Political Theory and Global Climate Change

Climate change will shape the political, economic, and cultural landscape as surelyas it shapes the natural landscape. It challenges our existing political institutions, ethicaltheories, and ways of conceptualizing the human relationship to the environment, it defies currentprinciples of distributive justice, transcends current discourses on rights, and disrupts our senseof place. Political Theory and Global Climate Change argues that the conceptual tools of politicaltheory can help us understand the obstacles to fair and effective global climate change policies,and this volume offers a selection of innovative and integrative scholarly efforts to do so.Illuminating the variety of political, economic, and social problems caused by global warming, thebook applies a range of theoretical approaches and methodologies--from analytic philosophy andconstitutional and legal theory to neo-Marxism and critical theory--using climate change as a caseto test standard normative and empirical premises. The book first looks at distributive justiceconcerns raised by climate change, including allocation of the global atmospheric commons and how toestablish the basis for a fair and effective global climate policy regime, then examines the complexrelationships between climate change and society, including the way that social institutions andpractices construct, reinforce, aim to address, and are disrupted by climatic instability. Showinghow political theory challenges and is challenged by global climate change, the book bothdemonstrates and evaluates innovative approaches in the developing field of environmental politicaltheory.

Contributors: Martin J. Adamian, John Barry, Peter F.Cannavo, Stephen Gardiner, George Gonzalez, Amy Lovecraft, Timothy W. Luke, Leigh Raymond, SteveVanderheiden

The hardcover edition does not include a dust jacket.

John Barry is Deputy Director and Reader in Politics at the Institute of Governance, Public Policy, and Social Research at Queens University, Belfast. He is the author of Rethinking Green Politics and coeditor of the International Encyclopedia of Environmental Politics.