ENERGY TRANSITION, CLIMATE JUSTICE AND THE RIGHT TO EXIST: PATHS TO THE TRANSITION TO A LOW-CARBON SOCIETY AND JURISDICTIONAL ROLE IN THE CLIMATE IMBROGLIO

Abstract

The climate emergency has imposed a new agenda in the scope of international relations, bringing to regulation the need to reconcile fields of knowledge that are different from each other, such as law, the study of energy, issues of an economic, political and social nature, with multiple interests, agendas, claims that need to be modulated, not in favor of immediate interests, but equating in an equitable way the needs of present and future generations and,  more broadly, of the conservation of life (human and non-human) on the planet. Thus, based on an approximation of the concepts of climate justice and energy transition, the text seeks to analyze the role of social, political, and economic agents and their actions at the global, regional, and subnational levels in creating possible solutions in this context of urgent needs of climate change. The text highlights how the capitalocene (era of capital in the interior of the Holocene) is responsible for an unprecedented crisis that threatens the existence of life on the planet. It was highlighted that the solutions to the problem posed are permeated by two needs, one immediate and rapid with the transition of use of clean, efficient and accessible technologies associated with another change or social transformation, this one deeper with an ontological basis in modern society, with the abandonment of utilitarianism and the estrangement of the human in relation to nature and the product of his work,  with a turn towards a society of non-exploitation. In this perspective, the change in the human relationship with nature is reflected in the need for technologies that need to be more than sustainable, because it is no longer enough to be renewable, it is necessary that they are also clean – understood as low emissions of Greenhouse Gases (GHG) – to be able to break the catastrophic future that lies ahead. In this context, given the need for regulation and the difficulty in promoting large global pacts for this purpose, such as the possibility of regional, bi- and multilateral regulations, they can play a more effective role in achieving global emissions targets. And so the hypothesis of unification of anti-systemic struggles for the formulation of a new low-carbon society arises, based on the concept of the right to existence (or the right to the material conditions of natural and social existence) highlighting that the sense of action of climate justice can establish a meeting of interests and the possibility of strategic use of climate litigation as a mechanism to induce public policies at the subnational levels,  national and regional governments, so that they can contribute to the fight against climate change and to the construction of another society, low-carbon and anti-capitalist.