Geo-engineering requires that we address the challenges of seeking to understand how future generations might judge what is fair both distributionally and procedurally. Given unavoidable climate change, with unevenly distributed impacts, geo-engineering might be considered a means of reducing that injustice. But geo-engineering itself could also trigger serious distributed impacts. Furthermore, evaluative approaches will be required which can address justice dimensions in the context of highly incomplete and uncertain information.
This paper explores the potential for the capabilities approach of Nussbaum and Sen (1993) to help frame consideration of, and potentially even evaluate, the justice implications of geoengineering. The paper explores the potential benefits of a capabilities based approach, and discusses its application to several predicted consequences of different geo-engineering proposals, namely reduced precipitation; increased consumption of bioproductivity; and increased primary energy demand.
The paper also briefly examines the contested argument that potential availability of geo-engineering creates a moral hazard for mitigation effort (interpreting any such moral hazard as an inter-generational injustice), and suggests that the capabilities approach to justice can help resolve this debate.
The paper further considers how best to define the moral community with respect to geoengineering, extending, inter alia, to other generations, Sen’s arguments (2009) for including other nations in our moral community. It considers what recognition (Schlosberg 2007) might add to our efforts to effectively define a moral community including future generations. It proposes a variant of cosmopolitan thinking (Caney 2005) which claims that ‘we should include in our moral community all humans (present or future) who we have the capacity to harm with our actions now’.
