Ethics and Climate

Donald Brown

Obama’s Laudable Speech Fails to Communicate Policy Implications of The Moral Dimensions of Climate Change.

Posted on August 4, 2015 by dabrown57

When US President Obama announced revised regulations on reducing carbon dioxide emissions from US power plants on August 3, 2015 in a laudable speech supporting the new rules, as he predicted opponents of US climate change policy strongly attacked the new rules on grounds that they would wreck the US economy, destroy jobs, and raise electricity prices. Although President Obama defended the new rules on the basis that they were necessary to prevent dangerous climate change, that time was running out to do so, and that the rules would protect human health of US citizens, the speech failed to develop some of the obvious profound implications for climate policy of the conclusion that climate change is a moral problem, although President Obama did assert twice in the speech that climate change is a moral problem.

Although the Obama speech has rightly been praised by those who believe the US must take strong action on climate change, his speech did not acknowledge that:

US ghg emissions are harming and seriously threatening hundreds of millions of people outside the United States. There was no mention in the speech how US ghg emissions were harming others around the world.
Those who are most vulnerable to climate change have done almost nothing to cause the existing threats to them.
Those who are most vulnerable to climate change can do little to protect themselves, their best hope is that high emitting nations, sub-national governments, organizations, entities, and individuals will respond to their moral responsibilities to reduce the threat of climate change.
If climate change is a moral problem, the US may not base its climate change policies on US interests alone, it must respond to its obligations to not harm others outside the United States. Therefore costs to the US economy alone may not be used to justify failure to reduce US ghg emissions.
The United States must reduce its ghg emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions, a fact which leads to the conclusion that the new rules for power plants are still not stringent enough in light of the fact that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has determined that developed countries must reduce their ghg emissions by a minimum of 25% to 40% by 2020 to prevent dangerous climate change and the new rule will only achieve 32% reduction by 2030 coupled with the added fact that any reasonable interpretation of what equity requires of the United States would require the US to be closer to the 40% reduction by 2020 and surely reduce US ghg emissions well in excess of 40% by 2030.
One of the reasons the world is now running out of time to prevent dangerous climate change is because fossil fuel companies and their allies in the US Congress has prevented the United States from taking serious action on climate change since 1992 when the George H. W Bush administration agreed in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that the United States should adopt policies and measures to prevent dangerous anthropocentric interference on climate change on the basis of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities. Thus the United States, more than any other developed country, has been responsible for the disastrous 30 year delay in formulating a serious global response to climate change, while delays make the problem harder and more expensive to solve and increase the likelihood of triggering dangerous climate change.
The United States is more responsible for raising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gas concentrations to 400 ppm CO2 equivalent in the atmosphere than any country and has among the highest per capita ghg emissions as any country in the world.
The climate change opposition in the United States has successfully prevented the United States from adopting policies that would have significantly reduced US emissions on the basis of scientific uncertainty despite the fact that the United States agreed in the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to not use scientific uncertainty as an excuse for not reducing its ghg emissions to safe levels.
Those nations who have consistently emitted ghgs above their fair share of safe global ghg emissions are responsible for the reasonable adaptation costs and damages of poor nations and people who have not caused climate change.These responsibilities are required both by basic ethics and justice and international law. These financial obligations will far exceed hundreds of billions of dollars per year.

Donald A Brown

Scholar In Residence and Professor

Widener Commonwealth University Law School

dabrown57@gmail.com

New Very Helpful Website on Climate Equity

Posted on October 30, 2014 by dabrown57

The World Resources Institute (WRI) has created a new very helpful website that allows visual comparisons of up to four nations at a time up and up to eight of 24 variables at a time relevant to determining what equity requires of nations in formulating their climate policies. The website is called Equity Tracker and is available at: http://cait2.wri.org/equity/

The above picture from the website demonstrates how one could visualize differences between nations on factors relevant to what equity requires of them and thereby understand why some nations must make much deeper cuts than others as a matter of equity and justice. This information could be very valuable in deepening citizen and government reflection on ethical, justice, and equity problems with national responses to climate change. As a matter of equity, for instance, the website help one quickly visualize why the United States must make deeper percentage cuts in its ghg emissions than India and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, not to mention China, for instance.

One minor criticism of the site is, however, in order. Although the website is very helpful to both help visualize and understand facts relevant to determinations of what equitable principles should guide national climate policy formation, particularly in regard to ghg emissions reduction targets, lamentably the site could be interpreted to leave the mistaken impression that equity could mean anything. In fact the site says that the meaning of equity “depends upon the lens through which one views it.” The site could be improved if it included a reference to the IPCC discussion in Chapters 3 and 4 of Working Group III’s recent report which, among other things, identifies ethical limitations of economic arguments about climate policies and only a limited number of considerations that should be considered in determining what equity means. For a summary of the IPCC conclusions on these issue see IPCC, Ethics, and Climate Change: Will IPCC’s Latest Report Transform How National Climate Change Policies Are Justified?. and Improving IPCC Working Group III’s Analysis on Climate Ethics and Equity, Second In A Series on this website.

The other idea one must understand to effectively criticize national ghg commitments is the policy implications of a carbon budget that must be maintained to limit warming to 2 degrees C. If a citizen understands the equity considerations and the extraordinary urgency of lowering global emissions to limit warming to 2 degrees C, then citizens can then effectively criticize their nation’s ghg emissions target. The following is one depiction of a carbon budget prepared by the Global Commons Institute with three different reductions pathways that make different assumptions about when global ghg emissions peak.

By:

Donald A. Brown

Scholar in Residence and Professor

Widener University School of Law

dabrown57@gmail.com

At the UN Climate Talks, Thinking About Equity May Require Understanding the Conditions of Mutual Trust

Posted on July 6, 2014 by dabrown57

Editor’s Note: The following entry is by guest blogger, Dr. Idil Boran, from York University in Toronto, Canada. Dr. Boran has previously reported on equity and justice issues that arose in the recently concluded Bonn intercessional meetings of climate negotiations under the UNFCCC. This latest report was made at the conclusion of these negotiations during which almost no progress was made in defining equity under UNFCCC by the Ad Hoc Working Group on Durban Platform For Enhanced Action (ADP), a mechanism under the UNFCCC that seeks to achieve a adequate global climate agreement, despite a growing consensus among most observers of the UNFCCC negotiations that nations need to align their emissions reductions commitments to levels required of them by equity and justice if the world is going to prevent extremely dangerous climate change.

At the UN Climate Talks, Thinking About Equity May Require Understanding the Conditions of Mutual Trust

The UN Climate Conference held in Bonn, Germany, June 4-15, 2014, concluded in a generally positive tone. Much work has been done before COP 20 in Lima, where negotiators are expected to produce a fully written draft of the new agreement.

International talks on climate change have taken many twists and turns since the UNFCCC came into effect. In the current round of negotiations important shifts are occurring. As explained in a previous post, the new platform of negotiations favors the concept of global participation, where every nation is expected to do its part in some capacity. This is to replace the idea of common but differentiated responsibilities, which was the guiding principle of the negotiations in the Kyoto era. This principle was specially opted to capture a sense of equity within a binding global treaty. The current focus on global participation is to facilitate agreement and induce greater participation. But does this shift imply that the new agreement will have to make a compromise on the issue of equity?

Moral and political philosophers tend to think about equity in substantive terms, as claims about how to apportion the burdens and the benefits as part of a collective venture. The thinking is usually that of identifying an appropriate criterion of equity (a guiding principle) and then articulating an allocation of responsibilities from this criterion.

This way of thinking can be applied to many topics arising within the Framework Convention. Take, for example, the new issue at the heart of the multilateral negotiations: the Warsaw Mechanism on Loss and Damage associated with climate impacts in developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change. When the issue of loss and damage is raised, a standard approach that comes to mind is that of prescribing an allocation of the costs associated with loss and damage (human, economic, as well as non-economic costs) by a criterion of equity.

For example, historical accountability provides a morally powerful criterion. This is the idea that those who are historically responsible for the problem of climate change should provide the resources to deal with loss and damage. Ability to pay provides another criterion. Here the idea is that developed countries should take up the costs, simply because they are more wealthy. These arguments have been made for mitigation efforts, and they can also be made as new issues arise, such as the issue of an international mechanism on loss and damage.

But the reality is far more complex. However neat these substantive arguments are, they do not capture the layers of discussions that actually take place. In fact, most of the discussions regarding the Warsaw Mechanism, at this point in time, are not over substantive questions. They are focused on deciding on the rules and procedures, and the composition of the Executive Committee, whose mandate will be to develop the details of the mechanism. But the questions that arise at this procedural level are no less interesting. As discussions continue, developing countries who feel threatened by the effects of climate change will press for greater representation within the Committee, and developed countries, such as the United States and the E.U. will press more on the importance of securing the right team of experts regardless of country representation.

But why are developing countries vulnerable to the effects of climate change are pressing for more seats on the Committee? Clearly, when it comes to decisions made by the Executive Committee, they worry that their interests will not be taken into account, unless they secure greater representation.

So, it looks like there is a problem of trust that needs to be addressed at the heart of the deliberations. Within rightful conditions of collective decision-making, equitable terms of cooperation can be captured and agreed upon. And this is exactly what the new round of negotiations aims to achieve by 2015, with more flexibility conferred to countries in making their contributions to the climate effort. What remains to be done, then, is to work on the conditions that will promote trust between parties.

More than neat arguments from first principles, this may require specially talented people, with strong diplomatic skills working on the ground, who can foster a sense of building bridges, and a feel for working together on a global problem. This will also require the building of strong international institutions that put greater emphasis than ever on transparency, accountability, and governance.

At this juncture then, if equity is the concern, there are reasons to invest in understanding what, if at all, can generate more trust between parties at the UNFCCC. Figuring out what it takes to secure mutual trust is more an art than strict rational argumentation. It has something to do with creating a welcoming and inclusive atmosphere, as opposed to a hostile one where all hold their cards close to their chests. It therefore makes sense for academic researchers interested in the ethical, political, and legal aspects of climate talks to tune in to these dynamics.

As for the institutional structure of the UNFCCC, adopting the right institutional rules and procedures can help in fostering mutual trust. That’s why the new multilateral assessment and review processes under development are of special significance. So is the effort to agree on a common metric on emissions reduction, so to allow all parties to pitch in their contributions in a coherent way, and work together toward ratcheting them up in the future. This may not be a magic solution to the climate problem, but it can set the foundations of cooperation that’s not only equitable but durable too. If successful, it can set an important precedent.

That’s why all eyes will be on Lima in December 2014…

By:

Dr. Idil Boran. Associate Professor &

Director of the Certificate Program in Practical Ethics

Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies

Core Faculty Member

Institute for Research and Innovation in Sustainability (IRIS)

York University, Toronto Ontario

Canada

The Progression of Multilateral Talks on Climate Change and the Challenge of “Equity”: Notes from the UN Climate Conference in Bonn, June 2014

Posted on June 11, 2014 by dabrown57

Editor’s Note: As the international community seeks to negotiate a new climate treaty to be completed in Paris in 2015, negotiations have been taking place during the last two weeks in Bonn, Germany as one of the sessions on the road to Paris. Today’s guest blogger, Dr. Idil Boran, from York University in Canada has submitted the following report on progress in Bonn during the first week. A central issue of concern in these negotiations is the need of nations to take equity and justice seriously when they make ghg emissions reductions commitments and when considering their responsibility for adaptation, losses and damages in poor vulnerable countries. Among close observers of the negotiations and the science informing these talks, there is widespread agreement that there is little hope of keeping warming to tolerable levels unless high-emitting nations base their emissions reductions promises on what equity would require of them.

The Progression of Multilateral Talks on Climate Change and the Challenge of “Equity”: Notes from the UN Climate Conference in Bonn, June 2014

The June sessions of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is taking place in Bonn, Germany, June 4-15, 2014. This is one of the “intersessional” meetings that take place at various times during the year between the meetings of the Conference of the Parties (COPs) annually held at the end of each year.

This year’s intersessional meetings are of special importance, the June session currently under way being a critical one. This is because multilateral negotiations on climate change are on a track to reach a comprehensive and legally binding agreement by the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 21), to be held in Paris at the end of 2015. But more importantly, everything to be agreed upon at COP 21 must be drafted at COP 20 the year before, that is in December 2014. It is the present intersessional meeting – taking place in June in Bonn – where the hard work needs to be done, so that all the substantive recommendations can be presented, negotiated, and drafted in Lima. In this spirit, the UN Climate Change Conference convened on June 4 with determination to achieve as much as possible before Lima.

At this point in time, the negotiations are at an important juncture. The goal for the international community is to draw lessons from the Kyoto Protocol era, and to articulate the terms of an entirely new system of cooperation for the Post-Kyoto era. In other words, the goal is to avoid the weaknesses of the Kyoto Protocol.

Given that the Kyoto Protocol was motivated by a well-defined conception of equitable distribution of responsibility, many questions arise at this juncture over how equity will be defined within the new agreement. Equity has always been central to multilateral negotiations on climate change. This makes sense for many reasons. First, climate change is expected to affect lives in important ways. Second, the way in which people’s lives will be affected is expected to be more severe in some places than others. Third, climate change is a phenomenon that is associated with human activity, which has been going on for some time and which is intertwined with economic development and growth. For these reasons alone, it becomes obvious to anyone with a sense of fairness that – to the extent that the international community is to cooperate on addressing the effects of climate change – the terms of cooperation ought to be fair.

The terms of cooperation set by the Kyoto Protocol were devised in light of the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities”. Given that industrialized nations are responsible for the problem of climate change, the idea was to adopt an allocation of responsibilities that requires developed nations to take up the bulk of the burden. This gave rise to roughly two categories of nations: those who are to assume the costs of curbing climate change by contrast to those who are not expected to do much. But this structure also became highly divisive and unable to generate agreement and compliance, which is desperately needed for action on climate change to be effective.

As part of the new rounds of negotiations, the UNFCCC adopted the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action at COP 17 in Durban in 2011, where negotiations were put on an ambitious track to work out the details of an entirely new international agreement by 2015. When it was first put in place, the Durban Platform did not include too many substantive decisions, for the objective was to allow the terms of international cooperation to be discussed and decided upon through negotiations from 2012 to 2015. The single prior decision that was made, however, was the rejection of the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” and the adoption of a principle of “universality” instead, as the central guiding principle of a post-Kyoto agreement. On this principle, all nations are to contribute to the cooperative scheme on climate change in some capacity. This shift gave the international community the opportunity to have a fresh start and to rethink the terms of cooperation on a (relatively) clean slate.

Additionally, the new international agreement under negotiation is one that is expected to have a richer composition than the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol was focused exclusively on mitigation through reduction of emissions. The new agreement is expected to have both a mitigation component and an adaptation component. Within the adaptation component, an International Mechanism on Loss and Damage associated with climate change impacts in developing countries vulnerable to the effects of climate change is being negotiated as well. This is an entirely novel issue under negotiations, and one with important implications for the philosophical, legal, and ethical aspects of international cooperation. In short, this broader range of issues adds significant dimension to the talks. The principle of “universality” may well be more suitable for this new round of negotiations, as the allocation of responsibility may need to be customized to each specific issue.

Contrary to what might seem at first blush, the principle of “universality” need not require every nation to assume exactly the same amount of costs and responsibilities for a given issue. So far, no one has suggested that. Negotiators are discussing how to achieve equitable conditions within a system of cooperation for each issue. Take the discussions on the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage, adopted recently in Warsaw in November 2013. As the issue is still in its earlier stages, the discussions are mostly over procedural matters at this point. But the question of equity arises nevertheless, and remains a central concern. For example, representatives of countries that are particularly vulnerable to the threat of loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change, such as the members of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), want to see greater representation of these countries in the decision-making body. There is an equity argument that motivates this request. A competing argument is that the advisory and decision-making bodies on this matter will secure more appropriate decisions if they are composed of members with the appropriate expertise, which may or may not align with regional or national affiliations. This argument, which is also motivated by a sense of justice, suggests that the expert-based composition will be conducive to decisions that would maximize the benefits to those whose interests are at stake.

How the discussions will unfold is yet to be seen, but the general parameters of the negotiations are such that equitable terms are to be discussed and tailored. The concept of “equity” is neither a monolithic nor an inert concept. It often needs to be formulated from within the concrete circumstances that make it relevant. Sometimes, equitable conditions devised for specific circumstances can become obsolete if circumstances change, and may need to be rethought and reformulated. Seen in this way, equity is not lost in this new round of negotiations, it is being worked out as new issues arise. Since any decision coming out of these negotiations will set precedents for future debates on international relations, it is important that the international community take the time to think through, and to carefully consider various (and sometimes conflicting) arguments, leaving no stone unturned.

The advantage of the present round of negotiations is that there is a general motivation to advance the debates in a productive way, and to reach a genuinely effective and mutually acceptable agreement. How the talks will unfold in the second week of the June session at the UNFCCC will set the tone for the Conference of the Parties (COP 20) in Lima. And for anyone interested in the philosophical, legal, and ethical dimensions of public policy and international cooperation, a close examination of the dynamics of the negotiations is worthwhile.

By:

Idil Boran.

Associate Professor &

Director of the Certificate Program in Practical Ethics

Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies

York University

Toronto Ontario, Canada

A Picture To Help Citizens Understand the Justice and Equity Issues That Must Be Faced in Setting National GHG Emissions Targets.

Posted on May 16, 2014 by dabrown57

All nations, when they set national ghg emissions reductions targets, are implicitly taking a position on the following two civilization challenging ethical issues. The international community should require that all nations explicitly explain their positions on these two issues.

Every national ghg emissions reduction target is implicitly a position on the two above civilization challenging ethical issues, although nations almost never identify the positions they have taken on these issues nor acknowledge that these are ethical matters. These issues are: (1) a ghg atmospheric concentration stabilization goal, and (2) the nation’s fair share of global ghg emissions that will achieve the atmospheric goal. This picture seeks to help citizens understand these issues. Both of these issues are essentially ethical and moral issues. This is so because in taking a position on an ghg atmospheric stabilization goal, a nation is determining how much harm it is willing to inflict on hundreds of millions of poor vulnerable people around the world and the ecological systems on which life depends. Also, in specifying a ghg emissions reduction amount, the nation is also taking a position on what distributive justice requires of it to reduce global ghg emissions to safe levels.

Governments should be required to explain their positions on these issues because every national ghg emissions reduction target is implicitly a position on these ethical questions.

By:

Donald A. Brown

Scholar In Residence and Professor,

Widener University School of Law

dabrown57@gmail.com

10 Reasons Why “Contraction and Convergence” Is Still The Most Preferable Equity Framework for Allocating National GHG Targets .

Posted on February 21, 2014 by dabrown57

(The Contraction and Convergence Equity Framework)

I. Introduction

Perhaps the most challenging policy issue raised by climate change is how to fairly allocate responsibility among nations, regions, states, organizations, and individuals to reduce global greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions to non-dangerous levels. This problem is generally referred to as the problem of “equity” in the climate change regime. It a central issue in climate change policy formation because each government policy on reducing the threat of climate change is implicitly a position on that government’s fair share of safe global emissions. In addition, climate change will continue to get worse unless each country reduces its emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions. Therefore, “equity” is not only a challenging issue in forming climate policies, it is perhaps the most critical policy question facing the international community.

This article identifies 10 reasons why the equity framework known as “contraction and convergence” (C&C) is the most preferable of all the equity frameworks under serious discussion around the world. The end of this paper will acknowledge some alleged limitations of C&C yet explain why these limitations should be dealt with in one of several possible ways while adopting the C&C framework internationally.

C&C was first proposed in 1990 by the London-based non-governmental Global Commons Institute. (Meyer, 2000) ( GCI, 2009) Basically, C&C is not a prescription per se, but rather a way of demonstrating how a global prescription could be negotiated and organized. (Meyer, 1999:305) Implementing C&C requires two main steps. As a first step, countries must to agree on a long-term global stabilization level for atmospheric ghg concentrations. Although a warming limit of 2 degrees C has been preliminarily agreed to in international negotiations, subject to the acknowledged need to examine whether the limit should be reduced to 1.5 degrees C in studies that are underway, once a warming limit is finalized it must be translated into a ghg atmospheric concentration goal and then a global ghg emissions budget can be calculated. As a second step, countries need to negotiate a convergence date, that is a date at which time the emissions allocated to each country should converge on equal per-capita entitlements (“convergence”) while staying within the carbon budget. During the transition period, a yearly global limitation is devised which contracts over time as the per-capita entitlements of developed countries decrease while those of most developing countries increase. C&C would allow nations to achieve their per capita based targets through trading from countries that have excess allotments.

And so the heart of C&C is the idea that justice requires that rights to use the atmosphere as a carbon sink must be based upon the idea that all human beings have an equal right to use the global commons, the Earth’s atmosphere. Because it would be impossible to achieve equal per capita emissions allocations in the short-term, C&C allows higher emitting nations to converge on a equal per capita target at some future date thus giving these nations some time to achieve an equal per capita target goal.

II. 10 Reasons To Support C&C

C&C is the most preferable equity framework for the following reasons:

1. Climate change is a classic problem of distributive justice. Distributive justice holds that all people should be treated as equals in any allocation of public goods unless some other distribution can be justified on morally supportable grounds. And so distributive justice entails the idea that at all allocations of public goods should start with a with a presumption of equal rights to public goods. Yet, distributive justice does not require that all shares of public goods be equal but put puts the burden on those who want to move away from equal shares to demonstrate that their justification for their requested entitlement to non-equal shares is based upon morally relevant grounds. Therefore someone cannot justify his or her desire to use a greater share of public resources on the fact that he or she has blue eyes or that he or she will maximize his or her economic self-interest through greater shares of public goods because such justifications fail to pass the test of morally supportable justifications for being treated differently. Because C&C ends up at some time in the future with equal rights for all individuals to use the atmosphere as a sink, it is strongly consistent with theories of distributive justice. Although distributive justice would also allow for other morally relevant considerations to be considered in allocating ghg emissions that diverge from strict equality, including such considerations as historical ghg emissions levels, these other considerations can be built into a C&C framework either by negotiating the convergence dates in a C&C regime or in side-agreements on such issues as financing technologies for low-emitting nations at levels that would allow them to achieve per capita emissions limitations. C&C therefore is strongly consistent with theories of distributive justice because equal per capita emissions is the ultimate outcome of C&C even if that outcome is modified to take into account other legitimate equitable issues in negotiations by changing the convergence date or in side-agreements that finance compliance for poor nations that need assistance in achieving equal per capita emissions limitations.

2. Allocating ghg emissions on an equal per capita emissions basis is consistent with the virtually universally recognized ethical idea that all people should treat others as they wish to be treated. And so basing allocations on equal rights is the least contentious of all ethical theories of how to allocate public goods. Although there are are other ethically relevant facts that arguably should be considered in an allocation of ghg emissions such as economic capability to reduce emissions or historical emissions levels, these considerations are more controversial ethically particularly in regard to how they are operationalized in setting a numeric targets and therefore are more amenable to negotiated settlements on issues such as when convergence on equal per capita levels will be achieved rather than in setting basic allocation target levels.

3. Equal per capita emissions levels are also consistent with human rights theories about the duty to prevent climate change. That is, human rights are based upon the uncontroversial ethical theory that humans should treat each other as they would like to be treated because all people, regardless of where they are, should be treated with respect. Since the outcome of C&C is equal per capita rights, it is completely consistent with the idea of treating all people with equal respect, the foundation of human rights obligations. Because climate change undeniably violates several non-controversial human rights including the right to life, security, and food among other rights, climate change is widely acknowledged as a human rights problem. If climate change allocations are considered to be in fulfillment of human rights duties, then arguments based upon economic self-interest in setting ghg emissions targets are not an acceptable justification for avoiding human rights obligations. This is so because human rights obligations are viewed to ethically trump other values such as economic self interest or utility maximization as has been explained in significant detail in recent entries on this website. If human rights are violated by climate change, costs to those causing climate change entailed by policies to reduce the threat of climate change are not relevant for policy. That is if a person is violating human rights, he or she should desist even if it is costly to them. Therefore because a C&C framework has the strongest obvious link to human rights, if it were agreed to by the international community it would provide a strong argument against those who refuse to limit their emissions to an equal per capita level on the bases of cost to them.

4. Setting a ghg emissions target based upon distributive justice requires consideration of facts determined by looking backward, such as levels of historical ghg emissions, and issues determined by looking forward, such as what amount of the global commons should each individual be entitled to for personal use. Only equal per capita entitlements to the use a global commons satisfies future focused allocations issues without ethical controversy. And so an allocation that converges on equal per capita emissions allocations sometime in the future is more than any other allocation framework likely to be seen as universally just as far as future entitlements issues are concerned. And so, the C&C should be supported because it is most consistent with equal entitlements to use global commons resources.

5, The C&C framework is the simplest of the dozen or so equity allocation frameworks which have been seriously considered in international climate change negotiations. Because it is simpler, it will likely be easier to negotiate than the other equity frameworks which have received serious consideration. Its simplicity is derived from the fact that its focus is narrowly on climate change justice issues. Thus it is not complicated by other global injustice issues which are not climate change related yet which are considerations in some other equity frameworks . For instance, other proposed ghg allocation formula try and remedy economic injustice among nations, issues which are worthy of international attention yet greatly complicate the ethical issues which need to be considered in setting ghg targets. Because C&C is simple, it is very pragmatic.

6. Objections to equal per capita allocations have sometimes been made by representatives from high emitting nations such as the United States because of the enormous ghg emissions reductions which would be required of it to reach equal per capita emissions levels of diminishing allowable safe global emissions. Yet emissions reductions that would be required of high emitting nations under other proposed equity frameworks would be even steeper because they take into considerations issues such as, for example, historical emissions, economic wealth of nations, and ability of nations to pay. For this reason C&C holds the best chance of being accepted by the international community compared to other equity frameworks provided other issues that raise legitimate equity concerns including historical emissions levels are taken into account in some way in climate negotiations. These other justice concerns should be understood to be refinements of C&C rather than replacements of C&C because the C&C framework was always flexible enough to take into account additional issues relevant to distributive justice.

7. Many observers of international global efforts to achieve a solution to climate change argue that there has been too much emphasis on the obligations of nations while obligations of individuals and regional governments have largely been ignored. These observers argue that this focus on nations has helped high-emitting individuals and regional governments to largely escape public scrutiny. Because C&C obligations are premised on determining the obligations of nations based upon equal per capita shares, C&C can be seamlessly applied to state and regional governments and individuals around the world. If, for instance, a C&C framework determines that the world should converge on a per capita emissions target of 2 tons per person by 2025, it is therefore a straightforward deduction to argue that all individuals around the world should limit their emissions to be below 2 tons per person by 2025 at a minimum.

8. Some of the issues that proponents of other equity frameworks have argued should be considered in allocating national emissions targets such as historical emissions or the level of economic development in poor countries are already in serious consideration in international climate change negotiation agenda focused on such matters as: (a) financial responsibility for adaptation, (b) responsibility for loses and damages for climate change, and (c) financing of climate friendly technologies for developing countries. Because of this the ethical issues raised by historical emissions or economic ability of nations to achieve a per capita allocation could be relegated to other issues already being negotiated in international climate change negotiations while emissions allocations targets are allocated on the basis of C&C.

9. Establishing a norm that each person is only entitled to emit ghgs on an equal per capita basis would also help to draw lines about other contentious ethical issues raised by climate change such as how to count responsibility for historical emissions. Determining how to translate historical emissions into legal obligations raises a host of contentious issues including when to start counting historical emissions. This question could be simplified by first determining reasonable per capita emissions at various moments in history. In addition, determining liability for future excess emissions could be simplified if there was an agreement on acceptable per capita emissions. And so looking at the problem of climate change through a per capita lens helps draw lines about other climate change policy matters which will need to be faced. Therefore the establishment of a C&C framework would help with other policy questions that must be faced in the future.

10. Many have argued that responsibility for reducing ghg emissions should not only be based upon production of ghgs within a nation, the current presumption of international negotiations, but on products consumed in a nation but produced in another nations in processes which emitted ghgs. Although this shift from production ghg to consumption related ghg as a way of establishing national responsibility to achieve ghg emissions reduction targets is not likely to happen in the short-term, those who desire to assign liability on the basis of consumption could also use the C&C framework more easier than other proposed equity frameworks.

III. Limitations of C&C

Other proposed equity frameworks were developed to deal with a few alleged limitations of C&C. (As we have explained, C&C was always flexible enough to deal with additional issues relevant to distributive justice and therefore these alleged criticisms did not take into considerations the inherent flexibility of C&C.)

For instance, a second allocation formula which has received serious attention by the international community is the Greenhouse Development Rights Framework ( GDR) (Baer et al., 2008). GDR was developed, according to its proponents, because C&C does not leave adequate ghg emissions to allow developing nations to develop to levels that would allow them to escape grinding poverty. And so, proponents of GDR argue that any targets developed under a C&C framework will not be fair to poor nations and therefore will not be accepted by developing nations. We agree that several additional equitable issues including the justice dimensions of historical emissions levels must be dealt with for a C&C approach to be fair to low-emitting poor countries because emissions targets simply based upon equal per capita emissions to allocate the extraordinarily small carbon budget that is left to avoid dangerous climate change will leave almost nothing for low emitting nations to grow economically. The questions is not whether these issues need to be considered in setting targets, but rather how they are considered while maintaining the moral force of equal per capita rights to use the atmosphere as a carbon sink.

The Brazilian government has also developed a proposed equity framework based upon the need to take historical emissions levels seriously. Both the proposed GDR framework and the proposed Brazilian framework more directly deal with legitimate justice issues which are not expressly initially dealt with under C&C. Yet C&C can be adopted in combination with other agreements and adjustments to C&C assumptions that deal directly with the equitable issues more directly considered by the other proposed equity frameworks. For instance, the convergence dates in the C&C framework can be modified to take into consideration s0me historical emissions issues. In addition, separate agreements on such matters as financing carbon friendly technologies in poor, low emitting nations can deal with issues of need to assist developing nations achieve otherwise just ghg emissions targets.

In summary, some of the alleged limitations of C&C can be dealt in other agreements while retaining the basic structure of C&C. And so, for the 10 reasons above, the C&C should be adopted by the international community not withstanding the legitimate need to consider other issues relevant to distributive justice in setting ghg emissions reduction targets including levels of historical emissions and financial ability of poor nations to comply with per capita emissions limitations. For this reason, C&C is the most preferable and practical equitable framework for allocating climate change obligations among governments.

References:

Baer, P., Athanasiou, T., Kartha, S., and Kemp-Benedict, E., (2008). The Greenhouse Development Rights Framework, Second Edition, November 2008. http://www.ecoequity.org/docs/TheGDRsFramework.pdf

Global Commons Institute, (GCI), ) 2010. http://www.gci.org.uk/

Meyer, A., (2000, Contraction and Convergence, The Global Solution to Climate Change, Ttones, UK: Green Books,

By:

Donald A. Brown

Scholar in Residence and Professor, Sustainability Ethics and Law and Professor, Widener University School of LawPart-time Professor, Nanjing University of Science Information and Technology, Nanjing, China

dabrown57@gmail.com

Visuallizing Why US National and US State Governments’ GHG Reductions Commitments Are Now Woefully Inadequate in Light Of Recent Science.

Posted on January 26, 2014 by dabrown57

Several charts produced by the Global Commons Institute vividly demonstrate the woeful inadequacy of both the US federal government’s and US states’ commitments on climate change in light of the most recent climate change science.

These charts are extremely important because there is virtually no discussion in the US press of the utter and undeniable inadequacy of commitments on climate change made by the US federal and state governments.

These charts help visualize complex information that is not well understood by the vast majority of US citizens, yet these facts must be understood to comprehend the utter inadequacy of the US federal government and US state governments response to climate change. Thus, these charts help explain both why the US commitment to reduce its ghg emissions by 17% below 2005 as well as targets that have been set by even those US states which have shown some leadership on climate change must now be understood as utterly inadequate in light of the most recent climate change science.

As we shall see below, in setting a government target for ghg emissions two clusters of issues need to be considered which have largely been ignored when US policy makers have set ghg emissions targets. One is the issue of global carbon budgets for the entire world needed to prevent dangerous climate change. We will call this the carbon budget issue. The second is the unquestionable need of all governments to set a target in light of that government’s fair share of safe global emissions. This is required by distributive justice. We will call this the equity or justice issue. All ghg emissions targets are implicitly a positions on the carbon budget issue and the equity and justice issue, yet policy makers rarely discuss their implicit positions on these issues and the US media is largely not covering the budget and justice issues implicit in any US policy on climate change. Any entities identifying a ghg emissions reduction target must be expected to expressly identify their assumptions about what remaining carbon budget and justice and equity consideration were made in setting the target.

I. The First Chart-US States’ Emissions Reductions Commitments Required to Prevent Dangerous Climate Change and Adjusted To Take Equity Into Account.

The following chart depicts what US states emissions commitments should be to prevent dangerous climate change in light of the most recent climate change science and the need to take justice into account in setting ghg emissions targets. This chart can be examined in more detail on the Global Commons Institute website at http://www.gci.org.uk/images/Don_Brown_All_State_draft_[complete].pdf Clinking on this URL should access a pdf file that will allow for a closer inspection of this chart which can be further enhanced by using the zoom function.

What is most notable about this chart is that the US federal government and US state g0vernments will need to reduce their ghg emissions extraordinarily steeply in the next few decades, far beyond what has been committed to. This chart, in combination with the next chart, helps visualize why the current commitments of even those US states which have demonstrated some considerable leadership on climate change need to be increased to levels that represent the state’s fair share of safe global emissions.

a. The Carbon Budget Issue

These steep reductions commitments are needed in light of the most recent scientific understanding of the climate problem facing the world. A carbon emissions budget for the entire world is needed to prevent dangerous climate change and was identified by IPCC in 2013. This budget is of profound significance for national and state and regional ghg emissions reductions targets yet it is infrequently being discussed in global media and has virtually been completely ignored by the US media. To give the world an approximately 66% chance of keeping warming below 2 degrees C, the entire global community must work together to keep global ghg emissions from exceeding approximately 250 metric gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent. The 250 metric gigatonne budget figure has been widely recognized as a reasonable budget goal by many scientists and organizations including most recently the International Geosphere Biosphere Program. The 250 metric ton number is based upon IPCC’s original budget number after adjusting for carbon equivalence of non-CO2 gases that have already been emitted but were not considered initially by IPCC. The practical meaning of this budget is that when the 250 gigtatons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions have been emitted the entire world’s ghg emissions must be zero to give reasonable hope of limiting warming to the 2 degrees C. Since the world is now emitting carbon dioxide equivalent emissions at approximately 10 metric gigatons per year, the world will run out of emissions under the budget in approximately 25 years at current emissions rates. This is a daunting challenge for the world particularly in light of the fact that global emissions levels continue to increase.

A 2 degree C warming limit was agreed to by almost every nation in the world in international climate change negotiations in 2009 in Copenhagen because it is widely believed by the majority of mainstream scientists that warming greater 2 degree C will create very harsh climate impacts for the world. In fact many scientists believe that the warming limit should be lower than 2 degree C to prevent dangerous climate change and as a result the international community has also agreed to study whether the warming limit should be lowered to 1.5 degree C. The report on whether a 1.5 degree C warming limit should be adopted is to be completed in 2015. In addition, some scientists, including former NASA scientist James Hansen who is now at Columbia University, believe that atmospheric concentrations are already too high and that atmospheric concentrations of ghg should actually be lowered from their current levels of approximately 400 ppm CO2 to 350 ppm CO2 to prevent dangerous climate impacts. If, of course, there is a consensus that the current warming limit should be lower than 2 degrees C, the slopes in the above chart would need to be even steeper. (For a good introduction to the implications of the 2 degree C warming limit see the short video by International Geosphere Biosphere Programme)

Although there has been some very limited discussion of this in the US press, the staggering global challenge entailed by keeping global emission within a roughly 250 gigaton budget, not to mention a budget premised on 1.5 degrees C, does not take into account the additional undeniable need of high-emitting nations, states, and regional governments to take equity and distributive justice into account in setting ghg emissions reduction targets is not being covered in US media hardly at all.

b. The Justice or Equity Issue

Under any reasonable interpretation of what equity and justice requires, high-emitting nations and regions (including the United States federal government and US states) will need to reduce their ghg emissions at significantly greater rates than lower emitting government entities because of: (1) significantly higher per capita emissions in developed nations (2) the dramatically higher historical emissions of most developed countries compared to poorer countries, and (3) the need of poor countries to be able to aspire to economic growth rate that will get them out of grinding poverty. If equity is not taken into account in setting national ghg targets, poor countries will have their much lower per capita emissions levels frozen into place if national governments set targets based upon equal percentage reduction amounts. And so there are at least three very strong reasons why any target of a high emitting nation or state government must take justice into account in setting its emissions reduction target:

(1) Allocating emissions among nations to achieve a global target is inherently a problem of distributive justice. To not take justice into account in quantifying ghg emissions targets guarantees an unjust global response to climate change.

(2) All nations including the United States have already agreed to reduce their emissions based upon “equity,” not national self-interest when they ratified the United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change.

(3) To not consider justice when a developed nation sets a ghg reduction target would be extraordinarily and obviously unfair to poor, low emitting nations, many of which are most vulnerable to the harshest climate change impacts and have done little to cause the existing problem.

The numbers in the above chart are based upon an equity framework known as Contraction and Convergence (C&C). The C&C framework consists of reducing overall emissions of ghg to a safe levels from all nations (contraction) and each nation bringing its emissions eventually to equal per capita levels for all countries (convergence). Although justification of the C&C framework is beyond the scope of this entry, we will argue in a future article that it is the least controversial of all of the equity frameworks receiving international attention and therefore should be adopted by the international community as it can be adjusted to take other distributive justice issues into account not expressly initially considered in the C&C framework such as historical emissions and the need of poor-developing countries to grow economically. Because nations can negotiate the convergence date in the C&C framework, it is also a good tool to negotiate a global solution to climate change. It is therefore the least controversial of all of the equity frameworks under serious consideration by the international community although there are other equity frameworks that have some supporters including the Greenhouse Development Rights Framework (GDR). (We will explain our position on these issues in much more detail in a future entry.)

Yet, for the purposes of showing the utter inadequacy of existing US federal government and US state commitments, the C&C framework is very useful because other equity frameworks which have received some attention and respect in international discussions of what equity requires of nations would require even steeper reductions for the US and US state governments. For instance the GDR framework would require the US to be carbon negative by between 2025 and 2030. The C&C framework is therefore a very non-controversial way of demonstrating the utter inadequacy of developed nations ghg emissions reductions commitments because other equity frameworks would require even greater reductions from developed countries.

The above chart demonstrates the implications of this recent science for US states as well as the inadequacy of the US federal government commitment in light of a total global budget limitation of approximately 250 gigatons of carbon equivalent emissions.. The steepness of the curves in this chart are driven both by the limitations of the 250 gigaton carbon equivalent budget and the need to take equity into account. (The Global Commons Institute has a computer graphic tool on its web site, the Carbon Budget Accounting Tool, that allows those who would like to consider alternatives to the 250 gigaton budget to visualize the effects of other budget numbers on the shape of the ghg reductions pathways needed, the differences in environmental impacts, and many other policy considerations.)

Like any attempt to determine what a ghg national target should be, the above chart makes a few assumptions, including but not limited to, about what equity requires not only of the United States but of individual states, when global emissions will peak, and what the carbon emissions budget should be to avoid dangerous climate change. Although different assumptions would lead to different slopes of the emissions reductions pathways that are needed to remain below the 250 gigaton global carbon limitation, the chart depicts very reasonable assumptions about what needs to be done to stay within the 250 gigaton carbon equivalent budget while taking equity into account. And so, without doubt the US government and US state’s targets are woefully inadequate. To stay within the 250 gigaton carbon equivalent budget, total US emissions which will be comprised of emissions from all states must achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Even the most aggressive US state targets are woefully short of this goal. In addition most US states have no emissions reduction target at all. The US will need to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, and this national requirement will will require US states to work together to achieve carbon neutrality. The US government could achieve the goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2050 by relying on different approaches in different states, yet the individual states must assume they have a duty to limit their ghg emissions to levels that constitute their fair share of safe global emissions and in the absence of a federal plan that would allow them to do otherwise, states must achieve zero carbon emissions by 2050 and the above chart is a good example of what is required of them in total.

II. The Second Chart-US States Existing Commitments Compared to an 80% Reduction By 2050.

A few states have set ghg emissions reduction targets of 80 % by 2050. The next chart shows the quantify of reductions that each state would need to achieve to reach an 80% reduction by 2050 although we have already established above that the most recent science would require each state to achieve carbon neutrality by 2o50.

This chart can be examined in higher resolution on the Global Commons Institute website at: http://www.gci.org.uk/images/Emissions_Cuts_States_by_State.pdf

What is notable about this chart is that most US states have made no ghg emissions reductions commitments at all, only a few have made a commitment of an 80% reduction by 2050 which is still not stringent enough to meet the goal of carbon neutrality by 2050, and that some states such as Texas need to achievehuge emissions reductions if the US is going to do its fair share of staying within the 250 metric gigaton carbon equivalent budget.

III. Conclusions

These charts help visualize the enormity of the challenge facing the United States federal government and US state governments in light of the challenge facing the world as understood by the vast majority of mainstream scientists. There has been almost no coverage of this reality in the US media.

As explained above, there are two kinds of issues that need to be understood to comprehend what governments must do when setting ghg emissions targets. The first is the need to set any target in light of a total global ghg emissions limitation or budget entailed by the need to limit ghg emissions to levels that will not cause dangerous climate change. This, as we have seen, is sometimes referred to as the carbon budget issue. The second is the need of governments to set their emissions target only after considering what distributive justice requires of them. This sometimes referred to as the equity or justice issue. Any propose ghg emissions target must take positions on

these two clusters of issues in fact they implicitly do this. Yet government rarely explain what assumptions about the carbon budget and equity and justice issues they have made when setting their target.

By:

Donald A. Brown

Scholar In Residence and Professor,Sustainability Ethics and Law
Widener University School of Law

Part-time Professor, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing China

dabrown57@gmail.com

Has Discussion Of What “Equity” Requires Of Nations To Reduce GHG Emissions Disappeared From Climate Negotiations? If So, What Should Be Done About It?

Posted on December 29, 2013 by dabrown57

I. Introduction

Has the leadership of international climate negotiations under the UNFCCC lost the desire to require nations to expressly examine what “equity” requires of them? Recently there has been no evidence that the UNFCCC Secretariat or the leadership of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (known as the ADP) has any intention of discussing the meaning or practical significance of “equity” in climate negotiations. This paper examines: (a) what has happened recently in climate negotiations in regard to national obligations to reduce ghg emissions reductions on the basis of equity and justice, (b) arguments that have been made in support of ignoring express discussion of equity and justice issues in climate negotiations, (c) arguments in support of a greater focus on equity and justice at both the international and national levels, and (d) what should be done to increase the focus on equity and justice in light of the resistance of nations to acknowledge their equitable and justice obligations.

II. Recent Disappearance of Equity In Climate Negotiations

The ADP is a subsidiary body under the UNFCCC. It was established in 2011 with the mandate to develop a “protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force” under the Convention applicable to all Parties, which is to be completed no later than 2015 and to come into effect in 2020.

While there have been negotiations under way on the new agreement, there has also been an attempt to increase national commitments on greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions reductions in the short-term because mainstream science is telling nations that much greater reductions in emissions are necessary in the next few years to maintain any hope of keeping warming below 20 C, a warming limit that all nations have agreed should not be exceeded to give some hope of preventing catastrophic warming. In fact, the international community has understood that much more ambitious commitments are necessary, both in the short- and long-term to maintain any hope of keeping warming to tolerable levels. For this reason, the agendas of the last few Conferences of the Parties (COP) UNFCCC meetings have sought to increase the ambition of nations to increase their ghg emissions reductions commitments both in the short- and long-term. There has also been a fairly wide-spread understanding that the international community will not avoid very dangerous climate change unless nations increase their national commitments to levels required of them based upon equity while working with other nations to keep atmospheric concentrations of ghg from exceeding dangerous levels.

Two years ago it appeared as if the ADP was proceeding to seek some agreement on what equity requires under the UNFCCC. In May of 2012, the UNFCCC held a workshop on equity in Bonn. A report on the workshop is on available. As expected, nations were not able to come close to agreeing on what equity requires at this initial Bonn workshop. Yet, the workshop concluded that a work program on equity is needed and made a decision that “equity” should be taken up at COP-18 in Doha, Qatar.

There was no focused discussion of “equity” in Qatar despite the recommendation from the Bonn workshop. The United States opposed language in the final Qatar document that included language on “equity” according to the report on COP-18 by the Earth Negotiation Bulletin http://www.iisd.ca/vol12/enb12567e.html. Is this the reason why discussions on “equity” were not resumed in Qatar? The public record is not clear.

Nor was there any focused discussion on “equity” in Warsaw at COP-19 with the exception of a proposal pushed by the Brazilian government and 130 other nations to define equity in a way that took historic responsibility into account. The United States, the EU, Canada, and Australia refused to discuss this proposal.

And there was virtually no discussion of what equity would require of nations in regard to emissions reductions commitments in the last few years at the UNFCCC annual meetings which seek to create an adequate global solution to climate change.

The Warsaw meeting did discuss “co-benefits of climate change commitments” at the urging the UNFCCC leadership thereby implicitly reverting to a category of self-interest rather than national obligation. Co-benefits were discussed presumably to convince nations that it was in their national economic interest to adopt climate policies, a tactic which may implicitly confirm the notion that national economic interest rather than national obligations should be the basis for climate change policy.

And so it would appear that discussions of what equity would require of nations to increase their ghg emissions reductions commitments is no longer on the UNFCCC agenda.

Yet nations have already agreed under the UNFCCC to adopt programs and measures to prevent dangerous climate change based upon equity and common but differentiated responsibilities. We might add, however, even if nations did not agree to reduce their emissions based upon equity, basic and uncontroversial theories of justice would require nations to reduce their emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions. However most nations are making ghg reduction commitments based upon national economic interest, not on their fair share of safe global emissions.

Differences among nations about the significance of equity and justice plagued the Warsaw meeting in regard to funding for adaptation and loss and damages, yet the ADP discussions never took up express consideration of what equity would require in regard to these issues either.

This failure to discuss equity is somewhat curious given that there has been a strong level of agreement among many observers to and commenters on the climate negotiations that if nations are going to increase their ambition on ghg emissions reduction to levels that prevent catastrophic warming, they will need to make commitments based upon their equitable obligations to keep atmospheric ghg concentrations to safe levels rather than on self-interest. That is, without a recognition by nations of their ethical and justice obligations to the rest of the world to reduce their emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions, there is little hope of preventing catastrophic warming.

Based upon the negotiations in Warsaw at COP-19, it would appear that the future treaty that was agreed to in Durban in 2011 and is to be finally negotiated in Paris in 2015 will be comprised of “bottom-up” pledges without any formal recognition or operational definition of equity. Although it is possible that “equity” could be taken up in a meeting scheduled for March in Bonn this coming year, it would appear that at least for the moment, the UNFCCC secretariat has abandoned any hope of getting nations to operationalization “equity” in the negotiations.

In fact, several observers of the negotiations have advised the international community to abandon any direct discussion of “equity” because it is too contentious. This paper reviews some of the reasons that have been advanced for avoiding any direct negotiation of what “equity” requires along with arguments for resumption of negotiations expressly focused on equity. Finally this paper argues for continuance of a discussion on “equity” that anticipates some of the problems that have arisen when equity has been previously discussed in the negotiations.

III. Arguments Against Direct Negotiation of “Equity”

Several observers of the climate negotiations have counseled against any further direct negotiation of “equity” because it is too contentious and will not likely lead to agreement.

For instance, a recent World Bank paper recommends that climate negotiations abandon attempts to achieve national ghg emissions reductions commitments based upon “equitable” obligations after a somewhat rigorous review of the extant literature on “equity” and a brief summary of what has happened in the negotiations. The paper is entitled “Equity in Climate Change, An Analytical Review.” The paper identifies four formula or frameworks for operationalizing equity under the UNFCCC that have appeared in the relevant literature. These include emissions allocated: (i) equally on a per capita basis; (ii) inversely related to historic responsibility for emissions; (iii) inversely related to ability to pay; and (iv) directly related to future development opportunities.

The paper argues that none of these formulae have attracted sufficient support because each is dramatically inconsistent with many nations’ national interest and therefore will not likely receive the level of consensus required in international negotiations. In light of the fact that any attempt to reach consensus on the operationalization of equity will run into conflicts with national interest, the paper recommends a completely new approach that would fund a new carbon revolution while abandoning the current approach in which nations make individual emissions reductions commitments consistent with what equity requires of them. Equity considerations, according to the paper, would then play a role, not in allocating a shrinking emissions budget, but in informing the relative contributions of countries to funding a technological revolution.

The World Bank paper further asserts that conflicts of interest are created by any of the equity formulas that have been advanced that are both inherent and stron. They are inherent because any allocation must distribute a fixed aggregate carbon budget. They are strong because the budget is not really fixed but shrinking dramatically relative to the growing needs of developing countries. Since mainstream science has concluded that drastic compression in aggregate emissions is now necessary to keep temperatures below dangerous levels, shrinking emissions budgets are likely to require even greater ghg emissions reduction commitments that are in even greater conflict with national interests.

Therefore, the paper recommends abandoning negotiations about “equitable” emissions reduction commitments and attack climate change through commitments on funding climate friendly technologies.

Others have also recommended abandonment of “equity” considerations because any reasonable definition of equity would require nations to agree to cuts that were not in their national interest coupled with the fact that there is no consensus about what equity requires. It would appear that these people believe that if nations cannot agree on what equity requires it is unproductive to discuss equity in climate negotiations. They appear to fear that discussions of equity will lead to no agreement.

IV. Justification For Requiring Nations to Agree on Equitable Responsibilities

There are several reasons why nations should be required to make emissions reductions expressly consistent with what fairness and equity require of them including the following:

1. Nations have been entering negotiations as if only economic national interest counts and in so doing have failed to make emissions reductions commitments based upon equity that in the aggregate will avoid dangerous climate change. In fact, when some nations have been asked to explain why they have not made more ambitious commitments, they have frequently justified their unwillingness to make greater commitments because such reductions are not in their economic interest. For this reason, it is likely a practical mistake to not insist that any national commitment conforms to some reasonable definition of what equity requires. To ignore this obligation is to encourage the continued dominance of national self-interest in national responses to climate change.

2. Although there is some reasonable disagreement on what equity requires, this fact should not relieve nations of the obligation to demonstrate that their emissions reductions commitments are based upon reasonable expectations of fairness and distributive justice. Some nations seem to be arguing that because there are differences among nations about what equity requires, this is justification for totally ignoring equity and justice issues entailed by making allocations among nations. Because allocation of national ghg emissions is inherently a matter of justice, nations should be required to explain how their ghg emissions reduction commitments both will lead to a specific atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration that is not dangerous, that is, what remaining ghg CO2 equivalent budget they have assumed that their commitment will achieve, and on what equitable basis have they determined their fair share of that budget. Any national ghg emissions reduction is implicitly a position on a safe atmospheric ghg concentration and that nation’s fair share of total global emissions that will reach that target. Because of this, nations should be required to expressly disclose their assumptions on safe global emissions and what fairness requires of them because such assumptions are implicit but usually hidden in their commitment.

3. Although there may be some reasonable disagreement of what equity requires among various equitable frameworks that have been proposed, this does not mean that any proposal for what equity requires is entitled to respect. The problem of allocating emissions reductions among nations is a classic problem of distributive justice. Distributive justice allows people to be treated differently but requires that those who want to be treated differently from others in some distribution of public goods identify a morally relevant justification for being treated differently. For instance, a person whose justification for obtaining a larger share of food is the fact that he or she has blue eyes will not pass ethical scrutiny because the color of someone’s eyes is not a morally relevant justification for different treatment. Similarly a nation’s justification for the refusal to reduce ghg emissions is that reductions in emissions will affect the nation’s economic interest is not a morally relevant justification for refusing to cut ghg emissions. If it were any polluter could justify continuing to pollute as long as pollution controls cost the polluter money. Because many of the justifications for national ghg emissions commitments are based upon economic self-interest, rather than ethical duty to others, these justifications fail to satisfy minimum ethical scrutiny. And so, strong claims can be made that certain justifications for national commitments on ghg emissions reductions fail to pass any reasonable ethical analysis even though one cannot say absolutely what perfect justice requires. It is therefore fairly easy to spot ethical problems with national ghg commitments even though one cannot claim unambiguously what justice requires. Therefore it is possible to get traction for ethics and justice issues despite disagreement on what justice precisely requires.

4. Although reasonable people may disagree on what equity and justice may require of national ghg emission reduction commitments, there are only a few considerations that are arguably morally relevant to national climate targets. In discussing equity and the distributive justice of national commitments, the relevant criteria for being treated differently that have been recognized by serious participants in the debate about equity include: (a) per capita considerations, (b) historical considerations, (c) luxury versus necessity emissions, (d) economic capacity of nations for reductions, (e) levels of economic development, and (f) and combinations of these factors. The fact that reasonable people may disagree about the importance of each one of these criteria does not mean that anything goes as a matter of ethics and justice. In addition, the positions actually taken by nations on these issues in the negotiations utterly fail any reasonable ethical scrutiny. For this reason, discussions on equity should focus heavily on the obvious injustice of national positions on these issues rather than worrying about what perfect justice requires. Some reasonable compromise among these criteria should be a goal of the negotiations. In fact, a global framework for equity would include some forward looking considerations including per capita considerations and backward looking considerations such as historical responsibility from a specific date, modified by certain economic considerations including economic ability to respond rapidly and perhaps differences between necessity emissions and luxury emissions.

5. The insight that nations will not agree to what equity requires of them because it is not in their national interest should not be the basis for abandoning an equitable approach to climate change as recommended by the above referenced World Bank paper because national interest is not a morally acceptable justification for national climate change policy yet it is likely to remain the criteria for setting national climate change policy unless a nation is shamed for its ethically bankrupt position on climate change. The fact that changes in national responses to ethically unacceptable behavior can be demonstrated from the spread of human rights around the world which can be attributed to shaming nations for their failure to provide human rights protections. The same naming and shaming approach to equity and national ghg emissions reductions commitments should be followed on climate change emissions reductions commitments by adopting better understanding of the ethical bankruptcy of some nations’ approach to climate change.

6. The need to turn up the visibility on the ethical and equitable unacceptability of national ghg commitments is not only important to get nations to increase their emissions reductions commitments in international negotiations, it is also important to change the way climate change policies are debated at the national level when climate change policies are formed. For instance, when some nations including the United States and New Zealand have debated climate change policies at the national level there has been a complete failure to acknowledge that proposed policies must respond to the nation’s equity and ethical obligations. Because of this, national economic interest rather than global obligation dominates debates on proposed climate policies at the national level. There is an important need to change the focus of national debates on climate change policies at the national scale so that citizens understand the ethical problems with their country’s national commitments. And so, there is an important need to increase awareness of the equity and justice issues entailed by national climate change policy debates.

V. How To Make Equity Part Of National Responses To Climate Change

For the reason stated above, there is an urgent need to increase the focus in international climate negotiations and at the national level on equity and justice and simply ignoring these issues because they are difficult or contentious is likely a huge practical mistake that has potential catastrophic consequences. However, given the resistance thus far on nations’ willingness to openly discuss the equity and justice dimensions of their climate policies, the first order question is how to do this. Because of the unwillingness of nations to agree on what equity requires of them, initial steps should be taken to increase awareness of the ethical and justice failures of national responses to climate change.

1. The first priority is to achieve a wider understanding of the utter failure of national commitments thus far to deal with the equity and justice issues. The UNFCCC secretariat has the authority to ask nations specific questions. In the past, when the nations have been asked questions about their position on equity, the questions have been too general with insufficient follow up. Along this line each nation should be asked to answer a series of questions about their ghg emissions commitments which include but are not limited to the following:

A. What specifically is the quantitative relevance of your emission reduction commitment to a global ghg emissions budget to keep warming below a 1.5 °C or 2°C warming target. In other words how does your emissions reduction commitment, in combination with others, achieve an acceptable ghg atmospheric concentration that limits warming to 2°C or the 1.5°C warming limit that may be necessary to prevent catastrophic warming?

B. What is the atmospheric ghg concentration level that your target in combination with others is aiming to achieve?

C. How specifically does your national commitment take into consideration your nation’s undeniable obligation under the UNFCCC to base your national climate change policy on the basis of “equity.” In other words, how have you operationalized equity quantitatively in making your emissions reduction commitments?

D. What part of your target was based upon “equity”?

E. Are you denying that nations have a duty under international law to assure that:

a. the “polluter pays”;

b. citizens in their country not harm other people outside their national jurisdiction under the “no harm” principle; and,

c. your country should have applied the precautionary approach to climate change policy since 1992 when the UNFCCC was adopted?

F. How does your national ghg target commitment respond to these settled principles of international law?

G. In debating national climate policy, to what extent have you apprised citizens of your country that nations have ethical and justice responsibilities to other vulnerable people and nations?

H. To what extent have you informed high emitting entities and individuals within your nation that they have ethical responsibilities to decrease their ghg emissions in cases when this can be done without a major sacrifice to an entities or individual interest.

2. Because debates about climate change policy formation at the national level have often ignored questions of equity and fairness, there is a need to publicize how debates at the national level about proposed climate change policies acknowledge or ignore questions of equity, ethics, and distributive justice. To accomplish this, researchers around the world should be requested to report on and document how ethics and equity issues are being considered in public policy debates about national policy within each country. This analysis should determine, among other things, the extent to which the debate about climate policy has specifically considered an atmospheric ghg concentrations goal and on what equitable and distributive justice basis has the target commitment selected.

3. There is a need to establish an international data base on how nations have considered equity and distributive justice issues at the national level and specific excuses that nations have relied upon for their failure to support an ethically justifiable international climate regime.

4. The starting point for any negotiations session under the UNFCCC should be a submission by each government on their position on their equitable obligations for issues under negotiation. This submission should be detailed to include specific ethical issues under consideration during each negotiation.

5. Each nation should be required to identify what policy steps it is taking to provide, protect, and fulfill the human rights that may be adversely affected by climate change to both people in their own country and vulnerable people around the world.

6. As part of climate negotiations, each national commitment to reduce ghg emissions should be reviewed by a panel of experts who would evaluate each national commitment to reduce ghg emissions on its merits as a matter of distributive justice.

By:

Donald A. Brown

Scholar In Residence and Professor,

Widener University School of Law,

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Visiting Professor, Nagoya University,

Nagoya, Japan

Part-time Professor, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, China

dabrown57@gmail.com

US Media Finally Acknowledges That Ethics and Justice Issues Are At the Center of Contention in Climate Change Negotiations, Yet Has Not Caught On to the Significance of This for US Policy.

Posted on November 28, 2013 by dabrown57

During the climate negotiations in Warsaw that concluded late Saturday, some of the most prominent US media institutions finally acknowledged that ethics and justice issues were at the very center of the most contentious issues in dispute.

For instance, the New York Times ran a story on November 16 entitled: Growing Clamor About Inequities of Climate Crisis. This article expressly acknowledged that growing demands about ethics and justice have become an emotionally charged flash point at the Warsaw climate negotiations

The Washington Post reported that: Hundreds of activists march for climate on sidelines of UN talks in Warsaw and in this story there was acknowledgment that the ethics and justice issues were the central focus of unresolved issues on national ghg emissions reduction commitments and funding needed funding for poor, vulnerable nations for adaptation and climate change caused losses and damages.

Bloomsberg News also ran a story entitled: U.S., EU, Reject Brazilian Call for Climate Equity Metric. This story described great disagreements among nations on how to allocate national emissions targets on the basis of equity.

This recent recognition of the importance of ethics and justice issues in international climate change negotiations marks a possible sea change in on how the US press has thus far covered international climate change issues. Yet it is too early to predict such a transformation will actually take place and reason to believe that the US media still does not understand the practical importance for US climate policy that an ethical focus on climate change entails. In fact there is no evidence that the US press understands the policy significance for the US if climate change is understood as a civilization challenging global distributive justice problem.

As we have frequently reported in EthicandClimate.org over the last several years, (See articles on the website on the US media in the Index), the US media has been utterly ignoring the climate change justice issues that increasingly have become the most contentious issues in dispute in the international search for a global solution to climate change.

Although there has been a US press presence at international climate negotiations since they began over 20 years, the US media reports on the climate negotiations has usually focused on the failures and small success of previous negotiations. Also, sometimes the US press also has reported on specific disagreements among nations on contentious issues in negotiations. And so, the US media has covered climate negotiations like they would a baseball game, that is they usually focus on the score, who batted in the runs, and who prevented runs from scoring.

In the meantime, during the debates about US domestic policy on climate change that have been taking place for almost thirty years, the US media has reported on climate issues almost exclusively by focusing on issues of scientific certainty about climate change impacts and economic cost to the US economy. This phenomenon is partly attributable to the fact that economic interests opposed to US climate change policies have skillfully and successfully framed the US climate change debate as a matter about which there is insufficient scientific evidence or too much adverse impact on the US economy to warrant action. And so, although climate change is a civilization challenging problem of distributive justice, the US media has largely ignored the justice issues particularly in regard to their significance for US policy. For instance, if the the US not only has economic interests in the climate change policies in political debate but also obligations and duties to poor vulnerable nations to not cause them great harm from US ghg emissions, the United States may not justify failure to act to reduce its ghg emissions on the basis of economic cost to the US.

Yet now that the scientific community is telling the world that is running out of time to prevent dangerous climate change and that there is a very small amount of ghg emissions that can be admitted by the entire world if the international community seeks to have any reasonable hope of avoiding dangerous climate change, the ethics and justice issues are becoming undeniable and it is almost possible to ignore that the ethics and justice issues are at the very center of international disputes about how to structure a global climate solution. And so, cries about the justice issues will mostly likely continue to become louder in the future. This is so because if the entire global community must limit total global ghg emissions to a specific number of tons of ghgs and this number requires radical ghg emissions reductions from the entire global community, the obvious question becomes what is any nation’s fair share of allowable emissions. And so, issues of climate justice may no longer be ignored, in fact, the longer the world waits to arrive at a global solution to climate change the more important and visible the ethics and justice issues will become. For this reason, it will become more and more difficult for the US press to ignore the practical significance of ethics and justice questions.

At the center of the Warsaw negotiations was not only the question of what was each countries fair share of safe total allowable greenhouse gas submissions, but also what does justice require of high-emitting countries to both pay for the costs of climate adaptation and compensation for damages for poor vulnerable countries that have done very little to cause climate change.

And so this new interest in ethics and justice about climate issues could become a growing media focus. However, this recent new interest of the US media is not evidence that the US press has begun to pay attention to the implications of these issues for US climate change policy. In fact, there is no evidence that the US media has figured out how the ethics and justice issues will need to radically transform how domestic climate change policy is debated in the United States. We will know that the US media this is seriously paying attention to the ethical dimensions of climate change if it examines the following questions when it covers US climate change policy debates.

1. What is the ethical justification for any proposed US greenhouse gas reduction target in light of the fact the US has duty to reduce its emissions to the US fair share of safe global emissions. In setting a ghg emissions reduction target, what ethical obligations to nations and people outside the US has it taken into account.

2. If the United States is a very large emitter of gigs compared to most other nations in terms of historical and per capita emissions, why doesn’t the United States have an ethical duty to fund reasonable climate change adaptation measures in and losses and damages of poor developing countries that have done little or nothing to cause human-induced warming.

3. If a US politician argues in opposition to proposed US climate policies on the basis of cost to the US economy, why doesn’t that politician acknowledge that in addition to US economic economic interests, that the United States has duties to people around the world and future generations to reduce ghg US emissions.

4. If United States actually has ethical duties for the rest of the world to reduce its ghg emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions, why is there no national policy encouraging everyone in the United States including individuals and corporations to reduce unnecessary ghg emissions.

5. On what basis may the United States argue that it need not reduce US ghg emissions to its fair share of safe global missions because China or some other developing country has not yet adopted strong climate change policies, given that any US ghg emissions in excess of the US fair share of safe total omissions is harming hundreds of thousands of people around the world and the ecological systems on which life depends.

By:

Donald A. Brown

Scholar In Residence and Professor,

Widener University School of Law

Harrisburg, Pa.

Visiting Professor, Nagoya University School of Law

Nagoya, Japen

Part-time Professor, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology

Nanjing, China

dabrown57@gmail.com

The Ethical and Justice Issues At the Center of the Warsaw Climate Change Negotiations-Issue 2, Equity and National GHG Emissions Reductions Commitments in the Medium- to Long-Term

Posted on November 17, 2013 by dabrown57

This is the third paper in a series which is looking at the ethical and justice issues entailed by the Warsaw climate change negotiating agenda. This paper looks at issue two, namely, the ethics and justice issues entailed by the need to find a global solution to climate change that includes national ghg emissions targets after 2020. The last entry looked at ethical issues entailed by the need to increase the ambition of national emissions targets before 2020 when a new climate change treaty that will be negotiated by 2015 comes into effect.

The issues of long-term national commitments to reduce ghg emissions is being negotiated in Warsaw under the Durban Platform. The Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) is a subsidiary body of the UNFCCC that was established by a decision of the Durban COP in December 2011. The mandate of the ADP is to develop a protocol, another legal instrument, or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties, which is to be completed no later than 2015 in order for it to be adopted at the twenty-first session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) and for it to come into effect and be implemented from 2020. Among many other issues, the new treaty will need to take a position on several issues relating to national ghg emissions obligations after 2020.

The last entry in this series examined some of the most recent scientific evidence that has concluded that the world is rapidly running out of time to prevent dangerous climate change. The staggering magnitude of the challenge facing the international community to limit warming to 2 degrees C can be visualized by understanding the following chart that depicts three ghg emissions reductions pathways which would allow the world to stay within a specific remaining budget to achieve a specific atmospheric concentration of ghgs. As we explained in the last entry, the IPCC has in September of this year described a budget that would give the world a 66% confidence of preventing the 2 degree C warming limit which the international community has agreed upon.

Any atmospheric ghg concentration target can only state the warming that will be experienced at the concentration limited by a probability statement because there is scientific uncertainty about climate sensitivity, a term which is used to describe the warming that will be caused by different concentration of atmospheric ghgs. The level of certainty that we should seek to limit warming to a specific atmospheric concentration is itself an ethical question, not just a scientific question which often goes unexamined by the scientific community when discussing warming limits and emissions budgets to achieve warming limits.

One might ask why the budget prepared by IPCC was not based upon achieving the 2 degree C with much higher levels of certainty, a question which is not discussed in the IPCC report, yet one might speculate that IPCC’s failure to discuss a budget that would assure 100% certainty that the 2 degree C warming limit would not be exceeded was because it would leave no remaining budget for additional ghg emissions. The international community has already emitted so much CO2 that limiting warming to 2 degrees C with very high levels of certainty would mean that future emissions must be negative emissions, that is activities which remove ghg from the atmosphere while immediately ceasing ghg emissions activities.

As we have seen in the last entry, if the IPCC budget would have included all ghgs that have been emitted, it would have concluded that there remains only 269 billion tons of CO2e left to be emitted by the entire global community to stay within an emissions budget that will give a 66% confidence that the 20C warming limit would not be exceeded. Achieving the global reductions entailed by this budget is a civilization challenging problem of the highest magnitude.

The following chart prepared by the Global Commons Institute provides a visualization of the enormity of the challenge entailed by a budget of approximately 242 billion tons. This chart shows 3 different potential missions reductions pathways which will stay within the budget which differ depending upon how fast the needed emissions reductions are begun. The later global emissions peak and begin to be reduced, the steeper the emissions reductions pathways must become. This fact alone leads to the conclusion that any delay in emissions reductions has ethical significance because the steeper emission reductions are needed, the more difficult, if not impossible, it becomes to achieve the needed reductions. For this reasons, those who have been advocating for a delay in implementing a very aggressive ghg emissions policy can be understood to be engaged in ethically troublesome activities because it is alreadly likely to be too late to prevent some very serious consequences from climate change to hundreds of millions of people around the world.

This chart, being a depiction of total global emissions reductions pathway, does not attempt to display what the emissions reductions pathway in any one nation would be if equity and justice were to be taken seriously by nations. High emitting nations will need even steeper reductions in global missions than those depicted in the above chart. If there is any hope of achieving the global emotions needed to limit warming to 2°C, as we explained in the last entry in the series, nations will need to limit their emissions based upon equity. Yet, equity-based emissions for high emitting developed countries will lead to an even greater challenge for high emitting nations. The following chart, also prepared by the Global Commons Institute, depicts what the US share of total global missions must be if United States were to agree on a per capita allocation of the remaining global budget to satisfy its clear obligations to take equity into account although this chart would change depending upon when nations would agree on equal per capita shares and when global emissions peaked. Nevertheless it is helpful to demonstrate the enormity of the challenge entailed by the undeniable need to take equity into account by depicting the consequences for one nation as this chart does.

This chart uniquely shows why the United States and other high-emitting nations likely do not want to discuss “equity” in the Warsaw climate negotiations. If United States and other high-emitting nations were to take seriously its obligation to reduce its emissions based upon equity or distributive justice, such a decision would create an enormous challenge for them. And so, it would appear that the United States and several other developed countries have entered the Warsaw negotiations as if they can ignore the equity and justice issues while justifying their national ghg reductions commitments ultimately on the basis of national economic interest.

However, emissions reductions commitments based upon national economic interest can not be understood to satisfy any reasonable definition of equity or plausible formula for distributive justice.

Distributive justice does not require that all parties be treated equally. But distributive justice does require that parties who want to be treated differently justify their different treatment on the basis of morally relevant criteria. For instance, according to theories of distributive justice, I cannot justify my desire for more food on the basis that I have blue eyes. The color of my eyes it not a relevant basis for unequal treatment when it comes to food distribution. For the same reason, a justification for national ghg emissions reduction target commitments based upon national economic interest alone that does not consider global responsibilities does not pass minimum ethical scrutiny. It is totally ethically bankrupt.

Many commentators on the “equity” issue arising in international climate negotiations dismiss any plea for “equitable” allocations on the basis that because different people reach different conclusions about what equity requires the search for an equitable global solution to climate change should be abandoned. For instance it has been reported that the United States has resisted discussing equity on the basis that there is no objective way of determining what equity requires.

Yet the fact that different people reach different conclusions about what equity means does not mean that all opinions about what acting equity means or entitled to respect. As we’ve seen, theories of distributive justice require that people want to be treated differently identify morally relevant criteria for being treated differently. As we have seen, the color of my eyes is not a morally relevant criteria were being treated differently. Similarly my race is not a morally relevant justification for giving me the right to vote above others.

The world urgently needs a deeper conversation about equity and justice and national climate change policies.

To move the equity debate along, nations should be required to specify specifically how their emissions reductions commitments deal with both the enormity of the challenge entailed by the global emissions budget identified by the IPCC and how their emissions reductions target specifically can be justified on the basis of equity and justice.

Although reasonable people may disagree on what equity and justice may require of any national ghg emission reduction commitment, there are only a few considerations that are arguably morally relevant to national climate targets. This entry will end with the identification of a few equity frameworks that have received serious attention in the international community. It is important to stress, however, that although there is some legitimate disagreement about which of these formats to follow in international negotiations, almost all national emissions reductions commitments of large emitting countries fail to pass any reasonable ethical scrutiny. In discussing equity and the distributive justice of national commitments, the relevant criteria for being treated differently that have been recognized by serious participants in the debate about equity include: (A) per capita considerations, (B) historical considerations, (C) luxury versus necessity emissions, (D) economic capacity of nations for reductions, (E) levels of economic development, and (E) and combinations of these factors.

The fact that reasonable people may disagree about the importance of each one of these criteria does not mean that anything goes as a matter of ethics and justice. In addition, the positions actually been taken by nations on these issues in the negotiations utterly fail any reasonable ethical scrutiny. For this reason, concerned citizens of the world should focus heavily on the obvious injustice of national positions on these issues rather than worrying about what perfect justice requires.

In addition, in all probability, a global framework for equity would include some forward looking considerations including per capita considerations and backward looking considerations such as historical responsibility from a specific date, modified by certain economic considerations including economic ability to respond rapidly and perhaps differences between necessity emissions and luxury emissions.

We would stress, it is not as necessary to get immediate agreement on the final framework as it is to achieve a wider understanding of the utter failure of national commitments thus far to deal with the equity and justice issues. Along this line each nation should be asked to answer a series of questions about their commitments which include:

A. What specifically is the quantitative relevance of your emission reduction commitment to a global ghg emissions budget to keep warming below the 2°C warming target. In other words how does your emissions reduction commitment in combination with others achieve an acceptable ghg atmospheric concentration that limits warming to 20C.

B. What is the atmospheric ghg concentration level that your target in combination with others is aiming to achieve?

D. What part of your target was based upon “equity.”

E. Are you denying that nations have a duty under international law to assure that:

a. the “polluter pays,”

b. that nations have a duty to assure that citizens in their country not harm other people outside their national jurisdiction,

c. nations should have applied the precautionary approach to climate change policy since 1992 when the UNFCCC was adopted?

F. How does your national ghg target commitment respond to these settled principles of international law?

As we have noted, citizes of the world need to increase international understanding of the failure of nations to respond to equity and distributive justice. The following equitable framework formats are among others in serious discussion in international climate negotiations about what “equity” requires. However, as we have argued, it is more important in this moment in history to achieve a higher level of understanding of the utter injustice of national ghg emissions commitments than it is to get agreement on what perfect justice requires. This is particularly because, the international media, for the most part, is utterly failing to cover the obvious ethical unacceptability of most national commitments on climate change.

• Contraction and Convergence (C&C) is a proposed global framework for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change. Conceived by the Global Commons Institute [GCI] in the early 1990s, the Contraction and Convergence strategy consists of reducing overall emissions of greenhouse gases to a safe level (contraction), resulting from every country bringing its emissions per capita to a level which is equal for all countries (convergence). It is intended to form the basis of an international agreement which will reduce carbon dioxide emissions to avoid dangerous climate change, carbon dioxide being the gas that is primarily responsible for changes in the greenhouse effect on Earth. C&C does not require immediate per capita emissions per country but allows a later convergence on capita allocations to deal with other equitable considerations.

• Greenhouse Development Rights is a framework wherein the burdens for supporting both mitigation and adaptation are shared among countries in proportion to their economic capacity and responsibility. GDRs seeks to transparently calculate national “fair shares” in the costs of an emergency global climate mobilization, in a manner that takes explicit account of the fact that, as things now stand, global political and economic life is divided along both North/South and rich/poor lines.

• Equity in the Greenhouse, South-North dialogue is a global “multi-stage approach,” based on principles of: responsibility; capability; mitigation potential; right to development.

• Brazilian Historic Responsibility is based primarily on historic responsibility for emissions: developed countries are each allocated emissions cuts based on the total contribution of their historic emissions (going back to 1800s) to the current global temperature increase.

• Oxfam has proposed an approach, subsequently supported by various other NGOs, that uses a calculated responsibility and capability index to allocate an overall developed country target of 40%, and allows for a climate finance budget of $150bn to be allocated using the same method. Developing countries individual need for financing is assessed in line with available economic capability, taking into account intra-national inequality, and hence climate finance is provided on a sliding scale (below a minimum ‘available capability threshold’).

• The EU has (e.g. EU Commission Proposal of 2009) suggested a method for distributing targets amongst Annex 1 countries that includes starting with an overall target for Annex 1 countries of 30% below 1990 levels by 2020 and allocating this target on the following basis: GDP per capita, addressing the capacity to pay for emission reduction within a country and through the global carbon market [capacity]; GHG per GDP, addressing the opportunities to reduce GHG emissions within one economy [capacity/mitigation potential]; Change of GHG emissions between 1990 and 2005, rewarding early action by developed countries to reduce emissions [reward early action/recognize latent mitigation potential]; Population trends over the period 1990 – 2005, recognizing different population trends between countries and as such different pressures on the projected emission evolution [equal rights to pollute]

There is a need to turn up the volume on the ethical dimensions of climate change for many reasons including the fact that ethically dubious positions of nations are being hidden in self-interested arguments made in opposition to climate change policies and there is no hope of meeting the 2 degree C warming target without a serious national response based upon equity.

One need not seek agreement on what ethics requires to get traction on ethical issues because most opposition to action on climate change fails to survive minimum ethical scrutiny. The key is to spot the injustice of positions not on getting agreement on what justice requires.

The longer the world waits to develop a global approach to climate change, the more central the ethics questions become about the most contentious issues in consideration.

By:

Donald A. Brown

Scholar In Residence and Professor,

Widener University School of Law

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Visting Professor, Nagoya University,

Nagoya, Japan

Part-time Professor

Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology

Nanjing, China

dabrown 57@gmail.com