Social Justice, the Global Community,

and the Distributional Principle

Ethics of Sustainability

Class 7

Leslie Paul Thiele, Ph.D.Department of Political Science

University of Florida

Overview

• The Meaning of Social Justice

• Environmental Racism/Injustice

• Ecological Shadows and Interdependence

• Spaceships and Lifeboats

• The Distributional Principle

• Sharing Power

• Transparency

• Autonomy

Social justice

• the fair allocation of burdens, risks, benefits, and opportunities within society

• the just distribution of advantages and disadvantages of social life

• Logic of extending intergenerational justice to intragenerational justice

• Self-interest and social justice

The Ethics of Reciprocity

• Concerns relationships of mutual exchange, equal treatment, and reciprocal rights and duties

The golden rule

• Confucious: “Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.”

• Hillel: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor, that is the whole Torah, while the rest is the commentary.”

• New Testament: “Always treat others as you would like them to treat you.”

How do our neighbors want to be treated?

• basic needs for physical security, health, nutritious food, decent housing, education, a meaningful livelihood, and a life-supporting, beautiful, and biologically diverse planet.

• the right and opportunity to participate in decision-making processes that will determine how basic goods and risks are defined and distributed

Environmental Racism/Injustice

-the disproportionate burdening

of certain races or classes with

environmental hardships or

risks

Ecological Shadows

• Pollution

• Poverty and Hunger

• Overconsumption

• Resource depletion

• Climate Change

Pollution

Poverty & Hunger

Overconsumption

Resource Depletion

Climate Change

Interdependence

• Norman Myers: "Not even the most advanced nation can insulate itself from [global] environmental impacts, no matter how strong it may be economically or how advanced technologically or how powerful militarily.”

ITI. T.. E. T.

Spaceship Earth and Globalism

• Adlai Stevenson: "We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent upon its vulnerable reserve of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation by the care, the work, and I will say, the love we give our fragile craft.”

Spaceship Earth and Globalism

• Global Green Dictatorship?

• Globeocracy?

• McWorld?

• Glocalism

Think tomorrow act todayThink Globally, act locally

• Wendell Berry: "The real work of planet-saving will be small, humble, and humbling, and (insofar as it involves love) pleasing and rewarding. Its jobs will be too many to count, too many to report, too many to be publicly noticed or rewarded, too small to make anyone rich or famous."

The Global Haves & Have Nots

• Stevenson: "We cannot maintain [the spaceship] half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave to the ancient enemies of mankind and half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew, can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the security of us all."

Lifeboat Ethics

• Hardin: Tragedy of the Commons– Swamping the commons– “Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.”

Managing the Global Commons

• Privatize everything

• Green Dictator

• Multilateral agreements (e.g. Antarctica)

• NGOs

• Traditional Practices

• Combinations?

Collective Action Dilemmas

• The problem of free riders

• Fostering sense of identity, agency and empowerment, injustice– Ultimatum game

Lifeboat or Spaceship?• Egalitarian and socially just countries better

protect their environments

• Economic development stimulates environmental values

• Green technology requires economic means

• Economic development and gender justice stems population growth

Global Community

Distributional Principle

• Fair distribution of rights, duties and social advantages

• Economic benefits

• Risks

• Power

• Decision making abilities…

What is fair?

The “Difference Principle”

-basic rights

-equality of opportunity

-inequalities benefit the

disadvantaged

Sharing Power

• Marshall McLuhan: “There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth; everybody's crew."

• Need for democratic governance

• WCED: “The pursuit of sustainable development requires ... a political system that secures effective citizen participation in decision making.”

Transparency

• Democracy and transparency: elections, lobbying, parliamentary procedure

• Right to know legislation

• Ecolabeling

• Life-cycle analysis

• Technology, expertise, and the public

Autonomy

• Self-governance

• Voluntary and involuntary risk– GMOs, nanotechnology

Who decides?