Negotiations on the international climate regime have begun in Warsaw at a time when the scientific community, including the IPCC in its recent report on the Physical Basis for Climate Change Science and UNEP in its just released Emissions Gap Report, are advising the international community that the world is running out of time to prevent dangerous climate change.
The Warsaw agenda includes numerous topics that raise profound ethical and justice issues which not only must be faced to achieve a global climate change solution but which are also increasingly at the center of the most contentious issues in the international climate negotiations. Despite this fact, the international media, at least in most developed countries, is utterly failing to report on the ethical and justice dimensions of issues that are so central to achieving a favorable outcome in Warsaw. The failure of the media to continue to report on these issues almost guarantees that nations will continue to ignore their ethical obligations, a prospect which surely dooms the development of an adequate global climate regime.
This is the first entry in a multi-part series which will first examine the ethical dimensions of major issues under consideration in Warsaw and then, at the conclusion of COP-19, report on what was accomplished in Warsaw on these ethical issues.
Among Warsaw issues examined in this series through an ethical lens will be:
1. The extent to which nations make ghg emissions reductions commitments based upon “equity” rather than national interest alone.
2. The willingness of nations to agree to a new treaty that is to be completed in 2015 and that comes into effect in 2020 that includes a format for emissions reductions that takes equity and justice seriously.
3. The willingness of high-emitting nations to finance adaptation and climate change reduction strategies in vulnerable, developing counties.
4. The willingness of those nations most responsible for human-induced warming to agree to finance the value of losses and damages from climate change that can’t be avoided.
5. The extent to which some nations more than others are barriers to an urgently needed global climate change treaty.
6. The willingness of nations to accept a new climate change treaty that is sufficiently legally binding that it provides adequate sanctions for those who do not comply with their promises.
The next entry in the series will look at the ethical issues entailed by the need for national emissions reductions commitments to be based on “equity” and “justice”.
By:
Donald A. Brown
Scholar in Residence and Professor, Sustainability Ethics and Law
Widener University School of Law
Visiting Professor, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan
Part-time Professor, Nanjing University for Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, China
A new report that looks at Pennsylvania examines why US states must reduce their greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions. Although this report focuses on Pennsylvania, the conclusions in this report could be applied to other US states as well as sub-national and regional governments around the world.
The report concludes that Pennsylvania needs to act to reduce the threat of climate change. The report explains how the latest science on climate change that is being articulated by the most prestigious scientific institutions including the National Academy of Sciences leads to the conclusion that there is an urgent need of governments at all scales to act to reduce the threat of climate change to maintain any hope of avoiding dangerous climate change. The report also explainshow climate change will likely affect Pennsylvania and hundreds of millions of poor, vulnerable people around the world. Given this, the report explains why Pennsylvania needs to also plan to adapt to climate change impacts that are now very likely even if governments respond more aggressively to climate change than they have in the past. The report also compares Pennsylvania’s response to climate change to other US states.
The report calls Pennsylvania to adopt an enforceable greenhouse gas target consistent with Pennsylvania’s fair share of safe global emissions because Pennsylvania ghg emissions are contributing to global emissions and there is an urgent need to dramatically reduce global ghg emissions to prevent dangerous warming. Because ghg emissions from Pennsylvania are contributing both to enormous threats to the world and will likely have adverse impacts on human health and ecological systems in Pennsylvania (a matter discussed below), the state should reduce its emissions to Pennsylvania’s fair share of safe global emissions. Pennsylvania must also act to reduce ghg emissions because Pennsylvania controls human activities that produce ghg emissions that are not regulated at the federal level for such activities as some transportation decisions, regulation of electricity generation, building codes, land use, waste disposal, and some aspects of forest protection.
Although a description of Pennsylvania’s exact fair share of safe global emissions was beyond the scope of this report, nonetheless, the report concluded that a strong case can be made that Pennsylvania should limit its emissions to achieve greater percentage of ghg reductions than required of the entire world to avoid dangerous climate change. This is so because like all US states and most of the developed world nations, ghg emissions levels from Pennsylvania far exceed most of the world in per capita ghg emissions.In other words, if it is determined that the entire world should reduce its emissions by 80 % below 1990 levels to prevent dangerous climate change, high-emitting nations or sub-national governments around the world, including US states, will need to reduce their emissions to even greater levels on the basis of equity and fairness.To require each nation or government to reduce emissions by the same percentage amount would freeze into place unjust emission levels for high-emitting governments.For this reason, almost all the nations of the world, including the United States in 1992 when it ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, agreed that each nation must reduce its emissions on the basis of “equity” to prevent dangerous climate change. (UNFCCC, 1992: Art 3, Para 1) If all nations need only reduce their emissions by equal percentage amounts, then a high emitting nation like the United States that emits ghg at rate of 17.3 tons per capita would be allowed to emit at a level 10 times more per capita than a country like Vietnam that emits 1.7 tons of ghg per capita. (World Bank, 2012b) As a result, all nations have agreed that national targets must be based upon fairness or equity although reasonable differences exist about what fairness requires.
An issue brief for New York State recently recognized the need of New York to set ghg emission targets on the basis of equity:
Determining how much individual states or nations should reduce emissions through mid-century requires consideration of allocation equity and reduction effectiveness. The UNFCCC approach to apportioning ghg emission reduction requirements between developed and developing nations considers a broad spectrum of parameters, including population, gross domestic product (GDP), GDP growth, and global emission pathways that lead to climate stabilization.Applying these parameters, the UNFCCC concludes that, to reach the 450 ppm CO2e stabilization target, developed countries need to reduce ghg emissions by 80 to 95 percent from 1990 levels by 2050. (New York State, 2009)
And so like New York, Pennsylvania should recognize that its emissions reduction target must be based upon fairness. However, because reasonable differences exist about what equity requires of nations and states in setting emissions reductions targets, this report makes no specific final recommendations on what an enforceable ghg cap should be except to claim it should be fair.At the very minimum, however, any State cap should be at least as stringent as emissions reductions levels needed by the entire world to provide reasonable confidence that dangerous climate change will be avoided.It should also be based on recognition that fairness likely requires Pennsylvania to be more aggressive in reducing its ghg emissions than most of the rest of the world. As the above quoted New York report recognizes, a state like Pennsylvania might set a target to reduce ghg emissions by 80 to 95 percent from 1990 levels by 2050.
Furthermore, any action plan and interim emissions reductions target should put Pennsylvania on an emissions reductions pathway consistent with the need to limit global emissions to levels that will stabilize atmospheric greenhouse concentrations at levels that provide reasonable confidence of preventing dangerous climate change. This requirement entails the need of any Pennsylvania action plan to consider not only what action steps are necessary to achieve a target at a specific year such as 2020, the target year recognized in an unimplemented 2009 Pennsylvania action plan, but also to consider actions that will put Pennsylvania on a reduction pathway capable of reducing ghg emissions from Pennsylvania necessary to prevent dangerous climate change in the years ahead. More specifically this means that Pennsylvania’s action plan should consider how it will achieve emissions reductions to achieve any long-term goals such the potential goal of reducing ghg emissions by 80 to 95 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
Given all of this the report calls for Pennsylvania to:
Adopt a legally-binding GHG emissions reduction target consistent with Pennsylvania’s fair share of safe global emissions.
Work with the Climate Change Advisory Committeeidentified in the 2008 Pennsylvania Climate Act supplemented by vigorous public participation to identify strategies to reduce Pennsylvania GHG necessary to achieve the legally-binding GHG emissions reduction target
Adopt any laws or regulations necessary to implement the action plan and achieve the target.
Greatly ramp up Pennsylvania’s commitment to non-fossil energy.
Develop and periodically update a climate change adaptation plan.
Encourage, support, and recognize actions and programs to reduce the threat of climate change by Pennsylvania sub-state level governments, businesses, organizations, and educational and religious institutions.
The United States defended its track record on fighting climate change as the Qatar climate change negotiations began last week. The US representative Jonathan Pershing claimed that the United Sates was making “enormous” efforts to slow global warming and help the poor nations most affected by it. (Associated Press, 2012) Other countries have accused the United States of consistently blocking progress in the search for a global solution to climate change particularly since the George W. Bush administration abandoned the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 treaty limiting emissions of heat-trapping gases by industrialized countries. As negotiators met for a two-week session in oil and gas-rich Qatar, U.S. delegate Pershing suggested America deserves more credit and said: “Those who don’t follow what the U.S. is doing may not be informed of the scale and extent of the effort, but it’s enormous.” Pershing also noted that the Obama administration has taken a series of steps, including sharply increasing fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks, and made good on promises of climate financing for poor countries. (Associated Press, 2012). Thus far, the United States has not articulated any willingness to go beyond the voluntary emissions reductions commitment it made in Copenhagen three years ago.
The US apparent unwillingness to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions beyond what it is already on track to achieve is of considerable controversy in the Qatar negotiations this week because of the growing scientific concern about the potential inevitability of catastrophic warming caused by human activities. Probably at the top of the list in order of importance of all of the issues under negotiation in Qatar is the need to increase the ambitiousness of emissions reductions commitments by nations so that that future warming is limited to 2°C. Because nations have failed to make commitments to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to levels that will limit future warming do 2°C, there is an increasing sense of urgency among climate scientists around the world on the need for all nations to significantly increase their greenhouse gas emissions reductions commitments to their fair share of safe global emissions. This will require most nations, but particularly high-emitting nations such as the United States, to greatly increase commitments beyond those that they had made in the Copenhagen Cop in 2009.
As we have written about extensively before on EthicandCliamte.org, the world has been waiting for over two decades for the United States to show leadership on climate change. See, f0r instance, The World Waits In Vain For US Ethical Climate Change Leadership As the World Warms. Although there are many countries other than the United States that have frequently failed to respond to what justice would require of them to reduce the threat of climate change, the United States, perhaps more than any other country, has gained a reputation in the international community for its consistent unwillingness to commit to serious greenhouse gas emissions reductions during the over two decades that world has been seeking a global agreement on how to respond to climate change. Because the United States is such a vital player in any global solution to climate change, the US lack of response to its obligations to reduce the global threat of climate change is widely seen as an immense impediment to an urgently needed global climate change solution. And so the world continues to wait for ethical leadership from the United States on climate change at a time when climate change damages are becoming more visible around the world.
The United States according to the World Resources Institute has recently made progress on its greenhouse gas emissions toward its voluntary target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 17% below 2005 emissions by 2020 to the extent that it may reduce its emissions by 9.5 % by 2020. (WRI, 2012) US ghg emissions reductions have been achieved in the United States due largely significant fuel switching in the electricity sector from coal to natural gas, an economic slowdown that began in 2008, and some federal and US state regulatory programs designed to reduce ghg emissions. Yet because the US projected reductions of 9.5% below 2005 in 2020 is equal to a 2% increase above 1990 levels in 2020 at a moment in history when many scientists believe that a reductions of 25 to 4o% below 1990 levels by 2020 are necessary to prevent dangerous climate change, the US projected reductions fall extraordinarily short of any reasonable US fair share of tolerable global emissions.
Because of these inadequate commitments from the United States, ECO, an NGO publication that reports on developments at UNFCCC negotiations, wrote the following letter to President Obama that we hereby reprint.
President Obama: We Hope for Change
In his victory speech after being re-elected to a second term, President Obama swelled the hopes once again of people around the world who care about climate change when he said, “We want our children to live in an America that is not burdened by debt, that is not weakened by inequality, that is not threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet.” Those hopes continued to swell when in a press conference a few days later, he responded to a question from the media on climate by saying that he planned to start “a conversation across the country…” to see “how we can shape an agenda that garners bipartisan support and helps move this agenda forward…and…be an international leader” on climate change. President Obama appears to understand that climate change is a legacy issue that was not adequately addressed during his first term in office.
The question therefore has to be, what next? In his second term, will President Obama deliver the bold action needed to reduce the threat of climate change to the US and the world, by shifting the US economy towards a zero carbon future, and making the issue a centerpiece of US foreign policy? In the aftermath of superstorm Sandy, and the drought, wildfires and other extreme weather events that have afflicted the US over the last year, it is clearly time for President Obama to press the reset button on climate policy, both nationally and internationally.
First, the world needs to hear from the President and his negotiating team here in Doha that they remain fully committed to keeping the increase in global temperature far below 2 degrees, that it is not only still possible but essential to do so, and that the USA is going to provide leadership in this collective effort.
The administration should then make clear how it will meet its current 17 percent reduction target. While US emissions are decreasing slightly – both as a result of the administration’s policies on renewable energy and vehicle fuel economy standards and because of sharply lower natural gas prices that have reduced coal use for electricity generation – it is unlikely that without additional regulation or legislation that the US will meet its 2020 target. The delegation should also clarify what the Obama Administration will do to put the US on track to the near-elimination of emissions by mid-century called for by the scientific community.
Finally, delegations need to hear that the US remains committed to meeting its fair share of the Copenhagen pledge of mobilizing $100 billion in climate finance per year by 2020, as well as which innovative finance options the administration is prepared to support to get there.
These four steps would go a long way to reset US climate diplomacy. They would show that instead of dragging the world down to the level of what is (not) possible in the USA, President Obama and his team are going to pull the US up to what the science and the world demands to avoid catastrophic climate change.
One last point: every coach knows that when you find your team down by several goals at half-time, a change in your game plan may not be enough; it may also be time to make some substitutions to the players on the field.
Many of the positions taken by some governments and individuals on climate change are so obviously unjust and unfair, that monkeys would get the injustice this video argues. Monkeys are believed to be capable of responding to obvious unfairness as this video demonstrates when one monkey is given a cucumber (which monkeys don’t like that much) and another is give a grape (which some monkeys love). The monkey who gets the cucumber throws it back at the trainer when the monkey sees the other monkey getting a beloved grape.
The more serious point of this video is that those who desire to see that ethics and justice become more influential in climate change policy formation need to help others spot the injustice of actual positions being taken by governments and others on climate change policy issues rather than focus on perfect justice. Many positions of governments on climate change fail to pass minimum ethical scrutiny yet ethics and justice issues are largely being ignored in discussions of climate change policies at least in the United States. Although there is a growing literature on the ethical dimensions of climate change, most of this literature is focused on theoretical ethical questions rather than on the injustice of positions actually being taken about climate policies.
The purpose of this video is to encourage the press, NGOs, and concerned citizens around the world to turn up the volume on the ethical dimensions of climate change. Despite a thirty-five year debate on climate change, for the most part, governments, NGOs, organizations, and individuals are ignoring the ethical dimensions of climate change even though an increased focus on ethics and justice is needed to move the world to a global solution to this immense threat. The video argues that ethics is the crucial missing element in the climate change debate and if an ethical framing of most climate change policy issues were taken seriously it would transform how the public debate on climate change takes place.
Editor’s Note: This entry contains both a video and a the text on which the video was based that examines the views of US Presidential candidate Mitt Romney on climate change though an ethical lens. The text follows the video.
I. Introduction
Ethicsandclimate.org has critically examined US President Obama’s approach to climate change on several occasions. See, for instance:
Ethicsandclimate.org now turns to an ethical analysis of US Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s views on climate change. Although Mitt Romney’s position on climate change appears to have changed over time (at one time supported policies to reduce the threat of climate change), he recently has opposed legislation designed to reduce greenhouse gases citing two reasons. In an October 2011 he asserted in response to a question about his view on climate change that he was opposed to climate change legislation because:
He did not know whether climate change was human caused.
Climate change is a global problem and the US should not spend huge amounts of money on a problem that is global in scope.
In addition, during his acceptance speech at the Republican convention on August 30, 2012, Romney commented on climate change by asserting that President Obama would try to stop raising seas and heal the planet while he would help American families, thus implicitly implying that he would not support climate change legislation while he was President (Lacey, 2012).
II. Ethical Analysis Of Romney’s Opposition To Climate Change Policies
Should Mitt Romney’s opposition to government action on climate change be understood as a profound ethical lapse? The potential ethical significance of an unwillingness to act on climate change is obvious once one understands that:
High emitting nations and individuals are putting tens of millions of the world’s poorest people at risk.
Tens of thousands of deaths and other harms caused by climate change are already attributable to human-induced warming, that is climate change is not just a civilization challenging future problem but the present cause of misery to some humans in some parts of the world.
Even if the international community could stabilize atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gas emissions at current levels further warming will continue for as much as 100 years because of thermal lags in the climate system.
The mainstream scientific view holds that the world is likely running out of time to prevent rapid, nonlinear, and potentially catastrophic warming.
These facts are held by mainstream scientific view on climate change, a view supported by every academy of sciences in the world that has taken a position including theUnited States Academy of Sciences, 97 to 98% of the scientists that actually do climate science research, and over 100 scientific organizations in the world whose members have relevant expertise.
In light of the above, Mitt Romney’s position on human-induced warming is a stunning moral failure. We now investigate in more detail ethical problems with the specific justifications articulated by Romney so far for his unwillingness to support climate change legislation.
Ethical analysis of opposing greenhouse gas reduction policies on the basis of lack of scientific evidence of human causation.
It is not clear from candidate Romney’s stated position about human causation of observable warming whether he is claiming that there is no evidence of human causation or alternatively that there is significant scientific uncertainty about links between human activities and observed warming.
If Romney is claiming that there is no evidence of human causation of warming this is either a lie or reckless disregard for the truth. That is any claim that there is no evidence that observed warming is caused by human activity is demonstratively false. In fact there are numerous independent and robust lines of evidence that humans are mostly responsible for the undeniable warming the world is experiencing. This evidence includes:
(Cook 2010)
Multiple climate fingerprints of human causation including how the upper atmosphere is warming in comparison to the lower atmosphere, nights are warming faster than days, the upper limit of the troposphere is rising as the world warms, more heat is returning to Earth, less oxygen is being found in atmosphere as CO2 rises, and ocean temperature change patterns can’t be attributed to factors that drive natural climate variability.
Multiple studies (called attribution studies) designed to statistically test the probability that observed warming could be attributed to natural variability.
Measures of isotopes of CO2 that support the conclusion that the CO2 appearing in the atmosphere is from fossil fuels combustion.
Close correlation between atmospheric CO2 concentrations and global consumption of fossil fuel and deforestation.
Inability to attribute observed warming to known causes of natural climate variability.
Uncontestable scientific understanding that as greenhouse gases are added to the atmosphere the Earth’s climate will warm to some extent.
It is clearly untruthful to claim that there’s no evidence of human causation of observed warming.
Perhaps, Romney is claiming, however, not that there is no evidence of human causation, but rather that there is significant scientific uncertainty about whether warming can be attributed to human activities. Yet the mainstream scientific view on this issue is that it is more than 90% certain that observable warming is primarily caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases produced by human activities including the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation (IPCC, 2007). The mainstream scientific view, as we have seen, is supported by the most prestigious scientific organizations in the world a fact in itself that has moral significance.
Even assuming for the sake of argument that there is more scientific uncertainty about human causation of warming than that recognized by the mainstream scientific view, as we have explained in Ethicsandclimate.org before in numerous articles (See. e.g. Brown, 2008a), using scientific uncertainty as an excuse for non-action on climate change does not pass minimum ethical scrutiny due to certain features of the climate change problem including:
The enormous adverse potential impacts on human health and the environment from human-induced climate change articulated by the consensus view.
The disproportionate climate change impacts on the poorest people of the world.
The real potential for potentially catastrophic climate surprises recognized by the mainstream scientific view.
The fact that much of the science of the climate change problem has never or is not now in dispute, even if one acknowledges some remaining uncertainty about timing or magnitude of climate change impacts.
The fact that climate change damage is probably already being experienced by some people, plants, animals, and ecosystems around the world in the form of rising seas and increased strength of tropical storms and more frequent and intense droughts and floods.
The strong likelihood that serious and irreversible damage will be experienced before all the uncertainties can be eliminated.
The fact that the longer nations wait to take action, the more difficult it will be to stabilize greenhouse gases at levels which don’t create serious damage.
The fact that those who will be most harmed by climate change have rights to be consulted about decisions that dare made to take no action on climate change on the basis of basis scientific uncertainty.
The fact that the mainstream view holds that the world is running out of time to prevent dangerous climate change.
Given these features of the climate change problem, it is inconceivable that any ethical system would condone an excuse for non-action on climate change based upon scientific uncertainty. This is particularly true because if the consensus view is wrong about the magnitude and timing of climate change it could be wrong in both directions, that is, climate change impacts could be much worse and more rapid than the impacts identified by IPCC and the US Academy of Sciences even if they also could be less harmful in regard to timing and magnitude.
All major ethical systems would strongly condemn behavior that is much less threatening and dangerous than climate change. That is deontological, utilitarian, justice, ecocentric, biocentric, and relationship based ethics would not condone using scientific uncertainty as justification for not reducing high levels of greenhouse gas emissions given what is not in dispute among mainstream climate scientists (See Brown, 2002: 141-148). For this is a problem that if not controlled may cause the death of tens or hundreds of thousands of helpless victims caused by intense storms and heat waves, the death or sickness of millions that may suffer dengue fever or malaria, the destruction of some nations’ ability to grow food or provide drinking water, the devastation of forests and personal property, and the acceleration of elimination of countless species of plants and animals that are already stressed by other human activities. In summary, global warming threatens many of the things that humans hold to be of most value, i.e., life, health, family, the ability to make a living, community, and the natural environment.
The ethical duty to avoid risky behavior is proportional to the magnitude of the potential harm. Because climate change is likely to cause death to many, if not millions of people, through heat stroke, vector borne disease, and flooding, annihilate many island nations by rising seas, cause billions of dollars in property damage in intense storms, and destroy the ability of hundreds of millions to feed themselves in hotter drier climates, the duty to refrain from activities which could cause global warming is extraordinarily strong even in the face of scientific uncertainty about consequences.
Therefore, the nature of the risk from climate change is enormous and using scientific uncertainty as an excuse for doing nothing is ethically intolerable.
In fact that there is wide spread cross-cultural acceptance of the idea that one should not engage in very risky behavior that could cause great harm to things which people attach great value to is a conclusion that is clear from the acceptance of the “precautionary principle” in a growing number of international treaties including the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UN, 1992, Article 3). Under the precautionary principle agreed in the climate change convention, nations promised not to use scientific uncertainty as an excuse for not taking cost-effective action. This is an additional ethical reason why scientific uncertainty cannot now be used by nations as an excuse for refusing to make reductions to their fair share of safe global emissions. That is, in addition to the strong ethical reasons identified sbove, a nation may not break a promise made to other nations in the UNFCCC to not use scientific uncertainty as justification for non-action on climate change.
II. Ethical Duty To Act Does Not Depend On Other Nation’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Commitments
As we have seen, Presidential candidate Romney has also indicated that he would not support US domestic change legislation because it is a global problem and the United States should not spend money on such a global problem. It would appear that Romney is objecting to US expenditures to reduce greenhouse gases as long as other nations are not also committing to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions although it is not clear why Romeny would object to US action on climate change on the basis that is a global problem. Implicit in this justification appears to be the unstated assumption that no nation need to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to its fair share of safe global missions until other nations act accordingly. Yet this excuse for non-action on climate change also does not withstand minimum ethical scrutiny.
Because current greenhouse gas levels are already harming people, plants, animals, and ecosystems around the world according to the consensus climate change scientific view, and even if global atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases could be stabilized at current levels, an extraordinarily difficult goal to achieve, climate change-caused harms will grow in the years ahead. For this reason, current levels of total global greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced significantly to avoid future harms especially to those who have done little to cause the existing problem.
Yet, not all nations have equal responsibility to reduce greenhouse emissions given differences among nations in current and past emissions levels and steps already taken to reduce national emissions. However, all nations have an ethical duty to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions if they are exceeding their fair share (See Brown 2008). Although reasonable people may disagree on what fairness requires because different theories of distributive justice reach different conclusiosn about how to allocate responsibility, no developed nation may reasonablly make the argument that they are justified in not reducing greenhouse gas emissions subatanially because of the cilization challenging magnitude of emissions reductions that are needed to stabilze atmospheric concentrations at safe levels and the hugely disproportionate emissons levels attributable to developed nations.
As a matter of distributive justice, no nation nay deny that it has a duty to keep its national emissions levels below its fair share of safe global emissions. Therefore if a nation is exceeding its fair share of safe global emissions, that nation has an ethical duty to reduce emissions and this duty does not depend upon what other nations are doing.
Although some developing nations can make a presentable argument that they could increase greenhouse gas emissions without exceeding their fair share of global emissions, the developed nations, including the United States cannot make this argument because it is known that existing total global emissions levels need to be significantly reduced and the developed nations are very high emitting nations compared to most nations in the world. For this reason, the United States and other developed nations, along with perhaps a few developing nations, have an immediate duty to begin to reduce their emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions and this obligation is compelled by basic justice, not a need for leadership.
The duty to reduce emissions is not diminished if others who are contributing to the harm fail to cease their harmful behavior. This is so because no nation or person has a right to continue destructive behavior on the basis that others who are causing damage have not ceased their destructive behavior. The only question that needs to be examined to trigger a responsibility to begin to make immediate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions is whether the nation is exceeding its fair share of safe global emissions.
In addition to principles of distributive justice, developed nations have another strong reason why they must reduce their emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions. That is, they promised to do reduce their emissions based upon “equity” in the Untied Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to prevent dangerous anthropocentric interference with the climate system. Violating a provision of an international agreement such as the UNFCCC is considered a wrongful act under international law, and is therefore an unethical action for consenting nations (See, e.g., International Law Commission Draft Articles on State Responsibility Art. 2(a) & (b), 2001). Since parties to the UNFCCC also agreed that Annex I countries, that is developed countries, would take the lead in combating climate change and modifying future trends, Annex I countries must undertake policies and measures to limit their emissions regardless of actions taken by non-Annex I country parties. This is now a matter of international law as well as a principle of distributive justice.
For these reasons, high emitting nations in particular have a legal and ethical responsibility to reduce emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions. This duty applies regardless of efforts undertaken by other nations.
And so, Republican presidential candidate Romney may not justify a refusal of the United States to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions on the basis that other nations refuse to do so. All that is being asked of United States is that it limit its greenhouse gas emissions to it’s fair and just share. It is not being asked to solve the problem for the rest of the world.
For these reasons, the United States may not refuse to reduce its emissions to its fair share of safe global emission because not all nations have acted accordingly. Such a conclusion is ethically absurd.
III. Conclusion
For all these reasons, US presidential candidate Romney’s position on climate change fails to pass minimal ethical scrutiny.
References:
Brown, Donald (2002) American Heat, Ethical Problems with The United States Response to Global Warming, Rowman and Littlefield, Lantham Maryland.
International Law Commission (2001) Draft Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts, Supplement No. 10 (A/56/10), chp.IV.E.1, available at: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3ddb8f804.html [accessed 1 September 2012]
Dear former subscribers to ClimateEthics and new visitors to Ethicsandclimate.org:
After over 80 articles on the ethics of climate change at ClimateEthics.org, I am moving to Widener University School of Law where the analyses formerly posted on ClimateEthics as well as new posts will continue at this site, EthicsandClimate.org.
Climate change must be understood essentially as a civilization challenging ethical and moral problem. This realization has profound practical consequences for policy formation. Yet the ethical implications of policy responses have usually been ignored in policy debates that have now spanned thirty years. Despite 20 years of international negotiations to come up with a global solution to climate change under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the ethical and justice dimensions of national positions remain the key missing element in the positions of national governments.
This site examines the ethical dimensions of climate science, economics, politics, policy responses, trading, atmospheric greenhouse gas stabilization goals, as well as the obligations of nations, governments, businesses, organizations, and individuals to respond to climate change and pay for adaptation responses and damages.
The site will follow the positions taken by governments in international climate change negotiations and subject them to an ethical critique. The site will subject arguments made by proponents and opponents of climate change policies to ethical scrutiny.
The site believes that turning up the volume on the ethical dimensions of climate change is key to moving the world to a just solution to climate change.
Because many of the most important ethical issues that need to be faced in climate change policy formation are often hidden in dense scientific and economic discourses that most people, including many policy professionals, have difficulty in unpacking, this sites seeks to help those concerned about climate change understand the ethical issues often obscured by what first appears to be the “value-neutral” languages of science and economics.
For these reasons, the purpose of this site is to help civil society understand, debate, and respond to the ethical dimensions of climate change.
Prior subscribers to ClimateEthics and new visitors to this site, please subscribe to this new website by clicking on the subscribe button.
Thank you,
Donald A. Brown EthicsandClimate.org
As of July 1, 2012,
Scholar In Residence, Sustainability Ethics and Law,
Widener University School of Law
I. Introduction: What Is Missing In Reporting About The Durban Outcome?
It has now been two weeks since negotiations at the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP-17) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) were completed in the early morning of Sunday, December 11, 2011 in Durban, South Africa. We will claim that there is something missing from the reporting of what happened in Durban that is crucial if one aspires to think critically about the Durban outcomes. That is, reporting on Durban has for the most part missed the biggest story, namely that most nations continue to act as if they have no obligations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to their fair share of safe global emission, that the positions they have been taking on most major climate issues fail any reasonable minimum ethical test, that an acknowledgement that nations not only have interests but duties and responsibilities continues to be the key missing element in the negotiations, and that some nations in particular have lamentably not only failed to lead on climate change but are continuing to take positions that not only fail to satisfy their immediate international duties to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions but also encourage irresponsible behavior of other nations.
Among these nations are the United States, Canada, Russia, and Japan and several developing countries. As we shall see, these countries, among others, have continued to negotiate as if: (a) they only need to commit to reduce their greenhouse gas emission if other nations commit to do so, in other words that their national interests limit their international obligations, (b) any emissions reductions commitments can be determined and calculated without regard to what is each nation’s fair share of safe global emissions, (c) large emitting nations have no duty to compensate people or nations that are vulnerable to climate change for climate change damages or reasonable adaptation responses, and (d) they often justify their own failure to actually reduce emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions on the inability to of the international community to reach an adequate solution under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. We are not saying that these countries were exclusively the blame for disappointing Durban outcomes, there is plenty of blame to go around. Yet, some countries have distinguished themselves by their positions that are obviously based upon national economic interest rather than a fulfillment of global responsibilities.
Although the leadership in the United States and other nations that are failing to make commitments congruent with their ethical obligations will no doubt claim that their position in the international climate negotiations is limited by what is politically feasible in their countries, the world needs national leaders who are prepared to urge their nations to make commitments congruent with their ethical obligations, not on national self-interest alone. (For an example of national leadership that fulfilled this requirement, see, Brown, 2009)
As has been the case for recent COPs, commentators about achievements at COP-17 are split on whether these negotiations accomplished some important positive steps toward an eventual meaningful global solution to climate change or whether Durban must be understood as another tragic international failure to come up with an adequate solution to the immense threat of human-induced warming. (For a good articulation of these two views, see: Light, 2011 and Hertsgaard, 2011)
As we shall see this difference of opinion about how to characterize Durban outcomes is ultimately a disagreement about whether each COP outcome should be judged on the basis of what is politically feasible at that moment in history in which the COP takes place or whether what is politically feasible at any moment in history should itself be critically reflected on. If one judges Durban outcomes on the basis of what was deemed politically feasible coming into Durban, one can reasonably draw positive conclusions about Durban outcomes. But if one reviews Durban outcomes from the standpoint of what nations should agree to in light of their ethical and moral responsibilities, Durban is another tragic missed opportunity.
ClimateEthics has frequently explained that the key missing element in international climate negotiations as well as in the development of domestic climate change policies for most nations has been acknowledgement that nations not only have economic interests that can be affected by climate change policies but also have duties, responsibilities, and obligations to protect people around the world and the natural resources on which life depends. (See for example, Brown, 2010a) This is so because climate change must be understood as a civilization challenging ethical and moral problem and the failure to acknowledge and act on this has been responsible for an inadequate global response to climate change’s immense threat during the twenty years of international negotiations that have sought to reach agreement on a global solution. That is the major problem with international climate negotiations is that most nations are approaching the negotiations has if their economic interests trump their global responsibilities.
If climate change is an ethical problem, then practical consequences for national positions on climate change follow. (See, Brown, 2011 for a discussion of specific practical consequences that follow from recognition that climate change is an ethical problem) These consequences include that nations should commit to do what their ethical responsibilities, obligations, and duties requires of them without regard to whether all other nations are agreeing to do so.
This post examines concretely what happened in the recently concluded Durban climate change negotiations with the goal of explicating why the lack of acceptance of duties and responsibilities, that is lack of acceptance that climate change is an ethical problem, continues to be the major barrier to achieving an adequate global approach to reduce the threat of climate change. Unless, the international community can convince or cajole nations to make commitments consistent with their ethical obligations, then international climate negotiations are likely to continue to be plagued by the failure to tackle the most difficult climate change issues.
On March 7th, US Congressman Henry Waxman, speaking at the Center for American Progress, encouraged Americans to see US action on climate change as a moral responsibility. To our knowledge, Congressman Waxman is the first US elected national politician to speak about the moral dimensions of climate change despite the fact that climate change must be understood as essentially a problem that creates a host of civilization challenging ethical issues. For this reason, Congressman Waxman should be commended.
Congressman Waxman did not, however, discuss the practical implications of understanding climate change as moral matter and for this reason this post identifies some of the logical conclusions that necessarily follow from seeing climate change as a moral issue. If these principles were followed it would transform how climate change has been debated in the United States.
II. The Significance of Waxman’s Ethical Claim
After riling against many efforts underway in the Republican controlled US House of Representatives to prevent the US government action on climate change that are based upon fraudulent scientific views propagated by some fossil fuel interests, Congressman Henry Waxman said:
We are at a pivotal time in which every member of Congress will decide whether they will be on the right side of history or the wrong side of history,” Mr. Waxman said. “Civil rights in the 1960s was a moral issue, and there was a right side and a wrong side. Climate change is an environmental issue. It is an economic issue. But it is also fundamentally a moral issue. (Broder, 2011)
If climate change is a moral issue it is important to identify the practical significance of this understanding. If climate change is a moral issue then, at minimum:
1. High-emitting nations and individuals may not make decisions about greenhouse gas reductions by looking only at self-interest alone. Any position on climate change must respond to duties, responsibilities, and obligations to others.
2. A nation that is exceeding its fair share of safe global emissions may not refuse to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on the basis of increased domestic cost alone.
3. A nation may not refuse to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that put others and the ecological systems on which they depend at risk of harm on the basis of some scientific uncertainty once it is established that great harms are possible.
4. A nation must limit its greenhouse gas emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions. In deciding what is fair, a nation must look to ethically relevant criteria for being treated differently than others.
5. Some of the economic analytical tools that are often used to judge the acceptability of public policy such as cost-benefit analysis are ethically problematic when harms and costs are greatly disaggregated among those who would bear costs of action to reduce the threat and those who experience harms of non-action as they are in climate change.
6. Those who cause damages to others have a duty to compensate them for their harms.
7. National policies on greenhouse gas emissions must take into consideration their responsibility to limit their emissions to their fair share of global emissions that will achieve safe levels of levels of atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.
8. Before setting domestic climate change policies, nations must consult with those who could be harmed by non-action on climate change.
9. Nations, sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals have responsibilities to reduce the threat of climate change.
If climate change is a moral issue as Congressman Waxman has asserted that it is, then it follows that how the climate change debate has been conducted in the United States must be transformed. No longer can the climate change debate focus exclusively on whether proposed climate legislation or policies are in the US interest alone.
The US must consider its duties, responsibilities, and obligations it has both to living people around the world and future generations. So far, ethics is the missing crucial element in the US debate about climate change because the US climate change debate has up until now focused exclusively on whether climate change legislation and policies are in the US interest alone.
By:
Donald A. Brown,
Associate Professor, Environmental Ethics, Science, and Law,
Penn State University
dab57@psu.edu
Although some progress was made on a number of procedural issues and voluntary emissions reductions commitments at the conclusion of the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP-16) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting in December, the international community had failed for the 20th year in a row to agree to a meaningful global approach to climate change.
That is, Cancun failed to produce binding and equitable national greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets necessary to prevent dangerous climate change nor dedicated and predictable funding needed for adaptation by vulnerable developing nations.
In fact, the voluntary emissions reduction commitments agreed to in Cancun, even if fully complied with, virtually guarantee that rising global temperatures will exceed dangerous levels.
Although there are several countries that have frequently failed to respond to what justice would require of them to reduce the threat of climate change, the United States, more than any other country, has consistently failed to respond to its ethical duties to reduce its emissions to the its fair share of safe global emissions during the over two decades that world has been seeking a global agreement on how to respond to climate change. In fact, as we shall see, the United States among the developed countries is the only nation to make no binding commitments on climate change.
Because the United States is such a vital player in any global solution to climate change, the United States response to its obligations to reduce the global threat of climate change has been an immense impediment to an urgently needed global climate change solution. And so the world continues to wait for ethical leadership from the United States on climate change as significant damages from human-induced climate change now are becoming more visible around the world. And so, as the world is running out of time to prevent significant climate change, the United States is ignoring its global obligations.
Even though the election of President Obama was widely seen as a basis for hope in the international community that the United States would for the first time accept its international responsibilities on climate change, it would appear that at least for his first term President Obama will not be able to deliver on his promise to make the United States a responsible participant in solving climate change.
Because the United States recently elected a Congress that shows no interest in developing national climate change policies and there are reasons to believe that the Obama administration will not be able to make meaningful reductions through administrative action under existing law, the international community is becoming increasingly pessimistic that it will be able to achieve a global deal on climate change in the continuing absence of US leadership. The international community needs the United States to commit to reduce its emissions not only because of the relative size of the US emissions as a percentage of global emissions (over 21%), but because other countries have signaled that they will not act without the United States greenhouse gas reduction commitments.
This post reviews: (a) the state of international climate change cooperation in light of COP-16 in Cancun, (b) the unfortunate and tragic history of the failed US response to climate change, (c) the political domestic opposition to climate change policies, and (d) the need of the United States to respond to its ethical duties to reduce the threat of climate change.
II. Cancun Outcome.
To understand the state of the global deal on climate change, one needs to examine the agreements reached at COP-16 in Cancun. In a recent post, ClimateEthics examined in considerable detail the positive outcomes and huge disappointments of COP-16 in Cancun, Mexico in December 2010. See, An Ethical Analysis of the Cancun Climate Negotiations Outcome.
In summary, despite a few agreements on mostly procedural matters and non-binding national emissions reductions commitments and aspirations for adaptation funding that have kept hope alive for some eventual global deal on climate change, the Cancun agreements failed to achieve legally binding agreements on national greenhouse gas emissions reductions and sufficient dedicated funding for adaptation efforts to climate change in vulnerable countries around the world.
Although Cancun made progress on voluntary national greenhouse gas emissions reductions commitments, these commitments even if complied with, will not avoid dangerous climate change. In short, Cancun made some progress but deferred decisions on the most difficult international climate change issues to later COPs. As we explained in the previous post, Cancun utterly failed to achieve an agreement that: (a) was environmentally sufficient, (b) adequately funded needed adaptation, or (c) allocated national responsibility on the basis of equity.
A. Environmental Sufficiency Criteria
As we have seen the Cancun agreements fail to modify the inadequate voluntary commitments on ghg emissions reductions made pursuant to the Copenhagen Accord. Not only does the Cancun agreements fail to require sufficient ghg emissions reductions to assure that the international community is on a ghg emissions reduction pathway that will prevent dangerous climate change, the emissions reductions commitments that have been identified under the Cancun agreements almost guarantee that millions of poor people, plants, animals, an ecosystems will be harmed by climate change. That is, the voluntary emissions reduction commitments made in Cancun leave at a very minimum a 5Gt gap between emissions levels that will be achieved if there is full compliance with the voluntary emissions reductions and what is necessary to prevent 2°C rise, a warming amount that most scientists believe could cause very dangerous climate change.
B. Just Adaptation Criteria
The second criteria for judging the sufficiency of any second commitment period under the UNFCCC is that it must provide adequate funding to support adaptation programs in developing countries given that some developing countries have done nothing to cause climate change and must now or soon take steps to avoid harsh impacts. Although the Cancun agreement did manage to create an adaptation framework to enhance adaptation efforts by all countries and a process to help least developed countries (LDCs) to develop and implement national adaptation, Cancun failed to identify dedicated sources of funding to implement an adaptation agenda that is based upon “mandatory” contributions to “new, predictable, and additional sources of funding.”
C. Equity Criteria
As we explained in the recent post on Cancun, a third criteria that all post-Kyoto proposals must meet is the requirement that national emissions reduction proposals must be consistent with what “equity” and “justice” demands of nations. That is, equity requires that each nation reduce its emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions. In other words, each nation’s emissions reduction levels should be based upon what distributive and retributive justice demands, not on national self-interest. As we explained in the recent post, the voluntary emissions reductions commitments made under the Cancun agreements utterly failed to satisfy the requirement that national emissions reductions be based upon “equity” or are otherwise distributively just.
This post continues exploration of ethical issues raised by the numerous carbon cap and trade regimes that have arisen or are under consideration around the world.
One of the happy surprises of publishing ClimateEthics is that occasionally we get comments on our entries that raise very important and thought-provoking questions about our initial ethical analysis. This is a response to helpful comments by Robert Sullivan on our recent entry on the Ethics of Carbon Trading. This post originally appeared at: http://rockblogs.psu.edu/climate/2010/06/ethical-issues-raised-by-carbon-cap-and-trade-regimes.html. The section numbers referenced below refer to sections in the original article. In that article, ClimateEthics examined ethical questions that arise in cap and trade programs. These ethical questions fell into the following categories: (a) Justice of the Cap, (b) Creating Property Rights in the Atmosphere, (c) Environmental Effectiveness, (d) Distributive Justice, and (e) Procedural Justice
In the last post, ClimateEthics explained that the purpose of the analysis was not to resolve all the many ethical issues raised by cap and trade but to encourage further exploration of these ethical issues. Thanks to the comments of Robert Sullivan, this post attempts to go deeper on some of the issues raised in the earlier post with the goal of continuing the exploration of the ethics of cap and trade regimes.
II. Specific Issues
1: Justice Of The Cap
In the original post, ClimateEthics argued that if the total society-wide cap, before it is allocated among emitters within the jurisdiction of the government allocating the cap, is less than the government’s fair share of safe global emissions, then the cap is not environmentally just particularly to those who are vulnerable to harsh climate change impacts. We also claimed that most existing cap and trade regimes could be accused of being insufficient as a matter of justice.
A. Comment -Mr. Sullivan says:
The first issue is justice of the cap. I agree with you that the world is not doing nearly enough to even put us on a pathway to avoiding catastrophic climate change let alone following that path. However, I don’t see a failure of caps being strict enough as an indication of the inherently unethical or unjust nature of cap and trade or emissions trading per se. Without having read any of the references you include on countries’ obligations, I am not sure I agree with the statement “many cap and trade regimes do not derive the quantity of the cap from these international obligations”. There is an international obligation under Article 2 of the UNFCCC to prevent “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”, and this is further articulated in the QELRCs set out in the Kyoto Protocol (see the first part of Art 2 of the UNFCCC which links into the KP, and also note the clarifying text at the end of Art 2 around also ensuring sustainable development). While I agree that the Kyoto caps are insufficient to meet Art 2 of the UNFCCC over the long term, the Kyoto caps do indeed reflect the most detailed set of international obligations with respect to GHG caps to date. I would argue these are the dominant obligations of countries under public international law, and the cap and trade system set up by the Kyoto Protocol complies with these obligations as does the European Emissions Trading Scheme. However, I also acknowledge that here you may be drawing a distinction between a countries legal obligations under public international law and some other sort of other (ethical?) obligations premised on cuts that are needed to avoid catastrophic climate change and some means of allocating these cuts amongst countries.
Whether or not a cap and trade represents a “fair share” is another issue. The caps are the result of political negotiations, and if there was no cap and trade there may still be emission reduction commitments and targets but I don’t think they would necessarily be any fairer simply because they were not linked to cap and trade. If anything developed countries would be less willing to assume steeper cuts, making cap and trade an ethical imperative as the most likely means of achieving the steepest global reductions.
B. Our Response
Mr. Sullivan probes appropriately about elements of our claim that if the cap is unjust the entire cap and trade regime may be unjust. It appears to us that there are several different questions Mr. Sullivan raises.
First, Mr. Sullivan asks what is the basis for our claim that many caps do not meet a nation’s fair share of safe global emissions.
Answer, there is a growing scientific consensus that to prevent dangerous climate change the world most likely needs to reduce global emissions by between 25 to 40 per cent by 2020.
A rich literature on this issue exists. In citing this literature it is important to acknowledge that because there is uncertainty about climate sensitivity, that is we don’t know for sure how much warming will be experienced at equilibrium from different concentrations of CO 2 equivalent in the atmosphere, various emissions reductions targets are recommended to give different levels of confidence that warming will be limited to additional warming targets such as 1.5 0C or 2 0C. We must also acknowledge that there is great controversy about whether 20C.should be the global warming limit target or 1.50C or even lower temperature should be the target. In addition, it should be recognized that there is no ethically neutral way of making this decision because of the inherent uncertainty in the climate sensitivity coupled with uncertainty about at what temperatures the Earth will experience rapid non-linear responses of the climate system. For this reason, determining a global target raises a host of ethical questions which are beyond the scope of this post. These ethical questions include who should have the burden of proof about what temperature levels are safe and what quantity of proof should satisfy the burden of proof. Nevertheless, there appears to be a growing scientific consensus that 20C should be, at the very minimum. a global warming temperature limit target that should be the goal of the UNFCCC.. However, as we will see, we don’t have to decide this to conclude that current caps are ethically problematic (see below). For a discussion of what reductions are needed to achieve a 20C, see.
However, given that global emissions most likely need to be reduced by at least 25% below 1990 levels by 2020 at the very minimum to give any reasonable confidence that the world will avoid rapid non-linear warming, one can conclude that national commitments made pursuant to the Copenhagen Accord will not achieve what is needed to achieve the 25% minimum reductions by 2020 because they just don’t add up to 25% reductions. A fortiori, individual high-emitting nations can be accused of not meeting their fair share of safe global emissions because fairness would require that high-emitting nations would have to achieve lower emissions than what is needed for the globe, yet no high emitting nations have made commitments at a levels which now appear to be necessary to achieve the 20C target for the entire world.
For this reason, a strong case can be made that existing caps on high-emitting countries do not achieve what justice would require of high-emitting nations to avoid dangerous climate change to others.
Second, Mr. Sullivan appropriately asks ClimateEthics whether given some of the caps that nations have agreed to are now legally recognized by international law such as the Kyoto Protocol, how can we say they are unethical.
We would argue that legal validity does not equal ethical sufficiency given that: (a) nations have never claimed that the emissions reductions commitments they have agreed to in accepting a cap represent their fair share of safe global emissions, (b) nations seem to base the legitimacy of their emissions reductions targets on national self-interest not international responsibility, and (c) nations have negotiated the cap that they have accepted on the basis of what was viewed by them to be politically viable. . We, therefore, don’t agree that legal commitments can be construed to satisfy ethical obligations.
One could of course argue, that making any legal commitments in a cap is better than no commitments. We would agree. However, ClimateEthics believes it is important to acknowledge that existing caps do not achieve what would be required of nations if they took their ethical responsibilities seriously to reduce their emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions.
Along this line, we believe it would be an improvement to require in international negotiations that each government be required to expressly articulate what atmospheric concentrations of ghg emissions their commitments are designed to achieve. No national target makes any sense unless it is seen implicitly as a position on a safe global atmospheric concentration target but nations are not asked to explain what global targets will be achieved by their voluntary targets and why their emissions commitments should be understood to constitute their fair share of total global emissions.
Third, we understand Mr. Sullivan to be asking once the cap is agreed in international negotiations, can we claim that the entire cap and trade regime is unjust.
We think this question raises interesting ethical issues not yet dealt with. Another way of stating this question is- if the world has agreed to caps in an international agreement, given the agreement how can we say the entire cap and trade regime is unjust. We believe the trade features of cap and trade could lead to seeing the entire scheme as unjust if the cap is unjust for the following reasons. If country A only agrees to a 10% reduction by 2020 when their fair share is 25% for instance, and they actually achieve 15% reduction they can sell the 5% excess tons to country B to be counted against country B’s target. This then creates two injustices. First country A has not achieved its fair target. Second it gets unjust revenues because the cap was set too low. This also gives the buying entity, country B a right to exceed its fair share of safe global emissions because it has bought credits from country A. From the standpoint of a country that is very vulnerable to climate change impacts, the trading scheme is unethical.
