The Anthropocenic Cupola

On Future Models of Climate Change Liability

Abstract

One of the future challenges of law is to create possibilities for dealing with conflicts in ways that meet the fundamental requirements of environmental and climate protection. Climate responsibility, as a collective ecological responsibility, is not only expected socially from state policymakers and business enterprises, but also increasingly claimed legally. With the perspective of an ecological private law that thinks of interests worthy of protection and of legal subjectivity from the point of view of vulnerability, new legal channels open up for those affected to take action against impending climate hazards or damage and to demand compensation. Fatefully connected by jointly-suffered climate catastrophes, life communities assemble as associations of human and non-human beings that all incur injury. Legal protection for these injured beings can thus no longer be directed exclusively to human needs, but must be based on the ubiquitous vulnerability of all forms of life – a vulnerability that is particularly evident in the face of climate change. The ecological private law of the future will have to ensure that those living entities affected can sue on the basis of their own right. In this way, an effective ecological climate law protection would be created, whose essential task is to help enforce climate policy decisions made in the interest of society.