Climate Change and Political Alienation

Meeting the demands of climate change requires significant political action. There are good moral reasons for taking such action, but there are also good reasons to govern people in ways that make sense to them, rather than simply exercising power over them. Climate action can pull these two things apart, alienating many people from their governments. This a genuine loss, even when the action is morally justified. This talk is about this problem, why it is especially deep in liberal democracies built on fossil fuels, and how we can still pursue climate justice in light of it: by building climate politics around problems that people already recognize as their own. Mike Gadomski ‘14, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at SUNY Oswego