Climate Justice

Climate Justice, in Global Climate Change and U.S. Law, 3d ed. (Michael B. Gerrard, Jody Freeman, and Michael Burger, eds) (2022, Forthcoming)

Univ. of San Francisco Law Research Paper

31 Pages Posted: 25 Jul 2022

See all articles by Alice Kaswan

Alice Kaswan

University of San Francisco - School of Law

Date Written: March 1, 2022

Abstract

This draft chapter, prepared for an ABA treatise surveying U.S. climate policy, explores legal and policy mechanisms for achieving climate justice. It begins with core conceptions of justice embraced by the environmental justice movement and provides a snapshot of current distributional inequities. The chapter then turns to several of the legal mechanisms that have helped inject justice into environmental policies and explores how these mechanisms are impacting litigation over fossil fuel projects.

Next, the chapter discusses the guiding principles climate justice advocates apply to climate mitigation, including participatory and distributional justice. Considering participatory justice, the chapter assesses the degree to which federal and state policies facilitate participation by historically marginalized communities in high-level strategic climate policy-making as well as in bottom-up community-led planning. The chapter then evaluates how cross-cutting federal and state policies incorporate advocates’ distributional aims: the degree to which they enhance benefits and minimize risks to historically marginalized communities. From there, the chapter turns to sector-specific issues and policies, considering the electricity, industrial, and transportation sectors.

The chapter also considers the particular justice issues faced by workers, including fossil-fuel workers and the communities reliant on fossil fuel extraction and use. Lastly, the chapter explains a critical flashpoint for climate justice advocates—their opposition to market mechanisms—and suggests the possibility of developing a suite of climate policies that incorporate environmental justice principles while simultaneously embracing a limited role for market-based approaches.

Keywords: climate change, climate justice, global warming, environmental justice, US climate policy, state climate policy

Suggested Citation

Kaswan, Alice, Climate Justice (March 1, 2022). Climate Justice, in Global Climate Change and U.S. Law, 3d ed. (Michael B. Gerrard, Jody Freeman, and Michael Burger, eds) (2022, Forthcoming), Univ. of San Francisco Law Research Paper , Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4168262

Alice Kaswan (Contact Author)

University of San Francisco - School of Law ( email )

2130 Fulton Street
San Francisco, CA 94117
United States
(415) 422-5053 (Phone)

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