|
Introduction to the Website
This website is the creation of Madison Powers, Francis J. McNamara Jr Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, Georgetown University. The specific focus is the global production, distribution, and use of vital, but dwindling resources of food, energy, and water - problems made worse by the structure and operation of the global political economy and the emerging threats of climate disruption and other environmental crises. |
Tips for Navigation
This website was first published on January 25, 2013. It currently contains more than 500 unique entries found on 35 pages and over 1500 external links. The site has be read as a book length work (currently around 200,000 words), but each entry or topic page is designed to be read on its own.
|
Descriptions of Books & Recent Articles (with some links)
Structural Injustice: Power, Advantage, and Human Rights, co-authored with Ruth Faden, expands upon and revises some key themes of our earlier book, Social Justice (see below). Oxford University Press, 2019. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/structural-injustice-9780190053987
This book develops a theory of structural injustice that is distinctive in several respects. Our theory forges important links between human rights norms and fairness norms, both of which are underpinned by our conception of well-being. This conception provides the foundation for human rights, explains the depth of unfairness of systematic patterns of disadvantage, and locates the fundamental unfairness of power relations in forms of control some groups have over the well-being of other groups. In our theory, structurally unfair patterns of power and advantage and human rights violations are routinely intertwined. In this, we differ from theories that presuppose that structural injustices generally emerge from largely benign social processes. We believe the more typical pattern involves identifiable agents of injustice whose wrongful conduct is manifested in creating or sustaining mutually reinforcing forms of injustice.
Our theory is not specific to the domestic or global context. Rather, it applies to different kinds of nation-states and to interactions across national boundaries. However, we reject the claim that for a theory of structural injustice to be so broadly applicable it must be universally endorsable by multiple ethical frameworks. Instead, we rely on examples that illustrate the perspectives of participants in social movements around the world. Prominent among those examples are extended discussions of environmental sacrifice zones and the environmental reality of the global trend toward the urbanization of poverty.
We also differ from approaches that make enhanced democratic decision-making or the global extension of republican institutions the centerpiece of their proposed remedies. By contrast, we focus on justified forms of resistance and options available in the near-term in circumstances in which institutions are unwilling or unable to address pressing issues of injustice. We hope that the book will be useful not only to academic philosophers but to individuals involved with social justice movements, NGO's, investigative journalists, and philanthropic institutions.
Reviews:
"This is an urgently needed book. Madison Powers and Ruth Faden have constructed a powerfully reasoned, deeply learned, and richly perceptive theory that places the problem of structural injustice at the heart of political philosophy... The authors make conceptual breakthroughs that open new perspectives on old debates, and they write with authority and clarity on every issue they address. Their discussion is filled with wisdom and discernment, informed by a deep understanding of philosophical and social science literatures. I hope this book influences scholars, activists, policymakers, and the public at large; it should be widely studied and discussed, its arguments and insights put to productive use." -- Jamie Mayerfeld, Ethics and International Affairs
"a profound and fascinating essay on the structural injustices shaking our times... genuinely a philosophical essay. Yet one of its most significant merits is that it is written for various audiences, including researchers in bioethics and public health ethics, political philosophers, journalists, and activists." -- Ryoa Chung, Hastings Center Report
This book develops a theory of structural injustice that is distinctive in several respects. Our theory forges important links between human rights norms and fairness norms, both of which are underpinned by our conception of well-being. This conception provides the foundation for human rights, explains the depth of unfairness of systematic patterns of disadvantage, and locates the fundamental unfairness of power relations in forms of control some groups have over the well-being of other groups. In our theory, structurally unfair patterns of power and advantage and human rights violations are routinely intertwined. In this, we differ from theories that presuppose that structural injustices generally emerge from largely benign social processes. We believe the more typical pattern involves identifiable agents of injustice whose wrongful conduct is manifested in creating or sustaining mutually reinforcing forms of injustice.
Our theory is not specific to the domestic or global context. Rather, it applies to different kinds of nation-states and to interactions across national boundaries. However, we reject the claim that for a theory of structural injustice to be so broadly applicable it must be universally endorsable by multiple ethical frameworks. Instead, we rely on examples that illustrate the perspectives of participants in social movements around the world. Prominent among those examples are extended discussions of environmental sacrifice zones and the environmental reality of the global trend toward the urbanization of poverty.
We also differ from approaches that make enhanced democratic decision-making or the global extension of republican institutions the centerpiece of their proposed remedies. By contrast, we focus on justified forms of resistance and options available in the near-term in circumstances in which institutions are unwilling or unable to address pressing issues of injustice. We hope that the book will be useful not only to academic philosophers but to individuals involved with social justice movements, NGO's, investigative journalists, and philanthropic institutions.
Reviews:
"This is an urgently needed book. Madison Powers and Ruth Faden have constructed a powerfully reasoned, deeply learned, and richly perceptive theory that places the problem of structural injustice at the heart of political philosophy... The authors make conceptual breakthroughs that open new perspectives on old debates, and they write with authority and clarity on every issue they address. Their discussion is filled with wisdom and discernment, informed by a deep understanding of philosophical and social science literatures. I hope this book influences scholars, activists, policymakers, and the public at large; it should be widely studied and discussed, its arguments and insights put to productive use." -- Jamie Mayerfeld, Ethics and International Affairs
"a profound and fascinating essay on the structural injustices shaking our times... genuinely a philosophical essay. Yet one of its most significant merits is that it is written for various audiences, including researchers in bioethics and public health ethics, political philosophers, journalists, and activists." -- Ryoa Chung, Hastings Center Report
Chapter titles: 1 Our Ecological Predicament 2 Sustainability & Political Economy 3 Market Fundamentalism 4 Human Rights & Ecological Self-defense 5 Market Power & Legal Advantage 6 Land Change & its Impact 7 Water & Social Organization 8 Energy Transition Pathways 9 Control over the Future |
A Livable Planet: Human Rights in the Global Economy (Oxford University Press, February 2024).
This book argues for a human rights approach as an important first step in addressing our ecological predicament, consisting of a cluster of concurrent, mutually reinforcing crises. In addition to climate change, it includes land-system change, loss of biodiversity and biosphere integrity, alteration of biogeochemical cycles, and decreased freshwater availability. These crises are causally intertwined and resistant to resolution in isolation. Their harmful effects result from or are exacerbated by the structure of the global political economy, especially institutions that most influence market practices pertaining to the acquisition, control, and use of land, energy, and water resources. These institutions shape the economic decisions that have transformed every region of the globe and altered the planetary conditions that support life on Earth. A sustainable planet therefore requires pervasive changes in humanity’s relation to the rest of nature, not just rapid decarbonization. Changing our relation to the rest of nature requires changes in the institutional basis of our economic relationships, not merely adoption of a suite of greener technologies. Changes in institutions also require transformation in the political and economic ideals that underpin them. Specifically, the balance of power between states and markets should be reversed, beginning with the implementation of robust institutional support for socioeconomic human rights that effectively counteract economically predatory, ecologically destructive market practices. These practices enable the powerful to hoard economic opportunities, crowd out sustainable alternatives, extract resources from vulnerable communities, shift environmental and economic burdens, dodge political and market accountability, and hijack public institutions for private purposes. A human rights approach is not a comprehensive normative solution to our predicament, and its implementation faces significant practical obstacles. However, without the structural changes in the global political economy that it would set in motion, prospects for widespread preservation of the conditions for a livable planet are greatly diminished. |
Social Justice: The Moral Foundations of Public Health and Health Policy, co-authored with Ruth Faden, (Oxford University Press, 2006; rev. ed., 2008). (Click here for link).
This book poses a single question: Which inequalities, if any, are urgent matters of justice? Our answer is in two parts. The first part of our answer takes the form of a sufficientarian theory of justice, where the claim is that individuals have stringent claims for enough of six core (or essential) elements of well-being characteristic of a decent human life. However, that answer is incomplete, not only because of the inherent difficulties in defining a decent human life, but in addition, because how much is enough also depends on how much others have and their ability to convert those goods into relative advantage that is systematically sustained in ways that work to the long-term disadvantage of the less well-off. The second part of our answer, then, is that inequalities that cascade and compound over time, leading to greater deprivation and entrenched disadvantage, thereby undermining the aims of sufficiency are deeply unjust. The primary focus here is health policy, but we argue that the theory applies equally well to other policy arenas, and moreover, that because of the interactive effects across policy domains, we must abandon the idea of separate spheres of justice, each concerned about a specific good.
Reviews:
"Social Justice is one of the most important books to come out in bioethics, and health policy ethics, in the last decade. It challenges us to think more broadly about what bioethics brings to the table when we evaluate health policies and public health practices. Its combination of rigor and clarity is uncommon."--Peter A. Ubel, M.D., Director, Center for Behavioral and Decision Sciences in Medicine, Ann Arbor
"In this excellent book, Madison Powers and Ruth Faden set out to define the essential dimensions of well-being that should guide a theory of justice, and then to show how such a theory can be applied to important issues in public health and health policy."--Hastings Center Report
"Most moral theorists think about what principles of justice would govern an ideal world. Such ideal theories do not necessarily guide us well in our non-ideal world. Powers and Faden make a powerful case for moving from ideal to non-ideal theory, and ably show how to do it in the field of justice in health care. This book makes an important advance in making moral theory more empirically responsible."--Elizabeth Anderson, John Rawls Collegiate Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
This book poses a single question: Which inequalities, if any, are urgent matters of justice? Our answer is in two parts. The first part of our answer takes the form of a sufficientarian theory of justice, where the claim is that individuals have stringent claims for enough of six core (or essential) elements of well-being characteristic of a decent human life. However, that answer is incomplete, not only because of the inherent difficulties in defining a decent human life, but in addition, because how much is enough also depends on how much others have and their ability to convert those goods into relative advantage that is systematically sustained in ways that work to the long-term disadvantage of the less well-off. The second part of our answer, then, is that inequalities that cascade and compound over time, leading to greater deprivation and entrenched disadvantage, thereby undermining the aims of sufficiency are deeply unjust. The primary focus here is health policy, but we argue that the theory applies equally well to other policy arenas, and moreover, that because of the interactive effects across policy domains, we must abandon the idea of separate spheres of justice, each concerned about a specific good.
Reviews:
"Social Justice is one of the most important books to come out in bioethics, and health policy ethics, in the last decade. It challenges us to think more broadly about what bioethics brings to the table when we evaluate health policies and public health practices. Its combination of rigor and clarity is uncommon."--Peter A. Ubel, M.D., Director, Center for Behavioral and Decision Sciences in Medicine, Ann Arbor
"In this excellent book, Madison Powers and Ruth Faden set out to define the essential dimensions of well-being that should guide a theory of justice, and then to show how such a theory can be applied to important issues in public health and health policy."--Hastings Center Report
"Most moral theorists think about what principles of justice would govern an ideal world. Such ideal theories do not necessarily guide us well in our non-ideal world. Powers and Faden make a powerful case for moving from ideal to non-ideal theory, and ably show how to do it in the field of justice in health care. This book makes an important advance in making moral theory more empirically responsible."--Elizabeth Anderson, John Rawls Collegiate Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Other recent publications of potential interest to visitors to this site:
16. "Food, Justice, and the Global Political Economy," Ethics and International Affairs 35 (Spring, 2021).
Abstract: This article explores intertwined issues of human rights and structural justice arising from the way that the global political economy influences production, investment, and distribution decisions pertaining to agricultural commodities and resources. The first section explains what the global political economy is, why it is an appropriate context for discussion of issues of justice, and reasons for a focus on food production and agricultural markets from a global perspective. The second section examines human rights implicated by the design of the global food system, the role of nation-states in securing these rights, and the linkage between human rights protection and the practical requirements for combating structural injustice within and across nations. The final four sections illustrate issues of justice generated by the institutional rules governing international trade, the dynamics of market concentration, the organization of global supply chains, and patterns of foreign direct investment in farmland and related resources.
15. “Making a Difference: Individual Responsibility in the Anthropocene,” in Applying Nonideal Theory to Bioethics: Living and Dying in a Nonideal World, eds. Laura Guidry-Grimes and Elizabeth Victor (New York: Springer Publishing, forthcoming 2021).
Abstract: Modern life is full of examples of environmentally-mediated “group harms” - what Derek Parfit describes as harms produced by “what we all do together.” Typically, the harms are unintended and arise from the uncoordinated actions of many individuals. Their actions ordinarily are not inherently wrong, no one’s action causes harm to an identifiable individual, and prevention of the expected harm is unlikely unless all, or nearly everyone, reduces or ceases to engage in activities that collectively and cumulatively result in harm. Unless the individual’s action is likely to make a difference to the outcome, it is often argued that it is not clear what, if anything, makes it wrong or a breach of personal moral responsibility. Activities that result in climate change and agricultural practices commonly employed within the global system of food production are prominent examples. There are several well-known strategies for dealing with such cases, but often they rest on idealized assumptions regarding the impact that one individual can have, provide answers suitable only in counterfactual circumstances, or rely on the kinds of principles of justice that make it difficult to identify clearly and address directly many important moral problems. The task of this chapter is to examine these strategies and propose alternative freestanding practical principles that can guide our efforts to address the world as we find and explain the sense of wrongness individuals often experience.
14. “Ethical Challenges Posed by Climate Change: An Overview,” in Moral Theory and Climate Change: Ethical Perspectives on a Warming Planet. Dale E. Miller and Ben Eggleston, editors. (London: Taylor & Francis/Routledge, 2020), pp. 35-57. [pdf]
Abstract: This chapter provides an overview of key moral issues posed by climate change. It first considers overarching issues: the appropriate target for harm prevention; the distinction between duties of mitigation and duties of adaptation; instances in which efforts to fulfill these duties will be self-defeating or at work cross-purposes; and the distribution of the economic burdens of fulfilling those duties. The remainder of the chapter reviews challenges to the capacity of traditional moral theories to come to grips with questions of moral responsibility. Some challenges are generic; they are applicable to both individual and institutional agents under any moral theory, while others are specific to agent-types or particular theories. The chapter then surveys differences in the way wrongness is conceptualized, including theories that view wrongness as necessarily linked to harming someone, wronging someone without harming, and doing wrong without wronging anyone. The chapter concludes by showing how the challenge of developing a plausible theory of climate change ethics is magnified by the fact that the adverse consequences are a function of what numerous individuals and institutions do or fail to do, having both international and intergenerational impact.
13. “Water, Justice, and Public Health,” Oxford Handbook of Public Health Ethics. Jeffrey Kahn, Nancy Kass, and Anna Mastroianni, editors, (Oxford University Press, 2018). [pdf].
Abstract: This chapter utilizes theories of social justice and human rights to examine issues of access to clean water and sanitation services, along with competing uses that include agricultural purposes essential for human health. Prospects for a just system of resource access are complicated by several factors. While water is an essential public health resource, competing uses and social values must be balanced. Because groundwater and surface water availability depends on how each is used, integrated water management approaches are necessary, and their comprehensive authority results in decisions that touch on every aspect of social life. Moreover, physical water scarcity, once limited to arid and desert regions, now affects the majority of the world’s population, especially the global poor and megacities. Finally, as water assumes greater importance as a global commodity, existing models of property rights are open to fresh moral scrutiny, ideals of democratic control over vital resources are challenged, and effective national sovereignty is tested by the complex realities of transboundary waters.
12. “Food, Fairness, and Global Markets,” Oxford Handbook of Food Ethics. Anne Barnhill, Tyler Doggett, and Mark B. Budolfson, editors, (Oxford University Press, 2018). [pdf]
Abstract: This chapter examines issues of fairness in the organization of global agricultural markets. The discussion begins with a survey of the challenges in feeding the world and the debates between “market fundamentalists” who defend strongly pro-market, pro-globalization approaches and critics who deny that such challenges can be addressed fairly through markets alone or through particular forms of market organization. Conceptions of fairness that market fundamentalists and critics alike agree upon, as well as additional norms of fairness defended by critics, are applied to four prominent aspects of global market organization in the agricultural sector. They include: trade subsidies and protectionist restrictions, economic development strategies that often leave lesser developed nations caught in a commodity trap, supply-chain management thoughcontract agriculture, and patterns of large-scale farmland acquisition known as the global and grab.
11. “Sustainability and Resilience,” Encyclopedia of the Anthropocene, vol.4, edited by Dominick DellaSala and Michael Goldstein, 29-37. Oxford: Elsevier, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-409548-9.10491-9. [pdf]
Abstract: This article explores some of the main philosophical issues posed by the dominant ways in which current environmental discussions are structured. More specifically, the article examines the conceptual foundations and normative implications of notions of sustainability and resilience and traces the trajectory of their development against the backdrop of traditional ideals of natural conservation and the preservation of biodiversity. The first section shows how notions of sustainability and resilience differ in their justification from ones proposed by moral theories and cultural traditions that view the intrinsic value of nature as an important rationale for moral responsibilities for the condition of the environment. The dominant global discourse among scientists and economists in particular emphasizes the unprecedented anthropogenic causes of global resource depletion and the severity of environmental degradation that limit future human activities, in tandem with an anthropocentric focus on their adverse consequences for human well-being. The second section examines challenges to some traditional rationales for natural conservation and preservation of species. Arguments for halting species loss are driven increasingly by the emerging scientific understanding of the functional roles of key species within ecological systems, the global scale of the threat that loss of specific species might have, and the sense of urgency of those threats based on anthropocentric concerns. The shift in the character of these arguments mirrors the dominant patterns of argument in discussions about sustainability and resilience, where matters of systemic impact, global scale, and effect on human ends take center stage.The third section examines conceptions of sustainability as they have evolved from the 1987 Brundtland Report, and most recently, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). From the outset, the global conversation regarding sustainable economic development has been characterized by ambiguity in the understanding of what should be sustained and why, a lack of consensus on how priorities in the potential conflict between the goals of economic development and environmental protection should be set, and divergent moral responses to problems of intergenerational and international justice. The fourth section explains the rationale for a partial shift away from the focus on resource depletion to the more fundamental notion of decreased resilience of Earth systems. The central topic involves the threats to the sustainable provision of environmental services, and the conversations are often framed in terms of conceptions of planetary boundaries that define a safe operating space within which the planet remains in a Holocene-like state that can support life on Earth. The fifth section explores some of the sharpest normative fissures within the environmentalist community (broadly construed). Of particular interest are the diverse critics of modernity itself, globalization, dominant models of economic development, or contemporary modes of capitalist production, as well as debates prompted by a group of thinkers who describe themselves as ecomodernists.
10. "Vulnerable Populations in the Context of Public Health Emergency Preparedness, Planning, and Response." In Emergency Ethics: Public Health Preparedness and Response, edited by Bruce Jennings, John D. Arras, Drue H. Barrett, and Barbara A. Ellis, pp. 135-154. New York, Oxford University Press, 2016. [pdf]
Abstract: Surveys of disaster-related planning and guidance documents around the world reveal that public health authorities differ considerably in those groups they identify as especially vulnerable, as well as in the specificity of their plans to address the special needs of the vulnerable. Despite this, the special focus of justice on vulnerable populations has risen to the top of the agenda in many disaster preparedness planning circles This chapter examines four major issues. The first section focuses on the relevant notions of vulnerability and the related conceptions of societal duties toward vulnerable populations. Following that is a discussion of what those duties might involve in the way of practical decision and implementation, the relative stringency or priority of duties toward vulnerable populations, and how one might decide what to do when moral duties conflict. The third issue concerns the obligations to gather information, plan for, prevent, or mitigate harm from a disaster, and whether and to what extent these obligations differ in their priority and moral importance. Finally, we consider whether there are significant moral differences associated with different triggering events, such as natural disasters, terrorism, or pandemics.
9. “Moral Responsibility for Climate Change.” Routledge Companion to Bioethics, John Arras, Elizabeth Fenton, and Rebecca Kukla, editors, pp. 133-46. New York: Routledge, 2015. [pdf]
Abstract: This chapter surveys six sets of issues in the assignment of moral responsibility for addressing the threats posed by climate change. The first set of issues arises from the moral framework of the original UN Framework Convention, which assigns "common but differentiated responsibilities" among nation-states. The second, overarching issue is the complex nature of the collective moral problem that challenges the applicability of our most familiar ideas about the assignment of moral responsibility for preventing and compensating for harm. Third, the difficulties in applying the Polluter Pays Principle to individual causal contributors to climate change are examined. Fourth, multiple objections to proposals to hold nation-states responsible for the emissions of its citizens are evaluated. Fifth, two proposals for extending human rights theory to the context of harms produced by climate change are explored. Sixth, issues of moral responsibility are assessed from the point of view of the world's least powerful, most vulnerable people, who are likely to be hurt first and worst, but because of their structurally disadvantaged position in the global order are unable to exercise effective control over their own destinies.
8. “Health Care as a Human Right: The Problem of Indeterminate Content.” Jurisprudence 6 no. 1 (2015): 138-43. [pdf]
7. Review: John Broome, Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming World, W.W. Norton and Co., 2012. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, June 2014, available online.
6. “Social Justice.” Encyclopedia of Bioethics, 4th edition, Bruce Jennings et al, editors, pp. 2966-2973. (2014). [pdf]
5. Ruth Faden and Madison Powers, "Biotechnology, Justice and Health," Journal of Practical Ethics, (2013). 1 (1): 49-61. [pdf]
4. Madison Powers and Ruth Faden, "Social Practices, Public Health, and the Twin Aims of Justice: Responses to Comments,” in a Symposium on Social Justice: The Moral Foundations of Public Health and Health Policy,” Public Health Ethics 2013 6 (1): 45-49. [pdf]
3. Madison Powers, Ruth Faden, and Yashar Saghai, “Liberty, Mill, and the Framework of Public Health Ethics.” Public Health Ethics (2012). 5: 6-15. [pdf]
Abstract: In this article, we address the relevance of J.S. Mill’s political philosophy for a framework of public health ethics. In contrast to some readings of Mill, we reject the view that in the formulation of public policies liberties of all kinds enjoy an equal presumption in their favor. We argue that Mill also rejects this view and discuss the distinction that Mill makes between three kinds of liberty interests: interests that are immune from state interference; interests that enjoy a presumption in favor of liberty; and interests that enjoy no such presumption. We argue that what is of focal importance for Mill in protecting liberty is captured by the essential role that the value of self-determination plays in human well-being. Finally, we make the case for the plausibility of a more complex and nuanced Millian framework for public health ethics that would modify how the balancing of some liberty and public health interests should proceed by taking the thumb off the liberty end of the scale. Mill’s arguments and the legacy of liberalism support certain forms of state interference with marketplace liberties for the sake of public health objectives without any presumption in favor of liberty.
2. Madison Powers and Ruth Faden, “Health Capabilities, Outcomes, and the Political Ends of Justice.” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities (2011) 12: 565-570. [pdf]
1. Ruth Faden and Madison Powers, “A Social Justice Framework for Health and Science Policy.” Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics (2011) 20: 584-604. [pdf]
16. "Food, Justice, and the Global Political Economy," Ethics and International Affairs 35 (Spring, 2021).
Abstract: This article explores intertwined issues of human rights and structural justice arising from the way that the global political economy influences production, investment, and distribution decisions pertaining to agricultural commodities and resources. The first section explains what the global political economy is, why it is an appropriate context for discussion of issues of justice, and reasons for a focus on food production and agricultural markets from a global perspective. The second section examines human rights implicated by the design of the global food system, the role of nation-states in securing these rights, and the linkage between human rights protection and the practical requirements for combating structural injustice within and across nations. The final four sections illustrate issues of justice generated by the institutional rules governing international trade, the dynamics of market concentration, the organization of global supply chains, and patterns of foreign direct investment in farmland and related resources.
15. “Making a Difference: Individual Responsibility in the Anthropocene,” in Applying Nonideal Theory to Bioethics: Living and Dying in a Nonideal World, eds. Laura Guidry-Grimes and Elizabeth Victor (New York: Springer Publishing, forthcoming 2021).
Abstract: Modern life is full of examples of environmentally-mediated “group harms” - what Derek Parfit describes as harms produced by “what we all do together.” Typically, the harms are unintended and arise from the uncoordinated actions of many individuals. Their actions ordinarily are not inherently wrong, no one’s action causes harm to an identifiable individual, and prevention of the expected harm is unlikely unless all, or nearly everyone, reduces or ceases to engage in activities that collectively and cumulatively result in harm. Unless the individual’s action is likely to make a difference to the outcome, it is often argued that it is not clear what, if anything, makes it wrong or a breach of personal moral responsibility. Activities that result in climate change and agricultural practices commonly employed within the global system of food production are prominent examples. There are several well-known strategies for dealing with such cases, but often they rest on idealized assumptions regarding the impact that one individual can have, provide answers suitable only in counterfactual circumstances, or rely on the kinds of principles of justice that make it difficult to identify clearly and address directly many important moral problems. The task of this chapter is to examine these strategies and propose alternative freestanding practical principles that can guide our efforts to address the world as we find and explain the sense of wrongness individuals often experience.
14. “Ethical Challenges Posed by Climate Change: An Overview,” in Moral Theory and Climate Change: Ethical Perspectives on a Warming Planet. Dale E. Miller and Ben Eggleston, editors. (London: Taylor & Francis/Routledge, 2020), pp. 35-57. [pdf]
Abstract: This chapter provides an overview of key moral issues posed by climate change. It first considers overarching issues: the appropriate target for harm prevention; the distinction between duties of mitigation and duties of adaptation; instances in which efforts to fulfill these duties will be self-defeating or at work cross-purposes; and the distribution of the economic burdens of fulfilling those duties. The remainder of the chapter reviews challenges to the capacity of traditional moral theories to come to grips with questions of moral responsibility. Some challenges are generic; they are applicable to both individual and institutional agents under any moral theory, while others are specific to agent-types or particular theories. The chapter then surveys differences in the way wrongness is conceptualized, including theories that view wrongness as necessarily linked to harming someone, wronging someone without harming, and doing wrong without wronging anyone. The chapter concludes by showing how the challenge of developing a plausible theory of climate change ethics is magnified by the fact that the adverse consequences are a function of what numerous individuals and institutions do or fail to do, having both international and intergenerational impact.
13. “Water, Justice, and Public Health,” Oxford Handbook of Public Health Ethics. Jeffrey Kahn, Nancy Kass, and Anna Mastroianni, editors, (Oxford University Press, 2018). [pdf].
Abstract: This chapter utilizes theories of social justice and human rights to examine issues of access to clean water and sanitation services, along with competing uses that include agricultural purposes essential for human health. Prospects for a just system of resource access are complicated by several factors. While water is an essential public health resource, competing uses and social values must be balanced. Because groundwater and surface water availability depends on how each is used, integrated water management approaches are necessary, and their comprehensive authority results in decisions that touch on every aspect of social life. Moreover, physical water scarcity, once limited to arid and desert regions, now affects the majority of the world’s population, especially the global poor and megacities. Finally, as water assumes greater importance as a global commodity, existing models of property rights are open to fresh moral scrutiny, ideals of democratic control over vital resources are challenged, and effective national sovereignty is tested by the complex realities of transboundary waters.
12. “Food, Fairness, and Global Markets,” Oxford Handbook of Food Ethics. Anne Barnhill, Tyler Doggett, and Mark B. Budolfson, editors, (Oxford University Press, 2018). [pdf]
Abstract: This chapter examines issues of fairness in the organization of global agricultural markets. The discussion begins with a survey of the challenges in feeding the world and the debates between “market fundamentalists” who defend strongly pro-market, pro-globalization approaches and critics who deny that such challenges can be addressed fairly through markets alone or through particular forms of market organization. Conceptions of fairness that market fundamentalists and critics alike agree upon, as well as additional norms of fairness defended by critics, are applied to four prominent aspects of global market organization in the agricultural sector. They include: trade subsidies and protectionist restrictions, economic development strategies that often leave lesser developed nations caught in a commodity trap, supply-chain management thoughcontract agriculture, and patterns of large-scale farmland acquisition known as the global and grab.
11. “Sustainability and Resilience,” Encyclopedia of the Anthropocene, vol.4, edited by Dominick DellaSala and Michael Goldstein, 29-37. Oxford: Elsevier, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-409548-9.10491-9. [pdf]
Abstract: This article explores some of the main philosophical issues posed by the dominant ways in which current environmental discussions are structured. More specifically, the article examines the conceptual foundations and normative implications of notions of sustainability and resilience and traces the trajectory of their development against the backdrop of traditional ideals of natural conservation and the preservation of biodiversity. The first section shows how notions of sustainability and resilience differ in their justification from ones proposed by moral theories and cultural traditions that view the intrinsic value of nature as an important rationale for moral responsibilities for the condition of the environment. The dominant global discourse among scientists and economists in particular emphasizes the unprecedented anthropogenic causes of global resource depletion and the severity of environmental degradation that limit future human activities, in tandem with an anthropocentric focus on their adverse consequences for human well-being. The second section examines challenges to some traditional rationales for natural conservation and preservation of species. Arguments for halting species loss are driven increasingly by the emerging scientific understanding of the functional roles of key species within ecological systems, the global scale of the threat that loss of specific species might have, and the sense of urgency of those threats based on anthropocentric concerns. The shift in the character of these arguments mirrors the dominant patterns of argument in discussions about sustainability and resilience, where matters of systemic impact, global scale, and effect on human ends take center stage.The third section examines conceptions of sustainability as they have evolved from the 1987 Brundtland Report, and most recently, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). From the outset, the global conversation regarding sustainable economic development has been characterized by ambiguity in the understanding of what should be sustained and why, a lack of consensus on how priorities in the potential conflict between the goals of economic development and environmental protection should be set, and divergent moral responses to problems of intergenerational and international justice. The fourth section explains the rationale for a partial shift away from the focus on resource depletion to the more fundamental notion of decreased resilience of Earth systems. The central topic involves the threats to the sustainable provision of environmental services, and the conversations are often framed in terms of conceptions of planetary boundaries that define a safe operating space within which the planet remains in a Holocene-like state that can support life on Earth. The fifth section explores some of the sharpest normative fissures within the environmentalist community (broadly construed). Of particular interest are the diverse critics of modernity itself, globalization, dominant models of economic development, or contemporary modes of capitalist production, as well as debates prompted by a group of thinkers who describe themselves as ecomodernists.
10. "Vulnerable Populations in the Context of Public Health Emergency Preparedness, Planning, and Response." In Emergency Ethics: Public Health Preparedness and Response, edited by Bruce Jennings, John D. Arras, Drue H. Barrett, and Barbara A. Ellis, pp. 135-154. New York, Oxford University Press, 2016. [pdf]
Abstract: Surveys of disaster-related planning and guidance documents around the world reveal that public health authorities differ considerably in those groups they identify as especially vulnerable, as well as in the specificity of their plans to address the special needs of the vulnerable. Despite this, the special focus of justice on vulnerable populations has risen to the top of the agenda in many disaster preparedness planning circles This chapter examines four major issues. The first section focuses on the relevant notions of vulnerability and the related conceptions of societal duties toward vulnerable populations. Following that is a discussion of what those duties might involve in the way of practical decision and implementation, the relative stringency or priority of duties toward vulnerable populations, and how one might decide what to do when moral duties conflict. The third issue concerns the obligations to gather information, plan for, prevent, or mitigate harm from a disaster, and whether and to what extent these obligations differ in their priority and moral importance. Finally, we consider whether there are significant moral differences associated with different triggering events, such as natural disasters, terrorism, or pandemics.
9. “Moral Responsibility for Climate Change.” Routledge Companion to Bioethics, John Arras, Elizabeth Fenton, and Rebecca Kukla, editors, pp. 133-46. New York: Routledge, 2015. [pdf]
Abstract: This chapter surveys six sets of issues in the assignment of moral responsibility for addressing the threats posed by climate change. The first set of issues arises from the moral framework of the original UN Framework Convention, which assigns "common but differentiated responsibilities" among nation-states. The second, overarching issue is the complex nature of the collective moral problem that challenges the applicability of our most familiar ideas about the assignment of moral responsibility for preventing and compensating for harm. Third, the difficulties in applying the Polluter Pays Principle to individual causal contributors to climate change are examined. Fourth, multiple objections to proposals to hold nation-states responsible for the emissions of its citizens are evaluated. Fifth, two proposals for extending human rights theory to the context of harms produced by climate change are explored. Sixth, issues of moral responsibility are assessed from the point of view of the world's least powerful, most vulnerable people, who are likely to be hurt first and worst, but because of their structurally disadvantaged position in the global order are unable to exercise effective control over their own destinies.
8. “Health Care as a Human Right: The Problem of Indeterminate Content.” Jurisprudence 6 no. 1 (2015): 138-43. [pdf]
7. Review: John Broome, Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming World, W.W. Norton and Co., 2012. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, June 2014, available online.
6. “Social Justice.” Encyclopedia of Bioethics, 4th edition, Bruce Jennings et al, editors, pp. 2966-2973. (2014). [pdf]
5. Ruth Faden and Madison Powers, "Biotechnology, Justice and Health," Journal of Practical Ethics, (2013). 1 (1): 49-61. [pdf]
4. Madison Powers and Ruth Faden, "Social Practices, Public Health, and the Twin Aims of Justice: Responses to Comments,” in a Symposium on Social Justice: The Moral Foundations of Public Health and Health Policy,” Public Health Ethics 2013 6 (1): 45-49. [pdf]
3. Madison Powers, Ruth Faden, and Yashar Saghai, “Liberty, Mill, and the Framework of Public Health Ethics.” Public Health Ethics (2012). 5: 6-15. [pdf]
Abstract: In this article, we address the relevance of J.S. Mill’s political philosophy for a framework of public health ethics. In contrast to some readings of Mill, we reject the view that in the formulation of public policies liberties of all kinds enjoy an equal presumption in their favor. We argue that Mill also rejects this view and discuss the distinction that Mill makes between three kinds of liberty interests: interests that are immune from state interference; interests that enjoy a presumption in favor of liberty; and interests that enjoy no such presumption. We argue that what is of focal importance for Mill in protecting liberty is captured by the essential role that the value of self-determination plays in human well-being. Finally, we make the case for the plausibility of a more complex and nuanced Millian framework for public health ethics that would modify how the balancing of some liberty and public health interests should proceed by taking the thumb off the liberty end of the scale. Mill’s arguments and the legacy of liberalism support certain forms of state interference with marketplace liberties for the sake of public health objectives without any presumption in favor of liberty.
2. Madison Powers and Ruth Faden, “Health Capabilities, Outcomes, and the Political Ends of Justice.” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities (2011) 12: 565-570. [pdf]
1. Ruth Faden and Madison Powers, “A Social Justice Framework for Health and Science Policy.” Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics (2011) 20: 584-604. [pdf]
The Big Picture: Environmental Sustainability and Economic Justice
To understand the origins of current environmental crises - such as climate disruption, water scarcity, soil depletion, biodiversity loss, deforestation, and chemical transformation of all aspects of the biosphere - it is necessary to understand how markets work. The basis of market decisions and the way they are shaped by, and in turn, shape state and other institutional policies reveal important facets of the origins of these six crises and accordingly, they constrain the feasible and fair pathways out.
One crucial fact about the globalized economy is that it involves an unprecedented level of environmental degradation, from mining and extraction, to the production stages, all the way to disposal of discarded products and hazardous wastes. From a perspective of environmental justice, increasingly, these sites of extraction, production, and disposal are geographically distinct from the primary sites of consumption. In practice, that means that some people bear the burden of the modern way of life available to the global affluent who reap many benefits and offload many of the burdens. This is true not only globally but also within countries - a phenomenon known as sacrifice zones, named for the idea that we simply write off some places and the people who live there for the sake of overall material progress of society and the maximization of private profit for those who do not bear the full environmental and social costs of their economic activities. However, as time passes, it becomes harder to isolate and contain environmental harms within sacrifice zones, and the problems are becoming everyone’s problems, though still not as severe for the global affluent as for the poor and powerless. More fundamentally, the differential patterns of harm reflect deeper injustices: the existence of differential patterns of economic control over scarce resources, the global division of labor that accompanies resource decisions, and indeed, a whole way of life for people caught in the grip of hierarchically structured constellations of economic power.
A familiar suggestion in climate change discussions – and in environmental circles more generally - is that we cannot continue with business as usual. In the narrowest sense, that means shifting away from wholesale reliance upon fossil fuels and changing individual consumer behavior propelling dangerous climate change. The current trajectory is unsustainable in a dual sense. The earth’s absorptive capacity can be seen as a finite and dwindling resource, but more fundamentally, the atmosphere is one of several key planetary systems that must operate within safe boundaries if the kind of life on Earth made possible for the last 11,000 years of the Holocene is to continue. The same constraining logic applies to dwindling resources such as water, soil, forests, and biodiversity, and to the proliferation of potentially toxic chemicals and fundamental alteration of biogeochemical cycles. In addition to resource constraints, understood as limits on what is available for consumption, there are planetary boundaries of safe operation corresponding to each resource. But sustainability, even in this dual sense is not our only goal. To the extent that we also seek environmental justice – e.g., a fair distribution of benefits and burdens, opportunities and risks, and crucially, the emancipation from unjust, asymmetric forms of control - we need to assess the basis of production and the factors driving the market decisions that underlie the differences in the way of life available to the global affluent and global poor. For these reasons, this website, and my academic work on environmental justice generally, devotes significant attention to the operation of the global economy, the major institutional influences, and ideological assumptions that inform policies of global development and market practices.
To understand how markets work and how key production decisions are made within markets it’s necessary to understand first how market relations are structured by nation-states. States create laws that establish property rights, determine the priority of creditor claims, shield or subject asset owners to more or less taxation, regulation, and legal liability to third parties. States also establish international legal frameworks within which home-based corporations do business globally. For example, they enter into bilateral investment treaties (perhaps as many as 2500-3000 in force now) with other states, establishing a wide range of rights and dispute resolution procedures for companies doing business in other countries. They recognize and enforce the law of the national jurisdictions of foreign investors as applicable within their own territorial boundaries when contracts specify which country’s law should apply. States pave the way for foreign investment, trade, and labor with and within other countries, not only by use of these international and bilateral treaties, but by the use of diplomatic pressure, threat of trade sanction, promises of additional investment, aid, contribution to their national security, or technology transfer. They condition the acceptance of exports from other states that accept the stronger state's terms of commercial interaction, including the adoption of their intellectual property protections.
States, even relatively powerful ones, also are subject to external constraints on their options. To understand the parameters within which states operate it’s necessary to understand how state options are structured by and constrained by a combination of powerful states, regional trading blocs, patterns of concentrated capital, international financial institutions such as the World Bank, IMF, IFC, and WTO, and multinational corporations and the incentive structure within which all of these clusters of economic power operate.
To study the aggregate and distributive effects of this combination of institutions and incentives it is necessary to examine global patterns of trade, the global division of labor, and global flows of capital. For example, it is necessary to know the size, duration, country of inflow and outflow of capital; how the global movements of capital affect patterns of international trade and the creation of global value chains; how capital investment decisions affect the life cycle of products, beginning at the point of resource extraction to the locus of production to site of disposal; how the global division of labor emerges; the basis upon which labor outsourcing decisions are made; the reasons for and extent of the global trend away from formal labor regimes to more informal, contingent contractual arrangements; why there are greater returns on capital than labor, greater returns on large capital in comparison to small capital, and greater wage returns for the more skilled laborers than unskilled laborers; the legal mechanisms through which wealth accumulation and concentration is insulated from taxation and other means of redistribution; how legally insulated processes of wealth accumulation undermine the creation of the public infrastructure necessary to mitigate and adapt to climate change and other environmental crises; how state sovereignty and environmental policies are shaped by the increasingly globalized (and sometimes regionalized) network of finance capital, often in concert with international and regional financial institutions; and how capital flows in turn are affected by geopolitical rivalries, perceptions of resource scarcity, national security concerns, and ideologies of racial, ethnic, or national superiority.
Why do we need to know these things?
An examination of how the global economy works – global markets, capital accumulation, and so on - can do a lot to inform how we got here and it thus helps us understand the full nature of our current condition. But there is an important difference in two explanatory tasks we might undertake by examining the origins and defining features of contemporary capitalism.
First, were we to argue that capitalism is the sole cause of environmental crises we would have to deal with a number of powerful objections. For example, it might be argued that there are other causal contributors – some story about human nature, a less ambitious account of human shortsightedness and failure to anticipate unintended consequences, ordinary greed that predated any historical timeline for the rise of capitalism, misplaced faith in technology, hubris in our belief in ourselves as masters over nature and of our own fate, the ambitions and political demands of political leaders whose power often depends on prosperity and the continual improvement of wellbeing of their constituencies, neo-Malthusian explanations of how population growth outstrips productivity growth and exceeds resource limits. If any of these arguments are persuasive, then efforts to reduce the explanation of complex phenomena such as the set of major environmental crises are likely to fail. It’s always plausible to suppose that we might have found ourselves in more or less the same situation, but perhaps on a much slower time scale, or to worry that the end of capitalism might not be sufficient to eliminate the challenges we face. Individuals and nations might stubbornly cling to environmentally destructive ways of life that they have come to expect and value. Better, I think to view the causal role of the modern capitalist global economy as analogous to an accelerant cast upon a fire. Some sources of our environmental problems seem built in already, but there are good reasons to suppose that these problems would not take their particular shape, severity, and immediacy but for the evolution of modern capitalism, its tremendous growth in productive capacity, its resource-intensiveness, its restless quest for profits, and the way it structures key institutions and incentives on a global scale. So, we need to understand where we are and how we got here, but without oversimplifying the causal story or underestimating the range of other impediments along the pathway to a different future.
Second, we need to understand how the global economy works because, whatever the full causal story about origins might be, the way the global economy is structured is an important constraint on the pathway out of our current condition. These deep structural impediments to change highlight the limitations of relying on our individual willingness to alter consumption patterns or our faith that technology will advance far enough, fast enough to permit us to continue our way of life, characterized by our current patterns of production and distribution. In short, we have to rethink every aspect of business as usual if we are to address not only climate change but the full portfolio of environmental crises and their distributive effects.
To understand the origins of current environmental crises - such as climate disruption, water scarcity, soil depletion, biodiversity loss, deforestation, and chemical transformation of all aspects of the biosphere - it is necessary to understand how markets work. The basis of market decisions and the way they are shaped by, and in turn, shape state and other institutional policies reveal important facets of the origins of these six crises and accordingly, they constrain the feasible and fair pathways out.
One crucial fact about the globalized economy is that it involves an unprecedented level of environmental degradation, from mining and extraction, to the production stages, all the way to disposal of discarded products and hazardous wastes. From a perspective of environmental justice, increasingly, these sites of extraction, production, and disposal are geographically distinct from the primary sites of consumption. In practice, that means that some people bear the burden of the modern way of life available to the global affluent who reap many benefits and offload many of the burdens. This is true not only globally but also within countries - a phenomenon known as sacrifice zones, named for the idea that we simply write off some places and the people who live there for the sake of overall material progress of society and the maximization of private profit for those who do not bear the full environmental and social costs of their economic activities. However, as time passes, it becomes harder to isolate and contain environmental harms within sacrifice zones, and the problems are becoming everyone’s problems, though still not as severe for the global affluent as for the poor and powerless. More fundamentally, the differential patterns of harm reflect deeper injustices: the existence of differential patterns of economic control over scarce resources, the global division of labor that accompanies resource decisions, and indeed, a whole way of life for people caught in the grip of hierarchically structured constellations of economic power.
A familiar suggestion in climate change discussions – and in environmental circles more generally - is that we cannot continue with business as usual. In the narrowest sense, that means shifting away from wholesale reliance upon fossil fuels and changing individual consumer behavior propelling dangerous climate change. The current trajectory is unsustainable in a dual sense. The earth’s absorptive capacity can be seen as a finite and dwindling resource, but more fundamentally, the atmosphere is one of several key planetary systems that must operate within safe boundaries if the kind of life on Earth made possible for the last 11,000 years of the Holocene is to continue. The same constraining logic applies to dwindling resources such as water, soil, forests, and biodiversity, and to the proliferation of potentially toxic chemicals and fundamental alteration of biogeochemical cycles. In addition to resource constraints, understood as limits on what is available for consumption, there are planetary boundaries of safe operation corresponding to each resource. But sustainability, even in this dual sense is not our only goal. To the extent that we also seek environmental justice – e.g., a fair distribution of benefits and burdens, opportunities and risks, and crucially, the emancipation from unjust, asymmetric forms of control - we need to assess the basis of production and the factors driving the market decisions that underlie the differences in the way of life available to the global affluent and global poor. For these reasons, this website, and my academic work on environmental justice generally, devotes significant attention to the operation of the global economy, the major institutional influences, and ideological assumptions that inform policies of global development and market practices.
To understand how markets work and how key production decisions are made within markets it’s necessary to understand first how market relations are structured by nation-states. States create laws that establish property rights, determine the priority of creditor claims, shield or subject asset owners to more or less taxation, regulation, and legal liability to third parties. States also establish international legal frameworks within which home-based corporations do business globally. For example, they enter into bilateral investment treaties (perhaps as many as 2500-3000 in force now) with other states, establishing a wide range of rights and dispute resolution procedures for companies doing business in other countries. They recognize and enforce the law of the national jurisdictions of foreign investors as applicable within their own territorial boundaries when contracts specify which country’s law should apply. States pave the way for foreign investment, trade, and labor with and within other countries, not only by use of these international and bilateral treaties, but by the use of diplomatic pressure, threat of trade sanction, promises of additional investment, aid, contribution to their national security, or technology transfer. They condition the acceptance of exports from other states that accept the stronger state's terms of commercial interaction, including the adoption of their intellectual property protections.
States, even relatively powerful ones, also are subject to external constraints on their options. To understand the parameters within which states operate it’s necessary to understand how state options are structured by and constrained by a combination of powerful states, regional trading blocs, patterns of concentrated capital, international financial institutions such as the World Bank, IMF, IFC, and WTO, and multinational corporations and the incentive structure within which all of these clusters of economic power operate.
To study the aggregate and distributive effects of this combination of institutions and incentives it is necessary to examine global patterns of trade, the global division of labor, and global flows of capital. For example, it is necessary to know the size, duration, country of inflow and outflow of capital; how the global movements of capital affect patterns of international trade and the creation of global value chains; how capital investment decisions affect the life cycle of products, beginning at the point of resource extraction to the locus of production to site of disposal; how the global division of labor emerges; the basis upon which labor outsourcing decisions are made; the reasons for and extent of the global trend away from formal labor regimes to more informal, contingent contractual arrangements; why there are greater returns on capital than labor, greater returns on large capital in comparison to small capital, and greater wage returns for the more skilled laborers than unskilled laborers; the legal mechanisms through which wealth accumulation and concentration is insulated from taxation and other means of redistribution; how legally insulated processes of wealth accumulation undermine the creation of the public infrastructure necessary to mitigate and adapt to climate change and other environmental crises; how state sovereignty and environmental policies are shaped by the increasingly globalized (and sometimes regionalized) network of finance capital, often in concert with international and regional financial institutions; and how capital flows in turn are affected by geopolitical rivalries, perceptions of resource scarcity, national security concerns, and ideologies of racial, ethnic, or national superiority.
Why do we need to know these things?
An examination of how the global economy works – global markets, capital accumulation, and so on - can do a lot to inform how we got here and it thus helps us understand the full nature of our current condition. But there is an important difference in two explanatory tasks we might undertake by examining the origins and defining features of contemporary capitalism.
First, were we to argue that capitalism is the sole cause of environmental crises we would have to deal with a number of powerful objections. For example, it might be argued that there are other causal contributors – some story about human nature, a less ambitious account of human shortsightedness and failure to anticipate unintended consequences, ordinary greed that predated any historical timeline for the rise of capitalism, misplaced faith in technology, hubris in our belief in ourselves as masters over nature and of our own fate, the ambitions and political demands of political leaders whose power often depends on prosperity and the continual improvement of wellbeing of their constituencies, neo-Malthusian explanations of how population growth outstrips productivity growth and exceeds resource limits. If any of these arguments are persuasive, then efforts to reduce the explanation of complex phenomena such as the set of major environmental crises are likely to fail. It’s always plausible to suppose that we might have found ourselves in more or less the same situation, but perhaps on a much slower time scale, or to worry that the end of capitalism might not be sufficient to eliminate the challenges we face. Individuals and nations might stubbornly cling to environmentally destructive ways of life that they have come to expect and value. Better, I think to view the causal role of the modern capitalist global economy as analogous to an accelerant cast upon a fire. Some sources of our environmental problems seem built in already, but there are good reasons to suppose that these problems would not take their particular shape, severity, and immediacy but for the evolution of modern capitalism, its tremendous growth in productive capacity, its resource-intensiveness, its restless quest for profits, and the way it structures key institutions and incentives on a global scale. So, we need to understand where we are and how we got here, but without oversimplifying the causal story or underestimating the range of other impediments along the pathway to a different future.
Second, we need to understand how the global economy works because, whatever the full causal story about origins might be, the way the global economy is structured is an important constraint on the pathway out of our current condition. These deep structural impediments to change highlight the limitations of relying on our individual willingness to alter consumption patterns or our faith that technology will advance far enough, fast enough to permit us to continue our way of life, characterized by our current patterns of production and distribution. In short, we have to rethink every aspect of business as usual if we are to address not only climate change but the full portfolio of environmental crises and their distributive effects.