ABSTRACT
The vast scale of the climate crisis can lead us to think of climate science, technology, and justice as the same across the world. Much of climate science focuses on how increasing greenhouse gas emissions will cause significant worldwide geophysical changes. Climate justice, or inequality in those responsible, vulnerable, and influential in the age of climate change, is characterized as a global conflict between the haves and have-nots. Using case studies from Indian cities, I instead point to how science, technology, and justice vary place by place. Rather than universally the same, they are situationally varied. Disagreements over climate science happen alongside other local causes of harm. The just transition to the use of low-carbon energy technologies will depend not just on how much they reduce emissions, but on whether they are suitable for the livelihoods of workers and residents. What will come to matter then is not how climate science, technology, and justice are understood globally, but how people will come to understand them situationally. Rather than focus on claims of justice based on abstract, global principles, I propose a focus on situated climate justice.
