Sunday, July 26, 2026

ThermalJustice * https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20358002


ThermalJustice names the equitable distribution of protection, exposure, resources and decision-making power in relation to heat. It treats temperature not as a neutral environmental variable but as a condition produced through architecture, infrastructure, labour, health, vegetation, energy access and territorial governance. The operator asks who is exposed, who can withdraw, whose body absorbs the consequences and which institutions possess the capacity to alter them. Thermal inequality is therefore not reducible to differences in measured temperature: equal readings can generate radically unequal effects according to housing, mobility, age, occupation, care and access to cooling. ThermalJustice also exceeds emergency relief. It concerns the long-term organisation of materials, shade, public space, maintenance, energy and rights through which thermal conditions are produced. The operator becomes operative when measurement is connected to differentiated vulnerability and when that connection redistributes protection and responsibility. ThermalJustice exists when the capacity to endure heat is no longer treated as an individual resource but as a collectively designed and politically accountable condition.

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