Climate Justice: Ethics, Energy, and Public Policy

Study Guide

Preface and Introduction

Possible discussion questions:

  1. The author begins in the preface by discussing ways climate change has impacted his community in northeast Iowa.Do you have similar experiences?In what ways do you believe global warming and climate change are affecting places you have lived or visited?
  2. This book argues that heavy reliance on fossil fuels poses grave threats to justice, peace, and the integrity of creation.Pause for a moment to think about the ways you consume fossil fuel resources.How do you make use of energy in a typical day? How does your use of energy reflect or shape who you are?Have you ever been in a situation where energy was in short supply or had to be rationed? Do you think you are a good steward of energy resources?
  3. The introduction identifies a host of social, economic, and political problems associated with our present reliance on fossil fuels.Has one or more of these problems impacted you in a particular way?
  4. The introduction also provides a summary of key scientific findings related to global climate change.Which aspects do you find especially worrisome or problematic?
  5. The challenges posed by global climate change are daunting.What are your reactions to the author’s comments regarding “cheap despair” on pg. 5?

For further reading:

Friedman, Thomas L. Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—And How It Can Renew America, (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008).

Goodell, Jeff.Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006).

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Fourth Assessment Report:Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report, (Geneva: IPCC Secretariat, November 2007), Summary for Policymakers, available at

Northcott, Michael S. A Moral Climate: The Ethics of Global Warming, (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2007)

Ruddiman, William F. Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate, (Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press, 2005)

Tamminen, Terry. Lives Per Gallon: The True Cost of Our Oil Addiction, (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2006)

U.S. Global Climate Change Research Program. Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, Thomas R. Karl, Jerry M. Melillo, and Thomas C. Peterson, eds., (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), available at globalchange.gov/usimpacts/pdfs/climate-impacts-report.pdf .