system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Framing Climate Change as a Justice Issue is Antagonistic, Inaccurate and Ineffective.

I often read in the news about Climate change activists calling for "justice". From what I have read about Greta Thornberg's speech to the UN (I still haven't heard it myself), this issue was largely framed around being a justice issue.

I find this a very strange and inaccurate way to view this problem. Justice means to "Just behaviour or treatment". When the concept is employed to describe situations or events, it generally employs the archetype of protagonist vs. antagonist. The antagonist does wrong, the protagonist combats the antagonist to do right. We tend to narrate many issues along these sorts of lines.

Anthropogenic climate change is a result of additional greenhouse gas emissions being released into the atmosphere from human causes. The majority of these causes stem from fossil fueled powered technologies. Humans use these technologies not out of malice, or antagonistic behaviour. Rather, humans use these technologies because they enable us to perform many different tasks very affordably and efficiently. The issue is the technology - it is not a result of bad people just doing bad things that require "justice".

Framing this as a justice issue also often accompanies a view that certain people, or certain behaviours, must be punished. I've read multiple posts about people placing the blame on corporations, the wealthy, right wing governments, etc. But, primarily, the root antagonist seems to be consumption in and of itself.

This poses a moral dilemma because coercive legislation or high pigovian taxes can only work effectively if they are high enough, or strict enough, to curb consumption behaviour. With lack of similarly affordable alternatives, this would dramatically raise the costs of almost everything. This would very likely increase poverty rates, which would pose very real implications for a variety of things.

Instead of viewing this as a justice issue which doesn't have a true antagonist, why not just view this as the very obvious technological issue that it is? The focus needs to be an alternative technologies - and I'm not understanding what vindictive tears in front of politicians, skipping school and blaming corporations is really going to accomplish. It seems to me like this movement is creating the very division it so ironically detests.
gpt
Some time this week, another atoll-dwelling family in the South Pacific will give up their garden because their groundwater has become too saline for taro and coconuts. It's a slow but steady process you see all over the region, with dead coconut tree stumps marching uphill as sea level rises. Then they'll decide the water isn't potable either, and build rainwater collection systems. Those will be battered by storms, and after one king tide too many, they'll load up a boat and sail to an island that is larger and taller, and already getting crowded with other families that decided they need to do the same thing.   


These are people whose carbon footprint is ridiculously lw. The younger family members don't even know that the rest of humanity relies on electricity that is on 24/7. They're used to the power going off at 10PM every night. And they just left the island they've inhabited for as far as their cultural memory goes. How is this not a matter of justice.