As the last two days of the negotiations are now before us, the US mainstream media coverage of the UNFCCC COP 21 in Paris continues to miss some of the most important issues that US citizens need to understand to evaluate the US government’s response to climate change. Although there has been ample coverage of President Obama’s appearance at the beginning of the Paris COP and abundant coverage of a few issues such as the fact that national commitments on ghg emissions reductions are not likely sufficient to limit warming to 20 C, there has been only sketchy coverage at best of the following issues:
The enormity and urgency of global ghg emissions reductions that are needed to limit warming to 1.5 or 2 degrees C. Only when citizens fully understand the limited carbon budget that remains to be distributed among all the nations of the world if the international community is going to retain hope of limiting warming to non-dangerous levels can they understand why all nations must increase their ambition in reducing ghg emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions.
The evidence that 1.5 degrees C should be the warming limit for the world that all nations should seek to achieve rather than 2 degrees C. To the extent that the press has covered the controversy between setting a global warming limit at 2 degrees C or 1.5 degrees C. the press has left the impression as if this is simply a choice for the international community without explaining the enormous danger for many poor developing countries that turns on this choice. Unless citizens understand how some countries are put at much greater risk if the warming limit remains at 2 degrees C they cannot clearly reflect on their moral responsibility to act to limit warming to lower amounts.
The implications of taking equity and justice seriously in allocating national ghg emissions reduction targets for the United States including the fact that if the United States would take its equitable obligations seriously it would not only have to reduce its carbon emissions to zero by 2050, it would have to financially contribute to the costs of emissions reductions in developing countries.
The damage to the world from an almost 30 year US delay in taking serious steps to reduce the threat of climate change including the enormity of global ghg emissions reductions that are now necessary compared to the reductions that would have been necessary if the United States and the world acted more forcefully a decade ago or so earlier.
The ethical and legal reasonableness of requiring high-emitting nations including the United States to financially contribute to the costs of adaptation, losses, and damages in poor, vulnerable nations that have done little to cause the threat of climate change.
The enormity of growing costs for needed adaptation, loses, and damages in poor developing countries. Without a clear understanding of how adaptation and loses and damages costs increase dramatically as delays continue in making adequate dramatic ghg emissions reductions, citizens cannot evaluate the need of their nations to act rapidly to reduce ghg emissions.
The failure of developed countries to meet their obligations to help poor vulnerable nations meet clear adaptation needs.
Why the commitment on reducing ghg emissions by the Obama administration, despite it being a welcome change from prior US responses to climate change, is still woefully inadequate.
The utter ethical and moral bankruptcy of the positions of opponents of climate change policies in the United States that are being presented in opposition to the Paris negotiations.
This blog will cover these issues in more detail in coming entries.
This website has been dedicated to helping citizens spot, understand, and make arguments about ethical and moral issues that arise in public discussion of climate change policies. A major objective of this effort has been to help proponents of climate change programs to respond to many arguments made by opponents of government action on climate that fail to pass reasonable ethical scrutiny. Armed with these ethical arguments, we have expected that proponents of stronger climate change policies would seek to hold accountable those governments, politicians, and opponents of climate change programs who have taken morally indefensible positions on climate change issues. That is we expected that strong moral arguments would be used either to convince governments or climate policy opponents of the moral unacceptability of their positions, or be used to pressure governments or individuals that continued to hold morally and ethically indefensible positions through the use of public shaming.
In doing this work for over a decade, we have frequently encountered proponents of climate change policies who eschew tactics that seek to publicly shame opponents of climate change policies or governments even in cases where their positions are obviously ethically and morally indefensible. Instead of making ethical and moral arguments in response to the arguments of climate change policies opponents, climate change policy advocates have often focused on refuting the factual claims of the opponents’ arguments such as climate change policies will destroy the economy or are not warranted due to scientific uncertainty. .
This article will (1) examine arguments that have sometimes been made against using shaming as a strategic tool to change the behavior of those who resist taking responsible action on climate change, and (2) identify features of an effective use of shaming that might lead to more responsible action on climate change,
II. Objections to the Use of Shaming Techniques to Enhance Climate Change Responses.
Some proponents of climate change policies have explained their aversion to moral arguments made in response to the positions of opponents of climate policies on the basis that moral judgements are subjective and thus there is often no clear way of resolving disagreements about what justice and ethics requires. It is true that not all ethical issues raised by climate change lead to a consensus among ethicists as to what ethics and morality requires. For instance, reasonable people can disagree on what principles of distributive justice should guide fair allocations of national ghg emissions reduction targets. Yet, as we have explained on this website many times, many of the most frequent arguments made by opponents of climate change policies violate widely accepted ethical principles including: (a) the Golden Rule that holds that people have a duty to treat others with respect, (b) widely accepted human rights principles, (c) non-controversial precepts of procedural justice such as people should not put other people at great risk of harm without obtaining permission from those most vulnerable to harm, and (d) widely accepted principles of international law such as the “polluter pays” principle, the “no harm principle” and the “precautionary principle,” the last two of which were expressly agreed to by all nations when they agreed in 1992 to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Given that the most frequent arguments made against climate change programs clearly fail to pass minimum ethical scrutiny, unwillingness to publicly hold opponents of climate change policies for their morally indefensible positions is a huge mistake.particularly in regard to the most frequent arguments that have been made in opposition to climate change policies. In the United States, opponents of climate change policies have most frequently argued that the United States should not adopt climate change policies because:
First, climate change programs will impose unacceptable costs on the economy or destroy jobs, or other economic reasons to oppose action on climate change.
Second, climate change emissions reductions programs are not warranted due to scientific uncertainty about whether humans are causing climate change and what the impacts will be.
Third, for a government such as the United States to act would be unfair or ineffective until other countries including China and India take similar action.
Citizens and environmental groups have unknowingly been tricked into responding to these arguments by making factual responses to these claims, such as climate change policies will increase jobs, despite the fact that each of these arguments contain hidden normative assumptions which clearly flunk minimum ethical scrutiny.
For example, as we have seen, opponents of climate change policies have frequently based their opposition on the claim that action on climate change will destroy jobs or the the national economy.
The response of NGOs and citizens to this argument has largely been to assert that climate change programs will create jobs and boost the economy. Yet this response unknowingly implicitly supports the very troublesome hidden normative assumption of the climate policy opponents’ argument, namely that the government should not adopt climate policies if the policies will hurt the government’s economic interests despite the fact that this argument is obviously wrong when viewed through an ethical lens because polluters not only have economic interests, they have moral responsibilities to not harm others. This conclusion is supported by: (a) the universally accepted Golden Rule which holds that someone should not be able to kill others because it would be costly to the killer to stop the killing behavior because people have duties to treat others as they wished to be treated, and (b) numerous widely accepted provisions of international law such as, among others, the “no harm” principle, the “polluter pays” principle Thus, the failure to respond to the arguments of the opponents of climate change policies on moral grounds is an astonishing oversight in light of the fact that the moral objection is very strong to anyone who claims that they can seriously harm others if their economic interests are threatened if they are required to limit their harmful activities. History is replete with examples of justifications made by some on economic grounds for their morally unacceptable behavior about which moral reasoning eventually prevailed. For instance. proponents of slavery often defended slavery on economic grounds, a position that was eventually widely rejected on moral grounds.
Such a claim that nations may continue to engage in behavior that harms others as long as their economic interests will be affected by ceasing the behavior violates the most non-controversial ethical rules, not only the Golden Rule, but also many well accepted provisions of international law based on the Golden Rule such as a rule called the “no harm principle” which holds that all nations have a legal duty to prevent their citizens from harming people outside their jurisdiction.
If citizens who support climate policies ignore the ethical problems with the arguments made by opponents of climate policies on the grounds that climate policies will impose costs on those who are harming others, they are playing into the hands of those responsible for putting the planet and millions of poor people at risk from climate change.
And so, for 30 years, the opponents of climate change policies have succeeded in framing the climate debate in a way that has largely ignored obvious ethical and moral problems with their unwillingness to reduce the threat of climate change. A recent research project of Widener University Commonwealth Law School and the University of Auckland has revealed that surprisingly both environmental organizations and the press in many countries have failed to bring attention to the obvious moral problems with the arguments made by opponents of action on climate change.
Although there are ethical issues raised by climate change about which ethicists may disagree on what ethics requires, there are many ethical issues that policy-making on climate change must confront about which very strong, non-controversial ethical condemnation can be made of many of the positions on these issues that opponents of climate change continue to make. These issues include, for instance:
Can a nation justify its unwillingness to adopt climate change policies primarily on the basis of national economic interest alone?
When is scientific uncertainty an ethically acceptable excuse for non-action for a potentially catastrophic problem like climate change given that waiting until the uncertainties are resolved makes the problem worse and more difficult to solve?
Should proponents or opponents of climate change policies have the burden of proof to scientifically demonstrate that climate change is or is not a threat before climate change policies are in enacted?
What level of proof, such as, for instance, 95% confidence levels or the balance of the evidence, is needed to demonstrate climate change is a threat that warrants policy responses?
What amount of climate change harm is it ethically acceptable for a nation to impose on those nations or people outside their jurisdiction who will be harmed without their consent?
To what extent does a nation’s financial ability to reduce ghg emissions create an ethical obligation to do so?
What are the rights of potential victims of climate change to consent to a nation’s decision to delay national action on climate change pm the basis of national cost or scientific uncertainty?
Who gets to decide what amount of global warming is acceptable?
Do high emitting nations and individuals have a moral responsibility to pay for losses and damages caused climate change to people or nations who have done little to cause climate change?
How should national ghg targets consider the per capita or historical emissions of the nation in establishing national climate commitments?
Do poor, low-emitting nations have any moral responsibility to do something about climate change and what is it?
When should a nation be bound by provisions of international law relevant to climate change that they agreed to including provisions in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change such as the “no-harm,” and “precautionary principle” and the duty of developed nations to take the lead on climate change?
Although there are legitimate differences of opinion on some of these issues among ethicists as to what justice requires, very strong, non-controversial ethical criticisms can be made of many of the positions held by many opponents of climate change on these issues, matters which have been frequently written about on this website. As Amaryta Sen and others have pointed out, one need not know what perfect justice requires to spot injustice.(Sen, 2009) For this reason, it is usually possible to strongly condemn many of the positions on these issues held by opponents of climate change policies even if there is reasonable disagreement on what justice requires. Thus, it is not necessary to get agreement on what perfect justice requires before strongly condemning some positions on climate change issues on moral and ethical grounds. It is not necessary to know what justice requires to condemn injustice.
Another objection to relying on moral arguments to shame opponents of climate change sometimes heard, is that shaming will not change government or human behavior. Many times I have heard people say moral arguments don’t work, people only respond to self-interest. Yet naming nations who violates basic human rights and holding them up to ridicule, that is “naming and shaming”, has proven to be in many cases an effective tool to enlarge human rights protections around the world. Jennifer Jacquet, in a recent book Is Shaming Necessary? New Uses for an Old Tool, explains that shaming has proven to be an effective tool to change ethically unsupportable behavior of governments and institutions provided a shaming strategy is created that is mindful of lessons learned from successful “naming and shaming” programs. (Jacket, 2015) In addition, moral arguments have been key to creating social movements that have transformed society in cases such as slavery, child labor, women’s rights, children’s rights, human treatment of animals, etc. Yet shaming strategies should learn from what has worked in the past.
III. Designing An Effective Shaming Tool To Change Government Behavior On Climate Change
As the international community heads to COP-21 in Paris next week, given that moral shaming always has the potential of achieving a change in government or individual behavior of those who justify their actions on ethically indefensible grounds and given that the global community is rapidly running out of time to prevent dangerous climate change due in large part to the success of opponents of climate change programs to frame the public climate debate in a way that avoids moral criticism, a strategy of publicly shaming nations. politicians, and opponents of needed climate change policies who refuse to be guided by their ethical responsibilities is needed now more than ever to get urgently needed action to reduce the immense threat of climate change.
An effective shaming strategy should focus not on all issues where there is disagreement among parties but only on those positions which clearly flunk minimum ethical scrutiny. For instance, in the climate change debate because there is significant disagreement among countries about what equity framework should control how ghg emissions should be allocated among nations, a shaming strategy would not likely lead to a resolution of these contentious issues. Some negotiations about reasonable equity frameworks is likely necessary to arrive at a global position on what equity requires. However, as we have seen, a country that claims it can set its national ghg emissions reductions commitments on the basis of national economic interest alone can be subjected to strong ethical condemnation .Therefor, even on an issue such as what does equity require about which reasonable disagreement exists, the disagreement does not support the conclusion that anyone’s claim about what equity requires is entitled to respect. In fact, many nations and individuals have taken position on what equity requires that can be strongly condemned on non-controversial ethical grounds even though reasonable disagreement exits on what equity requires. For this reason, progress can be made even on the issue of what does ‘equity’ require by holding positions on this issue that fail to pass minimum ethical scrutiny to public scrutiny.
Given that many nations continue to take positions on many issues that cannot be justified on any ethically acceptable reasons, there is a huge potential to pressure governments on ethical grounds in Paris and in subsequent negotiations provided that the governments or government officials are required to respond in a publicly transparent way to the ethical issues that must be faced in climate change policy formation.
A recent article in Climate Progress by Jeremy Deaton explains how shaming can lead to action on climate change in Paris and the years ahead. Deaton says:
December’s international climate summit might not result in a legally binding agreement, but it will almost certainly include mechanisms for countries to review each other’s progress. So, while the process could lack formal sanctions, it may allow for informal sanctions. Writing in Grist, Jacquet argues, “Governments must be convinced that if they fail to keep their pledges they will suffer negative reputational consequences that will damage their relations with other countries and may lead to domestic political damage as well.”
The potential success of a shaming strategy in Paris and beyond will be greatly enhanced if nations are required to respond on the record to questions asked by other governments and NGOs about how they responded to important ethical issues that must be faced in formulating their climate change policies. Such a mechanism under the UNFCCC has been under active discussion since the Lima COP in 2014. And so for a shaming strategy to be most effective, the UNFCCC negotiation outcome needs to establish a mechanism that forces nations to be transparent about the actual basis for their national climate commitments in regard to the ethical issues that must be faced in policy formation.
And so to strengthen the power of a shaming strategy to bring needed change, the Paris negotiations should seek to create a process that will force nations to explain on the record how they have responded to moral issues raised by climate change policy formation. The Widener/Auckland research project mentioned above has concluded that nations will claim they have taken equity and justice into account without explaining quantitatively how they based their national commitments on specific equity frameworks or how a quantitative ghg emissions reduction leads to a safe atmospheric ghg concentration level that will limit warming to tolerable levels. Furthermore, this research reveals that the actual basis for many national climate commitments, known as INDCs (Intended Nationally Determined Contributions under the UNFCCC) was economic interests not global responsibilities yet nations have not revealed how economic considerations have affected their national commitments. For this reason an effective shaming strategy requires that the international community must create an obligation that governments respond to questions from governments and NGOs on the record relating to important ethical issues. Many human rights regimes have established these procedures.
Because the Widener/Auckland research project identified above has concluded that nations will often disguise the actual basis for their national climate commitments, nations should be required to submit information with their INDCs that will allow citizens to better understand how their national INDC has responded to important ethical issues that must be faced in climate change policy formation.. For this reason, as we have explained on this website before, nations should:(a) report their ghg emissions reduction commitments in tons of CO2e rather than a percent reduction commitment from a baseline year, (b) the temperature limit and associated carbon budget that the INDC is seeking to achieve, (c) the equity principles that the nation relied on to assure the justice of its INDC, and (d) For Annex 1 countries, ghg emissions in 1990, the common baseline year. This information will allow clear evaluation of how nations have responded to ethical duties to reduce their ghg emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions.
Thus the Paris COP should seriously consider how to create an institutional mechanism and information base to allow citizens and governments to evaluate how nations have responded to their ethical obligations.on climate change
As Daeton said in the above article:
With shame, we are witnessing a very old tool being put to use on a relatively new problem. Humans have relied on shame since their evolutionary infancy to enforce social norms, and now it’s being used to urge action on climate change. How can we motivate the changes we need to curb global warming? As Jacquet points out, morality can evolve. It’s up to humans to render carbon pollution a moral ill and climate action a moral good. Shame may prove essential to that process.
Creating a process under climate regime to shame nations on their moral failures will not be the first time that the international community has relied heavily on shaming to achieve widespread social shame. As we have noted, the spread of human rights regimes has, for instance, relied heavily on “naming and shaming” countries who fail to protect human rights. The success of efforts to increase enjoyment of human rights protection around the world is widely attributed to the ability of nations and human rights NGOs to question nations on their human rights record and the creation of a legal duty of nations to respond in writing to these questions. The climate change regime should follow the example of international human rights law on these issues.
A similar strategy should be followed to pressure government officials and politicians who hold ethically unsupportable positions on climate change such as they wont support government action on climate change because the policies will impose costs on their government’s economy, a position as we have seen which ignores the clear responsibility of governments to not harm others outside the jurisdiction of the government. To create effective shaming tactics to pressure individual government officials or politicians running for office, NGOs should ask officials and politicians to respond on the record to questions that will expose the actual justifications for the official’s or politician’s position on climate change issues. For instance, when a government official or politician says he or she will not support action on climate change because it will harm the relevant government’s economy or destroy jobs, the official or politician should be asked if he or she denies that governments not only have economic interests but also ethical duties to not harm others. This website has identified many specific questions that should be asked of government officials and politicians to expose the ethical problems with their positions in several articles. See, for instance,
The upcoming Paris negotiations may make progress on creating a transparent process that will allow other governments and citizens to shame governments who base their responses to climate change on ethically unsupportable grounds.
This website will report regularly on what happens in Paris to make a shaming strategy more effective in reducing the threat of climate change.
References:
Jacquet, J., 2015, Is Shaming Necessary, New Uses for an Old Tool, Pantheon Books, , New York
Sen, A., 2009, The Idea of Justice, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts .
COP-21 INDCs Compared With Carbon Budgets to achieve a warming limit of: (a) 3 to 4 degrees C, (b) a 50% probability of 2 degrees C, (c) a 66% probability of 2 degrees C , and, (d) 1.5 degrees C. Global Commons Institute, Aubrey Meyer.
I. Introduction.
The above chart by the Global Commons Institute compares INDCs filed by nations with the UNFCCC before Paris with the reductions that would be needed by the entire world to live within carbon budgets that may not be exceeded if warming will be limited to; between 3 degrees and 4 degrees C, a 50% chance of limiting warming to 2 degrees C, a 66% chance of limiting warming to 2 degrees C, and a reasonable chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C.
A quick glance at the chart makes it clear that the INDCs that have been submitted by nations so far makes it very unlikely that the international community will be successful in limiting warming to 2 degrees C and virtually impossible to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C unless nations make significant increases in the ambition of their INDCs.
This entry argues that because nations have clear ethical duties to make national commitments on ghg emissions reductions consistent with their fair share of safe global emissions, they have duties to provide clear and transparent information about how their INDCs satisfies the nation’s ethical duty to limit its ghg emissions to levels which are sufficiently ambitious and fair so that citizens around the world can evaluate whether a nation has satisfied its ethical obligations. Furthermore, because national INDCs that have been submitted to the UNFCCC do not contain crucial information that is necessary to evaluate the nation’s compliance with its ethical obligations, nations must submit additional information to allow citizens around the world to evaluate national compliance with its ethical obligations to prevent dangerous climate change.
All developed countries and some non-Annex 1 countries have submitted INDCs that have made commitments on the basis of percent reductions below a baseline year such as 1990 or 2005 by a specific date such as 2030, 2050, etc.
Although nations were encouraged by the Lima COP-20 decision in 2014 to include in their INDC submissions information that was transparent as to why their INDC was sufficiently ambitious and fair, few nations have done this.
As of October 8th, 2015, 121 INDC submissions have been filed with the UNFCCC, reflecting 148 countries (including the European Union member states), and covering around 86% of global emissions in 2010 (excluding land use and forest emissions) and 87% of global population.) Most nations have not submitted information that is useful in determining the adequacy of the ambition or fairness of the INDCs submitted.
II. Why nations have a strong ethical duty to be clearly transparent on how they satisfied their ethical obligations to reduce its ghg emissions to the nation’s fairshare of safe global emissions.
A strong ethical case can be made that if nations have duties to limit their ghg emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions, a conclusion that follows both as a matter of ethics and justice and several international legal principles including, among others, the “no harm principle,” and promises nations made in the 1992 UNFCCC to adopt policies and measures required to prevent dangerous anthropocentric interference with the climate system in accordance with equity and common but differentiated responsibilities, nations have a duty to clearly explain how their national ghg emissions reductions commitments arguably satisfy their ethical obligations to limit their ghg emissions to the nation’s fair share of safe global emissions.
Because information submitted by nations with their INDCs does not contain sufficient information to help evaluate the ethical acceptability of national INDCs, nations should submit additional information needed to evaluate a nation’s compliance with its ethical obligations to prevent dangerous climate change.
The ethical duty to clearly explain how a nation satisfied its ethical obligations for climate change follows from the ethical duty of nations to not harm others beyond their national boundary. Although nations could reasonably disagree on what equity frameworks should guide national commitments on ghg emissions, no nation can deny its responsibility to reduce its ghg emissions on the basis of equity and principles of distributive justice to levels that will prevent dangerous climate impacts around the world. Unless nations specifically identify the equity principles that have guided their ghg emissions reductions, and the assumptions about warming limits entailed by their INDC, nations and citizens around the world who may be harmed by illigitmate uses of common pool resources have an insufficient factual basis to challenge the potentially unethical responses of nations to their ethical obligations. From this it is clear that nations have a strong duty to be clear on how they satisfied their ethical responsibilities for climate change. Yet almost all INDCs submitted thus far have either no information or inadequate information on how the nation satisfied its ethical duties in regard to the sufficient ambition or the justice of its INDC.
III. The ethical basis for why national INDCs should specify;(a) the number of tons of ghg emissions that will be reduced by implementation of the INDC by a specific date, (b)the warming limit and associated carbon budget that the nation’s INDC is seeking to achieve in cooperation with other nations, (c) the equity principles assumed by the nation in determining the fairness of its INDC, and (d) for Annex 1 nations, emissions reductions that will be achieved by the INDC from 1990, a common baseline year.
Any national ghg emissions reduction commitment is implicitly a position on two ethical questions, namely, first, what safe atmospheric ghg concentration level the commitment is designed to achieve and, second, what equity framework or principles of distributive justice the INDC is based on. Although some nations have acknowledged their ethical duties to base their INDC on ethically justifiable criteria, almost all INDC submissions have not explained how specific emissions reductions commitments link to a specific desired atmospheric ghg concentration levels and its associated carbon budget that will provide some level of confidence that a warming limit will be achieved nor why their ghg emissions reductions commitment is fair as a matter of distributive justice.
In fact no nation has explained quantitatively how its commitment is related to an atmospheric carbon budget or a specific equity framework. In addition the information submitted with INDCs submitted so far make it virtually impossible to rigorously evaluate the adequacy of the INDC as a matter of ethics and justice.
Almost all INDCs that have been submitted thus far by developed nations commit to a percentage reduction in ghg emissions from a baseline year by a a stated year. Although some nations acknowledge that their climate policies should be guided by ethical principles, no nation has expressly explained quantitatively how their commitments were specifically guided by ethical principles.
Because the acceptability of an INDC is a matter of ethics and justice, and citizens need additional information about the INDC to be able to evaluate the ethical acceptability of the INDC, INDCs submitted should be supplemented by additional information because an INDC expressed as a percent reduction from a given baseline year by a certain future date does not reveal:
(a) the percentage of the global carbon budget that will be consumed by the nation’s emissions because a percentage reduction commitment does not say when the reductions will be achieved yet the speed with which the reductions are achieved will affect the tonnes of any remaining carbon budget with quicker reductions consuming less amounts of the available carbon budget while waiting until the end of the period to achieve the percent reduction committed to will consume much more of the remaining carbon budget;
(b) the carbon budget in gigatons of CO2eq that the INDC is seeking to achieve. Because different carbon budgets will provide different levels of confidence that warming will be limited to specific temperature increases and the amount of temperature increase that an INDC has implicitly deemed to be acceptable to the nation is an ethical issue at its core, the nation should be required to link the INDC to a specific carbon budget so that the ambition of the INDC can be evaluated through an ethical lens.
(c) the equity framework or principles assumed by the nation in determining how much of a global carbon budget should be allocated to the nation in establishing its INDC such as contraction and convergence, ghg development rights, historical emissions responsibilities, or other principles of distributive justice. Although reasonable people may disagree what equity framework is just, nations should be expected to expressly specify the equity framework or principles of distributive justice they used in determining their INDC so that citizens around the world can evaluate claims about fairness made by a nation in setting its INDC.
(d) the fairness of the baseline year selected such as 1990. Some nations including the United States have selected baseline years such as 2005 which represents the year of its peak emissions, 13 years after the United States agreed in the 1992 UNFCCC to adopt policies and measures to prevent dangerous climate change that would return ghg emissions to levels that existed before 1992 by 2000. Although the international community could reasonably adopt different baseline years, ideally the baseline year should be consistent among nations so that citizens could more easily compare commitments and understand how a nation has taken responsibility for policies they adopted or failed to adopt after the nation agreed to adopt climate policies and measure in the 1992 UNFCCC. Although a strong case can be made that historical ghg emissions before 1990 should be considered in determining a nation’s fair share of safe global emissions, selecting a common baseline year such as 1990 would facilitate easier citizen comparison of national commitments while retaining the rights of nations to make arguments that historical ghg emissions should be considered in any equity framework.
For these reasons, ghg emissions reductions commitments in INDCs should be: (a) stated in tons of ghg emissions reductions rather then percent reductions from a baseline year, (b) identify the temperature limit and its associated carbon budget that the INDC is seeking to achieve to satisfy its ethical responsibilities to prevent dangerous climate change, (c) identify the equity framework or principles a nation followed to assure that its ghg emissions reductions were fair and just, and (d) compute its ghg emissions reductions commitment from the baseline year of 1990.
