There is no such thing as free lunch in environmental policy. Somebody, somewhere has to pay for climate protection. In their recent article, Inequality, Social Resilience, and the Green Economy, Sidney A. Shapiro and Robert R. M. Verchick remind us that we must examine the distribution of regulatory costs and benefits to assess the justice and equity implications of climate protection—and of climate neglect. Three facets of climate justice can offer additional emphasis to the issues that Shapiro and Verchick raise about distributional equity. The first and the most salient facet pertains to the disproportionate impact of climate bads. A well-established field of research on environmental justice suggests that the underprivileged—especially people of color—are disproportionately exposed to pollution or environmental degradation or both. Although climate change, an example of environmental degradation, results from an overuse of global commons, its costs are…
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