Law in Contemporary Society

View   r4  >  r3  ...
DevinMcDougallFirstPaper 4 - 26 Feb 2010 - Main.DevinMcDougall
Line: 1 to 1
 
META TOPICPARENT name="FirstPaper"

Climate Change, Lawyers and the Creed of Expertise

Changed:
<
<

Climate Change: A Justice Issue

>
>

I. A problem: Climate change is a priority justice issue

 
Changed:
<
<		Climate change is an issue which is frequently discussed in scientific terms. In the United States, a substantial number of citizens doubt that the science of climate change is legitimate, leading to the expenditure of much energy on the part of those interested in stronger climate policies simply on defending the science.
>
>		Climate change is an issue which is frequently cast in popular discourse in scientific terms. This is due in part to the fact that climate change is a highly complex phenomenon which unfolds on a time scale which is rather long compared to contemporary attention spans. But mostly the framing of climate change as a scientific issue is the result of a successful campaign by skeptics and status-quo interests to sow doubt about the science of climate change. The recent kerfuffle over the emails stolen from the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit is an example of these efforts.
 
Changed:
<
<		Despite a well-financed campaign by energy companies to sow scientific doubt, the science is in fact settled, and the most critical dimension of the climate problem now is moral. To connect to a concept frequently discussed in class, climate change represents a justice issue. Climate change should be considered a justice issue because it is a phenomenon which will inflict great amounts of unjust suffering on people. This suffering is unjust because it can be ameliorated but is not.
>
>		Despite these complexities and obfuscations, there is an international scientific consensus that climate change is real, and that it will hurt us badly and our children worse. Thus, it is past time to focus public debate on the justice dimension of climate change. Climate change should be considered a top priority justice issue because it is a phenomenon which will inflict great amounts of irreversible damage and unjust suffering on many people. This damage and suffering is unjust because it can be ameliorated but we are not taking the steps necessary to do so.
 Having identified a moral problem which needs to be addressed, the next step is to organize a foray into politics to alter the conditions which are feeding the problem. Sociologist Harold Lasswell usefully defined politics as the process of determining "who gets what when and how." Identifying political opportunities and exploiting them requires a strategy, which can be defined as the matching of finite resources to objectives with a plan.
Line: 29 to 29
 
Changed:
<
<

Section II

>
>

II. A resource: The creed of expertise

 

Subsection A

Subsection B

Added:
>
>

III. A strategy: Climate change and the creed of expertise

Case Study: Mass v. EPA


Revision 4r4 - 26 Feb 2010 - 13:41:08 - DevinMcDougall
Revision 3r3 - 24 Feb 2010 - 19:19:42 - DevinMcDougall
This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform.
All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
All material marked as authored by Eben Moglen is available under the license terms CC-BY-SA version 4.
Syndicate this site RSSATOM