Preserving livable climatic conditions for future generations is a clear demand of intergenerational justice. This demand of intergenerational climate justice is recognized in all climate treaties.

With two eastern regional elections on the horizon, Germany is once again anxious about the prospect of its first far-right state government. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is already declaring itself the winner, with latest record-breaking poll results fueling their optimism. But polls are not elections — a truth AfD election results have demonstrated for over a decade now.

In the imagination of industrial modernity, fossil fuels have long been associated with innovation, progress, and economic development. Industrialists such as John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil, celebrated petroleum refining as a socially beneficial and morally sanctioned enterprise that brought light, heat, and affordable energy to the masses. Coal, and later oil and gas, enabled unprecedented increases in productive capacity—they powered mass industrial production, electrification, global transport systems, and rising material living standards across much of the world. This...

It is a well-known fact that countries with abundant natural resources often fail to translate this wealth into economic growth and human development.

In this advertisement from Chevron, a supermajor oil company, fossil fuel energy is presented as essential to human progress. It is true that fossil fuels, freely available from nature, have provided humans with an unmatched source of energy that powered modernity—industrialization, transportation, urbanization, mass production of goods, and the ever-intensifying global movement of people and goods. The Industrial Revolution ran on coal, which fueled steam engines and, later, electricity-generating power plants. With the invention of the internal combustion engine, oil...

When we talk about war, we typically rehearse several perspectives—geopolitical tensions and power struggles; military tactics and battlefield outcomes; economic costs and disruptions to markets and supply chains. Violations of the norms of armed conflict and war crimes are approached from the perspective of international law. A crucial humanitarian perspective foregrounds violence and human suffering and reminds us that war is, above all, a human catastrophe.

In 2019, the richest 10 percent were responsible for 50 percent of all global emissions.

Environmental thinkers of the 1960s often reached for the image of Spaceship Earth to capture the unique and fragile environmental conditions on which life on Earth depends.

Brutal face of American power has rarely been so naked.

I try to live lightly on this planet. In Frankfurt, Germany, to be more precise, the city that has become my home. I don’t own a car, I don’t eat meat, and I travel by train. I bike around the city, often to my urban vegetable garden. I avoid food waste, recycle, and often buy second-hand. Not driving and eating mostly plant-based lowers my footprint. But my old, poorly insulated building is heated by gas, and I also fly for...