The course introduces students to fundamental debates in contemporary political philosophy surrounding the pressing matter of climate change and the related topic of justice among generations. The course is taught exclusively in English, and is open both to Pavia-based students and to international exchange students.
Increasingly, communities, cities and economies face the need to not only mitigate, but also adapt to climate change. Mitigation and adaptation to climate change are complex and multifarious efforts, involving profound transformations in critical infrastructure systems, social behaviors and values and governance systems, constituting one of the most pressing global challenges to humankind. The goal of this course is to analyse these challenges with the tools of normative political theory, that is, investigating how to understand and include social values and justice concerns in these transformative processes.
The first part of the course will focus on theories of environment ethics discussing which theories of justice are more suitable for guiding modelling, plans and policy-making in climate adaptation processes. The second part of the course will debate matters of fairness between different generations. Solving the challenges raised by aging, stable pension funding programs, and increasing healthcare costs, for example, requires a view on what justice between age groups demands. Also, climate change, resource depletion, environmental degradation, population growth, and the like, raise serious concerns about the conditions under which future people will have to live.
The second part of the course will be more applied, and will discuss some of the specific challenges faced by environmental ethics. It is likely to cover at least the following issues: How much CO2 may we emit – and who is allowed to emit what?; What – if anything – do we owe to future generations? How should we divide resources between the old and the young?; Do we have a right to create future generations, or even an obligation? Can there be ‘too many’ people? These are hard questions on the intersection of political philosophy and ethics. They are not questions that can be answered by merely applying our existing theories: thinking about how to react to the environmental crisis and about what we owe to future generations puts pressure on existing normative theories and the course intends to shed lights on these pressing dilemmas.
- Teacher: FEDERICA LIVERIERO