Between Sacrifice and Care: Reflections on Elisa Morgera’s 2026 Montesquieu Lecture

Introduction

Elisa Morgera’s 2026 Montesquieu Lecture offers a timely and ambitious intervention in contemporary debates on climate justice, human rights, and the legal foundations of ecological transition. At a moment in which climate politics are increasingly polarized and international cooperation appears fragile, the lecture deliberately reclaims a normative horizon grounded in law, human dignity, and intergenerational justice. It does so by contrasting what Morgera calls a “logic of sacrifice” with a “logic of care,” arguing for a legal and economic transformation capable of protecting both vulnerable communities and future generations.

The lecture deserves appreciation precisely because it resists the current political headwinds surrounding climate governance. Discussions within the context of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and beyond have increasingly shifted from science-based deliberation toward heavily politicized contestation. Against this background, Morgera’s contribution recalls what John Rawls described as a “deliberative society”:¹ a society in which citizens recognize the necessity of finding fair terms of cooperation under conditions of persistent disagreement. Such a society requires more than majoritarian politics. It depends on independent courts, adaptive legal institutions, and a rules-based order capable of protecting not merely the interests of those currently in power, but also the rights of the weak, the marginalized, and future generations.

Morgera’s lecture clearly positions itself within this tradition. Behind a contemporary “veil of ignorance,” she gives normative priority to those most exposed to ecological harm and climate injustice. Her argument thus combines human rights reasoning with a broader critique of fossil-fuel-dependent economic systems.

The following reflections engage with this project from a political economy perspective. Economists are often regarded as practitioners of the “dismal science” because they tend to focus on observable behavior, incentives, and institutional structures rather than beginning from predetermined moral commitments or reflections.² In capitalist societies, this often means paying close attention to the role of profit incentives, industrial organization, and political power in determining market and environmental outcomes. The following discussion offers four reflections on Morgera’s lecture from this perspective.

I. The Logic of Sacrifice and Care are powerful, but not new

Morgera’s distinction between a “logic of sacrifice” and a “logic of care” is powerful and rhetorically compelling. The notion of sacrifice effectively captures how environmental degradation and climate harm are unevenly distributed across populations and territories. Mining regions, industrial zones, polluted urban peripheries, and climate-vulnerable regions often coincide with places inhabited by poorer and politically weaker communities. In this sense, sacrifice zones are real and persistent features of modern economic systems.

At the same time, the logic of sacrifice is not unique to fossil-fuel-based economies. Societies historically dependent on biomass, land-intensive agriculture, or extractive resource systems have also generated forms of ecological exploitation and social marginalization.³ Historical analyses of pre-industrial societies demonstrate that environmental sacrifice long predates contemporary carbon capitalism. Fossil fuels intensified and globalized these dynamics, but they did not create them.

Similarly, the “logic of care” has important precedents within environmental governance itself. In many respects, this logic of care resembles the long-standing legal and policy objective of preventing environmental harm before it occurs, and compensating victims when prevention fails.⁴,⁵ Liability law, precautionary regulation, environmental impact assessment, sustainable development, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) all embody elements of this logic.

II. Climate Change Is Only One Source of Ecological Harm

A second point concerns environmental complexity. Morgera’s holistic understanding of interconnected planetary systems is persuasive and valuable. However, there is a risk in attributing too broad a range of environmental harms primarily to fossil-fuel dependency.

Climate change is undoubtedly central to contemporary ecological disruption. Fossil fuels shape energy systems, industrial production, transportation, and material consumption patterns across the globe. Nevertheless, many environmental crises cannot be reduced to fossil carbon alone. Biodiversity loss, chemical pollution, freshwater degradation, nitrogen overload, and toxic contamination often arise from broader patterns of industrialization, agricultural intensification, and large-scale material throughput.

The distinction between climate related impacts and other environmental harm matters because policy responses should be different. The unprecedented but also complex interactions between human beings and the environment requires targeted interventions depending on the type of environmental harm. For instance, pollution related to asbestos or ‘forever chemicals’ have nothing to do with climate change. And they require different policy responses like outright bans to prevent further harm now or in the future. And yes, also here the logic of care and sacrifice could be used to think more carefully about potential governance pathways.

III. The Logic of Care is difficult to implement without the Logic of Sacrifice

Another issue relates to an important practical question that remains insufficiently addressed in her contribution: the transition towards net zero or ‘defossilization’ generates new forms of environmental pressure. Biomass expansion can accelerate deforestation. Electrification requires extensive extraction of critical minerals. Renewable infrastructure transforms landscapes and ecosystems. In other words, substitution processes are rarely environmentally neutral. So alternative energy systems require land, minerals, infrastructure, and industrial transformation.

So, it is hard to see how exactly the logic of care could accelerate defossilization without sacrifice? Transitioning away from fossil fuels itself is not free from sacrifice as well. Moreover, if a logic of care substantially increases procedural, distributive, and compensatory obligations surrounding every transition pathway, one might reasonably ask whether this could slow rather than accelerate decarbonization. And a transition delayed by legal and political complexity may ultimately even increase aggregate environmental harm.

Indeed, transitions sometimes imply difficult trade-offs. A rigid application of a “logic of care” could unintentionally constrain the flexibility necessary for technological substitution and innovation. A complete avoidance of environmental sacrifice may simply be impossible in complex industrial societies. Trade-offs are unavoidable here and one might ask which logic of sacrifice applies in this transition and would be acceptable.⁶

This concern does not invalidate climate justice claims. On the contrary, it suggests that justice should focus not only on prevention, but also on fair compensation, burden-sharing, and institutional protection for those who disproportionately bear transition costs. Sacrifices may remain unavoidable; injustice lies in who bears them and who benefits from them.

IV. The Missing Question of Economic Organization

Morgera also advocates alternative economic models centered on intergenerational equity and ecological sustainability. Such models already exist and have existed for decades within ecological economics, welfare and resource economics, and sustainability theory.⁷ Also integrated assessment models, post-growth frameworks, and planetary boundary approaches all attempt to incorporate long-term environmental constraints into economic analysis.

The real challenge is not the absence of theoretical models, but the persistence of institutional incentives that reward short-term profit maximization and externalization of environmental costs. In this sense, the issue is not merely epistemic but political-economic.

Planetary boundary thinking usefully reminds us of physical limits. The deeper structural issue is not fossil fuels alone, but the overall scale and intensity of human economic activity causing a broad set of negative environmental consequences. Yet practical decision-making continues to be governed by institutional structures that prioritize growth, competition, and shareholder value. The contradiction is therefore not between “economics” and “care,” but between competing institutional logics within capitalism itself.

This raises a deeper question, largely implicit in Morgera’s lecture: what institutional arrangements could realistically discipline short-term extractive behavior while preserving innovation, prosperity, and democratic legitimacy? Without addressing political economy more directly, calling for alternative economic models risk appearing normatively compelling but institutionally underdeveloped.⁸

V. The Problem of Power in a Fragmenting International Order

What appears genuinely innovative in Morgera’s contribution is not the contradiction between two logics, but the idea to strengthen preventive climate governance through human rights law and intergenerational justice. The lecture seeks to constitutionalize climate protection by framing ecological degradation as a violation of fundamental rights rather than merely a policy failure. This approach reminds us of Rawls’ search for procedural justice where human rights are defined and ordered in a careful and deliberative way.

However, Morgera’s logic of care and its implementation through constitutionalization must confront the realities of geopolitical conflict and institutional power. There are both encouraging and discouraging developments here. Courts increasingly recognize climate obligations, human rights bodies are expanding environmental protections, and international law is gradually integrating intergenerational concerns.

At the same time, legal victories do not automatically transform corporate behavior. The history of litigation in the United States demonstrates that firms facing stringent liability risks often respond not only through compliance, but also through lobbying, strategic misinformation, and political influence. Climate politics already exhibits many of these dynamics.⁹

Moreover, legal instruments themselves may produce contradictory effects. The Energy Charter Treaty, originally designed to protect investors against unreliable states, has in some cases complicated rapid defossilization by enabling compensation claims against governments pursuing climate policies.

Beyond these institutional tensions lies a broader geopolitical reality: international law itself is increasingly under pressure in an era of strategic rivalry, nationalism, and fragmented multilateralism. This raises a difficult but unavoidable question for Morgera’s project. How can a global “logic of care” be effectively institutionalized in a world still fundamentally structured by power politics?

Normative arguments remain indispensable. Legal imagination matters. Yet climate governance ultimately unfolds within systems of strategic competition, unequal bargaining power, and contested sovereignty. Any durable logic of care must therefore engage not only with rights and justice, but also with the political realities of implementation.

Conclusion

Elisa Morgera’s Montesquieu Lecture provides an important and courageous contribution to the contemporary climate debate. Its insistence that legal systems must protect vulnerable populations and future generations against ecological destruction is both morally compelling and jurisprudentially significant. Particularly in an era of growing politicization, the lecture reaffirms the continuing importance of independent law, human rights, and deliberative democratic ideals.

At the same time, translating a “logic of care” into workable political and economic institutions remains profoundly challenging. Environmental harm cannot be reduced to fossil fuels alone; transitions themselves generate new forms of sacrifice; and global governance increasingly operates within fractured geopolitical conditions. The central challenge may therefore not be choosing between sacrifice and care, but determining how unavoidable sacrifices can be distributed, limited, and compensated in ways consistent with justice, democratic legitimacy, and ecological survival.

Morgera’s lecture succeeds precisely because it forces these questions onto the agenda. Even where one may disagree with aspects of her diagnosis or prescriptions, the broader normative challenge she poses cannot be ignored.