Climate change raises a number of challenging questions about the distribution of greenhouse gas emissions reductions. Who should bear the burden of emissions reductions within a given generation? How should emissions reductions be allocated across different generations? This talk presents a ‘capabilities approach to climate justice’ that deals specifically with the question of how to allocate the burden of greenhouse gas emissions reductions across these dimensions of space and time. Capabilities refer to conditions and states of human enablement. They are opportunities for doing and achieving the various things that make up a flourishing human life. Using ‘capability thresholds’ defined in part by conditions of ecological resilience on which humans depend, and ‘capability ceilings’ defined in terms of harms to others that play out through large-scale ecological processes, the talk proposes that climate justice in any given generation requires putting limits on what people are able to do with the money they have. Building on this approach to a just allocation of greenhouse emissions reduction within a given generation, the talk will then consider how the relationship between human capability thresholds and ceilings can be used to distribute the burden of emissions reductions across generations.

Breena Holland is a Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Environmental Initiative at Lehigh University.  Her primary research is in the areas of environmental policy and political theory and focuses on issues of valuation, justification, and participation in contemporary approaches to policy analysis and administrative rulemaking. She is currently engaged in several local projects related to environmental justice, food justice, and government accountability. 

Free pizza and beverages will be provided.

SPONSORED BY: Center for Animal Welfare Science | The Bindley Bioscience Center | Brewer Chair in Applied Ethics | Center for the Environment | Department of Health & Human Sciences | Global Policy esearch Center | Graduate School | College of Liberal Arts | Purdue Policy Research Institute | Department of Political Science | Department of Philosophy | College of Science | College of Veterinary Medicine | Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering purdue.