The ethics of climate politics: four modes of moral discourse

This article argues that James Gustafson's ‘modes of moral discourse’ framework is highly valuable for conceptualising the ethics of climate politics, or ‘climate ethics’. The moral-philosophical task of developing principles of climate justice, or the issue of how the burdens (and benefits) of global climate change should be distributed between and within generations, is essential to climate ethics, but it is also insufficient. Climate ethics should avoid focusing too exclusively on ‘(technical-)ethical’ discourse, but also incorporate insights from ‘narrative’, ‘policy’, and ‘prophetic’ discourses about or relevant to climate change politics. Climate ethics is to be conceived as pluralist: broad and interdisciplinary, but presumably conflictual and tragic as well.