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 Climate Justice
and Human Rights
Tracey Skillington
Climate Justice and Human Rights
 Tracey Skillington

Climate Justice and

Human Rights
Tracey Skillington
Department of Sociology
University College Cork
Cork, Ireland

ISBN 978-1-137-02280-6 ISBN 978-1-137-02281-3 (eBook)

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-02281-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016957367

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.

Cover illustration: © fei-chunying

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Nature America Inc.
The registered company address is: 1 New York Plaza, New York, NY 10004, USA
 CONTENTS

1 Introduction 1
Anthropocene Futures 1
Transformations in the Socio-cognitive Framing
of Climate Change since the 1990s 7
Pollution Practices as Practices of Domination 20
The State as a Moral-Political Agent of Justice
on Climate Change Issues 25
Completing ‘The Democratic Circle’ on Climate Justice 31
Notes 33
Bibliography 35

2 The Idea of Climate Justice 41

Introduction 41
Rawls’ Theory of Justice 44
Critical Perspectives on Rawls’ Law of Peoples 48
Benefits, Costs, Rights, and Responsibilities across
International Communities 54
Common Subjection to Climate Change Risk
as a Basis for a New Model of Global Justice 67
Defining Justice for an Expanded Commons:
The Perspective of Climate Justice Coalitions 72
Notes 81
Bibliography 83

v
vi CONTENTS

3 Resource Inequalities, Domination, and the Struggle

to Reclaim Democratic Freedoms 91
Introduction 91
Denying the Opportunity and Process Aspects
of Democratic Freedom: The Case of Global
Land Acquisitions 99
Claims to Extreme Energy Sources as Claims to Justice?
The Case of Hydraulic Fracking 105
Addressing Governance Deficiencies 111
Conclusion 113
Notes 116
Bibliography 116

4 Climate Change and Its Security Implications 123

Introduction 123
War in the National Interest 126
On the Rights of Peoples or the Rights of States
to Self-Determination over Natural Resources:
The Case of the Arctic 129
Towards a Transnational Order of Peace
on Natural Resource Distribution 136
Conclusion 144
Notes 145
Bibliography 146

5 Climate Justice Without Freedom: Assessing

Legal and Political Responses to Climate Change
and Forced Migration 151
Introduction 151
The Changing Circumstances of Justice under
Conditions of Growing Natural Resource Scarcity 154
Lacking Legal Definition and Human Rights Presence:
The Current Status of the Climate Displaced 157
Defining Rights to Mobility in ‘Abnormal Times’ 161
Conclusion 167
Notes 169
Bibliography 170
 CONTENTS vii

6 On the Rights of the Peoples of Disappearing States 177

Introduction 177
Addressing the Lacuna in International Law
on the Rights of Peoples of Disappearing States 181
New Contexts for the Application of the Rescue Principle 187
Realizing Collective Human Rights Obligations
to Displaced Communities 193
Transnational Democratic Settlements on Resource
Allocation and Sovereign State Reconfiguration 195
Conclusion 198
Notes 199
Bibliography 201

7 What Is Common About ‘Our Common Future’?

Maintaining the Human Rights Status of Water 207
Claiming Rights to the Resources of the Commons:
A Complicated Affair 207
The Case of Transboundary Rivers 210
Disputing the Human Rights Status of Water 214
Sharing Water Resources with Non-Excludable Others 217
Notes 225
Bibliography 226

8 Conclusion: Towards a Transnational Order

of Climate Justice 231
Addressing Democratic Deformities 234
Extending the ‘Who’ of Justice to Include Future Generations 238
The Communicative Empowerment of Aggrieved Publics 243
Establishing Greater Reciprocity Among All
Self-Determining Communities 247
Notes 255
Bibliography 256

Bibliography 261

Index 283
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

ANTHROPOCENE FUTURES
Over a time span of just a century and a half, humanity has become a for-
midable geological force of change in its own right, altering the Earth’s
atmosphere and natural landscape in ways that are unprecedented. For the
first time, the outer limits of Nature’s capacities to adapt to the destruc-
tion of its natural cycles of carbon, phosphorous, and nitrogen are in sight
(see Rockstrӧm et al. 2009). The overall rate of temperature increase has
nearly doubled (NASA Earth Observatory 2015) in the last 50 years.
Global average surface temperatures have risen to 0.9 degrees Celsius
while in the oceans, warming has occurred from the surface to a depth of
roughly 2300 feet where most marine life dwells (National Geographic
2016), causing sea levels to rise. On land, global net yields of stable food
crops are declining steadily in direct proportion to temperature increases
(see International Scientific Congress on Climate Change, March 2009).
According to the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) AR5 Working Group II Report on Food Security and
Food Production Systems (2014b), there is a critical climatic threshold
beyond which point essential food crops will not grow. If the current
pace in global warming is not decelerated, the likelihood is that climate
change will eventually overpower our capacities to adapt and large-scale
humanitarian disaster will ensue.1 So grave are these dangers that many
scientists believe humanity has entered a new geological age known as
the Anthropocene (Oldfield 2015). The core idea of the Anthropocene

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 1

T. Skillington, Climate Justice and Human Rights,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-02281-3_1
2 T. SKILLINGTON

is that the climate risks we face today are essentially our own doing. The
human species in effect has overtaken other forces of nature to become the
most significant driver of destruction of the Earth’s biosphere. Knowledge
of this event forces a compelling reframing of more traditional assump-
tions regarding the relationship between humanity and nature in favour
of a cognitive framework that assigns a determining role to humanity in
shaping the direction of future changes in the biophysical and biological
systems of planet Earth. Humanity is tasked with deciding how the future
of this planet will unfold. Not only must an objectivist account of nature’s
outer limits and a complementary scientific understanding of its biologi-
cal, chemical, and physical substance, be mastered, but humanity now
must also begin to reflexively engage in a hermeneutic reconstruction of
how it has arrived at this point of destruction in its historical development
(Strydom 2015)? As the most significant metanarrative of human develop-
ment in the twenty-first century, the arrival of Anthropocene forces us to
think again about how human interests are best defined and the political
will found to forge a better system of planetary stewardship for the future
(Berkhout 2014: 1).
For Beck (2015), the type of epochal changes that have been ushered
in by the Anthropocene have certain ‘emancipatory effects’. For one, the
anticipation of grave environmental catastrophes fundamentally alters ways
of being in and thinking about this world. Normative horizons of justice
and an ethics of care are extended as new scenes of crisis unfold and affect
communities everywhere. The type of ‘anthropological shock’ generated
by scenes of disaster (e.g., Hurricane Katrina, 2005; Hurricane Sandy,
2012; Typhoon Haiyan, 2013) provokes a deeper reflection on disturb-
ing truths. The international community is forced to face up to the fact
that preventable environmental disasters are inflicting untold harm and
suffering on the poorest, most vulnerable communities. In this moment
of catharsis, the imagination of catastrophe forcibly enters the everyday
consciousness of global communities at risk. No longer vague and futuris-
tic, the existential threat of major disaster provokes sentiments of urgency,
anxiety, and a growing desire for change. The realization is that a reform
of economic, social, political, and legal practices must ensue, even if this
realization is no more than a ‘latent side effect’ of attempts to adjust to a
series of globally interdependent crises (e.g., severe resource depletion and
biodiversity erosion). Norms, imperatives, and cultural ideals of ‘progress’
that have guided the worlds of capitalism for centuries are critically re-
evaluated through the ‘imagination of a threatening future’ (Beck 2015).
 INTRODUCTION 3

Concerned citizens, science experts and environmental groups come

together to voice their concerns and call on world leaders to decarbonize
the global economy, invest more seriously in sustainable energy systems
($100 billion a year) and adaptation programmes (e.g., see The Earth
Statement 2015).
The realization is that to be truly transformative the ‘emancipatory
potential’ of climate change catastrophism (Beck 2015) must also be dis-
closing. It is not enough for publics to express dissatisfaction or frustra-
tion with a regulatory system that is clearly failing to deliver on promises
of a more sustainable future for all. What is also required is a disclosure of
those underlying aspects of modern social life that steer cultural ideals and
social practices towards carbon-intensive models of desirable social living
and simultaneously away from less ecologically destructive alternatives. An
‘implicatory denial’ (Cohen 2001: 7) of the consequences arising from
such lifestyle choices does not deny the wider reality of climate change,
but it does suppress any serious debate on the implications of carbon-
intensive models of social living for the future of the planet. Implicatory
denial holds much of the contemporary climate change discourse cap-
tive to a metaphysics of presence where the only truly politically relevant
subject of justice is a living, proximate one. In many ways, the sheer per-
vasiveness of this element of short-sightedness makes the Anthropocene
a particularly belligerent era in the history of humanity. Its most violent
tendencies are reflected in its lack of commitment to reversing ecologi-
cal damage, in spite of increasing knowledge of the devastation thereby
caused. Violence against Nature continues to intensify and reaches mon-
umental proportions as further large-scale extractive ventures (e.g., the
pursuit of further, more penetrative deep-sea drilling for minerals, gas,
and oil) are enthusiastically welcomed and defended vehemently against
the warnings of opponents.
We may commiserate with those who fall victim to some of climate
change’s worst effects (e.g., displaced populations), but few concerted
attempts are being made at present to address the underlying causes of
such peoples’ misfortunes, or alleviate those additional regimes of violence
they have to endure when attempting to flee circumstances of poverty
and ecological devastation (denied legal entry to safer lands, no recogni-
tion in law of their status as refugees and, therefore, as persons entitled
to special privileges). Ongoing efforts to deny the ecological, social, and
political costs of what has been to date a highly destructive transition to
the Anthropocene age are not likely to succeed in the long term. The
4 T. SKILLINGTON

critical social actor has played a particularly strategic role in stimulating

a logical reconstruction of some of the most problematic elements of the
Anthropocene, including an analytical penetration of how its values and
‘norm laden practices’ (Strydom 2015: 286) have managed to sustain a
dangerous anthropogenic interference with the planet’s climate system
for too long. As initiators of a more reflexive moment in collective self-
understanding, these social agents challenge the international community
to acknowledge what has been largely denied to date—that current rates
of depletion of essential resources are not sustainable and that the future
survival of humanity requires urgent co-operative action. Various parties
may not agree entirely with each other’s interpretation of how such co-
operation might best proceed in the future. For those who support the
continuation of a predominantly state-bound model of climate justice,
for instance, the ‘domestic’ sphere is the preferred location for any delib-
eration on further co-operation since concentrated forms of co-operation
already exist between different interest groups within national settings.
Others point to the fact that states are networked into global capitalist
economic systems that support transnational corporate bids to privatize
as much of the resource commons as possible (e.g., water reserves), and
for such reasons, their interests may be in some ways be compromised.
The competence and responsibilities of economic agents are said to be
so obviously directed towards the pursuit of private profit that proposals
regarding further ‘cooperation’ from this quarter are seriously questioned.
Certainly, many of the world’s larger corporations have been particu-
larly vocal in their desire to see a reform of property rights to essential
resources. Any moves to create a regulatory framework that encourages
greater resource sharing as a co-operative ideal may not necessarily be seen
from this perspective to be in the best interests of capitalism’s future. In
particular, its need to acquire new resource supplies quickly, cheaply, and
in a legally pro-efficient manner.
The potential for disagreement on how greater co-operation ought to
proceed is considerable and no doubt will continue to be explored as a
‘dynamical object of the commind’ (Pierce 1998: 478) in the years ahead.
Nonetheless, the urgencies of such co-operation have encouraged at least
some within the international community to turn a more conscious eye
towards the ecological present, rather than away from it through a denial
of its risk potential. The understanding in this instance is that a more con-
certed effort must be made to reconfigure the catastrophic dimensions of
deteriorating climate conditions as an immanent reality whose trajectory
 INTRODUCTION 5

must be immediately interrupted with a more conscious effort at societal

transformation. The critical social actor has played a particularly impor-
tant role in highlighting the necessity of agency and linking such agency
to democracy. Coalitions such as Greenpeace, Christian Aid, or Climate
Action Now encourage a ‘thinking forward’ to scenarios where climate
adversities are shared and managed more equally among all members of
the international community. ‘Now time’ (Benjamin 2003) is said to offer
humanity the opportunity to reflect on experiences to date and re-assess
what is common to our circumstances. In this moment, new imaginaries
of a good and sustainable life are presented, and publics are encouraged to
view humanity as ‘the cause of its own advance toward the better’ (Kant
[1798] 1957), as much as the cause of its own advance towards ecological
destruction.
Ultimately, the realization of a more equitable and ecologically sustain-
able world cannot be confined to some future project of humanity but
rather must be located in the energies, the experiences, and critical reflex-
ive capacities of the ‘now-time’ of the present. Opportunities to make real
this alternative future are said to require an equally alternative conception
of the historical intelligibility of our civilizational development, a move-
ment away from the current dichotomization of a relatively stable, even
if fragile, ecological present confronting a distant and endangered future,
to an understanding of how our actions today intricately shape the ‘not
yet’ moment of collective futurity. The starting point of this new phase
of critical thinking is the realization that we are all trapped in what Beck
(2009b: 56) describes as ‘a shared global space of threats—without exit’.
Occupying this space in a sort of ‘empty time’ (Benjamin 1968: 261) of
ecological destruction, campaign groups argue, will not will these prob-
lems away, neither will responding to them through a national defence of
difference. The transborder nature of shared ecological problems means
that, as a subject of a collective willing, climate solutions cannot be lim-
ited de facto to members of one particular community but, rather, must
be the concern of a more indefinite commons, in both geographical and
generational terms.

It is for the world community to decide whether this moment of uncertainty

presages wider conflict, deepening inequality and the erosion of the rule of
law, or is used to renew institutions for peace, prosperity and human rights.
Now is the time to act…It is within reach. From pragmatic beginnings
could emerge a visionary change of direction for the world. (UN 2005: 6)
6 T. SKILLINGTON

As the most relevant enclosure of this commons, ‘our endangered planet’

draws the critical actor back to older, more cosmopolitan notions of com-
munity where the connectivity of different peoples and species is both
transterritorially and transtemporally defined. Already the campaign for
greater intergenerational justice is gaining momentum internationally.
Governments are coming under pressure to demonstrate their commit-
ment to future inhabitants of this planet as legitimate and rightful subjects
of justice and to recognize how their fate is unjustly served by the cur-
rent reckless borrowing of their environmental capital [see World Future
Council 2011; The Cousteau Society (2010: Bill of Rights of Future
Generations)]. The challenge now, as various climate justice coalitions
point out, is to begin to push such critical reflexive thinking towards cre-
ative new ways of imagining and realizing a sustainable Anthropocene
future for all. In the face of growing humanitarian crises, practices of shar-
ing limited reserves of precious resources, such as water, can no longer be
disregarded as political taboo. The type of radical resource inequalities we
see merging today require action, ‘irrespective of whether their elimina-
tion involves the movement of resources across national political bound-
aries’ (Shue 2011: 110). The traditional Rawlsian notion of the world’s
various communities of peoples mapping exclusively and neatly onto spe-
cific territories and their resource reserves may well prove the exception
rather than the rule in the future, as the effects of climate change spread
across the politically constructed borders of individual states. Rights to
the resources of the global commons have never been defined exclusively
along sovereign lines, a point that is proving increasingly important today
in political negotiations. As issues of resource entitlement become more
politicized, the definitional boundaries of an ‘equitable management’ of
humanity’s remaining precious reserves is prised open to international
debate. The UN (2012a, b) has made its position in this discourse quite
clear. It supports moves towards a greater degree of co-operation among
the sovereign communities of this world in the interests of peace and
the long-term survival of all of humanity. The definitional boundaries of
‘equitable resource management regimes’, it adds, must be understood
creatively. States, it claims, are required to embrace their role as agents of
sustainable development and as facilitators of democratic inclusion with
equal vigour (UN 2012a: 20).
There is, of course, a notable degree of resistance to do so at pres-
ent. Particularly tentative is the level of disagreement among various
parties: What is actually common about our ‘common future’ (e.g., the
 INTRODUCTION 7

legal value of property rights over more traditional entitlement claims to

remaining water reserves, land, energy sources, etc.) as well as how an
effective and legally consequential internationally co-ordinated response
to climate change can be put in motion? How will the rights of the climate
displaced, or those of peoples of sinking states, for example, be situated
within a wider social framework of rights, including the rights of others?
Do these peoples have a legitimate right to claim safe haven elsewhere
on less threatened territories? How will entitlement to compensation be
evaluated and in what form will it be distributed? All of these issues require
greater ethical consideration on the part of the wider international com-
munity and given the immanent nature of threat, serious practical engage-
ment as well. Campaign groups such as Greenpeace, Christian Aid, and the
Mary Robinson Foundation have played a particularly important role in
highlighting such issues and in demonstrating how democratic freedoms
embedded in legal rights are being actively undermined by the ongoing
failure of states to control pollution levels. The current lack of clarifica-
tion as to the nature of duties and responsibilities calls into question the
effectiveness of current governance arrangements when addressing such
issues. Before examining some of these problems in more detail, the fol-
lowing section outlines how the major risks posed by climate change have
been interpreted by the international community to date and institutional
responses developed accordingly.

TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE SOCIO-COGNITIVE FRAMING

OF CLIMATE CHANGE SINCE THE 1990S

International efforts to combat climate change to date have occurred in

three main phases. The first came to fruition in the early 1990s when state
parties finally agreed to sign the United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change ((UNFCCP) 1992), an international treaty obliging
states to stabilize greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in the atmosphere
at a level that would ‘prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with
the climate system’ and endorse a principle of ‘common but differentiated
responsibility’ according to which more industrialized states would take
the lead in cutting emissions, while the less-developed countries would
take significant action only in the future (see UNFCCC, Article 3, 1992).
By 1995, a second phase in international efforts to address climate change
had begun following a meeting of delegates in Berlin. Here negotiating
parties agreed to the ‘Berlin Mandate’ outlining a two-year Analytical
8 T. SKILLINGTON

and Assessment Phase (AAP) as well as a comprehensive list of actions for

states to tackle climate change in the future. By this stage it was already
clear that the voluntary emissions reductions agreed upon in Rio were not
effective and, therefore, a new stronger level of commitment was required.
The subsequent meeting of the parties in Geneva (1997) laid the founda-
tions for more collaborative efforts to begin, but it was the Kyoto Protocol
in 1997 that finally set binding targets for GHG reductions for developed
states. With the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, state parties now pledged
to reduce emissions to agreed safety levels within designated commitment
periods (the first period covered the years 2008–2012 while the second
runs from January 2013 until the end of 2020).
By 2009, 183 countries had signed the Protocol and agreed to reduce
their yearly emissions of carbon, as measured in six GHGs, by amounts
averaging 5.2 % by 2012 as compared to 1990 levels. In the years since,
some states have opted out of the Protocol (e.g., Canada, Russia (phase
two), and Japan), while the USA and Australia decided against becom-
ing a party to this agreement from the outset. For its critics, the Kyoto
agreement has unwisely granted concessions on the goal of limiting over-
all emissions levels and has allowed states to meet their commitments
through buying unused capacity from others. When delegates met in
Marrakesh in 2001, the general consensus was that the large concessions
granted to states in the period from Kyoto to Marrakesh had contrib-
uted detrimentally to efforts to reduce overall emissions levels (there has
been a 61 % increase in CO2 emissions since 1990 (IPCC 2013)). In spite
of a fall in international rates of economic growth, predictions were that
emissions levels would either match or eventually exceed those estimated
if the plan had been ‘business as usual’. The sad realization was that in
the period since the Earth Summit, negotiating parties had failed in their
efforts to reduce overall emissions levels. In November 2013, Japan, the
world’s third-largest economy, announced its plans to reduce its emissions
target for 2020 from 25 % to 3.8 % (i.e., 3.1 % above 1990 levels), having
been forced to re-assess its heavy reliance on nuclear power following the
Fukushima disaster (The Japan Times 2013). In December 2011, Canada
made public its decision to pull out of the Kyoto Protocol and withdraw
its previous commitments to reduce emissions levels to pre-1990 levels. In
fact, its emissions levels in 2011 were 33 % higher than those recorded in
1990 (Black 2011). By this period, a third phase in international efforts
to address climate change had begun, one that would see a formidable
backlash against concerted efforts to reduce global emissions. Generally,
 INTRODUCTION 9

the understanding is that this backlash was not triggered by a weaken-

ing of confidence in the science of climate change per se, but rather the
realization that alarming rates of global warming required a fundamental
shift in values and priorities, one, it seems, many were, for various reasons,
unwilling to take.
Although the Bonn-Marrakech Agreement (2002) did allow for pun-
ishments to be imposed on those who fail to stay within agreed emis-
sions levels, those punishments cannot be enforced on any state that has
not ratified the amendments allowing for punishments to be brought into
effect. For critics, international efforts to tackle climate change to date
have proven largely ineffective because of insufficient normative pressure
being brought to bear on all states to comply with set targets. Earlier
pledges to reduce net carbon emissions by 60 % to prevent concentrations
in the atmosphere from doubling by the end of the twenty-first century
now seem like a distant memory. We are currently on a warming trajec-
tory where a 2°C rise seems immanent, propelling us ‘into completely
uncharted waters’ (The Earth Statement 2015) and bringing ‘high risks’
of regional crop failure and severe water shortages in low-latitude, less-
developed areas (see IPCC, Climate Change 2014a—Impacts, Adaptation
and Vulnerability: Global and Sectoral Aspects: 811). The real danger is
that continuing political apathy will pave the way for temperature increases
far beyond 2°C, resulting in aggregate economic losses and greater food
insecurity worldwide. In the lead up to the Paris UN Climate Conference
in November 2015, the UN spoke of the importance of devising a practi-
cal model of global development that is ‘safe, durable and beneficial to all’.
‘The success of the whole planet’, Fabius (President Designate of COP
(Conference of Parties) 21 and CMP 11) adds, depends upon it. It is no
longer a matter of doubting the likelihood of these projected futures, but
of choosing which one we want to see realized (see Ban Ki-moon 2008).
Several theorists, including Gardiner (2004) and Jamieson (2010a),
have tried to understand how the international community has arrived
at this point of political stalemate in its attempts at establishing a safe cli-
mate future for all peoples. The primary concern of states from the start
of climate change negotiations, as they point out, has been the issue of
cost effectiveness. Indeed, the emphasis on cost has also shaped the justi-
fications states offer for not complying with set targets in the years since
1992. (e.g., Canada’s Minister for the Environment bemoaning the exces-
sive costs to Canada’s economy of meeting obligations under the Kyoto
Protocol ($13.6bn) see Black 2011). With an emphasis on the financial
10 T. SKILLINGTON

costs of stringent emissions targets comes an inherent bias towards the

interests of present generations (See also Brown 2002). Repeatedly, the
issue of economic security is put forwards as the primary reason why the
burning of fossil fuels must continue, even as its detrimental effects on
climate conditions are acknowledged. Climate justice campaigners point
to the fact that moves to unlock remaining reserves of fossil fuels for pri-
vate capital gain do not add up to a coherent plan for a sustainable future
(e.g., the Leave it in the Ground Campaign, The Guardian 2015a). Global
CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels rose by a record 36 billion metric
tons in 2013 (Garside 2013). In the same year, there was a 2.1 % rise in
global CO2 emissions levels (Olivier et al. 2015). More than half of the
total agreed global carbon budget (a trillion tons of carbon to avoid a
temperature rise of over 2°C limit was agreed in Copenhagen in 2009)
has already been consumed, leaving a remainder of 450 billion tons. For
the internationally agreed 2°C safety limit to be maintained, the majority
of the remaining fossil reserves would have to be left in the ground or
consumed at a gradual pace to allow the atmosphere to absorb the carbon
fossils fuels produced. However, given the lobbying power of gas and oil
exploration companies globally, as well as the coal industry in various parts
of Eastern Europe, this does not seem likely at present. The substantial
benefits derived from consuming the remaining gas, oil, and coal reserves
are consistently portrayed as outweighing any catastrophic costs incurred
for doing so. In the years since the Kyoto agreement, negotiating parties
have tended to base their decisions on new proposals on whether such
actions would benefit co-patriots directly. The emphasis throughout has
been on the needs and economic interests of present humanity, a bias that
has systematically underscored ‘the tragic structure’ of consecutive climate
change negotiations since the 1990s (Gardiner 2004). Commitments to
reduce emissions levels in the interests of the ‘long-term sustainability of
the earth’ have been waning now for some time, a situation with dras-
tic implications for the 45 % of the world’s population who are ‘vulner-
able to even minor shifts in natural and social conditions’ (Pogge 2007:
294). Climate change problems call for collaborative action in the inter-
ests of all of humanity—something the state communities of this world
have shown little enthusiasm for to date. The possibility of realizing a
low carbon future has been obstructed by a number of factors: first, the
prioritization of cost over human security; second, a pre-occupation with
the material needs of some of present humanity and; third, the fact that
various forms of state-state domination (e.g., unequal trade agreements,
 INTRODUCTION 11

greater degrees of economic and political clout enjoyed by some) inhibit

the capacity and willingness of states to act autonomously (explored in
more detail in Chap. 2). All of these factors restrict the likelihood of a
more effective co-ordinated response to climate change emerging. Add to
these challenges the fact that a significant change in dominant interpre-
tive framings of climate change has occurred since 2008. Unlike earlier
decades when the focus was predominantly on the issue of mitigation and
from the early 2000s, adaptation to climate change, the emphasis now
has moved quite explicitly back to the question of ‘homeland security’
and the serious threat posed by climate change to the long-term viability
of state resource reserves, the likely mass displacement of populations in
regions subject to severe drought, storms or flooding, a greater incidence
of conflict among resource deficient communities, political insurrection,
and even terrorism (see US Department of Homeland Security Climate
Change Adaptation Report 2010). The dominant interpretive approach of
the USA and Russia is to frame climate change as a major national security
concern. Similarly, the EU has sought a new ‘preventative security policy’
framework to address the threat posed by ‘destabilized’ regions ‘most
affected’ by climate change (see Report from the High Representative of
the European Commission to the European Council on Climate Change
and International Security, March 2008c). From this dominant security
perspective, climate change is now a major ‘threat multiplier’, posing a
serious risk to the political and economic integrity of industrialized states.
At the same time as reports of conflict among drought-ridden populations
in various climate vulnerable regions have inspired states to reread climate
change as a high security threat on par with the threat posed by global
terrorism and war, the UN has begun to interpret emerging scenarios of
humanitarian crises as a stimulus to another type of action—the need to
come to the rescue of such people in the name of human rights security.
In March 2008, the Human Rights Council adopted resolution 7/23
acknowledging how climate change poses ‘an immediate and far-reach-
ing threat’ to communities around the world and has ‘implications for
the full enjoyment of rights’. Climate change was now officially framed
as a ‘human rights concern’ for the international community, one in
urgent need of ‘a global solution’ (p. 1).2 Also in 2008, the UN Panel
on Human Dignity defined global climate change as a ‘priority issue’ for
an international community legally obliged to protect all peoples’ right
to food, water, settlement, health, and safety. The demonstratable reality
of adverse climate effects on vulnerable communities was now officially
12 T. SKILLINGTON

acknowledged as a serious challenge to the realization of legal human

rights commitments.3 In March 2009, the UN Human Rights Council
adopted Resolution 10/4 referring to specific regions most at risk and
specifying in more detail the various ways in which climate change affects
the enjoyment of rights, both directly and indirectly. The strong likeli-
hood of humanitarian disaster was said to justify a pre-emptive move to
ensure that human rights commitments would be upheld in the future.
In December 2010, the outcome document of the COP in Cancún made
explicit reference to Human Rights Council Resolution 10/4 and stressed
that ‘parties should in all climate change-related actions, fully respect
human rights’ (Decision 1/CP.16, 2010). On September 30, 2011, the
Human Rights Council adopted another resolution (18/22) on ‘human
rights and climate change’, tabled by the Philippines and Bangladesh,
with the support of 43 co-sponsors, including the Maldives, Germany,
and Spain. This new resolution referred to the effects of climate change
on the right to safe drinking water and sanitation and recalled how ‘in
no instance should a people be deprived of their means of subsistence’.
Pursuant to resolution 18/22, the Office of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) convened a seminar in
February 2012 addressing in more detail the adverse impacts of climate
change on the full enjoyment of rights. A summary report was presented
at the June 2012 session of the council and was made available to the
18th session of the COP to the UNFCCC (COP18) in Doha, Qatar
(November–December 2012). In February 2015 at the UNFCCC ADP
meeting in Geneva, Costa Rica led the Geneva Pledge for Human Rights
in Climate Action. Signed by 18 countries, this pledge recognizes the
importance of integrating human rights commitments into climate action
programmes for the future, a move, it adds, that can only be achieved
‘through participation, sustainability transparency, accountability, edu-
cation and access to information’.4 The following month, the Human
Rights Council hosted two discussion panels dedicated to the issue of
climate change and its human rights implications. Speakers included the
UN Special Envoy on Climate Change, Mary Robinson, who also noted
how a more explicit ‘human rights framing to our development and cli-
mate responses’ in recent years has encouraged a greater focus on the
importance of ‘inclusion, participation and equality’. Also speaking at
this event, UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,
Vitoria Tauli-Corpuz, drew attention to the significance of this discussion
to indigenous communities and their right to be included in decision-
 INTRODUCTION 13

making on issues that centrally affects their lives. An interactive dialogue

with civil society groups followed these discussion panels where again a
common emphasis was placed on the importance of the right of publics
to participation in decision-making on climate change policies, as well as
a recognition of the impact of climate change on their economic, social
and human rights.5
Various agencies attached to the UN have played a particularly impor-
tant role in drawing international attention to the human rights implica-
tions of climate change. However, it would be a mistake for us to assume,
as the International Council on Human Rights Policy (2012: 1) points
out, that they have acted alone in this regard. A broad range of civil society
organizations have also played a prominent role, including a number of
high-profile legal agencies supporting the campaigns of local communi-
ties affected by climate change. One such actor is Leigh Day. Established
in 1987, this legal actor has fought and won several cases against corpo-
rate giants such as Shell, BP, Anglo-American, and Unilever, forging, in
the process, a reputation for being a fierce defender of the human rights
of those deeply affected by corporate pollution activities (Vidal 2015).
Another legal actor advocating a human rights approach is the Centre for
International Environmental Law (CIEL). Since it was founded in 1989,
the CIEL has assisted the various campaigns of ‘public interest movements
around the world’ with a view to extending the relevance of ‘international
law and institutions’ to the creation of ‘a just and sustainable society’
(CIEL 2007). In December 2005, the CIEL assisted the Inuit people
in making a submission to the Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights detailing how their traditional way of life in the Arctic and the
natural resource wealth upon which they depend were being undermined
by global warming. The communication requested the Inter-American
Commission to investigate its claims and to declare the USA as ‘in viola-
tion of rights affirmed in the 1948 American Declaration of the Rights
and Duties of Man and other instruments of International Law’, including
the right to life (Article I), residence (Article VIII), and the preservation
of health and well-being (Article XI) due to its failure to control emis-
sions of GHGs. The Inter-American Commission ultimately decided not
to pursue the Inuit Petition as a contested case on the grounds that it did
not demonstrate sufficient evidence of a violation of rights protected in the
American Declaration. It did, however, invite the petitioners to testify at an
information hearing (without an outcome) on March 1, 2007, examining
the relationship between global warming and human rights.6 In September
14 T. SKILLINGTON

2008, the CIEL assisted the people of the Maldives in making a submission
to the OHCHR outlining how the collective failures of the international
community to reduce emissions to safe levels has led to extensive human
rights violations.7 Other states, however, took a different view of the situ-
ation. The USA in its submission to the OHCHR explained how it did
‘not share the view that an environment-related human right exists under
international law and indeed the sheer number of different formulations
of this “right” is indicative of the fact that it does not have a basis in inter-
national law…neither the International Covenant on Economic, Social,
and Cultural Rights nor any other universal human rights treaty of which
the United States is aware provides for such rights’ (Observations by the
United States of America on the Relationship between Climate Change
and Human Rights 2009: 3). It, therefore, advised against the interna-
tional community taking a human rights–based approach to climate pro-
tection on the grounds that it is ‘unlikely to be effective’ (Observations by
the United States of America on the Relationship between Climate Change
and Human Rights 2009: 1).8 In the run-up to the Paris Agreement, the
USA again voiced its concerns, expressing particular unease with more
protracted references to human rights and the likelihood of this discourse
‘sabotaging’ a 2015 climate agreement (Duyck 2015). In spite of some
states’ reservations about the alignment of human rights with climate
change issues and their decision not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol (or be
bound legally by its terms), it doubtful as to whether these same states can
opt out of their human rights commitments.
An increasing number of human rights, including rights to self-
determination, the right to life, and development are seen as peremptory
international law (ius cogens) and in that prevail over any climate treaty law
(including that emerging from the UNFCCC process). Article 53 of the
Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties explains how ‘a peremptory
norm of general international law is a norm accepted and recognized by
the international community of states as a whole as a norm from which no
derogation is permitted and which can be modified only by a subsequent
norm of general international law having the same character’.9 In rec-
ognition of the ‘higher authority’ of international human rights law, the
Cancún Agreement, for instance, requires that all climate-related actions
and agreements under the UNFCCC process from heretofore respects
human rights law.10 According to this clarification, any disagreements that
may arise regarding the terms of environmental agreements do not in any
way take from, or undermine the higher authority of human rights law
 INTRODUCTION 15

to which all states are aligned constitutionally (and with which they are
legally obliged to comply). However, that is not to say that there can be
no overlap between environmental treaties and human rights legislation.
The principles of the former may be interpreted in accordance with obli-
gations stemming from the latter. This clarification potentially has serious
implications for future climate action, and as human rights continue to
become an ever more prominent element of international climate change
negotiations, it is likely they will prove increasingly important to the pro-
cess of ensuring the legal compliance of all members of the international
community with agreed emissions targets in the future.
Legal actors such as CIEL and Leigh Day point to the significant
potential offered by existing legal mechanisms to form legitimate, human
rights–based claims against major polluters and to practices of uphold-
ing the rights of communities to accountability for harms caused to their
health, well-being, and natural resource supplies. The campaign efforts
of these actors do not stop at a diagnostic critique of corporate or state
pollution practices and their corrupt political and economic dealings.
They also encompass an important reconstructive critique of how peoples’
human rights can be better protected when aligned with institutionally
activated political rights to participation, information, transparency in
decision-making, freedom from interference, and so on. The existing legal
regime and its accompanying standards, procedures, methods, and values
are, therefore, seen to provide certain opportunities for a closer alignment
to be established between democratic rights and human rights. Indeed,
this has been one of the most important societal contributions of these
actors to date—the notion that it is possible for communities to generate
a transformative moment in non-ideal justice arrangements via democratic
legal processes. For these actors, the Anthropocene is a world capable of
reshaping its future through a critical reflexive learning as to the ongoing
legal and social value of human rights and democratic freedoms. It is a
world that, in spite of its destructive tendencies, is capable of regenerating
democratic potentials through legal and political institutional means, if
the collective will to do so is present, a perspective expressed recently by
Vinuta Gopal (2015), Executive Director of Greenpeace India:

…the power we need to challenge is one of our own making, an all-powerful

government we all elected, and in which we invested collective hope. A
government that promised good governance and development for all…we
16 T. SKILLINGTON

[must] hold it to the commitment it signed up to, of truly representing us

(Vinuta Gopal, Greenpeace India, August 14, 2015).

A strong ethical assertion is being made here as to the importance of fur-

ther activating political rights and, specifically, the need to address viola-
tions of these rights. The wider social and political currency of democratic
freedoms provides these actors with a foundation not only for affirming
the value of democratic liberties to our society, but also for taking an
interest in the freedoms and rights of others (e.g., communities in the
developing world, indigenous communities in the Arctic, and future peo-
ples). A greater consciousness also of the human rights implications of
climate justice has triggered an important conceptual transformation of
the language of climate change discourse more recently. It has proven
particularly important to the coalition-building efforts of environmental
groups and legal activists who together explore how principles already
embedded in law can be applied to new scenarios of injustice, includ-
ing a principle of resource equity [see UNFCCC, supra note 15, art.
3(1); see also International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural
Rights (ICESCR), supra note 16, art. 2(2)], as well as a ‘do no harm’
principle [established originally in the Trail Smelter Case (U.S. v. Can.),
1941], in a manner that combines them with human (e.g., a right to life
or development) and political rights legal norms (a right to participation).
Collectively, these efforts illustrate how law continues to offer powerful
normative tools that campaign actors can use to appraise the inadequacies
of current resource consumption and management arrangements, as well
as decision-making procedures.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on occasion has found
such rights violated by polluting parties. For instance, in the case of Lopez-
Ostra v. Spain, it ruled that the pollution and fumes from a particular waste
treatment plant forced the plaintiffs to move from their homes [20EHRR
277, ECHR 16798/90 (1994)]. In the case of Oneryildiz v. Turkey [Eur.
Ct. H.R. 20 (2005)], the European Court ruled that Turkey had failed to
take measures to maintain a healthy environment and prevent an explo-
sion at a waste dump and in that had violated the right to life (protected in
Article II of the ECHR). The decision in this case opened the door sub-
sequently for further findings by the European Court that environmen-
tal damage violates human rights (e.g., Dubetska and Others v. Ukraine
(2011)—violation of Article 8 ECHR the right to privacy and family life)
(see ECHR Environment Cases 2015). Similarly, the African Commission
 INTRODUCTION 17

on Human and Peoples’ Rights has begun to recognize polluting practices

as a violation of human rights to life, health, and property, all of which are
protected under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. In its
2001 ruling in the Social and Economic Rights Action Center (SERAC)
v. Nigeria, the African Commission ruled that Nigeria’s participation in
and failure to stop extensive oil spills and water contamination violated
the Ogoni peoples’ right to life, health, and property, among other rights.
More recently, the District Court of The Hague (June 2015), referring
to obligations embedded in the European Convention on Human Rights
and those incorporated in the Dutch constitution (e.g., Article 21 refer-
ring to the state’s duty to safeguard the living environment), ordered the
Netherlands to reduce its GHG emissions by 25 % by the end of 2020
(see Case C/09/456689/HA ZA 13-1396). It claimed the Dutch state’s
failure to reduce emissions levels represented a breach of both European
and national law. The Urgenda Foundation, along with 900 co-plaintiffs,
originally filed a case against the Dutch state in 2013 on the grounds that
it had failed in its basic function, that is, to protect its citizens and for such
reasons, it had no choice but to seek such protection from a court of law.11
By grounding social representations of the human costs of contempo-
rary climate destruction in the collectively shared language of human rights,
legal campaigns have furthered the cause for greater institutional account-
ability and responsibility for environmental wrongdoing. According to
existing human rights legislation, those whose human rights have been
violated are entitled to effective remedies in the form of compensation for
damages incurred, as well as aid to prevent further harm. More recently
(ruling of The Hague Court), a legal argument has been made that com-
munities are entitled to see states honour their commitments to reduce
emissions levels.12 Human rights are proving to be an evermore promi-
nent component of the socio-political and legal-normative interface that
regulates engagements between the various peoples of this world. They
are also, simultaneously, the crucibles (Tarrow 1992) out of which newer
understandings of justice and democracy are being forged in response
to the ecological challenges that are peculiar to the Anthropocene age.
For climate justice campaigners the project of emancipation remains that
of the realization of an underlying, if somewhat frustrated, potential for
democracy and freedom. Legal cases prove important opportunities to
learn how a socio-cultural elaboration of the principles of justice, equality,
and right continue to evolve in the contemporary world.
18 T. SKILLINGTON

The good news is that our judiciary is remaining strong and independent
and continuing to hold out hope for us all (Gopal, Co-Executive Director
of Greenpeace India, 2015).

However, the realization also is that we are only free to engage in a trans-
formative praxis to the extent that we are free members of democratic
societies. As Gopal (2015) further explains, publics must continue ‘to ask
questions, voice opinions, and speak up in defense of those—like us—who
dare to disagree with those in power. People have begun to reclaim the
belief that dissent is vital in a democracy’. For ActionAid (2012c), such
freedoms begin at a rudimentary level and at an early stage within the
micro contexts of everyday social life.

So just as much as we can demand that our rights be fulfilled, we also have
an obligation to make sure that we live up to human rights standards in
our own behavior to others. This calls for tolerance, compromise, gender
equality and empathy—the ability to see the world from other people’s per-
spectives. These values must be reflected in meetings where people have
the confidence to speak out, listen carefully and respond respectfully to one
another; it must be reflected in the way government officers interact with
citizens, in schools where teachers must respect students, in civil society
organisations where leaders must respect their members and in the family
where men and women, young and old, must respect one another. Learning
about democracy and human rights is one thing, but to live out these values
is quite another challenge (ActionAid 2012: 7).

Honneth (2014: 131–255) similarly draws attention to the importance

of building solid social foundations for freedom, tolerance, and respect
for the perspective of others. Individuals, he adds, can perform the type
of reflexive acts required for the creation of democratic societies only if
they interact socially with others who do the same. Socially embedded
practices of freedom are thought to be shaped initially by the institutions
of the family, the school system, employment, as well as friendships, inti-
mate relationships, and wider civil society engagement. It is here that the
foundations of a reciprocal freedom are nurtured. Today the potential to
foster a socially embedded culture of freedom is enhanced further by new
communications technologies, which at least hold out the possibility of
a greater reciprocal exploration of social freedoms well beyond the con-
fines of local context. Public perceptions of global climate risk have come
to be heavily shaped by new technologically mediated spaces of global
communication, spaces that transnational climate justice campaigners have
 INTRODUCTION 19

utilized very effectively to globalize their messages of protest (e.g., Twitter,

facebook campaigns) and build solidarity networks that reach across mul-
tiple settings, adding a distinctly ‘glocal’ (Robertson 1992; Beck 2002:
23) dimension to their campaign activities.
The global public domain created by such technologies allows for a freer
expression of human interests. Knowledge of climate change today exists
in predominantly transnational forms and is interpreted and reinterpreted
by a whole variety of actors, including climate justice movements within,
across, and beyond individual states. Many thinkers, including Paehlke
(2011: 144), remain optimistic that a more decentralized action plan on
climate change will eventually emerge as the normative pressure created by
dispersed networks of aggrieved publics campaigning on a variety of issues
continues to grow. Across the EU, Australia, the USA, Russia, India, and
China, mini-publics emerge encouraging new divisions to arise between
official government responses to climate risk (i.e., directed largely at the
question of border security and an exclusion of the other) and more cos-
mopolitan communities whose liberating prerogative is the forging of new
imaginaries of political belonging and civic solidarity with globally dispersed
others campaigning for justice on similar issues (e.g., efforts to build cos-
mopolitan communities of resource justice). Such developments reflect a
‘cosmopolitanization’ of the global risk society (Beck 2008: 29), where
community alliances begin to extend outwards beyond the nation state to
form more internationally distributed configurations of political communi-
cation and action. For instance, those engaged in campaigns to protect the
atmospheric commons, or those who align with ‘common struggles to build
real solutions to the global climate crisis’ (see Climate Justice Now 2009).

From disenchanted urban middle-class youth, to disenfranchised tribal

elders. From firebrand activists to philanthropic foundations. From petition
signers to panchayats to pensioners. We’ve all had our voices ignored, dimin-
ished, curtailed or stifled. But not for long (Vinuta Gopal, Co-Executive
Director of Greenpeace India, 2015).

One significant effect of these cosmopolitan communities’ efforts has been

their capacity to stimulate an increased propensity among publics more
generally for cognitive liberation, or the reconceptualization in the minds
of publics of ‘unintended’ acts of ecological destruction as deliberate
episodes of harm, arbitrary interference, and blatant injustice (Skillington
2012a). Transnational in scope and somewhat more versatile than their
traditional domestic counterparts, globally sustained communities of
20 T. SKILLINGTON

protest have gradually transformed the way publics think more generally
about the causes and consequences of climate change and, in the process,
have helped to resituate the state within a broader framework of culpabil-
ity and democratic accountability.

POLLUTION PRACTICES AS PRACTICES OF DOMINATION

Cognitive liberation has allowed publics to see that those who pollute the
atmosphere at excessive rates and in full knowledge of the consequences
of doing so interfere arbitrarily with the choices of others to live in a
safe and sustainable environment. In the process, practices of excessive
pollution come to be seen as practices of domination. For Pettit (2010:
73), domination is a relationship in which one actor exerts ‘a power of
arbitrary interference’ over the choices of another. Interference is experi-
enced in various forms, including, though not limited to, an obstruction
of everyday community life (through a pollution of vital water reserves,
for instance), deception (e.g., cover-up of polluting activities or the dan-
gers of chemical released into local water supplies), coercion (new energy
exploration projects promoted without the full consent of local commu-
nities), or the manipulation of the terms of trade agreements between
states. In the absence of a sufficiently open reasoning ensuring the power
of choice, as well as channels of mutual control, poor and more eco-
nomically vulnerable communities are unable to exert sufficient con-
trol over choices on resource management and distribution (e.g., land
leasing arrangements with large global corporations). Foreign parties,
for example, may come to exercise a form of ‘alien control’ over such
communities, exerting their power through interference (e.g., upstream
states overconsuming shared water reserves), as well as political and/or
economic intimidation. Transnational economic institutions who dictate
the terms of bailout agreements (e.g., the International Monetary Fund)
also exercise a form of domination by restricting the degree to which
developing countries and transnational organizations occupy common
spaces of unhindered reason and relationships of mutual respect and
freedom can prevail. The real implications of such relations of domina-
tion, in all their variety, are in terms of their impact on individual human
lives.
In opposition to relations of domination, human rights principles take
as given the notion that each individual is free to make choices and form
beliefs in a reason-sensitive manner, as well as establish through ongoing
 INTRODUCTION 21

communicative exchange, projects of mutual co-operation and respectful

gain. Acts of excessive pollution are interpreted by the climate justice actor
as a deliberate interference with such freedoms and the self-realization
capacities of the individual. Individuals are denied not only choices in
terms of their future but even more fundamentally, the capacity to realize
a future of security. Those who today face the destruction of their lands
and homes due to rising sea levels or prolonged periods of drought find
no solace in the unimplemented words of the UNFCCC (1992) that ‘the
specific needs and special circumstances of developing country Parties,
especially those that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of
climate change’ will be ‘given full consideration’ (UNFCCC 1992, Article
3: 4). Similarly, the UN’s ideal of ‘larger freedom’ (1945) occasionally
draws criticism from some who claim that, in truth, there are no exact
achievements of this ideal and that the best we can hope for is that repre-
sentative political regimes will work towards trying to reduce inequalities
and tendencies towards domination. Nonetheless, larger freedom remains
a highly significant motivating impulse towards transformative action for
those campaigning against ‘the scandal’ that is global poverty and pol-
lution (Christian Aid 2012) and defending the rights and freedoms of
all victims of ‘economic and ecological crimes’ (Westra 2009). For these
actors, larger freedom can be realized if the political will to do so is truly
collective.
In the reasoning of climate justice campaigners is the understanding
that the achievement of ‘larger freedom’ requires the actualization of the
full range of human rights, as well as political rights to ‘free, prior informed
consent’, ‘equitable benefits’, and ‘effective participation’ in decision-mak-
ing processes whose outcomes profoundly affect their quality of life (CIEL
2012: 17–18). Just as campaigns for a greater recognition of the civil and
political rights of marginalized peoples in the past were grounded in con-
cerns about imbalances in power, today similar concerns are expressed
in relation to the disproportionate amount of power yielded by global
corporate giants and more economically dominant states. The domination
exercised by these actors over communities everywhere overshadows a rec-
ognition of ‘the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human
family’ (see International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966).
Populations have a right to security from the type of excessive pollution
generated by these actors and the risks that follow, including a greater
threat of storm surges, drought, land degradation, crop failure, and so on
and further, loss of income, home, health, and dignity. Growing numbers
22 T. SKILLINGTON

are threatened by a loss of rights to property, access to essential sources of

food, water, as well as a basic means of subsistence. More still are denied
a right to preserve the natural wealth and long-term viability of their ter-
ritories (e.g., the peoples of disappearing states), placing the ‘equal rights
and self-determination’ of such peoples in serious jeopardy (UN Charter
Article 1(2), 1945). Columbia and Nigeria have already taken steps to
protect their populations’ right to a clean environment by placing it under
constitutional guarantee. Citizens can now claim the impact of climate
change as a violation of their civil and political rights to life, home, dignity,
and personal security.
Climate justice coalitions point to the fact that such domination is not
restricted to living communities. Climate powers also exert considerable
control over humanity’s capacities for a sustainable future. Inadequate
reserves of essential resources are being set aside for generations to come,
thereby threatening the resource base of future humanity. The quality of
life enjoyed by descendants of present humanity depends on the latter’s
choices and willingness to act responsibly on the basis of knowledge of the
determining role they play in shaping the future of this planet. Growing
awareness of the consequences of large-scale resource depletion means that
our choices can no longer be justified by a ‘veil of ignorance’ regarding
future outcomes. Instead, the expectation must be that present humanity
will work towards securing the ‘larger freedoms’ of future humanity by
actualizing a principle of non-domination (Pettit 2010: 88) when decid-
ing on energy policy or rates of carbon consumption, for instance. For
future generations to enjoy their status as independent and free subjects,
their capacity to do so must be protected.
Such protection requires that the ‘who’ in justice deliberation be
extended (Fraser 2010: 31) to include hypothetical peoples of the
future. The intrinsically border-crossing dimensions of an intergener-
ational climate justice require a broader range perspective where the
ideological injustice of historically embedded conceptions of justice is
finally challenged and generations are forced to think in less self-inter-
ested terms. As Rawls puts it, justice requires that ‘for anyone in the
next generation, there is someone who cares about him [or her] in the
previous generation’ (Rawls 1971: 129; see also Held 1995: 98–101).
One of the great injustices of the present age is the lack of concern for
the resource needs of future humanity, a subject of justice that has been
unfairly ignored until now, according to campaigners such as the World
Another random document with
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 Its dainty chalice with blue petals, where
The shade of bushes makes a shy retreat?
And we will frame our daily happiness
By joining hearts, lips, brows in rapt caress
Far from the world, its noises and conceit.
Shall we not hide our modest love between
Trees wafting cool on flowers and grasses green?

In Victor Kinon’s poetry is shown a knowledge of nature like that

possessed by that American poet whose death the world of letters
has not ceased to mourn, Madison Cawein. He sketches a
landscape in a few vigorous lines, and the picture is vivid and true.
This little poem might be a lyrical rendition of a Monet painting.

THE SETTING SUN

The stainless snow and the blue,

Lit by a pure gold star,
Nearly meet, but a bar
Of fire separates the two.

A rime-frosted, black pinewood,

Raising, as waves roll foam,
Its lances toothed like a comb,
Dams the horizon’s blood.

In a tomb of blue and white

Nothing stirs save a crow,
Unfolding solemnly now
Its silky wing black as night.

It is difficult to resist the temptation to read into the Catholic fold

many Belgian poets who do not, perhaps, belong there. There is
scarcely a man of letters in Belgium who does not owe his
introduction to literature to the Catholic Church. The Catholic schools
and universities of Belgium have given a knowledge of art and poetry
to many a poet who now pays for the gift his little stanzas of abuse.
But some of them, and among them must be counted Emile
Verhaeren, seem to be thinking of their old faith, now that the need
of faith has become terribly apparent to them. Verhaeren, especially,
seems to be about to stop in his weary flight from the Hound of
Heaven. For many years he was a writer of poems that seemed to
betray a mind absolutely diseased. There were realistic studies of
human vice that seemed like pages of Zola done into verse, and
there were extraordinary attempts (of which Stefan Zweig speaks
approvingly) to “chisel a new face of God.” But since his retirement
to his little cottage at Caillou-qui-Bique, he has written poems that
are for the most part exaltations of pure love, as lofty in thought as
they are finished in composition. Mr. Bithell’s translation of this little
song of wedded love shows that Verhaeren has left far behind him
the grossness of Les Flamandes and the morbidness of Les
Flambeaux Noirs.

THIS IS THE GOOD HOUR WHEN THE LAMP IS LIT

This is the good hour when the lamp is lit.

All is calm, and consoling, and dear,
And the silence is such that you could hear
A feather falling in it.

This is the good hour when to my chair my love will flit

As breezes blow,
As smoke will rise,
Gentle, slow,
She says nothing at first—and I am listening;
I hear all her soul, I surprise
Its gushing and glistening,
And I kiss her eyes.

This is the good hour when the lamp is lit.

When hearts will say
How they have loved each other through the day.
 And one says such simple things:
The fruit one from the garden brings;
The flower that one has seen
Opening in mosses green;

And the heart will of a sudden thrill and glow,

Remembering some faded word of love
Found in a drawer beneath a cast-off glove
In a letter of a year ago.

But the poem which indicates most clearly the tremendous

change that his nation’s tragedy has brought to Verhaeren, is that
inspired by the demolition of the Cathedral of Rheims. A year ago, it
may be, Verhaeren would have thought of this cathedral merely as a
beautiful piece of architecture, as an ancient and lovely landmark.
Now that it has suffered from the cannon of an invading army, he
remembers suddenly the high use for which it was intended, the
destruction of the sacred images and vessels reminds him, in spite
of all his sophistry, that these things were not mere works of art.
Once more, as in those far-away years when, with Georges
Rodenbach, Charles Van Lerberghe, and Maurice Maeterlinck, he
learned of literature and life at the Jesuit College of Sainte-Barbe, he
is able to understand that most necessary of all acts, worship. The
poem is so significant, so important to all who desire an insight into
the psychology of Verhaeren and of literary Belgium, that I venture to
quote here my own translation of it. It by no means does justice to
the beauty of the original.

THE CATHEDRAL OF RHEIMS

He who walks through the meadows of Champagne

At noon in Fall, when leaves like gold appear,
Sees it draw near
Like some great mountain set upon the plain.
From radiant dawn until the close of day,
Nearer it grows
To him who goes
Across the country. When tall towers lay
Their shadowy pall
Upon his way,
He enters, where
The solid stone is hollowed deep by all
Its centuries of beauty and of prayer.
Ancient French temple! thou whose hundred kings
Watch over thee, emblazoned on thy walls,
Tell me, within thy memory-hallowed halls
What chant of triumph or what war-song rings?
Thou hast known Clovis and his Frankish train,
Whose mighty hand Saint Remy’s hand did keep,
And in thy spacious vault perhaps may sleep
An echo of the voice of Charlemagne.
For God thou hast known fear, when from His side
Men wandered, seeking alien shrines and new,
But still the sky was bountiful and blue
And thou wast crowned with France’s love and pride.
Sacred thou art, from pinnacle to base;
And in thy panes of gold and scarlet glass
The setting sun sees thousandfold his face;
Sorrow and joy in stately silence pass
Across thy walls, the shadow and the light;
Around thy lofty pillars, tapers white
Illuminate, with delicate sharp flames,
The brows of saints with venerable names,
And in the night erect a fiery wall.
A great but silent fervour burns in all
Those simple folk who kneel, pathetic, dumb,
And know that down below, beside the Rhine—
Cannon, horses, soldiers, flags in line—
With blare of trumpets, mighty armies come.
Suddenly, each knows fear;
Swift rumours pass, that every one must hear,
The hostile banners blaze against the sky
And by the embassies mobs rage and cry.
Now war has come and peace is at an end.
On Paris town the German troops descend.
They are turned back, and driven to Champagne.
And now as to so many weary men,
The glorious temple gives them welcome, when
It meets them at the bottom of the plain.
At once, they set their cannon in its way.
There is no gable now, nor wall
That does not suffer, night and day,
As shot and shell in crushing torrents fall.
The stricken tocsin quivers through the tower;
The triple nave, the apse, the lonely choir
Are circled, hour by hour,
With thundering bands of fire
And Death is scattered broadcast among men.
And then
That which was splendid with baptismal grace;
The stately arches soaring into space,
The transepts, columns, windows gray and gold,
The organ, in whose tones the ocean rolled,
The crypts, of mighty shades the dwelling places,
The Virgin’s gentle hands, the Saints’ pure faces,
All, even the pardoning hands of Christ the Lord
Were struck and broken by the wanton sword
Of sacrilegious lust.

O beauty slain, O glory in the dust!

Strong walls of faith, most basely overthrown!
The crawling flames, like adders glistening
Ate the white fabric of this lovely thing.
Now from its soul rose a piteous moan,
The soul that always loved the just and fair.
Granite and marble loud their woe confessed,
The silver monstrances that Popes had blessed,
The chalices and lamps and crosiers rare
Were seared and twisted by a flaming breath;
The horror everywhere did range and swell,
The guardian Saints into this furnace fell,
Their bitter tears and screams were stilled in death.
 Around the flames armed hosts are skirmishing.
The burning sun reflects the lurid scene;
The German army, fighting for its life,
Rallies its torn and terrified left wing;
And, as they near this place,
The imperial eagles see
Before them in their flight,
Here, in the solemn night,
The old Cathedral to the years to be
Showing, with wounded arms, their own disgrace.

Of Verhaeren’s school-fellows at Sainte-Barbe, one, Maurice

Maeterlinck, is already enjoying a fame which exceeds his deserts
and is not likely to endure. Georges Rodenbach, who died in 1898,
wrote, like Verhaeren, of Flemish peasants, but he gave them a
romantic glamour which has alienated critics who admire naturalistic
poetry. Stefan Zweig has little use for him, and Jethro Bithell speaks
of his “weary Alexandrines,” and says that his reputation has waned
considerably since his death. But Charles C. Clarke, of the Sheffield
Scientific School, in the course of an illuminating article on Belgian
literature, says that Rodenbach’s poems have considerable vogue in
France. From his discussion of Rodenbach I quote this felicitously
phrased paragraph:

“Morbid and mystic like his prose, Rodenbach’s poetry has a

delicacy and a silvery tone that are inimitable. Out of almost
nothing it weaves thoughts and calls up memories of wonderfully
melancholy beauty. In it water is always stagnant, giving chill
reflections of the sky through trees; lights are dim, footsteps
noiseless; rooms are repositories of reminders of the past,
where silence speaks to the heart through sad aspects. The
extent to which Rodenbach uses such notes constitutes his
originality. His skill in avoiding every common formula and his
delicate choice of metaphors seem really inspiration. No one has
imitated his poems of gray tints and muffled sounds, his
mourning designs of dull filigree, without falling into monotony
 and trifling. It is not enough praise for a poet to say of him that
he was unapproachable in picturing the accessories of
melancholy; but Rodenbach deserves no more, unless it be our
gratitude for preserving in literature something of ancient
Flanders which battle and flame have destroyed beyond material
restoration.”

Another school-fellow of Verhaeren, Charles Van Lerberghe, can

scarcely, I believe, be called a Catholic poet, although, like Dante
Gabriel Rossetti, whose disciple he was, his verse is filled with
Catholic symbolism. In a country like Belgium, in which nearly all the
education is Catholic, and in which nearly every poet is, at any rate
nominally, a Catholic, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between
writers who have a genuinely devotional spirit, and those who merely
like to play with mysticism. There are, for example, the amazing
poems of Max Elskamp. He writes simple and charming poems
about the Blessed Virgin and the Christ Child, and seems, indeed, to
have the hardy faith of his Flemish ancestors. But the simplicity of
his poems is not always convincing; the reader remembers that the
late William Sharpe wrote, as “Fiona MacLeod,” poems that seemed
to flame with all the piety of the Gael. And William Sharpe was, as he
took care to let the world know, a “pagan.” The feeling that
Elskamp’s interest in religion is chiefly literary is strengthened when
we learn from Mr. Bithell that most of the sacred names in his poems
have a symbolic meaning, that the Blessed Virgin means merely “the
pure woman,” and the Christ Child simply “the delicious infancy.”
Intellectual caprices like this seldom accompany genuine devotional
feeling.
But at any rate there is nothing to disgust or pain the reader in
Elskamp’s verse; whether or not he believes in the sacred
personages of whom he writes, he does not treat them irreverently.
His Catholicism, however, is not so convincing as is that of Thomas
Braun and Georges Ramaekers.
It is good to find that in Belgium, a country the literature of which
must inevitably reflect from time to time the strange fashions of
Germany and France, there has been preserved through the years
the poetry of Catholic tradition. Belgian poetry must become more
and more spiritual; the poets have seen and felt things mighty and
terrible, and they can no longer concern themselves with erotic
fancies and the nuances of their own emotions. In days to come,
historians of literature will perhaps see that on the thought of
Belgium as on the thought of all Europe, this war has had a clarifying
and strengthening effect. Good still comes from evil, sweetness from
force, and honeycomb out of the lion’s carcass. Belgium may say, in
the words of one of the truest poets of our time:

Sweet Sorrow, play a grateful part,

Break me the marble of my heart
And of its fragments pave a street
Where, to my bliss, myself may meet
One hastening with piercèd feet.
 LETTERS

To Charles Willis Thompson

The New York Times.
November 1, 1914.
Dear Charlie—
Can you lend me $1.00? I wish to go to New Brunswick, N. J. Help
me to gratify this strange whim!
J. Kilmer.

* * * * *

To Shaemas O’Sheel
Mahwah, N. J.
My dear Shaemas—
Aline and I are heartily glad of the splendid fortune that has come
to you and Blanche. I am sure you will enjoy Washington—it’s a very
lovely city as I remember it—I was there for two days at the age of
four.
With love from Mayor Gaynor, Cale Young Rice, Alfred Noyes,
Madison Cawein, B. Russell Hertz and Harriet Monroe,
 I am,
Yours,
Joyce.

* * * * *

The New York Times.

February 12, 1916.
Dear Shaemas:
I have been thinking a good deal about you for the last day or so,
and might therefore have known that a message from you was on its
way. The Minaret is a fine adventure, and God knows Washington
needs adventures more than any other city in the United States. There
is some beautiful writing and some brave and direct thinking in the
copies you sent me, and of course I enclose my subscription for a
year. I’d support any enterprise of yours, so long as it wasn’t a scheme
to make the Kaiser Mayor of Mahwah, New Jersey. I also enclose a
poem, with my blessing.
But why do you let your young collaborator—I suppose he is
responsible—be so damned vindictive! No poet has any right in the
world to knock the work of another poet who is honest. Vachel Lindsey
is, in my opinion, a sincere artist, whose work sometimes—as in “The
Chinese Nightingale”—glows with genius. That is of course only my
own opinion—but it is not merely a matter of opinion, but a matter of
absolute fact, that he is an honest man, consistently serving his ideal,
earnestly endeavouring to express the beauty that is in him. And abuse
is not what he should receive from his brother poet.
However, go ahead, and good luck to you. But lay off the hammer!
Poets have enough to suffer without being castigated by other poets.
Keep out of jail, and give my love to Blanche and Patrick Wilhelm.
Yours as always,
Joyce Kilmer.

* * * * *
 To Louis Bevier, Jr.
New York Times.
November 28, 1916.
My dear Louis:
I am sending you by this mail a copy of my book “The Circus and
Other Essays,” which our friend Laurence has just published. I had
intended to dedicate it to your father and yourself, but I suddenly
discovered that I had never dedicated a book to my own father. So I
have dedicated this one to him, and will dedicate to your father and
yourself one of the two books coming out in the Spring—either the
poems or the interviews.
At any time you wish, I will buy you a drink.
Yours sincerely,
Joyce Kilmer.

* * * * *

To Sara Teasdale Filsinger

New York Times.
February, 1916.
Dear Sara:
I don’t know that POETRY could use a Valentine poem, but if it
could do so, it ought by all means to use it long after Valentine’s day,
for timeliness, the greatest curse of our much cursed magazines, is
certainly not one of POETRY’S vices. And how do you like it? It’s the
first free verse I’ve written since free verse made a special label for
itself—it’s a highly artificial poem, and yet passionately sincere.
I’ve quit being a critic, thank God! I resigned from the Bookman
and Book News Monthly, and I no longer review poetry for the Times. I
still run the Digest’s “Current Poetry” department, but that’s not
criticism, it’s just an exhibition. I merely hold up for admiration the best
poetry I can find, saying nothing about inferior stuff. And I can do that
without losing my self-respect. But criticism of poetry is no task for an
enthusiastic poet, however little he may deserve the title.
Aline is still in hospital, impatient for the new baby. She likes to
receive letters.
Yours, Joyce.

* * * * *

To Katherine Brégy
The New York Times,
Times Square.
November 6, 1914.
My dear Miss Brégy:
It is delightful to find on my desk this morning your letter telling me
of the honour in store for me. Of course I am reading with enjoyment
the “Opera” in America; how valuable a friend Catholic poetry, that is
poetry, has in you!
A verse-maker, I suppose, is an unskillful critic of his own work. But
in reply to your question, I will say that I am greatly pleased when
people like “Trees,” “Stars” and “Pennies,” when they see that “Folly” is
a religious poem, when they praise the stanza fourth from the end of
“Delicatessen,” and understand stanza three of section four of “The
Fourth Shepherd.”
 Before what Miss Guiney calls my “great leap into Liberty” I
published a book of verses called “Summer of Love”; but I do not think
it would interest you; it is, for the most part, a celebration of common
themes. If you have not a copy of “Trees and Other Poems” please tell
me and I will send you one. I will send also “Summer of Love” if you
wish it, for some of the poems in it, those inspired by genuine love, are
not things of which to be ashamed, and you, understanding, would not
be offended by the others.
Your sincerely,
Joyce Kilmer.

* * * * *

May 18th, 1917.

Dear Katherine:
Naturally I’m expecting to go to the Wars, being of appropriate age
and sex. I was going to Plattsburg to try for a commission, but for
many reasons—one of them being that I didn’t want to be an officer in
charge of conscripts (the democratic bluff again! says Katherine)—I
gave up the idea. So a month ago I enlisted as a private in the Seventh
Regiment, National Guard, New York. We were reviewed by your
friend Joffre—in 1824 we were reviewed by Lafayette. We go to
training camp in a week or so—where I don’t know—and then we are
mustered into Federal service. We may be sent to France, we may be
sent to Russia, or it may be Mexico or Cuba—nobody knows.
Please come to New York and let me take you to luncheon. And
give Mrs. Coates my love.
Joyce.

* * * * *
 To Amelia Josephine Burr
Headquarters Company, 165th Infantry,
A. E. F., France.
My dear Josephine:
That is a magnificent piece of knitting—I am delighted to own it.
Thanks ever so much! And I will thank you ever more for your book of
poetry, which you promise to send me. I enjoyed your recent poems in
the Outlook—you are one of the few American poets who should be
allowed to write war songs. Your letter came up to the specifications of
the order—it was highly entertaining and therefore genuinely
appreciated. I sympathise with you in your trials in addressing camp
audiences, though I don’t know as you deserve any sympathy. I think
you have a pretty good time. And I know the audiences do.
I wouldn’t be surprised to hear of you coming over here as a nurse
or something. Nice country, nice war. I wouldn’t be back in the States
having meatless, wheatless, boozeless, smokeless days for anything. I
am a Sergeant now. I spend my time working at Regimental
Headquarters while we are in reserve, and in training and when we are
in action I am an Observer in the Regimental Intelligence Section—
very amusing work. I had a fine time during the recent activities of our
regiment, activities of which you probably read in the papers. In the
dug-out I wrote a poem I think you’ll like—“Rouge Bouquet” is its
name. I expect to remain a Sergeant (unless I’m reduced), for to get a
commission I’d have to leave the Regiment and go to a training school
for several months and then I would be sent to some regiment other
than this. And I’d rather be a sergeant in the 69th than a lieutenant in
any other outfit.
Give my love to anybody you meet who would appreciate that
commodity. And write often to
Yours,
Joyce.

* * * * *
 To Howard W. Cook
Headquarters Company, 165th Infantry,
A. E. F., France.
June 28, 1918.
Dear Mr. Cook:
Your letter of May 31 has just arrived. I am afraid that such
information as I can send you will reach you too late to be of use, but
anyway I’ll do what I can.
You ask first for biographical details. All this material you will find in
Who’s Who in America, except the information that I am the father of
four children, named respectively Kenton Sinclair, Deborah Clanton,
Michael Barry and Christopher.
Second, you ask for comments on myself and something about my
earlier efforts in poetry. That’s harder to answer. How can I make
comments on myself? I’ll pass up that part of the questionnaire, if I
may, but I’m willing to write about my earlier efforts in poetry. They
were utterly worthless, that is, all of them which preceded a poem
called “Pennies” which you will find in my book “Trees and Other
Poems.” I want all my poems written before that to be forgotten—they
were only the exercises of an amateur, imitations, useful only as
technical training. If what I nowadays write is considered poetry, then I
became a poet in November, 1913.
Now, as to your other questions. I’ll take them in order. 1. What has
contemporary poetry already accomplished? Answer—All that poetry
can be expected to do is to give pleasure of a noble sort to its readers,
leading them to the contemplation of that Beauty which neither words
nor sculptures nor pigments can do more than faintly reflect, and to
express the mental and spiritual tendencies of the people of the lands
and times in which it is written. I have very little chance to read
contemporary poetry out here, but I hope it is reflecting the virtues
which are blossoming on the blood-soaked soil of this land—courage,
and self-abnegation, and love, and faith—this last not faith in some
abstract goodness, but faith in God and His Son and the Holy Ghost,
and in the Church which God Himself founded and still rules. France
has turned to her ancient Faith with more passionate devotion than
she has shown for centuries. I believe that America is learning the
same lesson from the war, and is cleansing herself of cynicism and
pessimism and materialism and the lust for novelty which has
hampered our national development. I hope that our poets already see
this tendency and rejoice in it—if they do not they are unworthy of their
craft.
2. What is American poetry’s influence to-day? Answer—This
question I am ill-prepared to answer, but I would venture to surmise
that the extravagances and decadence of the so-called “renascence of
poetry” during the last five years—a renascence distinguished by the
celebration of the queer and the nasty instead of the beautiful—have
made the poet seem as silly a figure to the contemporary American as
he seemed to the Englishman of the eighteen-nineties, when the
“æsthetic movement” was at its foolish height.
3. What of American poetry’s future? Answer—To predict anything
of American poetry’s future requires a knowledge of America’s future,
and I am not a student of political economy. But this much I will tell you
—when we soldiers get back to our homes and have the leisure to
read poetry, we won’t read the works of Amy Lowell and Edgar Lee
Masters. We’ll read poetry, if there is any for us to read, and I hope
there will be. I believe there will.
Sincerely yours,
Joyce Kilmer.

* * * * *

To Thomas Walsh
Headquarters Co., 165th Infantry,
A. E. F., France.
April.
Dear Tom:
Where will you be, I wonder, when this letter reaches you?
Perhaps in the Brooklyn sanctuary (this term is here used in a purely
literary sense) reading reviews of your newest book of verse—pleasant
reading indeed, judging by those I have seen. Perhaps you will be in
your Sabine farm at Lake Hopatkong—if that is the way that strange
word is spelled. Perhaps the postman will give it to you just as you
parade away from your home, and you will take it with you to the
palatial new Columbia University Club, and glance at it over your turtle
soup and sherry and steak and mushrooms and corn and sweet
potatoes and chaveis—but I’m breaking my heart describing this meal
of yours. Soon the mess call will sound and I’ll take my aluminum meat
dish and canteen cup, and wade through the mud to the mess-line.
And I’ll get a plate of stew and some milkless tea or coffee, and I’ll
stand in the mud or sit down in the mud and consume it.
Nevertheless, it’s a nice war and I’m enjoying most of it. Our time
at the front—of which the newspapers have by this time informed you
—was a wonderful experience. I had the privilege of spending a week
as observer in the Regimental Intelligence Section—lively and
interesting work. I’d love to see you at an observation post, Tom, you’d
get as thin as I now am.
Send me your book, will you, Tom? I enjoy poetry more now than
ever before—I suppose it is because I get it so seldom. When I’m
writing verse and reviewing verse and talking about verse and to
verse-makers all the time, I have not the enthusiasm for it I have over
here, where most of the poetry is unwritten and undiscussed.
Nevertheless, it’s a nice country. I’d like to buy you a litre of red
wine—for a franc and a half—with a dash of syrup in it. Also I could
introduce you to the results of the labours of a few accomplished
cooks, some of them soldiers, some of them French women.
Fr. O’Donnell quotes you to the effect that Louis is now in this land,
or on his way hither. I hope to see him. He ought to be sent to an
Officer’s Training School soon—I think that will happen. He is the sort
of fellow who ought to have a commission. I might possibly be allowed
to go to an Officer’s Training School, but I wouldn’t do so, because if I
did so I’d be sent—whether or not I got a commission—to some
Regiment other than this. And I take no pleasure in the thought of
soldiering in a regiment of strangers. I like the crowd in this outfit very
much and would rather be a sergeant—as I am—here than be a
lieutenant in any other Regiment.
If you are ever minded to send me papers, please let them be
Times Book Reviews or other sheets of a decidedly literary flavour.
Occasional copies of The Bookman would be welcome. I like a bit of
concentrated literature now and then.
Remember me, please, to your sisters and brothers and to any of
my other friends whom you may meet. And believe me
Always yours sincerely,
Joyce.

* * * * *

To Robert Cortes Holliday

Headquarters Co., 165th Inf.,
A. E. F., France.
May 7, 1918.
Dear Bob:
I have not the time now to write you the letter I’d like to write—
chiefly about your characteristic and delightful Tarkington book, which I
greatly enjoyed and expect to enjoy during many re-readings. What I
write now is merely a note in answer to your letter of April 12. This you
will please communicate to Mr. Doran and regard as final.
The only way I can give you any material for a book is as I am
doing now—sending you every six months or so some verses or an
introspective essay which you can syndicate and eventually turn into a
book. I sent you a prose sketch “Holy Ireland” (which represents the
best prose writing I can do nowadays), another prose sketch, and (by
way of Aline) a poem, “Rouge Bouquet,” which you ought to be able to
do a good deal with. It is probably the best verse I have written. I never
planned doing war-correspondence work—if I had I’d have come over
as a correspondent instead of as a soldier. Many circumstances,
including the censorship, the rules governing a soldier’s conduct and
other things, prevent me from trying to make a consecutive narrative
now, even if I so desired. I am a poet at present trying to be a soldier.
The experience may naturally be expected to result in a book—of
some kind, at some time. I am not going to try to “cover” the war or my
Regiment’s share in it. But the title “Here and There With the Fighting
Sixty-ninth” may probably be taken as well as any other to cover what,
if I survive, I shall probably, in the course of time, write. My days of
hack writing are over, for a time at least.
To tell the truth, I am not at all interested in writing nowadays,
except in so far as writing is the expression of something beautiful.
And I see daily and nightly the expression of beauty in action instead
of words, and I find it more satisfactory. I am a Sergeant in the
Regimental Intelligence Section—the most fascinating work possible—
more thrills in it than in any other branch except possibly aviation. And
it’s more varied than aviation. Wonderful life! But I don’t know what I’ll
be able to do in civilian life—unless I become a fireman!
Please give my love to Stella and believe me always your
affectionate and grateful friend
Joyce.

* * * * *

To Reverend Edward F. Garesché, S.J.

Hq. Co., 165th Inf.,
A. E. F.
Jan. 29, 1918.