Climate Change, Lawyers and the Creed of Expertise

Climate Change: A Justice Issue

Climate change is an issue which is frequently discussed in scientific terms. In the United States, a substantial number of citizens doubt that the science of climate change is legitimate, leading to the expenditure of much energy on the part of those interested in stronger climate policies simply on defending the science.

Despite a well-financed campaign by energy companies to sow scientific doubt, the science is in fact settled, and the most critical dimension of the climate problem now is moral. To connect to a concept frequently discussed in class, climate change represents a justice issue. Climate change should be considered a justice issue because it is a phenomenon which will inflict great amounts of unjust suffering on people. This suffering is unjust because it can be ameliorated but is not.

Having identified a moral problem which needs to be addressed, the next step is to organize a foray into politics to alter the conditions which are feeding the problem. Sociologist Harold Lasswell usefully defined politics as the process of determining "who gets what when and how." Identifying political opportunities and exploiting them requires a strategy, which can be defined as the matching of finite resources to objectives with a plan.

Lawyers have played an important role in achieving stronger environmental protections in the United States because they have access, through their training, social capital, and law licenses, to resources which can usefully be applied to those objectives.

A set of resources which have been used to great effect by those seeking change in America are what Thurman Arnold calls creeds.

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Subsection B

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Section II

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