The ethical issues raised by arguments raised against climate change policies often raise obvious ethical problems such as the claim that a country such as the United States need not adopt policies if they will impose unacceptable costs on the nation or an industry discussed in this video. There are, however, many other examples of strong ethical problems with arguments made against proposed climate change policies that are not discussed in this video that are discussed on this website, ethicsandclimate.org. See the “index and start here” tab above on this website for other topics.
Donald A. Brown
Scholar in Residence, Sustainability Ethics and Law
This is the third article in a three part series that makes recommendations to NGOs and citizens on how to respond to opponents of climate change policies if Pope Francis’ claim that climate change is fundamentally a moral problem is correct. The first in this series made recommendations on how to respond to arguments against climate change policies based on cost if climate change is a moral problem. The second made recommendations on how to respond to arguments made against climate change policies based on scientific uncertainty. This entry makes recommendations on how to respond to arguments against climate policies based on claims that it would be unfair or ineffective if a nation makes significant reductions in ghg emissions if other nations such as China or India does not act,
Pope Francis’ Encyclical, Laudato Si, On Care for Our Common Future, is attracting high-level attention around the world for its claim that climate change is a moral problem which all people have a duty to prevent. If his claim that climate change is essentially and fundamentally a moral problem is widely accepted, a conclusion that is strongly supported by basic ethical theory as explained on this website many times, it has the potential to radically transform how climate change has been debated in many nations around the world for the last twenty-five years because opponents of climate change policies have been very successful in framing the public debate so that it has focused on several issues almost exclusively. This framing has enabled the climate change debate to ignore ethical and moral issues that should have been part of the debate. The opponents of climate change policies have succeeded in opposing proposed climate change law and policy by claiming that government action on climate change should be opposed because: (1) it will impose unacceptable costs on national economics or specific industries and destroy jobs, (2) there is too much scientific uncertainty to warrant government action, or (3) it would be unfair and ineffective for nations like the United States to adopt expensive climate policies as long as China or India fail to adopt serious greenhouse gas emissions reductions policies. Common to these arguments is that they have successfully framed the climate change debate so that opponents and proponents of climate policies debate facts about costs, scientific uncertainty, or economic harms to nations that act while other large emitters don’t act rather the moral problems with these arguments.
However, if climate change is understood as essentially a moral and ethical problem it will eventually transform how climate change is debated because the successful framing by the opponents of climate change policies that have limited recent debate to these three arguments, namely cost, scientific uncertainty, and unfairness of reducing ghg emissions until China does so can be shown to be deeply ethically and morally problematic.
This series argues that NGOs, governments, and citizens should ask opponents of climate change policies questions designed to bring attention to the obvious ethical and moral problems with arguments made by opponents of climate change policies. Each question is followed by a brief description of the moral problem that the question is designed to bring to light.
II. Questions to be asked of those opposing government action climate change on the basis that other nations such as China and India have not reduced their ghg emissions.
When you argue that nations such as the United States need not reduce its ghg emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions because other nations such as China or India have not taken action,
1. Are you claiming that no nation has a duty to reduce its ghgs emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions until all other nations reduce their greenhouse gas emissions accordingly?
This question is designed to expose the ethical duty of all nations to reduce their ghg emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions regardless of what other nations do because any nation emitting ghg emissions above its fair share of safe global emissions is contributing to elevated atmospheric ghg concentrations which are harming and threatening others.
2. If you claim that the US or other developed nation has no duty to act on climate change until China acts, do you agree that economic competitors such has China have no duty to reduce their ghg emissions until the United States does so?
This question is designed to bring attention to the fact if the United States or other high-emitting nation has no duty to reduce its ghg emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions until other nations do the same, no nation has a duty to act until the US responds to its obligations, a patently absurd conclusion.
3. Are you aware that the claim frequently made by opponents of US and other national action on climate change that if the country acts to reduce its ghg emissions and China or other developing country does not act it will make no difference because climate change will still happen is not true because ghg emissions from nations exceeding their fair share of safe global emissions are responsible for rising atmospheric concentrations of ghgs?
This question is designed to correct the false claim that as long as a country such as China does not act, any action by a high-emitting nation such as the United States to reduce its ghg emissions makes no difference. This is factually not true because as long as a developed nation’s ghg emissions are above its fair share of safe global emissions they are contributing to rising atmospheric concentrations of ghgs.
4. Are you aware that the United States agreed when it ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992 to adopt policies and measures to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system on the basis of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities and that developed nations agreed to take the lead in reducing the threat of climate change?
This question is designed to bring attention to the fact that the United States and other developed nations have promised to take action to reduce their ghg emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions regardless of what other nations do under the UNFCCC.
6. Are you aware that all nations have a duty under customary international law to prevent harm by ensuring that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction?
This question is designed to expose the ethical duty of the United States and other high-emitting nations under international law to prevent its citizens from engaging in activities which cause climate change damages as a matter international law without regard to what other nations do.
7. Are you aware that the United States is much more responsible for elevated atmospheric ghg concentrations than any other country including China because of US historical and per capita emissions?
This question is designed to expose the strong ethical obligation of the United States and many other high-emitting nations to reduce their ghg emissions without regard to what other nations do because they are more responsible for dangerous elevated atmospheric levels of ghgs than any countries.
Now that Pope Francis has released his encyclical on climate change, strong responses from many climate change deniers has predictably emerged. Most of these attacks on the Pope’s message have focused on the Pope wandering from his area of authority in theology into science. Former Thatcher adviser Christopher Monckton’s retort is typical: “It is not the business of the Pope to stray from the field of faith and morals and wander in to the playground that is science”
The US media’s coverage, also predictably, has mostly focused on whether the Pope should have stayed in his theology lane.
Yet the most important potential message of the Pope’s encyclical is his assertion that climate change is a moral problem. Now, of course, many see the Pope’s claim about morality unsurprising but fail to understand the profound significance for climate policy-making of understanding climate change fundamentally as a moral issue. If climate change is understood to be a moral issue, it would completely transform the way climate change policies have been debated in the United States for over three decades.
For instance, opponents of US government action on climate change have for over 30 years predominantly argued against proposed policies on two grounds. First there is too much scientific uncertainty to warrant action and secondly climate policies will destroy jobs, specific industries, and the US economy. For this reason, action on climate change is not in the US self-interest.
But if climate change is a moral issue, the United States may not look at US economic interests alone, it must respond to US duties and obligations to the tens of millions of people around the world who are most vulnerable to climate change harms. Yet the US debate on climate change has made cost to the US economy of climate change policies, or economic impacts on specific US industries the key criteria for the acceptability of US action on climate change while ignoring what US ghg emissions were doing or threatening to do to tens of vulnerable people around the world.
In addition, if climate change is a moral problem, even assuming counter-factually that there is considerable scientific uncertainty about whether humans are causing serious global warming, those who are putting others at risk have duties to not endanger vulnerable people without their consent. This is particularly true on issues where waiting to resolve scientific uncertainty makes the problem worse or waiting makes the problem harder to solve, clear attributes of climate change.
It is the tens of millions of potential victims of climate change impacts that have the most to lose by waiting until all scientific uncertainties are resolved. Given that the mainstream scientific community now believes that the world is quickly running out of time to prevent dangerous climate change, the moral problems with waiting until all climate scientific uncertainties are resolved are unfortunately becoming obvious. The United States should have acknowledged the duty to fake action on climate change 30 years ago once the US Academy of Sciences and other highly respected scientific institutions stated that human-induced climate change was a growing menace.
Even without the Pope’s encyclical, Climate change is a problem with certain features that scream for attention to see it and respond to it as essentially a moral problem even more than other environmental problems. These features include the following:
• First, it is a problem that is being caused by some high-emitting people and nations in one part of the world who are putting other people and nations at great risk in another part of the world who have often done little to cause the problem.
• Second, the harms to those mostly at risk are not mere inconveniences, but potential catastrophic harms to life and natural resources on which all life depends.
• Third, climate change is a problem for which those people most at risk often can do little to protect themselves by petitioning their governments. Their best hope is that those high-emitting nations and people causing the problem will see that they have ethical duties to the victims to avoid harming them.
• Fourth, because CO2 is well mixed in the atmosphere, all human activities are contributing to rising atmospheric concentrations and therefore a global solution to climate change requires all nations and people to limit their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions.
Because climate change is a moral problem, issues nations must face in formulating climate policies need to be guided by moral considerations. They include, among many others, principles on what is each nation’s fair share of safe global emissions, who is responsible for reasonable adaptation needs of those people at greatest risk from climate damages in poor nations that have done little to cause climate change, should high-emitting nations help poor nations obtain climate friendly energy technologies, and what responsibilities should high-emitting nations have for refugees who must flee their country because climate change has made their nations uninhabitable?
Because climate change is a moral problem, high-emitting organizations, sub-national governments, corporations, and individuals also have duties to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions.
In the international climate negotiations that will resume on November 30 in Paris, issues of fairness are already the key issues in dispute. Hopefully the Pope’s encyclical will help citizens around the world see the moral dimensions of climate change policies and respond accordingly.
The US press has for 30 years utterly failed to help US citizens understand the practical significance for climate policy if climate change is a moral issue. Perhaps the Pope’s encyclical will change this.
Climate change must be understood and responded to as a profound problem of global justice and ethics. This is so because: (a) it is a problem mostly caused by some nations and people emitting high-levels of greenhouse gases (ghg) in one part of the world who are harming or threatening tens of millions of living people and countless numbers of future generations throughout the world who include some of the world’s poorest people who have done little to cause the problem, (b) the harms to many of the world’s most vulnerable victims of climate change are potentially catastrophic, (c) many people most at risk from climate change often can’t protect themselves by petitioning their governments; their best hope is that those causing the problem will see that justice requires them to greatly lower their ghg emissions, (d) to protect the world’s most vulnerable people nations must limit their ghg emissions to levels that constitute their fair share of safe global emissions, and, (e) climate change is preventing some people from enjoying the most basic human rights including rights to life and security among others. Because climate change is a profound problem of justice those causing the problem may not use self-interest alone as justification for their policy responses to human-induced warming, they must respond in ways consistent with their responsibilities and duties to others. In light of this the following questions should be asked of those who oppose national action on climate change on the basis of excessive costs to the national economy or scientific uncertainty.
Questions that should be asked of those opposing national action on climate change on the basis of cost to the national economy:
1. When you claim that a government emitting high levels of ghgs need not reduce its ghg emissions because the costs to it of so doing are too high, do you deny that high-emitting governments not only have economic interests in climate change policies but also duties and obligations to tens of millions of people around the world who are most vulnerable to climate change’s harshest impacts?
2. If you argue that high costs to a nation of reducing its ghg emissions to its fair share of safe global ghg emissions justify non-action, how have you considered the increased harms and risks to poor vulnerable people and nations that will continue to grow as atmospheric ghg concentrations continue to rise? In other words how have you considered the harms to others that will be caused by government inaction on climate change?
3. If the justification for a nation to reduce its ghg emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions is that costs to it are too high, yet inaction causes loss of life and great harm to people outside the nation’s borders, is the use of a cost justification by a nation for non-action morally supportable?
4. Do you agree that those nations and people around the world who will most be harmed by climate change have a right to participate in a decision by a nation that chooses to not adopt climate change policies because costs to it are deemed unacceptable?
5. Do you agree that nations that emit ghgs at levels beyond their fair share of safe global emissions have a duty to help pay for reasonable adaptation needs and unavoidable damages of low-emitting countries and individuals that have done little to cause climate change?
6. If you disagree that all nations have a duty to reduce their ghg emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions without regard to cost to it, do you also deny the applicability of the well-established international legal norm that almost all nations have agreed to in 1992 in the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development called the “polluter pays” principle which holds that polluters should pay for consequences of their pollution?
7. Do you agree that nations that have very high per capita and historical ghg emissions compared to other nations and so have contributed more than other nations to the rise of atmospheric concentrations of ghgs to dangerous levels have a greater duty to reduce their ghg emissions than nations that have done comparatively little to create the current threat of human-induced warming?
8. If you argue that the United States should not adopt climate change policies on the basis that economic competitors such as China have not adopted climate change policies, are you claiming that no nation has a duty to reduce its ghg emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions until all other nations reduce their ghg emissions accordingly?
9. In arguing that the United States or other high-emitting nations need not reduce their ghg emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions based on cost, how have you considered, if at all, that all nations have agreed in international climate negotiations to take steps to limit warming to 2 degree C because warming greater than this amount will not only create harsh impacts for tens of millions of people but runs the risk of creating rapid non-linear warming that will outstrip the ability of people and nations to adapt?
Questions that should be asked of those opposing national action on climate change on the basis of scientific uncertainty:
1. When you argue that a nation emitting high levels of ghgs need not adopt climate change policies because there is scientific uncertainty about adverse climate change impacts, are you arguing that a nation need not take action on climate change until scientific uncertainties are resolved given that waiting to resolve all scientific uncertainties before action is taken may very likely make it too late to prevent catastrophic climate change harms to millions of people around the world?
2. Do you deny that those who are most vulnerable to climate change’s harshest potential impacts have a right to participate in a decision about whether to wait to act to reduce the threat of climate change to them because of scientific uncertainty?
3. Given that mainstream climate change scientific view holds that the Earth could experience rapid non-linear climate change impacts which outstrip the ability of some people and nations to adapt, should this fact affect whether nations which emit high levels of ghgs should be able to use scientific uncertainty as an excuse for non-action on climate change?
4. What specific scientific references and sources do you rely upon to conclude that there is a reasonable scientific dispute about whether human actions are causing observable climate change and are you aware of the multiple “fingerprint” studies and “attribution” studies that very strongly point to human causation?
(Fingerprint studies draw conclusions about human causation that can be deduced from: (a) how the Earth warms in the upper and lower atmosphere, (b) warming in the oceans,(c) night-time vs day-time temperature increases,(d) energy escaping from the upper atmosphere versus energy trapped, (e) isotopes of CO2 in the atmosphere and coral that distinguish fossil CO2 from non-fossil CO2, (f) the height of the boundary between the lower and upper atmosphere, and (g) atmospheric oxygen levels decrease as CO2 levels increase. “Attribution” studies test whether the energy differences from those natural forces which have changed the Earth’s climate in the past such as changing radiation from the sun are capable of explaining observed temperature change.)
5. On what specific basis do you disregard the mainstream scientific view that holds that the Earth is warming, that the warming is mostly human caused, and that harsh impacts from warming are very likely under business-as-usual, conclusions supported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United States Academy of Sciences and over a hundred of the most prestigious scientific organizations in the world whose membership includes scientists with expertise relevant to the science of climate change including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, the American Institute of Physics, the American Meteorological Society, the Royal Meteorological Society, and the Royal Society of the UK and according to the American Academy of Sciences 97 percent of scientists who actually do peer-reviewed research on climate change?
6. When you claim that a nation such as the United States which emits high levels of ghgs need not adopt climate change policies because adverse human-induced climate change impacts have not yet been proven, are you claiming that climate change skeptics have proven that human-induced climate change will not create harsh adverse impacts to the human health and the ecological systems of others on which their lives often depend and if so what is that proof?
7. Given that in ratifying the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) the United States and almost every country in the world in 1992 agreed under Article 3 of that treaty to not use scientific uncertainty as an excuse for postponing climate change policies, do you believe the United States is now free to ignore this promise by refusing to take action on climate change on the basis of scientific uncertainty?
(Article 3 states:)
The Parties should take precautionary measures to anticipate, prevent or minimize the causes of climate change and mitigate its adverse effects. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing such measures, taking into account that policies and measures to deal with climate change should be cost-effective so as to ensure global benefits at the lowest possible cost
8. If a nation emitting high levels of ghgs refuses to reduce its emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions on the basis that there is too much scientific uncertainty to warrant action, if it turns out that human-induced climate change actually greatly harms the health and ecological systems on which life depends for tens of millions of others, should that nation be responsible for the harms that could have been avoided if preventative action had been taken earlier?
In the United States and in several developed countries including Australia and Canada, for instance, opponents of national commitments to reduce greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions frequently have made several arguments in opposition to proposed climate change policies. Most of these arguments have been of two types.
First, opponents of national climate policies have argued that there is insufficient scientific certainty about human causation of adverse climate impacts to warrant action because of the costs of reducing greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions might entail unnecessary expenditures if the mainstream scientific view on climate impacts turns out to be false.
Second proposed climate change policies are too costly. These cost arguments have taken several forms. They have included claims that the proposed ghg emissions reduction policies: (a) will unacceptably reduce national GDP, (b) will destroy jobs, (c) will destroy specific industries, (d) are not justified by cost-benefit analyses or other welfare maximization measurements, or (e) are just too costly.
Another very common argument made in opposition to national ghg emissions reductions policies that implicitly rests on claims of excessive costs is the frequent claim that it is unfair to the United States, or some other country, to be required to reduce its emissions as long as another country, e.g. China or India, is not willing to reduce its ghg emissions in similar ways.
This paper will examine whether a nation may make its willingness to reduce its ghg emissions contingent on what other nations do through an ethical lens after very briefly examining ethical problems with other cost justifications for a nation’s unwillingness to reduce it ghg emissions.
II. Ethical Problems with Cost Justifications for a Nation’s Unwillingness to Reduce its GHG Emissions.
As a matter of ethics all nations have clear duties reduce their ghg emissions to their fair share of global emissions because nations have ethical duties to not harm other people and nations. These ethical duties can be derived both from various ethical theories and international law. For instance, as an example from climate law, under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, nations agreed that nations have the:
“responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction.” (UNFCCC, Preamble)
In regard to the ethical basis for concluding that nations have duties to not harm others a recent conclusion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is relevant
Common sense ethics (and legal practice) hold persons responsible for harms or risks they knowingly impose or could have reasonably foreseen, and in certain cases, regardless of whether they could have been foreseen. (IPCC, 2014, AR5, WG III, Ch. 4, pg. 49)
Cost arguments are almost always arguments about self-interest that usually ignore duties and responsibilities to others.
Whether a nation or individual should act to prevent climate change is a matter of justice, not simply a matter of economic efficiency, national welfare maximization, or economic self-interest alone. This is so because some governments and individuals more than others are more responsible for climate change because they have much higher emissions of ghg in total tons, per capita levels, and historical contributions to elevated atmospheric ghg concentrations. Yet each nation must reduce its ghg emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions because it has a duty to not harm others and some of the poorest people in the world who have done almost nothing to cause climate change are the most vulnerable to climate change. These people will suffer the most if governments and individuals refuse to reduce their emissions based upon “efficiency” or “welfare maximization” or national costs considerations alone. In addition, those most vulnerable to climate change have not consented to be harmed because costs to polluters of reducing their emissions are high.
In regard to these ethical limits of costs arguments, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Working Group III report recently confirmed these conclusions when it stated:
“Efficiency” and “welfare maximization” justifications unjustly sacrifice vulnerable people to the economic prosperity of high emitting nations and individuals. The methods of economics are limited in what they can do. …They are suited to measuring and aggregating the wellbeing of humans, but not in taking account of justice and rights. (IPCC, 2014, AR5, WG III, Ch. 3, pg. 24)
What ethical considerations can economics and justice can economics cover satisfactorily? Since the methods of economics are concerned with value, they do not take account of justice and rights in general. (IPCC, 2014.AR5, WG III, Ch. 3, pg. 25)
Economics is not well suited to taking into account many other aspects of justice, including compensatory justice. (IPCC,2014, AR5, WG III, Ch. 3,pg. 24)
Yet, of course, what is any nation’s fair share of safe global emissions is a matter of distributive justice about which reasonable people may disagree. In fact, some very low emitting nation’s and people may be able to argue that they need not yet cut their ghg emissions because they have not yet exceeded their fair share of safe global emissions. Yet almost all nations are without doubt emitting at levels above their fair share of safe global emissions because total global emissions must be cut by as much as 95 percent by 2050 to prevent dangerous climate change. This is particularly true for all developed nations such as the United States which have very high per capita and historical emissions.
Although reasonable people may disagree on exactly what any nation’s fair share of safe global emissions, this does not mean that any national articulation of what is fair passes ethical scrutiny.
In this regard, the recent IPCC report also agreed when it said:
There is a basic set of shared ethical principles and precedents that apply to the climate problem…[and] such principles… can put bounds on the plausible interpretation of equity in the burden sharing context…[and] are important in establishing what may be reasonably required of different actors. (IPCC, 2014, AR5, WG III, Ch. 4, pg. 48)
The recent IPPC report identified the considerations that have been discussed in the ethics literature as being relevant for determining what fairness requires in allocating national responsibility for national ghg emissions reductions. They include; (a) responsibility for causing the climate problem, that is historical levels of emissions, (b) capacity or ability to pay for ghg emissions reductions, (c) equality or giving each human being an equal right to use the atmosphere as a sink for ghg emissions, and (d) the right to development a concept which is usually understood to give poorer nations an exception from the obligations to reduce ghg emissions so that they can meet basic needs. (IPCC, 2014, AR5, WGIII pp 52-56)
And so ethics requires each nation to reduce its emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions where what is fair must be based upon morally justifiable reasons for allocating national ghg emissions reductions’ burdens yet in determining what are morally relevant factors there are only a limited number of considerations that are recognized by ethicists to be morally relevant. None of these considerations are costs to reduce ghg emissions of high-emitting nations or people.
III. The Ethics Of One Nation Making Its GHG Reductions’ Commitment Contingent Upon Other Nations Doing the Same.
All nations that are exceeding their fair share of safe global emissions have a duty to immediately reduce their emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions without regard to what other nations do. This is so because climate change obligations are a matter of global justice, not national interest alone, and justice requires all nations to reduce their ghg emissions to levels that are distributively just and sufficient in magnitude to in combination with the reductions of other nations to prevent dangerous climate change.
The duty to cease activities that harm others is not diminished if others who are contributing to the harm fail to cease their harmful behavior. This is so because no nation or person has a right to continue destructive behavior on the basis that others who are contributing to the harm of others have not ceased their destructive behavior.
For example, it would be absurd for one of two factories that are poisoning people downstream by their discharges of toxic substances to argue that it has no obligation to reduce toxic discharges until the other factory agrees to reduce its toxic discharges. One of two persons beating up an innocent victim cannot defend his actions on the basis that he had no duty to stop the beating as long as the other person continued to assault the victim.
Yet climate change is an analogous problem because some very high-emitting countries are largely causing great harm to very low-emitting poor countries who can do little by themselves to protect themselves from the great harm. Those poor nations who are the most vulnerable victims of climate change are appropriately dismissive of arguments from high-emitting countries that justify their unwillingness to change the status quo on the basis that other high-emitting countries have not reduced their emissions.
May the United States, or other nation, refuse to reduce its emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions as long as another nation, for instance China, will not act accordingly? As a matter of ethics, for reasons stated above, no nation may refuse to reduce its emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions levels on the basis what other nations do.
May China, or other developing nation refuse to reduce its ghg emissions on the basis that another developed nation has refused to act according to levels required of them?
Any nation’s obligation, including China’s, to reduce its ghg emissions is terminated only when its ghg emission levels are below levels required by fair global allocations that will prevent dangerous climate change. Although even if a nation is emitting at levels below its fair share of safe global emissions an argument can be made that any nation that could reduce its ghg emissions further should do so to avoid catastrophic harm to others. This so because climate change is violating the human rights of poor people around the world and human rights theory requires governments that have the ability to prevent human rights violations should do so even if they are not at fault.
Without doubt as a matter of ethics, all nations, at a minimum, have a duty to keep ghg emissions below their fair share of safe global emissions independent of what other nations are doing.
Although as we have seen what fairness requires is a matter about which different ethical theories might reach different conclusions, a claim by almost any nation in the top 80 percent of global per capita emissions that it is already below its fair share of safe global emissions is highly unlikely to pass scrutiny on the basis of any conceivable ethically theory.
And so, the United States, along with other high-emitting nations, must act now because it cannot make a credible case that US ghg emissions are already below the US’s fair share of safe global emissions levels. This is true because most mainstream scientists have concluded that the world must reduce total global emissions by as much as 90 to 80 percent below existing levels to stabilize GHG atmospheric concentrations at minimally safe atmospheric ghg concentrations and most developed nations and China are very high emitters in both historical and per capita emissions. Therefore what is a fair reduction levels for these high-emitting countries will need to be reductions at greater levels than required of the entire world.
Yet, some very low-emitting developing countries might be able to make a credible case that their current ghg emissions levels are still below their fair share of safe global emissions. And so although some poor low-emitting nations might be able to substantiate a claim that their existing ghg emissions levels don’t yet trigger immediate emissions reductions obligations, the United States and all developed nations and China are not members of this group. For this reason, the US, developed nations, and even high-emitting developing nations have a duty to reduce their ghg emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions and this obligation is an international responsibility that is unaffected by the actions of other nations.
In addition, it is ethically problematic for the United States or another developed nation to assert that other nations must reduce their emissions to levels commensurate with US reductions. In fact, for the United States to make any claim on any other nation that it must reduce its emissions in the same amount as the US emissions reductions, it would have to make the case that the nation was already exceeding its fair share of safe global emissions coupled with the claim that to achieve fair emissions levels the nation would have to reduce emissions to the same level committed to by the United States. But even then, as we have seen, the United States could not makes its emissions reduction commitments contingent on what another nation did.
A variation of the argument that a country like the United States need not reduce its ghg emissions unless other nations do so is the claim that it will not make a difference in the harms experienced by those vulnerable to climate change if the United States reduces its ghg emissions and others fail to do so. Yet this claim is not factually true. Any nation which is emitting ghg emissions above its fair share is contributing to the harms of people and nations who are harmed by climate change. Although it is obviously true that unless all nations reduce their emissions to their fair share of safe global ghg emissions, some nations and people will be harmed by climate change, yet these harms will be worse so long as each nation refuses to reduce its emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions. Although the most damaging harms may be caused by those nations who refuse to reduce their ghg emissions to their fair share, all nations emitting ghgs above their fair share make the harms worse.
Countries like the United States are not being asked to reduce China’s fair share of safe global emissions, they are only expected to reduce the US ghg emissions to the US fair share of safe global emissions. For this reason, also, the US may not as a matter of ethics fail to reduce its ghg emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions because other countries have failed to do so.
IV. Conclusion
In conclusion, nations have an ethical responsibility to reduce ghg emissions that harm others for as long as they are exceeding their fair share of safe global emissions. This duty exists regardless of efforts undertaken by other nations to reduce their ghg emissions.
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.
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:
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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?
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.
What recommendations would you make to get the nation or civil society to take ethics and justice issues seriously in climate change policy formulation?
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
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.
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)
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
This is the second in a three part series examining the ethical and justice issues discussed by the IPCC Working Group III in its 5th Assessment Report (AR5) . In the first entry in this series we concluded that although the recent IPCC AR 5 Working Group III report is laudable improvement over prior IPCC reports in regard to identifying ethical and equity issues that should be considered in developing climate change policy, some criticisms are also warranted of how IPCC has articulated the significance and implications of the ethical, justice, and equity principles that should guide nations in developing climate change policies.
In short, we will argue improvement is possible in how IPCC deals with ethics, justice, and equity issues entailed by climate change policy-making despite very significant improvements on these matters in the AR5 report compared to prior IPCC reports.
In this entry we will examine several preliminary ethical and justice issues raised by the new IPCC Working Group III Chapter 3, on Social, Economic, and Ethical Concepts. The last entry will continue the examination Chapter 3 and then turn to Chapter 4 on Sustainable Development and Equity.
As a preliminary matter, one of the challenges that IPCC faces in its mandate on of ethics and justice issues relevant to climate change policy-making is that it is not IPCC’s role to be prescriptive in deciding what governments should do. It’s mandate is to synthesize the extant social-economic and scientific literature for policy-makers. In this regard, the IPCC chapter on ethics said expressly:
This chapter does not attempt to answer ethical questions, but rather provides policymakers with the tools (concepts, principles, arguments, and methods) to make decisions. (IPCC, 2014.WG III, Ch. 3, pg. 10)
And so it is not IPCC’s role to do ethical analyses of policy issues that raise ethical questions. IPCC can, however, distinguish between prescriptive and descriptive questions that arise in relevant socio-economic literature about climate policy-making, identify important ethical and justice issues that arise in this literature, where there is a consensus on ethics and justice issues in the relevant literature describe the consensus position, where there is no consensus on ethical and justice issues describe the range of reasonable views on these issues, and identify hard and soft law legal principles relevant to how governments should resolve ethical and justice issues that must be faced by policy-makers.
There are several subjects in climate change policy-making which raise important ethical and justice issues. They include policy judgements about:
how much warming will be tolerated, a matter which is implicit but rarely identified when nations make ghg emissions reduction commitments,
any nation’s fair share of safe global emissions, matters which are referred to by the IPCC usually as burden-sharing or effort-sharing considerations and a matter taken up in chapter 4 of IPCC, Working Group III chapter on sustainability and equity,
any nation’s responsibility for funding reasonable adaptation and compensation for losses and damages for those who are harmed by climate change,
when a nation is responsible for its ghg emissions given differences in historical and per capita emissions among nations,
responsibility for funding technology transfer to poor nations,
how to evaluate the effects on and responsibilities to others of climate change technologies that are adopted in response to the threat of climate change, including such technologies as geo-engineering or nuclear power, for instance,
who has a right to participate in climate change policy-making, a topic usually referred to under the topic of procedural justice,
the policy implications of human rights violations caused by climate change,
the responsibility of not only nations but subnational governments, entities, organizations, and individuals for climate change,
when economic analyses of climate change policy options can prescribe or limit national duties or obligations to respond to the threat of climate change,
ethical and justice implications of decisions must be made in the face of scientific uncertainty,
whether action or non-action of other nations is relevant to any nation’s responsibility for climate change,
how to spend limited funds on climate change adaptation,
when politicians may rely on their own uninformed opinion about climate change science,
who is responsible for climate refugees and what their responsibilities are.
On some of these issues, the recent IPCC report included a good summary of the extant ethical literature, on other issues important gaps in IPCC’s analysis can be identified, and lastly on a few of these issues, IPCC Working Group III is silent. IPCC reports cannot be expected to be exhaustive on these matters and therefore gaps and omissions in the IPCC reports in regard to ethics and justice issues relevant to policy-making is not necessarily a criticism of IPCC and is here pointed out only for future consideration. In fact, IPCC’s work on the ethical limits of economic arguments is a particularly important contribution to the global climate change debate. What is worthy of criticism, however, is if IPCC’s conclusions on guidance for policy-makers is misleading on ethics and justice issues.
II. Ethical Issues Raised by Economic Arguments About Climate Policy
Perhaps the most important practical ethical and justice issues raised by Working Group III’s work on ethics is its conclusions on the ethical and justice limitations of economic analyses of climate change policy options. This topic is enormously practically important because nations and others who argue against proposed climate change policies usually rely on various economic arguments which often completely ignore the ethical and justice limitations of these arguments (In the case of the United States, see Brown, 2012.) Because most citizens and policy-makers have not been trained in spotting ethically dubious claims that are often hidden in what appear at first glance to be “value-neutral” economic arguments, IPCC’s acknowledgement of the ethical limitations of economic arguments is vitally important. It is also practically important because the first four IPCC reports, although not completely ignoring all ethical and justice problems with economic arguments about climate change policies, failed to examine the vast majority of ethical problems with economic arguments against climate change policies while making economic analyses of climate change policies the primary focus of Working Group III’s work thereby leaving the strong impression that economic analyses, including but not limited to cost-benefit analyses, is the preferred way to evaluate the sufficiency of proposed climate change policies. On this matter, the AR5 report has made important clarifications.
The AR5 III report included a section on this very issue entitled: Economics, Rights, and Dutieswhich we reproduce here it its entirety because of its importance to this discussion, followed by comments in bold italics:
Economics can measure and aggregate human wellbeing, but Sections 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4 explain that wellbeing may be only one of several criteria for choosing among alternative mitigation policies.
Other ethical considerations are not reflected in economic valuations, and those considerations may be extremely important for particular decisions that have to be made. For example, some have contended that countries that have emitted a great deal of GHG in the past owe restitution to countries that have been harmed by their emissions. If so, this is an important consideration in determining how much finance rich countries should provide to poorer countries to help with their mitigation efforts. It suggests that economics alone cannot be used to determine who should bear the burden of mitigation.
What ethical considerations can economics cover satisfactorily? Since the methods of economics are concerned with value, they do not take into account of justice and rights in general. However, distributive justice can be accommodated within economics, because it can be understood as a value: specifically the value of equality. The theory of fairness within economics (Fleurbaey, 2008) is an account of distributive justice. It assumes that the level of distributive justice within a society is a function of the wellbeings of individuals, which means it can be reflected in the aggregation of wellbeing. In particular, it may be measured by the degree of inequality in wellbeing, using one of the standard measures of inequality such as the Gini coefficient (Gini, 1912), as discussed in the previous section. The Atkinson measure of inequality (Atkinson, 1970) is based on an additively separable social welfare function (SWF), and is therefore particularly appropriate for representing the prioritarian theory described in Section 3.4.6 . Furthermore, distributive justice can be reflected in weights incorporated into economic evaluations as Section 3.6 explains.
Simply identifying the level of inequality using the Gini Index does not assure that the harms and benefits of climate change policies will be distributed justly. For that a theory of just distribution is needed. The Gini index is also at such a level of abstraction that it is very difficult to use it as a way of thinking about the justice obligations to those most vulnerable to climate change. Even if there is strong economic equality in a nation measured by the Gini index, one cannot conclude that climate change policies are distributively just.
Economics is not well suited to taking into account many other aspects of justice, including compensatory justice. For example, a CBA might not show the drowning of a Pacific island as a big loss, since the island has few inhabitants and relatively little economic activity. It might conclude that more good would be done in total by allowing the island to drown: the cost of the radical action that would be required to save the island by mitigating climate change globally would be much greater than the benefit of saving the island. This might be the correct conclusion in terms of overall aggregation of costs and benefits. But the island’s inhabitants might have a right not to have their homes and livelihoods destroyed as a result of the GHG emissions of richer nations far away. If that is so, their right may override the conclusions of CBA. It may give those nations who emit GHG a duty to protect the people who suffer from it, or at least to make restitution to them for any harms they suffer.
Even in areas where the methods of economics can be applied in principle, they cannot be accepted without question (Jamieson, 1992; Sagoff, 2008). Particular simplifying assumptions are always required, as shown throughout this chapter. These assumptions are not always accurate or appropriate, and decision‐makers need to keep in mind the resulting limitations of the economic analyses. For example, climate change will shorten many people’s lives. This harm may in principle be included within a CBA, but it remains highly contentious how that should be done. Another problem is that, because economics can provide concrete, quantitative estimates of some but not all values, less quantifiable considerations may receive less attention than they deserve.
This discussion does not adequately capture serious ethical problems with translating all values into monetary units measured by willingness to pay or its surrogates nor that such transformation may greatly distort ethical obligations to do no harm into changes in commodity value.
The extraordinary scope and scale of climate change raises particular difficulties for economic methods (Stern, forthcoming). First, many of the common methods of valuation in economics are best designed for marginal changes, whereas some of the impacts of climate change and efforts at mitigation are not marginal (Howarth and Norgaard, 1992). Second, the very long time scale of climate change makes the discount rate crucial at the same time as it makes it highly controversial (see Section 3.6.2 ). Third, the scope of the problem means it encompasses the world’s extremes of wealth and poverty, so questions of distribution become especially important and especially difficult. Fourth, measuring non‐market values—such as the existence of species, natural environments, or traditional ways of life of local societies—is fraught with difficulty. Fifth, the uncertainty that surrounds climate change is very great. It includes the likelihood of irreversible changes to societies and to nature, and even a small chance of catastrophe. This degree of uncertainty sets special problems for economics. (Nelson, 2013) (IPCC, 2014.WG III, Ch. 3, pg. 12-13)
Again this discussion does not adequately describe the ethical problems with economic determinations of all values. In fact it leaves the impression that if non-market values can be discovered the problems of transforming all values to commodity values are adequately dealt with.
Chapter 3, also includes additional statements about the ethical limits of economic reasoning sprinkled throughout the chapter. They include:
1. Most normative analyses of solutions to the climate problem implicitly involve contestable ethical assumptions.(IPCC, 2014. WG III, Ch. 3, pg.10)
2. However, the methods of economics are limited in what they can do. They can be based on ethical principles, as Section 3.6 explains. But they cannot take account of every ethical principle. They are suited to measuring and aggregating the wellbeing of humans, but not to taking account of justice and rights (with the exception of distributive justice − see below), or other values apart from human wellbeing. (IPCC, 2014.WG III, Ch. 3, pg. 24)
And so Chapter 3 of the IPCC report contains a number or clear assertions about the ethical limitations of economic arguments. However there are important gaps missing from this analysis. Also several sections of Chapter 3 that can be interpreted as claims that policy makers are free to choose economic reasoning as justification for climate policies. That is, some of the text reads as if a policy-maker is free to choose whether to base policy on economic or ethical and justice considerations, choosing between these two ways of evaluation is simply an option. Some of these provisions follow with responses in italics
Chapter 3 page 6 says:
Many different analytic methods are available for evaluating policies. Methods may be quantitative (for example, cost‐benefit analysis, integrated assessment modeling, and multi‐criteria analysis) or qualitative (for example, sociological and participatory approaches). However, no single best method can provide a comprehensive analysis of policies. A mix of methods is often needed to understand the broad effects, attributes, trade‐offs, and complexities of policy choices; moreover, policies often address multiple objectives (IPCC, 2014.WG III, Ch. 3, pg. 6)
Although economic analyses can provide policy-makers with valuable information such as which technologies will achieve ethically determined goals at lowest cost, thereby providing criteria for making remedies cost-effective, there are serious ethical problems with cost-benefit analyses used prescriptively to set emissions reductions targets. Some of these are alluded to in IPCC Chapters 3 and 4, others are not acknowledged. Because of the prevalence of cost-benefit justifications for climate change policies, future IPCC reports could make a contribution by identifying all of the ethical issues raised by cost-benefit analyses.
Any decision about climate change is likely to promote some values and damage others. These may be values of very different sorts. In decision making, different values must therefore be put together or balanced against each other. (IPCC, 2014. WG III, Ch. 3, pg. 6)
This provision can be understood as condoning a consequentialist approach to climate policy that fails to acknowledge deontological limits. Since when any nation makes policy on climate change it affects poor people and vulnerable nations around the world, there are serious procedural justice issues which go unacknowledged in this section and, for the most part, all throughout Chapter 3. Nowhere does the chapter acknowledge that when a climate policy is under development at the national level, nations have no right to compare costs to them of implementing policies with the harms to others that have not consented to the method of valuation being used to determine quantitative value.
Ideally, emissions should be reduced in each place to just the extent that makes the marginal cost of further reductions the same everywhere. One way of achieving this result is to have a carbon price that is uniform across the world; or it might be approximated by a mix of policy instruments (see Section 3.8 ). (IPCC, 2014.WG III, Ch. 3, pg. 26)
This statement fails to acknowledge that emissions reductions amounts should be different in different places according to well accepted principles of distributive justice. Although other sections of the chapter acknowledge that responsibility for climate change is a matter of distributive justice, this section and others leave the impression that climate policy can be based upon economic efficiency grounds alone. The way to cure this problem is to continue to reference other sections that recognize ethical limits in setting policy on the basis of efficiency.
(IPCC, 2014.WG III, Ch. 3, pg. 6)
Since, for efficiency, mitigation should take place where it is cheapest, emissions of GHG should be reduced in many developing countries, as well as in rich ones. However, it does not follow that mitigation must be paid for by those developing countries; rich countries may pay for mitigation that takes place in poor countries. Financial flows between countries make it possible to separate the question of where mitigation should take place from the question of who should pay for it. Because mitigating climate change demands very large‐scale action, if put in place these transfers might become a significant factor in the international distribution of wealth. Provided appropriate financial transfers are made, the question of where mitigation should take place is largely a matter for the economic theory of efficiency, tempered by ethical considerations. But the distribution of wealth is amatter of justice among countries, and a major issue in the politics of climate change (Stanton, 2011). It is partly a matter of distributive justice, which economics can take into account, but compensatory justice may also be involved, which is an issue for ethics. (Section 3.3).(IPCC, 2014.WG III, Ch. 3, pg. 26)
There are a host of potential ethical problems with mitigation taking place in one part of the world to satisfy the ethical obligations of a nation in another part of the world which is emitting above its fair share of safe global emissions that are not mentioned in this article. Included in these problems are:
Environmental Sufficiency. There are many technical challenges in assuring that a project in one part of the world that seeks to reduce ghg by an amount that otherwise would be required of a polluter will actually succeed in achieving the reductions particularly when the method of reduction is reliant on biological removal of carbon.
Permanence. Many proposed projects for reducing carbon in one part of the world to offset reductions ethically required in another part of the world raise serious questions about whether the carbon reduced by the project will stay out of the atmosphere forever, a requirement that is required to achieve the environmental equivalence to ghg emissions reductions that would be achieved at the source.
Leakage. Many proposed projects used to offset emissions reductions of high-emitters raise serious questions about whether carbon reduced by a project at one location will result in actual reductions in emissions because the activity which is the subject of the offset is resumed at another location.
Additionality. A project that is proposed in another part of the world to offset emissions reductions of a high-emitting entity may not be environmentally effective if the project would have happened anyway for other reasons.
Allowing Delay In Investing In New Technology. The ability to rely on a cheaper emissions reductions project in another part of the world as a substitute of reducing emissions creates an excuse for high-emitting entities to delay investment in technologies that will reduce the pollution load. This may create a practical problem when emissions reductions obligations are tightened in the future.
Chapter 3 also treats other important ethical issues that arise in climate change policy formation. They include:
3.3 Justice, equity and responsibility,
3.3.1 Causal and moral responsibility
3.3.2 Intergenerational justice and rights of future people
3.3.4 Historical responsibility and distributive justice
3.3.5 Intra‐generational justice: compensatory justice and historical responsibility
3.3.6 Legal concepts of historical responsibility
3.3.7 Geoengineering, ethics, and justice
3.4 Values and wellbeing
3.4.1 Non‐human values
3.4.2 Cultural and social values
3.4.3 Wellbeing
3.4.4 Aggregation of wellbeing
3.4.5 Lifetime wellbeing
3.4.6 Social welfare functions
3.4.7 Valuing population
III. Some Additional Gaps In Chapter 3
Some of the gaps in Chapter 3 on ethical issues raised by climate change policy-making include: (1) ethics of decision-making in the face of scientific uncertainty, (2) whether action or non-action of other nations affects a nation’s responsibility for climate change, (3) how to spend limited funds on climate change adaptation, (4) when politicians may rely on their own uninformed opinion about climate change science, and (5) who is responsible to for climate refugees and what are their responsibilities.
The last entry in this series will continue the analyses of IPCC Chapter 3 on Social, Economic, and Ethical Concepts and Chapter 4 on Sustainability and Equity.
References
Brown, 2012, Navigating the Perfect Moral Storm: Climate Change Ethics In Light of a Thirty-Five Year Debate, Routledge-Earthscan, 2012
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2014, Working Group III, Mitigation of Climate Change, http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg3/ –
On Monday June 2, the US press began to shine a spotlight on the predictable political warfare breaking out over the Obama administration’s new proposed climate change rules. Yet, there are at least four crucial facts about any US response to climate change that continue to be largely ignored by the US media coverage of this food fight. They include: (1) a 35 year US delay on climate action has made the problem extraordinarily challenging to solve, (2) US greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions are more than any country responsible for rise in atmospheric concentrations to present dangerous levels, (3) US ghg emissions not only threaten the US with climate disruption but endanger many of the poorest people around the world, (4) the Obama administration’s pledge to reduce ghg emissions is far short of the US fair share of safe global emissions.
For over 35 years the US Academy of Sciences has been warning Americans about the threat of climate change. In 1977, Robert M. White, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, wrote a report for the US Academy that concluded that CO2 released during the burning of fossil fuel could have consequences for climate that pose a considerable threat to future society. By the late 1980s, scientists around the world agreed that action by the world governments was needed to avoid the threat of climate change. In June in 1988, a conference of the world’s governments and scientists proposed that developed nations reduce their emissions by 20% by 2000. The US, virtually standing alone among developed countries, refused to commit to any emissions reductions targets citing scientific uncertainty and cost to the US economy. The 35 year delay in taking significant action has made the task of avoiding dangerous climate change increasingly more challenging. In fact, most climate scientists are alarmed that the world is now running out of time to prevent very dangerous climate change. The 35 year delay has now created a need for extraordinarily steep ghg reductions worldwide. The longer the world waits, the more difficult and costly it will be to avoid dangerous climate change.
Opponents of US action on climate change loudly now argue that the US should not act until China commits to acts correspondingly siting that China is now the world’s largest emitter of ghg. Yet they conveniently ignore the fact that the United States is a much larger emitter of ghgs than China in per capita and historical emissions. The atmosphere is like a bathtub, it has a limited volume, and because CO2 is well mixed in the atmosphere it makes little difference where the emissions come from; the bathtub continues to fill. The US more than any other country has been responsible for filling the atmospheric bathtub with ghgs above levels that existed before the beginning of the industrial revolution to current dangerous levels. Given there is limited atmospheric space left before ghg concentrations exceed very dangerous levels, the international community expects the United States to reduce its emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions, it is not asking American to reduce China’s share.
The political fight in the United States often exclusively has focused on climate harms to the United States if it does not take climate action compared to the costs to the US of taking action. Such a framing ignores that it is tens of millions of poor people around the world who will be most harmed by climate change if high-emitting nations fail to reduce their emissions to their fair share 0f safe global emissions. For this reason, climate change raises civilization challenging questions of justice and fairness, a feature of climate change that the US press is largely ignoring while it focuses on harms and benefits to the United States alone. Climate change creates US obligations to poor people and places around the world that are most at risk.
In 2009, President Obama promised the world that the US would strive to reduce its ghg emissions by 17% below 2005 emissions by 2020. He did this knowing that the United States would need to adopt additional policies to achieve this very modest goal. Because the US Congress has refused to act, the Obama administration proposed the regulation this week that has triggered the political firestorm. Missing from the coverage of the proposed regulations, is that the Obama pledge on ghg emissions reductions falls far short of any reasonable judgment about what the US fair share of safe global emissions is. This is so because to have any reasonable hope of preventing dangerous climate change, the entire world must reduce its emissions by much greater amounts than the US 2009 commitment and the United States is at the high-end of national historical and per capita emissions. To having any hope of avoiding dangerous climate change the US and other high-emitting nations will need to reduce their emissions at much greater rates than the average for the rest of the world. Basic justice requires this.
