Volume 36, Issue 1, Spring/Summer 2016
Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda
Pages 27-49
Climate Change as Climate Debt
Forging a Just Future
Climate change may be the most far-reaching manifestation of white privilege and class privilege to face humankind. Caused overwhelmingly by highconsuming people, climate change is wreaking death and destruction foremost on impoverished people, who also are disproportionately people of color. This essay first posits climate change as a compelling moral matter of "race- and class-based climate debt" and ''Global North climate debt." A second part draws upon the descriptive and transformative tasks of Christian ethics as a critical discourse to frame a moral response. Finally, the essay illustrates implications for public policy. I propose the concepts of "climate privilege," "climate violence," and "blinders of climate privilege" as tools for demystifying our situation; ''climate reparations" as a dimension of a moral response; and "atmospheric citizenship" as a tool for moral identity.