ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the first of three criteria for a successful account of the scope of climate justice, arguing that an account of scope must be able to deal with uncertainties about future climate changes. It outlines the types of uncertainty we face in the context of climate change – risk, uncertainty, and ignorance – and argues that one of the established accounts of scope – the universal consequentialist account – is unable to successfully deal with situations of uncertainty. It suggests that we can successfully meet the challenges of uncertainty if instead we adopt an action-centred account of scope that takes our actions and their presuppositions as grounds for our duties of justice and differentiates between categories of risk based on a notion of foreseeability. It defines and defends the concept of foreseeability and introduces the two remaining elements of the account: it argues that every agent is entitled to the basic conditions necessary to live an autonomous life and that all have a duty to respect the agency of others. It then describes how an account of scope built around foreseeability and these two principles can be applied to situations of uncertainty.
