Dr Fergus Green
Biography
I am a Lecturer in Political Theory and Public Policy in the UCL Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy. Much of my research is concerned with the politics, governance and ethics of low-carbon transitions. My academic work builds on more than five years’ professional experience in law and public policy, and I continue to undertake consultancy work in these areas.
I began my career as a lawyer in the Melbourne office of Allens Arthur Robinson (now Allens-Linklaters) from 2009 to 2012, where I specialised in climate change, energy, water and environmental regulation. I then spent seven years at the London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) in various capacities: I obtained an MSc in Philosophy & Public Policy from the Department of Philosophy (2012-13); I was then a Policy Analyst and Research Advisor to Professor Nicholas Stern at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change & the Environment (2014-15); and finally I completed an MRes in Political Science and a PhD in Political Theory in the Department of Government (2015-19). From 2019 to 2021, I was a Postdoctoral Researcher on the Fair Limits Project at the Ethics Institute, Utrecht University, and spent a brief stint back at the Grantham Research Institute in mid-2021 before taking up my current position at UCL. I have also been a visiting researcher at Melbourne Law School and Melbourne Climate Futures.
Research
My research traverses political theory, political economy, public policy and law.
My current work focuses on questions of justice, politics and governance that arise in the transition to a low-carbon economy, including what we owe the ‘losers’ from such transitions, the kinds of institutions and policies by which states can steer a ‘just transition’, and the political implications of such policies. This work has been published in the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Political Philosophy, and Climate Policy. I am also completing a book project provisionally entitled Justice in Transition: What We Owe the ‘Losers’ from Legal Change. Further research in this area is being progressed through two collaborative research grants in which I am a Co-Investigator: ‘AdJUST—Advancing the Understanding of Challenges, Policy Options and Measures to Achieve a JUST EU Energy Transition’ (2022-26); and ‘JUSTDECARB—Socially Just and Politically Robust Decarbonisation: A Knowledge Base and Toolkit for Policymakers’ (2020-23).
In neighbouring work, I have written widely on the politics and governance of restricting and phasing out fossil fuels, including on “anti-fossil fuel norms”, the case for supply-side climate policy, fossil fuel-based accountability frameworks for climate governance, and the need for a norm against new fossil fuel projects. This work has been published in journals including Science, Nature Climate Change, Climatic Change, and Global Environmental Politics. As a result of this work, I have been a co-author of three editions of the UN Environment Programme’s Fossil Fuel Production Gap Report, and am a member of the Just Transition Expert Group of the Powering Past Coal Alliance.
I am also interested in the linkages between climate change and other contemporary challenges, including not only other ecological crises but also socio-economic inequalities, and the rise of populism. I am undertaking related theoretical work to develop a paradigm of climate governance concerned with the shared structural causes of these challenges (as opposed to the currently-dominant, much narrower climate governance paradigm focused on greenhouse gas emissions), and in that vein I am researching Green New Deal-style policy programmes. This line of research builds on my longstanding interest in the ways in which decarbonisation policies, far from being a “burden”, can provide a basis for building more equal, prosperous and sustainable societies.
Selected publications
- Journal articles
- Green F., Bois von Kursk, O., Muttitt, G. and Pye, S. (2024) 'No new fossil fuel projects: The norm we need', Science, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adn6533
- Bolet, D., Green F. and González-Eguino, M. (2023) 'How to Get Coal Country to Vote for Climate Policy: The Effect of a ‘Just Transition Agreement’ on Spanish Election Results', American Political Science Review, doi:10.1017/S0003055423001235.
- Green, F. and Kuch, D. (2022) ‘Counting Carbon or Counting Coal? Anchoring Climate Governance in Fossil Fuel-based Accountability Frameworks’, Global Environmental Politics, 22(4), pp. 48–69.
- Green, F. and van Asselt, H. (2022) ‘COP26 and the Dynamics of Anti-fossil Fuel Norms’, WIREs Climate Change, 14(3), e816.
- Green, F. (2022) ‘Fossil Free Zones: A Proposal’, Climate Policy, 22(9-10), pp. 1356–1362.
- Green, F. and Healy, N. (2022) ‘How Inequality Fuels Climate Change: The Climate Case for a Green New Deal’, One Earth, 5(6), pp. 635–649.
- Green, F. and Robeyns, I. (2022) ‘On the Merits and Limits of Nationalising the Fossil Fuel Industry’, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, 91(A Philosophers’ Manifesto: Ideas and Arguments to Change the World), pp. 53–80.
- Green, F. (2021) ‘Ecological Limits: Science, Justice, Policy, and the Good Life’, Philosophy Compass, 16(6), e12740.
- Green, F. and Brandstedt, E. (2021) ‘Engaged Climate Ethics’, Journal of Political Philosophy, 29(4), pp. 539–563.
- Green, F. (2020) ‘Legal Transitions without Legitimate Expectations’, Journal of Political Philosophy, 28(4), pp. 397–420.
- Green, F. and Gambhir, A. (2020) ‘Transitional Assistance Policies for Just, Equitable and Smooth Low-carbon Transitions: Who, What and How?’, Climate Policy, 20(8), pp. 902–921.
- Green, F. (2018) ‘The Logic of Fossil Fuel Bans’, Nature Climate Change, 8, pp. 449–451.
- Green, F. and Denniss, R. (2018) ‘Cutting with Both Arms of the Scissors: The Economic and Political Case for Restrictive Supply-side Climate Policies’, Climatic Change, 150, pp. 73–87.
- Green, F. (2018) ‘Anti-Fossil Fuel Norms’, Climatic Change, 150, pp. 103–116.
Green, F. and Stern, N. (2017) ‘China’s Changing Economy: Implications for its Carbon Dioxide Emissions’, Climate Policy, 17(4), pp. 423–442.
- Book chapters
- Green, F. (2017) ‘The Normative Foundations of Climate Legislation’, in A. Averchenkova, S. Fankhauser and M. Nachmany (eds.) Trends in Climate Change Legislation. London: Edward Elgar, pp. 85–107 (pre-publication version).
- Policy publications
- Macquarie, R. and Green, F. (2023) 'Just and robust transitions to net zero: A framework to guide national policy'. University College London, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, ClimLaw: Graz, Centre for Climate Law and Sustainability Studies, Center for International Climate Research, October 2023.
View a full list of publications on my website
Teaching
I teach on the ‘Ethics and Public Policy’ (POLS0063) and ‘Environmental and Climate Justice’ (POLS0101) undergraduate modules. The latter is a new module I designed and developed, for which I received a departmental and Faculty of Social & Historical Sciences Education Award (sustainability category).
I am interested in supervising research students on contemporary political theory (especially the normative analysis of public policy), and on the politics and governance of climate change and low-carbon transitions.