A Call for Researchers on A Project On Deepening National Responses to Climate Change On The Basis of Ethics and Justice

This is a call for researchers in different nations to investigate how national debates about climate change policies have expressly considered or not ethics and justice issues in formulating climate policies. So far we have researchers who have committed to produce papers on Australia, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, China, Equator, Germany, Ghana, India, Japan, Kenya, Netherlands, Nigeria, Malawi, Mauritius, Marshall Islands, Nepal, Panama, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, United Kingdom, and USA.

We are also looking for researchers from other nations.

The following description of the project:

  • explains the purpose and urgency of the research,
  • includes a research template that includes 10 questions that entail the research questions to be answered,
  • describes procedures for researchers who wish to become involved,
  • explains that the research will become part of a peer-reviewed publication to be published initially as a book and later as an ongoing web-based project, and
  • identifies additional guidelines on producing the research papers.

This new project has been organized by Widener University School of Law, Environmental Law Center and the University of Auckland, School of Architecture and Planning. As the following explains, those interested in participating in the research project should email Prue Taylor at the University of Aukland at prue.taylor@auckland.ac.nz and Donald Brown at Widener University School of Law at dabrown57@gmail.com indicating your interest and the nation you will research.

Research Project on Ethics and Justice in Formulating

A.    The Need for Research

This program will encourage researchers around the world to investigate how individual nations have or have not taken ethics and justice into account in their national responses to climate change.

There is widespread agreement among many observers of international attempts to achieve a global solution to climate change that there is little hope of preventing dangerous climate change unless nations take their equity and justice obligations into account in setting national responses to climate change. In ratifying the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), nations agreed to adopt policies and measures based upon “equity” to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.  Yet, many nations continue to make national commitments under the UNFCCC as if national economic self-interest rather than ethical obligations is an adequate basis for determining national policies on climate change.  As a result there is a huge gap between national commitments to reduce greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions that have been made thus far under the UNFCCC and global ghg emissions reductions that are necessary to limit warming to 2 oC, a warming limit that has been agreed to by the international community as necessary to prevent very dangerous climate change.

The research agenda outlined below seeks to develop information and analyses that could be helpful in ensuring that nations take equity and justice seriously when making national commitments on climate change.  Experience with international human rights regimes demonstrates that national performance on ethical and justice issues can be improved through the development of publically available records of national compliance with justice obligations. If records were available on national compliance with ethical obligations for climate change, they could be used both by the international community to pressure nations to improve performance on their climate change ethical obligations and also create a factual basis that could be used by citizens within the nation to ensure that the national climate change policies consider ethical obligations in setting their emissions targets. Currently there is no international database on how nations have taken equity and justice into account in setting national ghg reduction target or other wise responded to the ethical dimensions of climate change.

This research project calls upon researchers around the world to examine the issues outlined in the template below.

This is a project of Widener University School of Law and the University of Auckland who will manage the project and provide results to interested governments, NGOs students and citizens and publish the research and summaries of this work.

B.    Research Template

Focusing on a nation’s response to climate change in respect to policies adopted or under consideration, the researcher will examine the following issues, ideally over at least the last 5 years:

  1. To what extent has the national debate about how the nation should respond to climate change by setting a ghg emissions reduction target expressly considered that the nation not only has economic interests in setting the target but also ethical obligations to those who are most vulnerable to climate change and that any national ghg emission reduction target must represent the nation’s fair share of safe global emission.  In answering this question, identify the national ghg emissions reduction target, if any, that the nation has committed to under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
  2. In making a national commitment to reduce ghg emissions under the UNFCCC, to what extent, if at all, has the nation explained how it took equity and justice into consideration in setting its ghg emissions reduction target.
  3. Given that any national ghg emissions target is implicitly a position on achieving an atmospheric ghg concentration that will avoid dangerous climate change, to what extent has the nation identified the ghg atmospheric concentration stabilization level that the national emissions reduction target seeks to achieve in cooperation with other nations.
  4. Given that any national ghg emissions target is implicitly a position on the nation’s fair share of safe global emissions, to what extent has the nation identified the ethical and justice considerations that it took into account in allocating a percentage of global ghg emissions to the nation through the identification of a ghg emissions reduction commitment.
  5. To what extent, if at all, has the nation acknowledged that nation’s emitting ghg above their its share of safe global emissions have a responsibility to fund reasonable adaptation measures or unavoidable losses and damages in poor developing countries.
  6. What formal mechanisms are available in the nation for citizens, NGOs and other interested organizations to question/contest the nation’s ethical position on climate change?
  7. How is the concept of climate justice understood by the current government? Have they articulated any position on climate justice issues that arise in setting ghg emissions policy or in regard to the adaptation needs of vulnerable nations or people?
  8. Are you aware of any regional, state, provincial, or local governments in your country that has acknowledged some ethical responsibility for climate change? If so, what have they said?
  9. Has your national government taken any position on or other wise encouraged individuals, businesses, organizations, subnational governments, or other entities that they have some ethical duty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
  10.  What recommendations would you make to get the nation or civil society to take ethics and justice issues seriously in climate change policy formulation?

C.   Procedures

Researchers interested in participating in this project should send an email to Prue Taylor Prue.taylor@auckland.ac.nz  and Donald Brown at dabrown57@gmail.com

Please indicate the country you will be working on and include a bio.

We will then acknowledge your willingness to participate and provide any additional information.

Questions should be directed to Prue Taylor or Donald Brown at above email.

First drafts of Report due September 5th. 2014

D.  Additional Guidelines for Research Papers.

  • Each paper should be limited to 8 single spaced pages (16 doubled spaced) or about 3000 words.
  •  First drafts of the  papers should be submitted  by September 5, 2014 to myself and Prue Taylor from the University of Auckland for those researchers that desire to be published in the initial book on the topic.
  • Research papers received after this date will be published on the project website which is under construction. We expect this work will continue to be updated by additional papers on the website and that eventually the website will be the main method of publishing the research work.
  • Approximately the first 10 papers which are relieved and pass a quality control review will be published in the initial book which is part of phase one of this project.
  • All papers should follow the format of Earthcan/Routledge which follows.

Format guidelines for authors:

The following guidelines are provided to help you in the preparation of your manuscript,

• Text files must be supplied as Word documents containing plain text with no formatting (such as linked footnotes, section numbers, etc.) and no embedded images.

• Please use Oxford English spelling: -ize endings for words such as ‘organize’ and ‘dramatization’; ‘analyse’, not ‘analyze’; ‘colour’, not ‘color’; ‘labelling’, not ‘labeling’, etc.

• Figures and tables must have captions, e.g. Figure 1.1 The poverty spiral. Note the convention of giving the number in bold and the caption in italics.

• Tables should appear in the chapter file, at the appropriate point in the text, with the caption above the table and note and source (if applicable) below. If the table is particularly large or complex it may be best to supply it as a separate file, as for figures.

• Figures must be supplied as separate files (i.e. not embedded within the text files) with the filename clearly identifying it, e.g. Figure 1-1.jpg for Figure 1.1. Preferred file types are jpeg or tif. Try to avoid sending images embedded in Word documents. Please supply line diagrams and graphs in black and white only (not colour) unless you have specific agreement that they will be printed in colour. The text file should just include the caption (and source and note if applicable) in the appropriate place in the text to indicate the correct position for the typesetter.

• Image size, when resolution is set to 300dpi, should be as close as possible to the size at which the image is likely to appear in the book. Often this will mean a width of 120mm, although it obviously depends on the chosen dimensions for the book.

• Provide full details of source for figures and tables, even if the work is your own. You must obtain permission for Earthscan/Routledge to use any material you submit.

• Cite references in the text using the Harvard system of author name and date. For three or more authors use the first author’s name followed by et al. If citing more than one reference consecutively put them in date order, e.g. (Heard, 1984; Heard and Tyler, 1989, 1995; Adams, 1998; Adams et al, 1998).

• Follow the style of referencing in the following examples:

Dyer, C. (1996) ‘Evidence rules plea rejected’, The Guardian, 10 July, p4

Edwards, M. F. and Hulme, D. (1992) Making a Difference, Earthscan, London

Hawken, P. (1996) ‘A teasing irony’, in R. Welford and R. Starkey (eds) The Earthscan Reader in Business and the Environment, Earthscan, London

Hawken, P. and James, M. R. (1995) ‘Biodiversity to go: The hidden costs of beef consumption’, Chinese Biodiversity, vol 4, no 3, pp145–152

Joly, C. (2001) ‘Is enlightened capitalism possible?’, http://www.storebrand.com/enlightened.htm, accessed 30 January 2002

Jones, A. (1984a) ‘Sustainability and the environment’, PhD thesis, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK

Jones, A. (1984b) Environmental Sustainability, Smith Press, Sunyani, Ghana

• Notes should be placed at the end of your contribution under their own section. Please do not use footnotes or automatic notes/note numbering.

Additional Formatting Instructions

NOTES FOR AUTHORS AND EDITORS

The following guidelines are provided to help you in the preparation of your manuscript, and to ensure the book’s smooth progress through the editorial production process. The most important points are summarized below, while the following pages go into more detail

• TEXT FILES must be supplied as Word documents containing plain text with no formatting (such as linked footnotes, section numbers, etc.) and no embedded images.

• FIGURES must be supplied as separate files (i.e. not embedded within the text files) and should be clearly and logically labelled with the same name as is used to refer to the figure in the text file (see following pages for the best way to label figures). Do not send duplicate or extraneous images. The image files supplied should be all, and only, those to appear in the book

HOW AND WHAT TO SUBMIT

 

• Electronic files for both text and figures can be supplied to you editor and editorial assistant as attachments by e-mail. If the figures add up to more than about 10MB in total it is likely to be simpler to supply them by posting them on a CD.

• Please save the text using one Word document for each chapter. Additional material such as the contents or list of figures should also be supplied using a separate document for each, clearly labelled.

• Please advise the editor if anything is missing and has to be supplied at a later date. Often we can start production work on a book with the knowledge that, for example, the acknowledgements will be supplied later. It is important to know exactly what is missing and when you will be able to supply it in order to be sure that it will not disrupt the production schedule.

TEXT PRESENTATION

GENERAL POINTS

• Please do not insert linked footnotes/endnotes, embedded figures or any other complicated coding.

• The whole text file should be in plain 12-point type, double-spaced. Avoid unnecessary carriage returns; one carriage return at the end of a paragraph is sufficient. Do not use larger type or bold/italic for headings – see note below on distinguishing levels of heading. Bold and italic should be used only within the main text where necessary (see notes below under House Style heading)

 

HEADINGS

• Avoid numbering your headings unless the text is complex and would be confusing to follow without reference to numbered headings.

• Code them clearly with square bracket tags according to the level of emphasis needed, i.e. ‘[a]’ for the most important headings, ‘[b]’ for the next sub-level and so on. Do not leave a space after the tag and the text that it codes. For example:

[a]Public policy

[b]Green taxes

[c]The EU carbon tax

• It is fine if you only need to use [a] and [b] headings, or even just [a] headings. It is best to avoid more than four levels of heading (i.e. [a], [b], [c] and [d]).

LISTS

• You may wish to have bulleted or numbered lists. Only use the latter where there is a clear hierarchy in the list entries, or if the preceding statement warrants it (e.g. ‘There are four points to be borne in mind…’).

• Avoid lists with very long entries – it is often less confusing to use subheadings.

• Insert one hard carriage return before and after the list (i.e. one line space above and below) and a tag at the start indicating either bulleted list or numbered list.

• Numbers followed by one character space will indicate a numbered list:

1 First point in a numbered list

2 Second point in a numbered list

3 Third point in a numbered list.

 

• Bulleted lists should have a double asterisk to represent each new point:

** First point in a bulleted list

** Second point in a bulleted list

** Third point in a bulleted list.

CAPTIONS FOR FIGURES AND TABLES

• Figures and tables must have captions, e.g. Figure 1.1 The poverty spiral. Note the convention of giving the number in bold and the caption in italics.

• Tables should appear in the chapter file, at the appropriate point in the text, with the caption (and note and source if applicable) above the table. If the table is particularly large or complex it may be best to supply it as a separate file, as for figures.

• Figures must be supplied separately (see below for more about this) so the text file should just include the caption (and source and note if applicable) in the appropriate place in the text to indicate the correct position for the typesetter. If the figure is referred to in the text the position should obviously be as near as possible to that mention.

• Provide full details of source, even if the work is your own. You must obtain permission for Earthscan/Routledge to use any material you submit (see note on Permissions, below).

TEXT BOXES

• Do not use any special formatting for boxes.

• As for tables and figure captions, boxes should be included within the text file at the point in the text at which they are intended to appear.

• Insert the square bracket tags [!box!]’ and [!box ends!] at the start and finish of the box text.

• Insert a caption at the top of the box (i.e. below the [!box!] tag and above the box text), e.g. Box 3.4 Information about boxes

NOTES

• Notes will be grouped together as endnotes, either at the end of each chapter or in one section, grouped by chapter, at the back of the book. The sequence of numbers in each chapter should start at ‘1’ rather than having one consecutive list throughout the entire book.

• Do not use automatic footnote and endnote features in Word.

• Number the notes consecutively with Arabic numerals, ie ‘1’, ‘2’.

• List the notes at the end of your chapter under an [a]-level heading ‘Notes’.

• The superscript note number in the main text should be placed after punctuation, such as when it comes at the end of a sentence or refers to bracketed text. For example:

The revised tests (based on research carried out in the early 1970s)1,2 were adopted worldwide.3

 

REFERENCES

• If you quote material from another author’s work, please make sure that you have quoted the passages correctly and supplied an accurate reference. References will be grouped together at the end of each chapter, or at the back of the book grouped by chapter.

• Cite references in the text using the Harvard system of author name and date. For three or more authors use the first author’s name followed by et al. If citing more than one reference consecutively put them in date order, e.g. (Heard, 1984; Heard and Tyler, 1989, 1995; Adams, 1998; Adams et al, 1998).

• We prefer to avoid use of op cit, ibid and idem. Please simply repeat the citation as appropriate.

• Include page references where possible, if it will help the reader. They can be either with the citation in the text (e.g. Heard, 1984, p21) or at the end of the full reference; including them with the short citation allows you to use several citations for different pages of a publication with one reference at the end.

• List your references at the end of each chapter under an [a]-level heading ‘References’. They should be in alphabetical order by surname of author. In this full list of references, include the names of all authors (not ‘et al’).

• If more than one work by the same author is referenced, these should be in date order. Use letters beside the year of publication if two or more by the same author appeared in the same year, as in the Jones examples below; make sure that the citation in the text includes the correct letter).

• Book publications must include both the publisher’s name and their location (town or city), stating the country as well as the if it is not obvious. For American publishers we prefer the town/city name to be followed by the two-letter state abbreviation, e.g. Boston, MA

• Internet references should give an exact URL for what is referred to rather than just a home page address, and include a note of when the page was accessed (see Jones, 1984a below). Often it is not possible to be sure of date of publication, in which case put ‘(undated)’. If something has both a print and a web reference (as for many newspaper articles) please give a full print reference if possible, and the URL can be added on the end optionally.

PERMISSIONS

It is the author’s responsibility to clear permission to reproduce material protected by copyright; the publisher is indemnified against breaches of copyright by the author in the contract. It is usually considered unnecessary to clear permission for text extracts shorter than 400 words, but if you are in any doubt, check with the copyright holder.

CONTENTIOUS MATERIAL

Avoid using material which may give offence to readers. Racist and sexist remarks are unacceptable; please avoid sexual stereotypes. It is the author’s responsibility to check the accuracy of the material before it reaches the publisher. It is particularly important that any defamatory or potentially libellous material is checked carefully by a lawyer with competence in that field, and revised as necessary.

 

IMAGE FILES (FIGURES)

GENERAL POINTS

• We prefer to receive files as tif, jpeg or eps format. Please check with us if you intend to submit figures in other file formats. It is best to avoid using Word documents with photographs or other image files embedded in them; it will result in additional work and poorer quality.

• We can accept hard copy (e.g. photographs or transparencies) although the cost of scanning them to produce an electronic file may be passed on (see next point).

• If figures are not supplied in the ideal format or to specifications outlined below we are likely to need to carry out additional work on the files or have the figure redrawn, and the cost of this is usually passed on to the author.

 

ELECTRONIC SPECIFICATIONS

• Please provide figures to be reproduced in monochrome as black and white (‘grayscale’) images, and provide colour figures as CMYK, not RGB.

• Image size, when resolution is set to 300dpi, should be as close as possible to the size at which the image is likely to appear in the book. Often this will mean a width of 120mm, although it obviously depends on the chosen dimensions for the book.

• Save each image file using the name of the figure as referred to in the chapter text, e.g. ‘Figure 1.1.tif’. If a Figure is made up of multiple images they may be saved as ‘Figure 1.1a.tif’, ‘Figure 1.1b.tif’, etc.

• If you are creating a diagram, graph, etc. yourself, it’s preferable to use 8pt Helvetica font for any labelling (assuming the figure is at the correct size). Do not include the figure caption, source or notes in the illustration. These will be inserted in the appropriate position in the main text

HOUSE STYLE

Please write clearly, with your intended audience in mind, so that your text is accessible to the appropriate level of readership. Jargon is acceptable in technical texts, but should be kept to a minimum in more general texts, and should be explained thoroughly on first usage.

SPELLING

• Use ‘ize’/’ization’ rather than ‘ise’/’isation’ spellings for words like realize, organization, specialize etc. Note that some words – generally those that don’t stem from Latin – cannot take ‘ize’, e.g. analyse, comprise, revise (check in an Oxford English Dictionary if in doubt). However, ‘ise’/’isation’ spellings in certain proper names should be retained (e.g. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development).

• Use UK English rather than US English.

CAPITALIZATION

• Keep to a minimum. Don’t use capitals for words like ‘company’ or ‘manager’. Use lower case for generic references (‘European universities’); capitals for specifics (‘the University of Bristol’)

ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

• Spell out in full the first time that they are used, e.g. ‘International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)’. Thereafter, the short form only need be given.

• Extremely common abbreviations need not be explained, e.g. TV, CD, BBC.

• Please provide a list of all acronyms and abbreviations used

BOLD AND ITALICS

• Italics are no longer used for common foreign words or phrases (et al, inter alia etc.), but may be used for more obscure ones.

• Italics should be used for the names of books, newspapers, journals, paintings, plays, films, TV series and ships (government papers or policy statements usually appear in inverted commas). The rule is essentially that anything that is a complete thing in itself takes italics (and initial capital for all main words) whereas anything that is part of a work (e.g. a chapter in a book, an article in a journal, a poem from a collection, a particular episode of a TV series) should be unitalicized but within inverted commas.

• Use italics sparingly for emphasis.

• Bold should be used very sparingly. It can be useful in adding your own emphasis within a quoted passage (in which case note ‘[emphasis added]’ at end of quote) and to highlight terms in, for example, a glossary or a lis

NUMBERS AND MEASUREMENTS

• Use metric units with no space between the numeral and abbreviation, e.g. ‘3055km’.

• Currencies other than £, euros or US$ should be converted to one of those three currencies and used instead of or (in brackets) in addition to the currency referred to.

• Use a comma as a separator in numbers over 9999, e.g. 41,500. However no comma is necessary for lower values.

PUNCTUATION

• Do not use a comma before the penultimate entry in a list, e.g. use ‘rats, mice, gerbils and guinea pigs’, not ‘rats, mice, gerbils, and guinea pigs’.

• Use single quotation marks to denote speech; only use double quotation marks when speech is being reported within an extant set of quotation marks.

• No full stops after contractions such as Dr, Mr, Ms, ed for editor, BUT full stops after etc., or in e.g., i.e., and after initials of people’s names: J. B. Smith)

 

WEB ADDRESSES

• There is no need for ‘http://’ before ‘www’; e.g. ‘www.earthscan.co.uk’ not ‘http://www.earthscan.co.uk’. But keep the full form in URLs such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population.

• Punctuate as normal, i.e. if a web address comes at the end of a sentence in the main text it should take a full stop but not if it comes at the end of a reference.

If there are questions about format issues please direct to Prue Taylor prue.taylor@auckland.ac.nz

 By:

Donald A. Brown

Scholar In Residence and Professor

Widener University School Of Law

dabrown57@gmail.com

 

Prue Taylor

Deputy Director

New Zealand Center for Environmental Law

University of Auckland

Auckland, New Zealand
prue.taylor@auckland.ac.nz

 

 

 

 

 

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

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.

US states and federal reductions

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.

states 80 percent

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

Why US States Have A Duty To Reduce Their Emissions to Their Fair Share of Safe Global Emissions: The Case of Pennsylvania.

A new report that looks at Pennsylvania examines why US states must reduce their greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions. Although this report focuses on Pennsylvania, the conclusions in this report could be applied to other US states as well as sub-national and regional governments around the world.

temperture pa image 2

The report concludes that Pennsylvania needs to act to reduce the threat of climate change. The report explains how the latest science on climate change that is being articulated by the most prestigious scientific institutions including the National Academy of Sciences leads to the conclusion that there is an urgent need of governments at all scales to act to reduce the threat of climate change to maintain any hope of avoiding dangerous climate change. The report also explains how climate change will likely affect Pennsylvania and hundreds of millions of poor, vulnerable people around the world.  Given this, the report explains why Pennsylvania needs to also plan to adapt to climate change impacts that are now very likely even if governments respond more aggressively to climate change than they have in the past. The report also compares Pennsylvania’s response to climate change to other US states.

The report calls Pennsylvania to adopt an enforceable greenhouse gas target consistent with Pennsylvania’s fair share of safe global emissions because Pennsylvania ghg emissions are contributing to global emissions and there is an urgent need to dramatically reduce global ghg emissions to prevent dangerous warming. Because ghg emissions from Pennsylvania are contributing both to enormous threats to the world and will likely have adverse impacts on human health and ecological systems in Pennsylvania (a matter discussed below), the state should reduce its emissions to Pennsylvania’s fair share of safe global emissions. Pennsylvania must also act to reduce ghg emissions because Pennsylvania controls human activities that produce ghg emissions that are not regulated at the federal level for such activities as some transportation decisions, regulation of electricity generation, building codes, land use, waste disposal, and some aspects of forest protection.

Although a description of Pennsylvania’s exact fair share of safe global emissions was beyond the scope of this report, nonetheless, the report concluded that a strong case can be made that Pennsylvania should limit its emissions to achieve greater percentage of ghg reductions than required of the entire world to avoid dangerous climate change. This is so because like all US states and most of the developed world nations, ghg emissions levels from Pennsylvania far exceed most of the world in per capita ghg emissions.  In other words, if it is determined that the entire world should reduce its emissions by 80 % below 1990 levels to prevent dangerous climate change, high-emitting nations or sub-national governments around the world, including US states, will need to reduce their emissions to even greater levels on the basis of equity and fairness.  To require each nation or government to reduce emissions by the same percentage amount would freeze into place unjust emission levels for high-emitting governments.  For this reason, almost all the nations of the world, including the United States in 1992 when it ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, agreed that each nation must reduce its emissions on the basis of “equity” to prevent dangerous climate change. (UNFCCC, 1992: Art 3, Para 1) If all nations need only reduce their emissions by equal percentage amounts, then a high emitting nation like the United States that emits ghg at rate of 17.3 tons per capita would be allowed to emit at a level 10 times more per capita than a country like Vietnam that emits 1.7 tons of ghg per capita. (World Bank, 2012b) As a result, all nations have agreed that national targets must be based upon fairness or equity although reasonable differences exist about what fairness requires.

An issue brief for New York State recently recognized the need of New York to set ghg emission targets on the basis of equity:

Determining how much individual states or nations should reduce emissions through mid-century requires consideration of allocation equity and reduction effectiveness. The UNFCCC approach to apportioning ghg emission reduction requirements between developed and developing nations considers a broad spectrum of parameters, including population, gross domestic product (GDP), GDP growth, and global emission pathways that lead to climate stabilization.Applying these parameters, the UNFCCC concludes that, to reach the 450 ppm CO2e stabilization target, developed countries need to reduce ghg emissions by 80 to 95 percent from 1990 levels by 2050. (New York State, 2009)

And so like New York, Pennsylvania should  recognize that its emissions reduction target must be based upon fairness. However, because reasonable differences exist about what equity requires of nations and states in setting emissions reductions targets, this report makes no specific final recommendations on what an enforceable ghg cap should be except to claim it should be fair.  At the very minimum, however, any State cap should be at least as stringent as emissions reductions levels needed by the entire world to provide reasonable confidence that dangerous climate change will be avoided.  It should also be based on recognition that fairness likely requires Pennsylvania to be more aggressive in reducing its ghg emissions than most of the rest of the world. As the above quoted New York report recognizes, a state like Pennsylvania might set a target to reduce ghg emissions by 80 to 95 percent from 1990 levels by 2050.

Furthermore, any action plan and interim emissions reductions target should put Pennsylvania on an emissions reductions pathway consistent with the need to limit global emissions to levels that will stabilize atmospheric greenhouse concentrations at levels that provide reasonable confidence of preventing dangerous climate change. This requirement entails the need of any Pennsylvania action plan to consider not only what action steps are necessary to achieve a target at a specific year such as 2020, the target year recognized in an unimplemented 2009 Pennsylvania  action plan, but also to consider actions that will put Pennsylvania on a reduction pathway capable of reducing ghg emissions from Pennsylvania necessary to prevent dangerous climate change in the years ahead. More specifically this means that Pennsylvania’s action plan should consider how it will achieve emissions reductions to achieve any long-term goals such the potential goal of reducing ghg emissions by 80 to 95 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

Given all of this the report calls for Pennsylvania to:

  1.  Adopt a legally-binding GHG emissions reduction target consistent with Pennsylvania’s fair share of safe global emissions.
  2.  Work with the Climate Change Advisory Committee  identified in the 2008 Pennsylvania Climate Act supplemented by vigorous public participation to identify strategies to reduce Pennsylvania GHG necessary to achieve the legally-binding GHG emissions reduction target
  3. Adopt any laws or regulations necessary to implement the action plan and achieve the target.
  4. Greatly ramp up Pennsylvania’s commitment to non-fossil energy.
  5. Develop and periodically update a climate change adaptation plan.
  6. Encourage, support, and recognize actions and programs to reduce the threat of climate change by Pennsylvania sub-state level governments, businesses, organizations, and educational and religious institutions.

The full report can be downloaded at http://www.pagreencolleges.org/CapitolEvent

Reference:

New York State, (2009). Climate Change Issue Brief, New York Energy Plan 2009, www.nysenergyplan.com/final/Climate_Change_IB.pdf

By:

Donald A. Brown

Scholar In Residence,

Sustainability Ethics and Law

Widener University School of Law

dabrown57@gmail.com