Climate Ethics and 'The Right to be Cold'

Marion Hourdequin (Colorado College)

Abstract

This talk explores climate ethics through the lens of the 2015 book, The Right to be Cold. The book traces Sheila Watt-Cloutier’s journey from childhood through adulthood and describes her international advocacy on behalf of Canada’s Inuit communities, as well as Arctic peoples throughout the world. I argue that Watt-Cloutier’s account offers important lessons for climate ethics and climate justice, by highlighting the deeply contextual and relational dimensions of climate impacts; implicitly challenging highly abstract and ideal conceptions of justice; and at the same time, strategically deploying the notion of human rights to convey what is at stake for Arctic peoples in a changing climate.