Exorbitant Responsibility: Geographies of Climate Justice

Abstract

Exorbitant responsibility is endlessly demanding. It calls for constant attentiveness to the appeals of others and to the inevitable inadequacies of all acts of assistance. It requires calculations of which biologist-turned-climate change commentator Tim Flannery has observed: `(n)ever in the history of humanity has there been a cost-benefit analysis that demands greater scrutiny’ (2005: 170). It takes off from a sense of unrepayable indebtedness that stretches back through an untraceable lineage of bodies into turbulent earth history.