Suchergebnisse

This roundtable of Ethics & International Affairs provides an opportunity to step back and reflect on the fundamental elements of climate change and how ethics can play a role in addressing them. In this spirit, I explore three questions that capture the broad outlines of climate concerns. First, what is the nature of climate change as a global problem? Second, what frustrates humanity's ability to respond? Third, what can be done?

Mitigation and adaptation represent the two main ways the world is responding to climate change. However, a third response is being practiced by the most vulnerable: widespread suffering. No matter how much we mitigate or adapt to climate change, pervasive suffering is inevitable. In fact, it is already being experienced throughout the world. This article reports on interviews conducted with subsistence farmers living on the frontlines of climate change in northern India in the spring of 2013. It relates the ways in which sustained drought and then punishing rains wreaked hardship on the farmers, and the ways farmers endured such challenges. By relating farmers' tales and describing how this experience personally influenced the researcher, the article offers and invites reflection on the many meanings of climate suffering.

This article explores a paradox at the heart of climate bandwagoning. Numerous actors have hitched their efforts to climate policy formation in an effort either to advance their own interests or genuinely contribute to addressing this most urgent global dilemma or both. At the same time, the large number of stakeholders complicates climate negotiations as exceeding numbers of actors bring related but tangential issues into discussions and demand to be heard. The international community is thus faced with an almost existential situation: to address climate change in an effective manner requires nearly everyone in the room (regime bandwagoning); with everyone in the room, however, less is accomplished (regime sclerosis). This article explains such a paradox by stepping back from the cases presented in this special issue, and bringing into high relief the lineaments of regime congestion as they manifest in global climate affairs, and outlining the promises and perils involved.