We are in the grip of a climate emergency. Recently, a letter signed by more than 11,000 scientists from 153 countries, published in the journal BioScience, stated frankly that ‘[a]n immense increase of scale in endeavors to conserve our biosphere is needed to avoid untold suffering due to the climate crisis’.11 William J. Ripple, Christopher Wolf, Thomas Newsome, et al., ‘World scientists' warning of a climate emergency’, BioScience, 70 (2020), 8–12, at p. 8. It is in this profoundly disturbing context, at the dawn of what may perhaps be humanity's most defining decade, that a degree of critical reflection on the role political philosophers can, and should, play in these endeavours seems apt.

Over the last three decades, political philosophers/theorists and ethicists22 We shall use the terms interchangeably. have attempted to grapple with the myriad conceptual and normative challenges posed by climate change. They have produced a rich and fascinating canon of scholarship that has pushed the boundaries of moral and political theory, bringing formerly marginal questions—about global duties, future persons, non-human species, diffusely caused harms, risk and uncertainty, for example—into the mainstream of philosophical theorizing. Climate change, in short, has done much for philosophy. But philosophy, we suggest, has not done much for climate change. That is, we doubt whether normative theorizing about climate change (hereafter ‘climate ethics’) has done much to positively influence real-world climate action.33 We focus here on climate change mitigation, but engaged climate ethics is also applicable to other domains of climate ethics, such as adaptation and ‘loss and damage’. This, at least, is our motivating hunch.

Perhaps troubled by this failure, many theoretical interventions in climate ethics over the last decade or so have taken a ‘non-ideal’ turn. In this article, however, we argue that the standard approach to non-ideal climate ethics limits its capacity to have a positive influence on real-world climate action. Rather, we argue that engaged methods44 The term ‘engaged political philosophy’ has been used in a similar but distinct sense by Jonathan Wolff, ‘Method in philosophy and public policy: applied philosophy versus engaged philosophy’, Annabelle Lever and Andrei Poama (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Ethics and Public Policy (Oxford: Routledge, 2019), pp. 13–24. Wolff describes a method in which the philosopher engages with other kinds of experts to develop and evaluate public policy proposals. As discussed in Section III, we see this as but one type of engaged theorizing among (at least two) others. —methods of doing political theory that involve substantial interaction between the theorist and an actual or potential agent of change, or participation by the theorist in such a group agent, where such interaction or participation influences the content of the theorist's normative constructs—are a superior means of achieving that objective.

To be clear, we are not suggesting that engaged climate ethics is the only way climate ethics could legitimately be done. We take no issue with using standard methods as a means to achieving progress towards philosophy's truth-seeking objective. However, we believe many of our colleagues pursue climate ethics at least partly because they are concerned about the effects of climate change, and they believe, in a pragmatist vein, that climate ethics can have some influence, however marginal, on social responses to it. Accordingly, this group of philosophers, at least, should be interested in how climate ethics scholarship can best—or at least better—achieve that practical objective. Given the scale and urgency of the climate crisis, we think this is a valuable contribution that normative theorists can make in their capacity as scholars (as distinct from their capacity as concerned citizens); and our purpose here is to spearhead efforts in that direction.

The article is structured as follows. In Section I, we briefly outline some recent examples of non-ideal climate ethics. We identify among such examples the common utilization of a principles-first method of non-ideal theorizing. In Section II, we critically evaluate in detail one illustrative example of the principles-first method—a 2014 article in this journal by Simon Caney.55 Simon Caney, ‘Two kinds of climate justice: avoiding harm and sharing burdens’, Journal of Political Philosophy, 22 (2014), 124–49. We discuss two major weaknesses of Caney's method qua means of effectively averting the climate emergency (Caney's self-described goal). In Section III, we argue that engaged methods are well suited to overcoming these weaknesses, offering a more promising path to real-world influence through political theorizing. We discuss three kinds of engaged methods—which we call ethnographic, activist, and committee-based engaged methods—about which there has been much recent discussion, often methodologically reflexive, in political theory more generally. We suggest some promising subjects to which aspiring engaged climate ethicists might apply these engaged methods. In Section IV, we respond to a set of objections that goes to the legitimacy of engaged methods, which might be levelled by proponents of the more standard, principles-first approach.

我们正处于气候紧急状态。最近，一封由来自 153 个国家/地区的 11,000 多名科学家签署并发表在《生物科学》杂志上的一封信坦率地说，“需要大幅增加保护我们生物圈的努力规模，以避免气候危机造成的无尽痛苦” .11 William J. Ripple、Christopher Wolf、Thomas Newsome 等人，“世界科学家对气候紧急情况的警告”，《生物科学》，70（2020），8-12，第 10 页。8. 正是在这种极其令人不安的背景下，在可能是人类最具决定性的十年之初，对政治哲学家在这些努力中可以而且应该发挥的作用进行一定程度的批判性反思似乎是恰当的。

在过去的三年中，政治哲学家/理论家和伦理学家22我们将交替使用这些术语。试图应对气候变化带来的无数概念和规范挑战。他们创造了丰富而引人入胜的学术经典，突破了道德和政治理论的界限，将以前边缘化的问题——例如关于全球责任、未来的人、非人类物种、广泛造成的伤害、风险和不确定性——带入了哲学理论的主流。简而言之，气候变化对哲学起了很大作用。但我们认为，哲学对气候变化并没有多大作用。也就是说，我们怀疑关于气候变化的规范理论（以下简称“气候伦理”）是否对现实世界的气候行动产生了积极影响。 33我们在此关注减缓气候变化，但参与的气候伦理也适用于气候伦理的其他领域，例如适应和“损失和损害”。 至少，这是我们的动力预感。

也许是受到了这种失败的困扰，在过去十年左右的时间里，气候伦理的许多理论干预都出现了“非理想”的转变。然而，在本文中，我们认为非理想气候伦理的标准方法限制了其对现实世界气候行动产生积极影响的能力。相反，我们认为参与的方法44乔纳森·沃尔夫 (Jonathan Wolff) 在类似但不同的意义上使用了术语“参与式政治哲学”，“哲学和公共政策的方法：应用哲学与参与式哲学”，安娜贝尔·勒沃 (Annabelle Lever) 和安德烈·波马 (Andrei Poama)（编辑），《劳特利奇伦理手册》和公共政策（牛津：Routledge，2019 年），第 13-24 页。沃尔夫描述了一种方法，在这种方法中，哲学家与其他类型的专家一起制定和评估公共政策建议。正如第三部分所讨论的，我们认为这只是（至少两种）其他理论的一种类型。 ——从事政治理论的方法涉及理论家与实际或潜在的变革推动者之间的实质性互动，或理论家参与这样的群体推动者，其中这种互动或参与影响了理论家的规范建构的内容——是优越的实现这一目标的手段。

需要明确的是，我们并不是说参与气候伦理是唯一的气候伦理可以合法地进行的方式。我们不反对使用标准方法作为实现哲学追求真理目标的手段。然而，我们相信我们的许多同事至少在一定程度上追求气候伦理，因为他们担心气候变化的影响，而且他们从实用主义的角度相信，气候伦理可以对社会对它的反应产生一些影响，无论多么微不足道。 . 因此，这群哲学家至少应该对气候伦理学如何最好地——或者至少更好地——实现这一实际目标感兴趣。考虑到气候危机的规模和紧迫性，我们认为这是规范理论家作为学者（不同于他们作为相关公民的能力）可以做出的宝贵贡献；

这篇文章的结构如下。在第一部分，我们简要概述了一些近期非理想气候伦理的例子。我们在这些例子中确定了非理想理论化的原则优先方法的普遍使用。在第二部分中，我们批判性地详细评估了原则优先方法的一个说明性示例——Simon Caney 于 2014 年在本杂志上发表的一篇文章。 55 Simon Caney，“两种气候正义：避免伤害和分担负担”，《政治哲学杂志》，22（2014 年），124-49。我们讨论了卡尼方法作为有效避免气候紧急情况的手段（卡尼自述的目标）的两个主要弱点。在第三节中，我们认为参与式方法非常适合克服这些弱点，通过政治理论为现实世界的影响提供更有希望的途径。我们讨论了三种参与方法——我们称之为人种学、激进主义和基于委员会的方法参与的方法——最近在政治理论中进行了很多讨论，通常是方法论上的反思。我们建议一些有前途的主题，有抱负的参与气候伦理学家可能会应用这些参与方法。在第四节中，我们回应了一系列反对参与方法的合法性的反对意见，这些反对意见可能会被更标准的、原则至上的方法的支持者提出。