Book Proposal: Breathing Before the Law: Deconstructing Climate “Fictions” to Stop Fossil Harm Now

Working Title

Breathing Before the Law: Deconstructing Climate “Fictions” to Stop Fossil Harm Now

Alternative Titles

1. The Right to Breathe: Climate Justice, Derrida, and the Case for Nuclear Realism

2. Legitimate Fictions: How Climate Law Forgot the Present

3. Lawful and Unjust: Ending Fossil Harm and Rewriting the Energy Narrative

4. Zero Hour for the Living: Climate Law, Nuclear Power, and Justice in the Present

5. Force of Breath: Refounding Climate Law Against Fossil Harm

1) Overview (2–3 pages)

Thesis. Climate law has authorized itself on a set of legitimate fictions—to use Margaret Davies’ Derridean phrase—most notably the future-oriented calculus of carbon budgets and 2050 targets, and a renewables-only energy narrative. These fictions keep courts and policymakers in the safe domain of the calculable while the incalculable demand of justice—the singular life harmed today by fossil combustion—goes unmet. Breathing Before the Law argues that climate justice must begin with the lungs: treat present, predictable morbidity and mortality from combustion as the central justiciable harm, and then refound the legal and policy order in ways that swiftly replace fossil fuels with firm, ultra-low-emission power—including nuclear fission—alongside renewables.

What this book does.

• Part I (Theory) translates Derrida’s Force of Law and Davies’ “legitimate fictions” into a clear, usable method for jurists, advocates, and policymakers.

• Part II (Evidence) centers present-tense health harms and the structural reasons the law misses them.

• Part III (Narrative) deconstructs the renewables-only orthodoxy—tracing how fossil-aligned interests and legacy environmentalism co-produced an anti-nuclear common sense that has functioned as law’s “foundation.”

• Part IV (Law & Policy) lays out immediate remedies: product-liability and deceptive-practice claims, public-nuisance and duty-of-care frameworks, air-quality enforcement with teeth, coal plant closures, and permitting/market reforms that remove structural impediments to nuclear while expanding renewables where they truly displace combustion.

• Part V (Practice) provides a litigation and legislation playbook, model language, and a public-communication reframing that makes justice legible to courts, media, and voters.

Why now. Courts and agencies are moving; politics is polarized; and grid realities are colliding with narratives. A jurisprudence that answers for present harm while enabling rapid fossil displacement is both ethically mandatory and pragmatically overdue.

2) Audience & Markets

• Primary: climate and environmental lawyers; public-health lawyers; judges/clerks; policy staff; think-tank and NGO strategists; graduate seminars (law, public policy, energy, philosophy).

• Secondary: energy reporters; philanthropies; advanced general readers frustrated with “targets without justice.”

• Course adoption: jurisprudence; law & philosophy; environmental law; energy law; health justice; political theory.

Why it will sell: It offers a rare combination—rigorous theory (Derrida made operational) + actionable legal strategy + a constructive energy program (nuclear + renewables, no weapons association) that immediately saves lives.

3) Author & Platform

Eric W. Anders, Ph.D., Psy.D. is a scholar of psychoanalysis and deconstruction whose dissertation and major academic work center on Derrida (especially on Freud). He is founder and Executive Director of Earthrise Accord, an organization advancing nuclear-forward climate justice. He writes for policy and public audiences and leads initiatives connecting legal accountability, public health, and energy realism. Media-savvy and networked with academics, journalists, and policymakers across the U.S. and Europe, Eric can mobilize launch events, op-eds, and university talks. (Short and full bios included in Appendix.)

4) Competitive/Comparable Titles (and what’s new here)

• Legal/justice: works on climate litigation and rights (e.g., rights-based climate cases) tend to center future risk; they rarely translate Derrida/Davies into present-harm doctrine or pair it with a workable energy replacement program.

• Energy transition: pro-renewables or pro-nuclear books typically argue technology, not jurisprudence.

• Philosophy & law: Derrida in law is often abstract; this book operationalizes deconstruction into pleadings, doctrines, model statutes, and communications.

Edge: The book fuses critical theory + health justice + energy systems into a toolkit for courts and policymakers—while offering a persuasive narrative to the public.

5) Detailed Table of Contents

Part I — Before the Law: From Derrida to Doctrine

1. Legitimate Fictions — How legal orders authorize themselves; why climate law’s “foundations” are narrative choices, not inevitabilities.

2. Calculable Law / Incalculable Justice — Translating Derrida’s aporia into courtroom practice: when rules must bend to the singular case.

3. From Force of Law to Force of Breath — The right to breathe as the incalculable claim that refounds climate law in the present tense.

Part II — The Present Case: Fossil Harm Now

4. Seven Million a Year — The anatomy of combustion-driven morbidity/mortality and why law undercounts it.

5. Ella’s Lesson — A child’s death (and others like it) as jurisprudential turning point: causation, evidence, and responsibility.

6. Why Law Misses Chronic Harm — Institutions trained for spectacle and singular events; how to re-design proof and remedy.

Part III — Deconstruction of an Energy Narrative

7. The Renewables-Only Fiction — Its intellectual genealogy and political economy; how it became “common sense.”

8. How Anti-Nuclear Became Law-Like — From messaging to permitting norms and judicial dicta; tracing responsibility without demonizing good-faith actors.

9. Justice Requires Firm Power — Systems reality: why high-confidence fossil displacement needs firm, ultra-low-emission power (nuclear + hydro + geothermal), plus renewables.

Part IV — Refounding Climate Law Around Breath

10. Product, Fraud, and Duty — Liability for hazardous products and deceptive practices; duty-of-care theories; funding health/transition remedies.

11. Air-Quality First — Enforce standards with modern monitoring; coal closures as emergency relief; tying relief to health data.

12. Build What Saves Lives — Permitting/market reforms that remove structural barriers to nuclear, supercharge actual fossil displacement, and protect communities.

13. Justice Guardrails — Worker protection, community benefits, siting fairness; avoiding new injustices while ending the old.

Part V — Practice: Playbooks & Public Reason

14. Litigation Playbook — Model complaints, evidentiary frames, jury instructions, remedies.

15. Legislative Playbook — Model statute sections: right-to-breath act; truthful-energy labeling; expedited firm-clean build with justice safeguards.

16. Public Reason & Media — Rewriting the climate story so courts and citizens can act: messaging, metaphors, and avoiding traps.Epilogue: Breathing Before the Law — Living jurisprudence; measuring success by lives saved now.

6) Chapter Summaries (selected)

Ch. 1 — Legitimate Fictions.Shows how climate law’s “foundations” (targets, scenarios, renewables-only framing) are authorizing stories that have disciplined what counts as legal harm. Introduces Davies and the work of deconstructing such foundations without lapsing into nihilism.

Ch. 5 — Ella’s Lesson.Uses emblematic air-pollution deaths to unpack causation, foreseeability, and responsibility in chronic harm; proposes a courtroom toolkit for making these harms legible and urgent.

Ch. 9 — Justice Requires Firm Power.Explains—in plain, careful terms—why grids that rapidly displace combustion depend on firm ultra-low-emission sources (nuclear/hydro/geothermal) alongside renewables; forecloses any link to weapons; emphasizes public health and system reliability as justice, not ideology.

Ch. 12 — Build What Saves Lives.Sets out reforms (permitting, finance, market design, long-duration procurement) that make faster fossil displacement possible while installing strong labor and community protections.

7) Features & Pedagogy

• “From Theory to Motion” boxes that translate Derridean concepts into motions, objections, and jury instructions.

• Model language for statutes, executive orders, and consent decrees.

• Graphics that clarify energy and health concepts (power vs energy; capacity vs generation; emissions vs pollution).

• Case packets for seminars (primary sources + discussion prompts).

8) Permissions & Ethics

No third-party data beyond standard fair-use excerpts. No discussion of nuclear weapons or security issues; the focus is civilian power and public health. Any use of case materials involving minors will follow strict ethical and legal standards.

9) Length, Illustrations, and Schedule

• Manuscript length: ~85,000–95,000 words; ~15–20 figures/tables.

• Delivery: 9 months from contract (draft in 6, peer review/revision in 3).

• Format: Trade nonfiction with academic apparatus (notes, index), suitable for course adoption.

10) Marketing & Outreach

• Academic: adoption packets (syllabi, slides); law-school and public-policy talks; workshops with bar associations and public-health schools.

• Media: essays/op-eds in mainstream and policy outlets; podcast circuit (law, energy, health).

• Allied institutions: events with medical associations, teacher networks, and energy-justice groups.

• Earthrise Accord: launch webinar + toolkit (“Right to Breathe Act” model bill; litigation starter kit).

11) Sample Material (on request)

• Intro + Chapter 1 (Legitimate Fictions) — 4,500–5,500 words

• Chapter 9 (Justice Requires Firm Power) — 5,000–6,000 words

• Appendix: model “Right to Breathe” statute sections and complaint skeletons

Positioning Statement (for your query letters)

Breathing Before the Law reframes climate law around present-tense justice and provides the legal and policy toolkit to end fossil harm swiftly. Drawing on Derrida (through Davies) to expose climate law’s legitimate fictions—and pairing that critique with a nuclear-forward, public-health program for rapid fossil displacement—the book offers courts, lawyers, and policymakers a principled way to save lives now while building an energy system worthy of the future.