ABSTRACT
The Hartwell approach to climate change, for which this volume is named, is not a brand or a theory. A response to a fundamentally “wicked” problem, it does not aim to be a “solution”, at least in any conventional sense. Rather, the Hartwell approach is a strategy for pragmatic action grounded in a sober assessment of prevailing conditions and prospects and premised on the notion that climate change policy must not be merely elegant but also practicable; not selective or punitive in its ethical stance but morally grounded in the core aspiration of raising up human dignity worldwide. The approach laid out in The Hartwell Paper represents the distillation during a key moment in the climate change debate of the convergent views of a loose, diverse gathering of individuals. Each held independent views, the conflicts between which were not all—and could not all have been—resolved. All have continued their work in the intervening years, sometimes together but not always and not by default. In 2010, with a dominant paradigm of thought and action imploding around them, these individuals came together, armed with insights from across disciplines, geographies, and cultures, to produce a diagnosis of the failure of the received policy framework at hand and to articulate a set of principles upon which effective forward actions might be built.
