First, thanks for an increasingly rare thing here in Medium: an interesting, intelligent essay on an important philosophical topic.

The argument in the essay does point to the essential weakness of a rights-based approach to justice. The approach taken by Immanuel Kant and G.W.F. Hegel was to identify the 'ethic of justice'. That ethic is, my studies have taught me, a requirement that we respect others. Justice is present when all people are doing that, i.e., in the most general sense, taking one another into account as we live our separate lives together in this world.

Both Kant and Hegel ended with a form of respect for others as the ethic of justice, but mine follows from an observation within material existence, not an immaterial noumena, as Kant would insist both his and Hegel’s do. In my account of it, justice is mutual respect in effecting choices.

Justice, correctly identified, is universal. It applies in all times and places. Its benefits accrue to all people throughout time.

The single biggest driver of environmental degradation is the political imperative in every nation to maximize total output (GDP) in order to maximize employment, total income, and the collection of taxes at whatever rates exist. I have developed an alternative monetary paradigm that would make the existing economy more just. One (unforeseen) outcome of that paradigm is that there would be no unemployment or poverty at any level of total output. Also, all government in any nation could funded (at the current rate of total government spending) without taxes. Thus, that imperative to maximize total output would no longer exist. Total output would be governed, passively but effectively, by demographics--and nothing else.

If curious, "Alright, Already" concerns the ethic of justice and "Economic System Not the Problem" concerns applying that ethic to the existing economic system (though there is a lot about that in that other essay). Both are here in Medium; neither is behind the paywall.