James B. Martin-Schramm, Climate Justice: Ethics, Energy and Public Policy.

Kerber, Guillermo

James B. Martin-Schramm, Climate Justice: Ethics, Energy and Public Policy, Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 2010, 232 pp.

In his book, Martin-Schramm focuses on one of the critical points in climate justice: energy issues. Starting with Genesis 1:1-3 and highlighting wind, light and creation, the author says that to imagine the fullness of God is to talk about energy. He develops a biblical understanding of energy through an analysis of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.

Based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report and the 2009 report of the US Global Change Research Program, the author addresses the problems faced by the use of fossil fuel energy resources at the global and the United States levels.

Building on a conference on "Faith, Science and the Future" organized by the World Council of Churches in 1979, he pays particular attention to four moral norms that he considers as a broad outline of an ethic of eco-justice: sustainability, sufficiency, participation and solidarity. Having deepened and made explicit the biblical content of each, he uses this framework as eco-justice norms together with a set of energy policy guidelines derived from his previous work with Robert L. Stivers, Christian Environmental Ethics: A Case Method Approach (New York, Orbis, 2003). These 12 policy guidelines are further elaborated to develop a set of 14 climate policy guidelines, which are grouped according to temporal dimensions, structural dimensions and procedural dimensions.

In the subsequent chapters, the author uses these guidelines to analyze conventional, alternative and renewable energy options, and to look at international and US climate policies.

While considering conventional, nonrenewable energy resources in the US, the author concentrates on coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power, concluding that although these have produced much growth and prosperity for the US, the economic wealth has not been distributed very well. What is more, this wealth has been garnered by undermining the ecological health of the planet, hence the desperate need for alternative energy options.

In the following chapter, he looks at solar, wind, biomass, hydropower, geothermal, marine and hydrogen energy. In the two chapters, as he looks specifically at these areas, the author makes nine concrete policy recommendations, which include enacting a modest carbon tax on all fossil fuels and mandating that an increasing percentage of the US energy supply be produced renewably and sustainably, yet he remains aware that it will be very hard to move away from the dependence on fossil fuel and nuclear power.

It could be argued that the author is not very ambitious in his recommendations, but we need to recognize that these are realistic in the US scenario.

When the author analyzes international climate policy on mitigation, adaptation and technology transfer, he gives special attention to the Greenhouse Development Rights (GDRs) framework, which he considers a helpful approach to climate justice.

With regard to the US climate policy, the author unpacks the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 and considers possible future steps.

The final chapter gives an example of how greenhouse gas reduction has been implemented by the author's institution, Luther College in Decorah, Iowa.

The author acknowledges that he focuses on the US because it is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, because he is himself a US citizen, and also because the rest of the world is waiting for the US to assume responsibility and take leadership with regard to climate justice. After the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen in December 2009, and given the insufficient commitment of the US and its president at the Conference, this book is a strong testimony of ethical voices from the US that are calling on its citizens, its government and the whole world adequately to address the challenges posed by climate change.

Written primarily for a US audience, the book is also helpful for readers in other contexts, even those that are quite different from the US.

DOI: 10.1111/j. 1758-6623.2010.00061.x

Dr. Guillermo Kerber (Uruguay) serves as programme executive on climate change at the World Council of Churches in Geneva.