Anthropocene and Climate Justice: The Importance of an Ethics of Responsibility

Abstract

Climate change is a global phenomenon. Therefore, the globalization is the necessary hermeneutical horizon if one wants to develop an analysis on the metamorphosis which climate change could cause at a political, social and economic level. Within this horizon, the paper shows how the relationship between the concept of Anthropocene and the request for justice allows to frame a specific political interpretation of the effects of climate change. Such a peculiar political interpretation coincides with the claim for a climate justice. Indeed, in order to avoid the reduction of such a claim to the mere outcome of an ideological critique towards capitalism, the conception of a climate justice needs to be sustained by a rational ethical model. The thesis of the paper is that the ethics of responsibility, inspired by Hans Jonas’ well-known philosophy, could work just as a promising rational foundation of the claim for a climate justice.