general basis of moral justification for such protests. Specific reference is made to the Kingsnorth case, which involved a protest by Greenpeace against coal-powered electricity generation in the UK. An appeal is made to Rawlsian fairness arguments, traditionally employed to support the obligation of citizens to their national governments as opposed to their international duties. The argument made here, however, is that there seem to be sufficient reasons for holding that a stable climate is one of the first truly global public goods that is indispensable to acceptable standards of living everywhere. This would suffice to justify international and intergenerational 'atmospheric' political obligations, which in turn may justify protests - even those causing some damage to private property - against the laws and policies that violate the fair terms of cooperation in providing a stable climate. The fairness argument aims also to provide a ground from which Green political theory could integrate accounts of radical forms of citizenship into appeals to state political authority. This leads to justifying acts of civil disobedience on the basis of novel understandings of 'atmospheric' citizenship obligations.

Coal and climate change

“…Debates about coal in the context of climate change are frequently (perhaps always) proxy debates about development, about justice, and about sustainability which are colored by the interests of actors with overlapping and often contradictory interests. This both supports and raises questions about Kyllönnen's radical argument that Rawlsian fairness demands civil disobedience in the context of fossil fuel infrastructure, drawing on protests in the United Kingdom to argue for “climate stability as an indispensable global public good, whose provision over time requires not only global but intergenerational cooperation” and that “plans to build a new coal‐fired power station in a developed country may justifiably be held as a clear violation of these fair terms [of atmospheric cooperation]” (Kyllönen, , pp. 605, 610).…”

Public Discourses of Climate Change in Hong Kong

“…As climate change has risen to political and social pre-eminence, the public debates across the globe have seen bitter struggles and re-negotiations over the terms by which it is governed and managed (Dryzek & Lo, 2015;Dryzek & Stevenson, 2011;Kyllönen, 2015). The contested issues arising from global climate change can no longer be adequately represented by the scientific discourses that emerged in the 1980s and early 1990s, when key international reports, such as the IPCC's First Assessment Report, were released.…”

Sufficiency and Sustainability: Conceptual Analysis and Ethical Considerations for Sustainable Organisation

“…The second feature is 'the distributive principle' the theories impose: equal distribution, priority for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged, or a minimum level for everyone. When discussing inter-generational justice, this includes a consideration of those who can be imagined to be behind the 'veil of ignorance', in Rawls's words (see Kyllönen 2014). It could be suggested that we should engage in a Rawlsian thought experiment with a non-anthropocentric assumption.…”