Tag Archives: US climate change policy

What Crucial Climate Change Issues Should The Press Cover More Intensely

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In this writer’s experience, the US media is more frequently covering some important climate change issues such as new dire predictions of sea level rise or other climate induced harms such as damages from storms, or the increasing speed of ice melt from large ice masses including Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheet, and other growing horrific climate impacts,

Yet this entry seeks to identify critical climate issues that citizens need to understand to effectively evaluate climate policy issues that the press is mostly failing to cover in our experience. This entry seeks to initiate an exchange among concerned citizens about important climate issues that the press is inadequately covering,   We therefore solicit comments about major climate issues that are not appearing in mainstream media discussion that citizens need to understand. This entry does not seek to criticize media working on climate change issues, in fact many are doing excellent work, but only to spot major issues that we believe are inadequately being covered by the media..

This entry was motivated by my and several of my colleagues’ conclusions that we continue to be startled by how many US citizens we run into who seem to not understand how serious climate change is nor the significance of some climate change policy issues about which there appears to be widespread ignorance. We are also  blown away by the large number of Americans who still seem to believe that climate change is not caused by humans. The disinformation campaign has worked.

This concern has been deepened by the failure of governments or any NGOs, at least in our experience, to acknowledge the policy significance of the millions of refugees that would be caused by expected climate impacts that were predicted by the Army War blown  College in 1997. There is little doubt that millions of these refugees will be created by rising seas  yet our legislatures are still  dominated by climate deniers. This issue is now on the top of the international agenda now that nations have agreed to fund a “loss and  damage” mechanism which  was agreed to last year’s Egyptian COP.  Allocating responsibility for eligible loss and damages funding is likely to be different from how nations allocate responsibility for reducing emissions to achieve the Paris Agreement ‘s 1.5 C and 2.0C warming limit goals.

Issue 1. The need of the media to report on potential concrete climate policy consequences of frequent fossil fuel related issues that appear in the media such as the Biden decision to support drilling in Alaska. 

We believe there is a need to explain how policy issues under consideration such as approving more drilling in Alaska or support for increased use of natural gas will effect the announced US ghg  emissions reduction target in light of US GHG emissions have actually increased in the last two years, the US has consistently failed to meet its GHG emissions target, and there is widespread agreement that nations need to commit to a net zero carbon target

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

II, Linking proposed policies to tipping point concerns and the enormous harms already caused by elevated atmospheric CO2E concentrations

The media should also explain how Issues might affect the feared tipping points some of which are on the verge of being energized. Given that there is a growing concern that the international community needs to commit to achieve a net zero CO2e emissions no later than the next COP in the United Arab Emirates to the assure that the international community from staying within the 1. 5 C Paris Agreement Warming Limit Goal.

In discussing these  issues media should remind the public of the enormous harms to parts of the world if nations fail to take action consistent with their obligations.

An example of the confusion that can be caused if the media fails to link their reporting of developments in national approaches to climate change to the most feared climate harms  is a story appearing in the New York Times which announces numerous decisions of governments to increase development of fossil fuel resources without comment on how these decisions increase the most  feared harms that motivate restriction of fossil fuel use.

 

Since the Paris deal in 2015 a significant percentage of media attention on the climate crisis has been in this writer’s experience respect to whether climate change is  a natural phenomenon or human caused and issues relating to achieving the Paris Agreement’s warming limit goals of 1.5 C and 2.0 C.warming limit goal.

Yet because the growing climate caused suffering of communities around the world is being caused by elevated atmospheric CO2e levels which all countries have contributed to, the major media  focus on issues relating to achieving the Paris  Agreement warming limit goals may be  a distraction.from emissions reductions needed to prevent.harms already being experienced  such as flooding, intense storms, sea level rise, and drought, from increasing..

As we will see, limiting attention  to climate harms being caused by CO2e emissions that  raise atmospheric CO2e concentrations  has unfortunately resulted in lack of public awareness in the link between the millions of refugees predicted as early as 1987 by the Army War College and US emissions. This is so despite the fact that in  1992 UNFCCC all nations agreed that they had responsibility to ensure activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause harm to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction. I believe this provision may have been largely ignored by the press because there has been no mechanism up until now under international  law to assign and allocate damages for harms that nations cause.by their CO2e emissions. Now however, the loss and damage funding mechanism that the international community agreed to negotiate this year should bring  more attention national CO2 emissions and harms that they create. Also contributing to the failure to see a connection between a nation’s CO2e emissions and harms created by them around the world are certain scientific features of climate change that are different from other  other pollution problems as we have talked about on this website several times. See: 

Seven Features of Climate Change That Citizens and the Media Need to Understand that Are Different than Other Environmental Problems  

The above  image depicts the reality that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 rise as CO2 emissions rise. The policy implication of this fact is that all CO2 emissions are making climate harms worse globally for as long as the CO2 emissions are raising atmospheric CO2 concentrations.rise which is the ultimate cause ofl the climate harms the world is experiencing including the millions of refugees that the Army War College warned would create national security threats in parts of world vulnerable to climate impacts.such as drought in Syria.

III. The Policy Issues Raised by the New Loss and Damage Funding Mechanism

Last year at the Egyptian COP the international community agreed to create a fund for loss and damages from climate harms. Although the criteria for determining individual national responsibilities for loss and damages  is expected to be different from the considerations previously identified to determine a nation’s equitable share of reductions needed to achieve the Paris Agreement’s Warming Limits, there has been little press coverage of these issues.   As a result when the media announced the US support for a loss and damage mechanism, many US NGOs expressed confusion about what this was about. As an example,.a few asked me if loss and damage funding was  reparations.

The practical need for more press on  issues like this is that without greater civil society understanding of these issues, opponents of climate action will likely continue to make false claims which may get political traction. Making the matter more urgent, as the US prepares its position for the next UNFCCC  COP this fall in United Arab Emirates at a time when there is a growing consensus that all countries urgently need to commit to a net zero reduction, many US legislators at both the federal and state levels are still climate deniers.  are likely to resist federal and state proposed net zero emissions reduction targets. The media could perform a publics  service by linking legislators whose vote will probably be needed to  achieve a net zero  commitment to funding from fossil fuel interests

There has been startling confusion for the last decade in the US on what equity requires of nations in determining the nations NDC. The confusion on what constitutes equity is initially attributable to the inability to negotiate a clearer definition, a problem which would normally be expected to be resolved through negotiation before an agreement like the Paris Agreement was finalized. Yet the United States refused to negotiate a clearer definition and settled for a “pledge and review” system which allowed each country to determine a position on what equity.requres which would be the subject of comment during periodic stock takes The failure to  achieve greater public understanding of acceptable interpretations of  equity is an invitation to opponents of  climate change action to engage in disinformation about the fairness of the Paris Agreement. This is a false claim that President Trump made to justify the US withdrawal from the 2015 Agreement which was demonstratively false because the Paris Agreement allowed each nation to determine  what was fair before submitting their proposals. Furthermore many  Americans claimed the deal was unfair because it did not require China to reduce its emissions at rate equal to or greater than the United States even though there was agreement among most ethicists that a nations total emissions need to be modified by per capita or other considerations. to determine equity. More specifically IPCC explained:

 

.Yet there was very little US media coverage of these issues in my experience despite the importance of getting the equity step right.

Despite this clarification by IPCC, of what is a reasonable interpretation of equity in our experience few US citizens and NGOs demonstrated an understanding of this when they made recommendations on a US CO2e reduction target. This alone is strong evidence of the benefit of additional press coverage. of the meaning of equity

Some of the needed additional media coverage is required because most citizens and even  members of the media appear in our experience not to understand scientific features of climate change that are different from other environmental problems. This failure may be responsible for President Biden approving new drilling in Alaska at a time when there is a growing consensus of the urgency of nations to commit to achieve net zero emissions by the next UNFCCC COP in United Arab Emirates.

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The loss and damages negotiations are very likely to trigger misinformation eventhough the Army War College noted that  developed nations providing some financial relief to vulnerable countries was in the developed nations interest to reduce the hostility that would be directed at the developed countries for their failure to prevent harms to developing countries,  No matter what happens sea level rise will  likely continue n the years ahead which will further devastate countries like  Bangladesh, parts of Indonesia, and Small Island States.among others. Dealing with refugees will require international cooperation

IV. Monitor National Interpretations and Compliance with Ethical/Legal Principals Relevant to a Nations’ Compliance with International Law.

For over 30 years opponents of climate change policies largely framed  their opposition on scientific uncertainty or excessive costs.  Yet  in adopting the 1992 Climate Treaty, nations had to grapple with several ethical/legal principles which undermined the legitimacy  of this framing. These principles included the “no harm”.” precautionary”, “equity” : and :the duty to protect ‘human rights.The media could perform a public benefit by monitoring whether these principles get traction. in future disputes about policies. These principles also undermine the scientific uncertainty and excessive cost arguments.

The US Government Behaving Badly at the Katowice, COP24, Climate Negotiations

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On Monday, December 1, climate negotiations billed as the most important U.N. cliate conference since the Paris 2015 deal began in the Polish city of Katowice, the capital of the country’s Silesian coal mining district. The major hope and expectation of COP-24, the 24th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), was the finalization of a “rule-book”, that is a set of procedures, that nations must follow to have any hope that the world could achieve the warming limit goals set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement of as close as possible to 1.50 C but no greater than 2.0 0C. Shortly before 190 countries met in Poland on the first day of the two-week COP-24 negotiations, prospects for the international community working together to avoid catastrophic warming had become much gloomier due to several recent scientific papers that concluded the world was running out of time to prevent catastrophic warming.   At virtually the same time, the additional bad news was breaking that global CO2 emissions had risen in 2018 by more than 2% after having flattened out two years earlier.

At the Katowice COP, 32,800 people had registered, most of whom who were representing governments, international institutions, scientific and civic organizations, higher education, business and financial institutions, along with a large media presence. In addition to the two-week long negotiations, the Katowice COP, like the 23 that proceeded it. was a setting for scores of side events at which speakers made presentations on myriad scientific, technical, civil society, financial, and educational topics relevant to human-induced warming.

Many of the COP participants from non-government organizations had come to pressure the governments of the world to greatly ramp up their climate change policies. Also in attendance was a much smaller group of pro-coal activists including a small delegation from the United States while many nations sought to negotiate a timetable for the world to get out of coal. In the midst of growing gloom about potential catastrophic climate change impacts, delegations from local and regional governments were providing some hope of preventing climate change catastrophe because several thousand sub-national governments around the world have made commitments to seriously reducing GHG emissions.

On October 8, 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a Special Report on limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial temperatures.  This  report, along with several additional recent scientific studies published in the last few months, including a paper published by the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences on July 21, 2018, Trajectories of  the Earth System in the Anthropocene by Steffen et. al., and a paper published in mid-August of this year in Nature Communications by Anthony et. al., 21st-Century Modeled Permafrost Carbon Emissions Accelerated by Abrupt Thaw Beneath, lead to the conclusion that the international community is facing an urgent existential crisis that threatens life on Earth. Preventing this catastrophe now requires the entire international community at all levels of government (i.e., national, state, regional, and local) to engage immediately in an unprecedented effort to rapidly reduce GHG emissions to net zero in the next few decades.   These papers also revealed that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had been previously underestimating likely climate change impacts. Another paper, What Lies Beneath: On the Understatement of Existential Climate Risk, recently published by the Breakthrough Institute, claimed both that climate change risks are far greater than is evident from recent conclusions of IPCC and examined why IPCC has often underestimated threats from climate change. This report attributed the overly conservative conclusions of the IPCC to the consensus building nature that IPCC must follow to get governments to approve IPCC final reports and to the peer-reviewed science synthesized by IPCC was produced by scientists who follow scientific norms that condemn speculation. As a result, the What Lies Beneath report concluded that much of the climate research on which IPCC has relied has tended to underplay climate risks.

The Katowice negotiations began in the heart of Poland’s coal fields with nations mindful that although the use of oil and gas is still rising worldwide, and some countries are still using coal to fuel their economic growth, the international  community needed to agree on a set of rules that would allow the international community to evaluate clearly and transparently national progress in implementing and increasing the ambition  of nationally determined commitments (NDCs) under the 2015 Paris Agreement. The COP 24 negotiations sought agreement among nations on how they would report, in a clear and transparent way, on national progress on GHG emissions reductions and developed country financing of emissions reductions and adaptation programs in poor vulnerable nations around the world.

As the Katowice negotiations began, the best hope for getting the international community on a GHG emissions reductions pathway required to prevent catastrophic climate change rested on establishing a clear set of rules on national GHG emissions reporting and financing emissions reductions and adaptation programs in developing countries. Yet in the first week of COP-24, deep disagreements between high-emitting developed countries and lower emitting more vulnerable developing countries continued to plague the negotiations. The disagreements were over elements of the proposed “rule-book” and which provisions should apply to both developed and developing nations. Since international climate negotiations began in 1990, efforts to find an adequate global solution to prevent catastrophic climate change have been plagued by the unwillingness of some high-emitting nations with large fossil fuel resources to agree to reduce their emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions, as well as conflicts between developed and developing countries about developed nations’ responsibility for funding GHG reduction programs and adaptation responses in vulnerable developing countries.

Throughout the large Katowice negotiating complex, anger and frustration with US President Trump’s backward movement on climate change were loudly evident. Several times, I heard charges from some COP participants that President Trump was guilty of some kind of vicious crime against humanity given that the US was the second largest GHG emitter in the world after China but a much greater emitter than China in historical emissions and per capita emissions, yet the Trump Administration was in the midst of rolling back regulations on electric power plants, rules for measuring methane leakage from natural gas production facilities, and on fleet mile average on automobiles and trucks. Furthermore, the US also announced its unwillingness to provide finance at levels previously promised under the Obama administration for mitigation and adaptation programs in developing countries. Anger at the US unwillingness to participate in the Paris deal was intense because President Trump had justified his announced intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on the basis he was putting US economic interests first, a justification which flunked  minimum ethical scrutiny because US emissions were already contributing to great human suffering from intense storms, droughts, flood, spread of tropical diseases, killer heat waves, and loss of plants and animals around the world. Any country that justified its unwillingness to help minimize such massive suffering and destruction on the basis of economic self-interest was beyond moral comprehension at the very time much more aggressive US climate change policy is believed to be urgently needed to prevent a human catastrophe.

At the end of the first week, a text which initially “welcomed” the IPCC Special Report on limiting warming to 1.50 C was blocked by the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait even though their governments had approved the final IPCC report before it was released in October

The US had also cosponored along with Australia a pro-coal event as the world was seeking to negotiate a global agreement to eliminate coal combustion.

COP 24 ended with some progress on the “rule-book” but disappointment on developed country support for mitigation and adaptation programs in developing countries.

By:

Donald A. Brown

Scholar in Residence and Professor

Sustainabiliy Ethics and Law

Widener University Commonwealth Law School

dabrown57@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What Americans Urgently Need to Understand About Climate Change In Light of an Alarming New Report Published By US Academy of Sciences

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On July 31, 2018, a paper was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which should create a shiver of fear in all humans everywhere. The paper, Trajectories in the Earth System in the Anthropocene by Steffen et..al., explains how human-induced warming is rapidly approaching levels that may trigger positive climate feedbacks which could greatly accelerate the warming already plaguing the world by causing record floods, deadly heat waves and droughts, increasing tropical diseases, forest fires, more intense and damaging storms, sea level rise, coral bleaching, acidification of oceans, all of which are contributing to increasing the number of refugees which are destabilizing governments around the world.

The Steffen et. al. paper also describes how the positive feedbacks depicted in the following graphic, once triggered could initiate other feedbacks creating a cascade of positive feedbacks, each of which could speed up the warming which is already causing great harm and suffering around the world. The paper claims this mechanism could make life on much of the Earth uninhabitable which could lead to social collapse on the global scale and ultimately to warming increases that human reductions of greenhouse gases (ghg) emissions alone would not prevent until the global system reached a new temperature equilibrium at much higher temperatures than the human race has ever experienced. In other words, cascading positive feedbacks in the climate system could result in humans losing control over reducing disastrous warming.

Image result for global map of tipping cascades

Steffen et. al,, supra pg. 4.

If this is not scary enough, the Steffen et. al. paper concluded some of these feedbacks could be triggered between 1 degree C to 3 degrees C, suggesting that the “risk of tipping cascades could be significant at a 2 degree C rise (Steffen at al p.7), the upper warming limit goal of the Paris Agreement which President Trump has announced the United States will withdraw from.

Given that even if temperature increases already baked into the system don’t trigger positive feedbacks until global temperatures rise by 2 degrees C and given the enormous challenge facing the world to achieve the 2 degrees C warming limit goal agreed to by the international community in Paris in 2015 requires the international community to achieve net zero CO2 emissions by 2070 (UNEP, Emissions Gap, 2016), the international community needs to immediately join forces to achieve extraordinarily ambitious international cooperation almost immediately to achieve the 2 degree C warming limit goal. However, given that the 2 degree C warming limit goal agreed to in Paris was selected because it was believed that if warming increases could be limited to 2 degrees C, triggering dangerous climate system positive feedbacks was unlikely, the conclusions of the Steffen et al paper that positive feedbacks could be triggered below 2 degrees C additional warming must be interpreted as a justification for a call for an unprecedented urgent global cooperative effort to reduce carbon emissions and increase carbon sinks as rapidly as humanly possible.

Given that human-induced climate change is now widely understood to be an existential threat to life on Earth unless all nations rapidly reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) to net zero as fast as possible, Americans urgently need to understand certain features of the problem which have been infrequently mentioned in the US national climate change conversation including the following: 

  • There is growing evidence that even if global ghg emissions could be reduced to near zero rapidly, there is enough carbon already in the atmosphere that limiting warming to the then 2 degrees C warming limit goal by the end of this Century has only a 5% chance (Mooney, 2017).
  • Every day that nations fail to reduce their GHG emissions to levels required of them to achieve a warming limit goal such as 2 degrees C makes the problem worse because budgets available for the whole world that must constrain global emissions to achieve any warming limit goal shrink as emissions continue. Therefore, the speed that nations reduce their GHG emissions reductions is as important as the magnitude of reductions identified by any national GHG reduction commitment. For this reason, any national commitment on climate change should not only identify the amount of ghg emissions that will be reduced by a certain date, but the reduction pathway by which these reductions will be achieved,
  • For reasons stated in the Seffen et.al. paper, climate change is an existential threat to life on Earth that requires the international community to rapidly take extraordinarily aggressive coordinated steps not only sufficient to prevent global temperatures from rising no than more than 2 degrees C, the upper warming limit agreed to by the international community in the 2015 Paris Agreement, but to minimize any additional warming as quickly as possible,
  • Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which the US ratified in 1992, the US has a legal duty under the concept of “equity” to reduce its GHG emissions more rapidly than most other nations, and although there is reasonable disagreement among nations about what “equity” requires of them, any reasonable interpretation of equity would require the US to make much larger and more rapid GHG reductions than almost all other nations given that the United States emitted 5,011,687 metric kilo tons (kt) of CO2 equivalent emissions in 2016, second only to China’s 10,432,741 kt CO2. (Netherlands Environmental Agency). The US also has an equitable duty to more aggressively reduce its emissions than most other countries because it has emitted a greater amount of cumulative CO2 emissions, that is 29.3% of global CO2 emissions between 1850 and 2002, while China emitted 7.6% during the same period, (WRI, Cumulative Emissions) making the US much more responsible for raising atmospheric concentrations of CO2 to the current level of 406 ppm than any country.  Also given the US is responsible for 15.56 metric tons per capita CO2 emissions which is more than twice as much as China’s 7.45 metric tons per capita in 2016 (World Bank), as a matter of equity the US must reduce its GHG emissions much more rapidly and steeply than almost all countries,
  • The US duty to formulate its ghg emissions reduction target on the basis of equity is not only required by its legal obligations under the UNFCCC, practically the US and other high emitting nations must reduce their GHG emissions by much greater amounts and faster than poor developing nations because if they don’t the poorer nations will have to reduce their GHG emissions almost immediately to near zero CO2 so that global emissions don’t exceed the carbon budget available to prevent a warming limit such as 2 degrees C from being exceeded,
  • Any US policy response to climate change such as a carbon tax must be structured to reduce US ghg emissions to levels and speeds required of the US to achieve its responsibilities to the rest of the world to prevent dangerous climate change. Thus, if the US were to pass a carbon tax, the imposition of a tax must either reduce US GHG emissions to the level and the speed required of it by its obligations or be supplemented by other policy responses such as, for instance, mandatory conversions of electric power generation from fossil fuel combustion to renewable energy by a date certain or mandatory requirements for electric vehicles,
  • Because GHG emissions from every country mix rapidly in the atmosphere, all nations emissions are contributing to rising atmospheric GHG concentrations thus harming people and ecological systems on which life depends all over the world. Thus, the US may not formulate its climate change policies only on the basis of costs and benefits to itself alone, it must acknowledge and respond to the devastating climate change harms the United States is already contributing to that are being experienced around the world and particularly by poor people and nations that are most vulnerable to climate change impacts. For this reason, the Trump administration’s justification for withdrawing from the Paris Agreement on the basis of “putting US interests first” is deeply morally indefensible and tragic because of the damage it will likely cause to the world,
  • Because of the rapid speed required of the US to reduce its ghg emissions to net zero carbon emissions, the US urgently needs to put ghg emissions reductions on the equivalent of a wartime footing by not only adopting policy responses that can achieve ghg emission reduction goals required of it, but also by investing in research and development in new technologies that can facilitate and achieve the its ghg emission reduction obligations and increase carbon sinks that could reduce the rise in atmospheric ghg concentrations,
  • The United States needs to develop a strategy to achieve these objectives in the next two years and begin implementing the strategy immediately as quickly as possible.

By:

Donald A. Brown

Scholar in Residence and Professor

Widener University Commonwealth Law School

dabrown57@gmail.com

 

 

 

An American at the Bonn Climate Change Negotiations.

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To be an American at the Bonn 2017 climate negotiations felt very different than the 13 other times this writer has participated in the yearly efforts that almost every nation in the world has participated in with the hope of finding a global solution to climate change.

Shortly after entering the huge complex on the Rhine River at which every nation in the world was meeting to finalize the details of the 2015 Paris Accord, I ran into several acquaintances from other years who all remarked about the outrageousness of the US intention announced by President Trump of withdrawing from the global climate change deal.

The United States had a delegation at the Bonn talks that was telling other nations what they should do on an agreement about which the US president wants no part.  According to a representative from India, Dr. Vijeta Rattani, of the New Deli Center for Science and Environment, at the beginning of the Bonn talks the US was obstructing agreement on some issues that had wide support among most other nations.

The US’s main contribution was to host a panel which made a full-throated defense of coal while most of the rest of the world was trying to get an agreement that nations would phase out coal by 2030 because of the likely impossibility of keeping warming to non-catastrophic levels without phasing out of coal combustion.  According to a story in the New York Times before the Trump team could make its case on the benefits of fossil fuel, “the panel was disrupted for more than 10 minutes by scores of chanting and singing demonstrators. The protesters then walked out, leaving the room half empty. Throughout the remainder of the presentation, audience members shouted down and mocked White House officials who attempted to explain away President Trump’s stated view that global warming is a hoax.”

During the Bonn COP, 20 countries including  Angola, Austria, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Costa Rica, Denmark, El Salvador, Fiji, Finland, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Marshall Islands, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Niue, Portugal and Switzerland agreed to phase out of coal combustion by 2030.

Throughout the Bonn talks, representatives of some of the most vulnerable nations to climate change pleaded with high-emitting nations to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in light of the current suffering of their citizens. Among others I talked to early during the Bonn talks was a representative from Seychelles, a nation of 115 islands about 900 miles East of the East African coast in the Indian Ocean, who was strongly disturbed by the US lack of response to climate change given that people on her island were already suffering from rising sea levels and drought which was making it more difficult for her island nation’s citizens to grow food.

I also talked to Africans working on climate issues who claimed that massive human suffering from drought is now visible in the sub-Sahara countries of Mali, Chad, and Niger, suffering which is responsible for the creation of waves of refugees who have been attempting to enter Europe often through Libya, many of whom have drown at sea while those of have made it to Europe are destabilizing European politics.

Throughout the Bonn negotiation complex, most nations mounted pavilions which included displays of climate change impacts already being experienced in their countries, adaptation responses which are underway, and mitigation efforts which they are undertaking.  Walking through the Bonn complex, participants could not escape the conclusion that adverse climate change impacts are not just a future menace but a troubling current reality in much of the world.  Although ten years ago, one could participate in the yearly climate negotiations and conclude that most nations thought that human-induced climate change was mostly a future threat, in November 2017 it is clear that most nations are already experiencing some adverse climate change impacts that they realize they and other nations need to respond to now.

In several Bonn events, representatives of the global scientific community created a mood of gloom and urgency by discussing the magnitude and speed of GHG reductions now necessary to prevent catastrophic climate change harms. One program put on by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) described the enormous gap between the GHG emissions reductions pledged so far by nations under the Paris Agreement and those that are required to limit warming to the Paris Accord’s goals of 1.5  to 2.0 degrees C.  A report by UNEP concluded that if the international community fully complied with its GHG emissions reduction pledges made so far, the gap between the pledges and what is needed to achieve the warming limits is “alarmingly high.” The report goes on to say that even if national pledges are fully complied with, the remaining carbon budget that must constrain global GHG emissions to limit warming to 2.0 degrees C will be 80 % depleted by 2030 while by that year the remaining budget to achieve 1.5 degrees C warming limit goal will have been completely depleted. The report also says much more ambitious national pledges are now necessary by 2020, just over two years from now, to have any realistic hope of staying on a reduction pathway necessary to achieve the Paris Agreement’s warming limit goals.

Other scientists during the Bonn negotiations alarmingly warned of the more rapid loss of Arctic ice than what was expected, increasing yearly larger rises of atmospheric CO2 concentration levels perhaps because forest and ocean sinks are starting to decrease, and greater than expected sea level rise.

 Some of the great anger about the United States that I witnessed in Bonn was somewhat muted by the presence of 16 US States and numerous American cities and businesses who had been organized by California governor Jerry Brown and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg under the America’s Pledge Campaign. This group which accounted for almost half the US economy had a large presence in Bonn including a large pavilion which showcased what many US sub-national governments and private sector entities were doing to reduce US GHG emissions. One German participant said to me that he had hope that the United States would eventually do the right thing on climate change despite the Trump’s administration indefensible position because of the presence of the defiant US states and local governments. However, he said since these entities only represented about half of the US GHG emissions, the Trump administration’s unwillingness to cooperate with the rest of the world was a major global abomination.

During the last event I went to in Bonn, a UNEP representative discussed the fact that even if every nation fully achieved GHG reductions at levels they committed to, the world was headed toward over a 3 degree C warming in this Century, a level of warming that is extremely dangerous particularly for some parts of the world.  He then exhorted the audience to work tirelessly to get every national, state, regional, and local government to set ambitious GHG reduction targets. The situation is ominous he said, we need “all levels of government, that is nations, regions, and local governments,  to immediately work toward achieving zero carbon emissions.”

By:

Donald A. Brown

Scholar in Residence and Professor

Sustainability Ethics and Law,

Widener University Commonwealth Law School

dabrown57@gmail.com

 

The Moral Outrageousness of Trump’s Decision on the Paris Agreement

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When Pope Francis in May of 2015 issued his Laudata Si encyclical which called climate change a moral issue, it got global attention. Yet despite extensive international media coverage of worldwide condemnation of President Trump’s decision to remove the United States from the Paris agreement, there has been relatively little coverage of why the Trump decision should be understood not only as a dangerous break with the international community but as a profoundly immoral choice.

Climate change has certain features that more than any other global environmental problem call for responding to it as a moral problem. First, it is a problem caused mostly by high-emitting developed countries that are putting relatively low emitting developing countries most at risk. Second, the potential harms to the most vulnerable nations and people are not mere inconveniences but include catastrophic threats to life and the ecological systems on which life depends. Third, those people and nations most at risk can do little to protect themselves by petitioning their governments to shield them; their best hope is that high-emitting nations will respond to their obligations to not harm others. Fourth CO2 emissions become well mixed in the atmosphere so that CO2 atmosphere concentrations are roughly the same around the world regardless of the source of the emissions. Therefore unlike other air pollution problems which most threaten only those nations and communities located within the pollution plume, greenhouse gas emissions from any one country are threatening people and other countries around the world.  This means that US greenhouse gas emissions are causing and threatening enormous harm all over the world.

Under the 2015 Paris accord, 195 nations agreed to cooperate to limit warming to as close as possible to 1.5°C and no more than 2.0°C.  Even nations that have historically opposed strong international action on climate change, including most of the OPEC countries, agreed to this warming limit goal because there is a broad scientific consensus that warming above these amounts will not only cause harsh climate impacts to millions around the word, but could lead to abrupt climate change which could create great danger for much of the human race. The international community’s condemnation of the Trump decision is attributable to the understanding that achieving the Paris agreement’s warming limit goals will require the cooperation of all nations and particularly high emitting nations including the United States to adopt greenhouse gas reduction targets more ambitious than nations have committed to thus far. For this reason, most nations view the Trump decision as outrageously dangerous.

Trump justified his decision by his claim that removing the United States from the Paris agreement was consistent with his goal of adopting policies that put America first. According to Trump staying in the Paris Agreement would cost America as much as 2.7 million lost jobs by 2025 including 440,000 fewer manufacturing jobs. This claim was based on a dubious study by National Economic Research Associates which was funded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Council for Capitol Formation.  This study has been widely criticized for several reasons including that it neither counted the number of jobs which would be created in the renewable energy industry in a transformed energy sector nor the economic benefits of preventing climate change caused harms.

Yet it is the Trump assertion that the United States can base its energy policy primarily on putting US economic interests first while ignoring US obligations to not harm others that most clearly provokes moral outrage around the world. The moral principle that people may not harm others on the basis of self-interest is recognized by the vast majority of the world’s religions and in international law under the “no harm principle”.  The “no- harm’ rule is a principle of customary international law whereby a nation is duty-bound to prevent, reduce, and control the risk of environmental harm to other nations caused by activities within the nation  For these reasons, the Trump decision on the Paris Agreement is a moral travesty.

By: 

Donald A. Brown

Scholar In Residence and Professor

Widener University Commonwealth Law School

dabrown57@gmail.com

Responding to the Nomination for US Secretary of State the CEO of Exxon, a Company Which Funded the Morally Reprehensible Climate Change Disinformation Campaign and Politicians Who Are Climate Change Deniers

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Greenpeace activists who have chained themself to a Greenpeace vehicle and to the entrance of the Exxon Mobil Headquarters are being observed by a couple of policemen and -women. The vehicle says exxon-ceo

I. Introduction. Relative Lack of Media Focus on the Danger of Appointing the Exxon CEO to be US Secretary of State Given the Enormity of the Climate Change Threat.

How should those who are concerned about the enormous threat of climate change respond to the Trump nomination of Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson to be the US Secretary of State given the enormous damage that Exxon has already caused through the company’s successful efforts in delaying the adoption of US climate change policies?

Trump’s selection of Tillerson for Secretary of State has received considerable understandable attention from the US media largely because of concern about Exxon’s ties to Russia, including, for instance, a contract with Russia negotiated by Tillerson in the amount of $500 billion that can’t be executed until economic sanctions placed on Russia for its invasion of the Ukraine are lifted.

Given the potential meddling of Russia in the recent US presidential election and potential conflicts between Russia’s and US interests, appointing someone to be the lead US foreign policy administrator who is the chief executive of a company with such close ties to Russia creates reason for obvious concerns about the ability of the Secretary of State to manage foreign policy so as to protect US interests while ignoring the interests of the world’s largest publicly traded oil and gas company which are sometimes in conflict with American goals.

Conflicts between Exxon’s interests and US foreign policy interests are likely to frequently arise in the Trump administration. For instance, it is in the US interest to keep the price of fossil fuel very low but not in the interest of a fossil fuel company, nor Russia for that matter, both of which could benefit from high fossil fuel prices.

Receiving considerable less attention from the US media is the propriety of appointing someone to be US Secretary of State who has been the chief executive of  Exxon, a company with a well documented hostility to government policies on climate change. This hostility has not only manifested itself in Exxon’s spending of many millions of dollars in lobbying efforts to oppose proposed US domestic policies on climate change and supporting politicians who have consistently opposed proposed US climate change policies but also, even more disconcerting, Exxon has funded organizations who have been actively fighting to stop the United States from adopting climate change policies by employing morally reprehensible tactics to undermine citizens’ understanding of the scientific basis for the need to aggressively respond to climate change.

As we have explained, on this website in considerable detail (see articles under disinformation campaign in the index), although scientific skepticism is good because skepticism is the oxygen of science, Exxon has funded organizations engaged in disinformation who have used utterly indefensible tactics including: (1) lying or reckless disregard for the truth about climate change science, (2) manufacturing false scientific claims about climate change by holding bogus scientific conferences at which participants have  made scientific claims that have never not been subjected to peer review, (3) supporting front groups and fake grass roots organizations to oppose climate change policies whose creation was designed to hide the real parties in interest, (4) cherry-picking mainstream climate science by emphasizing a few minor issues in climate science about which there is some scientific uncertainty while ignoring the huge body of climate change science which is undisputed and claiming the uncertainties undermine the entire body of mainstream climate science, and (5) funding public relations strategies to undermine US citizens confidence in mainstream climate science, and (6) cyber bullying mainstream climate scientists and journalist who report on growing climate change risk.

Fossil fuel company support of the climate change disinformation campaign has been responsible for at least a twenty-five year delay in the United States response to climate change, a delay which has also thwarted international efforts to achieve a global solution to climate change and has made the threat of climate change now extraordinarily dangerous and made the warming limit goals agreed to by the world in Paris in 2015 to as close as possible 1.5 degrees C but no more than 2 degrees C extraordinarily difficult to achieve.

And so, the chief executive of a company has been nominated to lead the development of US foreign policy including forging an international position on climate change which company is already responsible for enormous potential climate change caused harms to the world created by the delay which is attributable to their funding and that of several other fossil fuel companies, industry organizations, and free-market fundamentalist foundations.

Although entities other than Exxon have also contributed to the funding of the climate change disinformation campaign, a  recent paper published  in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (PNAS) in October concluded that the main organizations comprising the climate denial echo chamber were funded by ExxonMobil and Koch Family Foundation and produced misinformation that effectively polluted mainstream media coverage of climate science and polarized the climate policy debate. The study is: Corporate funding and ideological polarization about climate change, October 12, 2015. 

This study’s analysis of 20 years’ worth of communication data between participants in the climate change counter-movement by Yale University researcher Dr. Justin Farrell shows beyond doubt that Exxon and the Koch Family Foundations have been key actors who funded the climate disinformation campaign and ensured the prolific spread of their doubt products throughout our mainstream media and public discourse about climate change.

“The contrarian efforts have been so effective for the fact that they have made it difficult for ordinary Americans to even know who to trust,” Dr. Farrell told the Washington Post.  Dr Farrell said: “This counter-movement produced messages aimed, at the very least, at creating ideological polarization through politicized tactics, and at the very most, at overtly refuting current scientific consensus with scientific findings of their own.”

As we have explained on this website, the tactics deployed by the climate change disinformation campaign funded by some fossil fuel companies including Exxon and others should be understood as a new kind of crime against humanity because they are deeply morally reprehensible even if not classifiable as a crime under existing law because of the enormous climate change harms these tactics have caused to tens of millions of poor vulnerable people around the world, some of which are already occurring as others are already in the pipeline.

Some participants in the climate change disinformation campaign defend their behavior as exercises in free speech, yet as we have explained on this website, free speech is not an adequate defense for those who make claims based on lies or reckless disregard for the truth when misinformation can greatly harm others. (see; Three Videos on Why the Fossil Fuel Funded Climate Change Disinformation Campaign Is Neither an Exercise of Free Speech nor Responsible Scientific Skepticism and Should Be Understood as Some Kind of New Crime Against Humanity)

Thus an argument can be made that Exxon and the other entities who have funded the climate change disinformation campaign to protect their profits should be made to help pay for at least some of the climate change adaptation responses that are now needed to protect poor vulnerable people around the world from rising seas, floods, droughts, and diminished water supplies and the enormous damages from climate change that will be experienced because of the approximate three decade delay in responding to climate change that is attributable to the climate change disinformation campaign which began to get organized in the late 1980s. (Several law suits that have been filed against Exxon and other fossil fuel companies by plaintiffs seeking damages from climate change harms have been dismissed thus far, often on the grounds that allocating climate change damages is a political rather than a judicial function yet  a growing number of cases  continue to be filed seeking to establish legal liability of fossil fuel companies for their role in spreading misinformation about climate change.)

Yet, rather than making Exxon responsible for the enormous damage it has done through its successful efforts to prevent government policies to reduce GHG emissions., President-elect Trump has nominated Exxon’s CEO to be the spokesperson for US foreign policy including climate change foreign policy. This is arguably like appointing the CEO of Philip Morris to be the Surgeon General of the United States.

II. Why Has the US Media Given Little Attention About the Danger from Climate Change of Making the Exxon CEO US Secretary of State?

Why has the US press mostly ignored the extreme danger of making the CEO of a huge powerful oil company Secretary of State which company has been responsible for dangerous delays in responding to climate change through the use of morally reprehensible tactics and which company’s profits are greatly threatened by policies that rapidly reduce GHG emissions?

It would appear that the media’s relative lack of concern about nominating an Exxon CEO to run the State Department is attributable to Exxon’s and Tillerson’s announcements which began in 2006 that they had changed their views on climate change, agreed that human-induced climate change was a threat worthy of policy responses which include potentially putting a price on carbon, and Exxon would no longer fund organizations participating in climate change denial. (For a discussion of Exxon’s and Tillerson’s gradual shift on climate change see John Schwartz, New York Times, Tillerson Led Exxon’s Shift on Climate Change; Some Say ‘It Was All P.R.‘)

In fact, some recent press coverage of Tillerson’s nomination to be the US Secretary of State have uncritically portrayed the Exxon CEO as a climate change advocate.

For instance  Media Matters has reported in a CBS Evening News Report on December 13, anchor Scott Pelley said of Tillerson: “The lifelong oil man has no government experience, but he did convince Exxon to acknowledge climate change.” [CBS Evening News, 12/13/16]

Media Matters also reported that on December 10, an NBC news segment discussing Tillerson, correspondent Andrea Mitchell reported, “During his time at the world’s largest public energy company, Tillerson acknowledged the science behind climate change, supporting a carbon tax, while also expressing support for the Paris Climate Agreement.”

And so it would appear that Exxon’s and Tillerson’s recent stated changes in their positions on the acceptance of climate change science is responsible to the US media’s largely uncritical coverage of Tillerson’s nomination despite Exxon’s role in successfully undermining US responses to climate change and the basic conflict that exists between rapidly reducing GHG emissions and Exxon’s profits and the value of its oil reserves.

In what is likely an attempt to rebrand Exxon from being a climate change policy obstructionist, recently Exxon has produced TV commercials in which the company announces that is supporting the development of carbon capture and storage technologies that would reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

III. Has Exxon actually stopped funding climate denial organizations?

In July 2016, DeSmog Blog reported that Exxon’s most recent financial disclosures show that the company “continues to support organizations that claim greenhouse gases are not causing climate change, or that cuts to emissions are a waste of time and money”:

Organisations including the American Enterprise Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council and the National Black Chamber of Commerce — all organisations with a record of misinformation on climate science — all received grants in 2015 from ExxonMobil. The 2015 tally brings the total amount of known Exxon funding to denial groups north of $33 million since 1998. (DeSmog Blog, 7/8/16)

According to a recent article in the Guardian, Exxon gave more than $2.3 million to members of Congress and a corporate lobbying group that deny climate change and block efforts to fight climate change – eight years after pledging to stop its funding of climate denial.

IV Has Exxon and Tillerson Actually Become Advocates of Government Action On Climate Change. 

Does Exxon and Tillerson fully accept the mainstream peer-reviewed science on climate change? It is not clear.

Although both Exxon and Tillerson have asserted that they agree with the mainstream scientific view that human-induced climate change is a significant threat that must be dealt with, it is not clear that either accepts the scientific implications of the mainstream view including, for instance, neither that some fossil fuels must be left in the ground unless carbon capture and storage technology can be made affordable and proven effective nor that there is an urgent need to immediately aggressively reduce GHG emissions if the the international community hopes to prevent dangerous climate change. .

Tillerson has stated that he believes that climate change is a problem with an engineering solution. This suggests he supports the development of technologies that can either store carbon in the ground or remove carbon from the atmosphere. Yet no such technologies have been yet identified that can be deployed at the scale currently needed and that are also affordable and technologically effective despite the fact that these technologies are needed to justify continued use of oil and gas at current rates.

In addition, and perhaps more importantly, to limit warming to the warming limit goals agreed to in Paris in 2015 of as close as possible to 1.5 degrees C, the world must reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2050.

CO2 emissions from energy and industry must be zero globally around 2050 for a 1.5°C limit, which is around 10-25 years earlier than for a 2°C limit. Full decarbonization for 1.5°C limit is therefore needed by mid-century, and mid-way through the second half of the century for 2°C limit. (Climate Analytics)

Thus, the international community must achieve net zero GHG emissions from the energy and industrial sectors in 33 years to have hope of limiting warming to 1.5°C and 58 years to achieve zero GHG emissions to limit to 2°C. To achieve these civilization challenging goals, the world must act quickly and aggressively. In fact rapid reductions are particularly needed in the next few years as UNEP has concluded. In fact there is an urgency of enhancing pre-2020 mitigation efforts to have any realistic hope of achieving the warming limit goals agreed to in Paris in December 2015. (See UNEP, Emissions Gap Report 2016, pg 9)

If nations quickly respond to the obligation to begin reducing GHG emissions to achieve zero emissions by 2050, this will require rapid expansion of non-fossil energy, a possibility due to recent rapid reductions in the cost of solar energy, and require energy companies to hold fossil fuel reserves in the ground. This could leave energy companies with unprofitable reserves, or assets “stranded” underground unless carbon capture and storage or atmospheric carbon removal technologies are deployed at scale because they have become affordable and technically effective. Yet  carbon storage has not yet proven affordable nor effective at the scale that would be required to prevent dangerous atmospheric GHG concentrations from continuing to rise.

Exxon has not accepted this idea.  In 2014, shareholders seeking greater accountability from the company on the potential that some of its reserves would have to be left in the ground submitted a resolution to disclose how its reserves would be affected if climate action reduced demand. The company, in response, produced a report that said it would be “highly unlikely” that countries would enact action aggressive enough to affect demand. Two years later, the world’s nations agreed to the Paris climate agreement to reduce emissions to zero by late in this century.

Has Tillerson questioned or denied mainstream climate science since 2006?

Yes. In settings with stock analysts or other executives Tillerson has at times reverted back to Exxon’s old narrative that cast doubt on climate science. At the company’s 2013 annual shareholder meeting, for instance,Tillerson said: “Notwithstanding all the advancements that have been made in gathering more data, instrumenting the planet so that we understand how climate conditions on the planet are changing, notwithstanding all that data, our ability to project with any degree of certainty the future is continuing to be very limited….If you examine the temperature record of the last decade, it really hadn’t changed.” Thus Tillerson adopted the frequently discredited claim of many climate change deniers that global rises in temperatures paused in the last decade.

At the 2015 annual meeting, Tillerson said it might be better to wait for better science before taking action on climate change. “What if everything we do, it turns out our models are lousy, and we don’t get the effects we predict?” (Inside Climate News, Rex Tillerson’s Record on Climate Change: Rhetoric vs. Reality)

Although Exxon and Tillerson have proclaimed that they might support a tax on carbon, they have done nothing to make this happen nor have they stated that they would support a significant carbon tax immediately. (John Schwartz, New York Times, Tillerson Led Exxon’s Shift on Climate Change; Some Say ‘It Was All P.R )

For these reasons, it is not clear that Exxon or Tillerson are willing to support US government responses on climate change that are now urgently required to deal with the climate emergency facing the world.

V. What Should Those Who Are  Concerned Abouaret Climate Change Do In Response to the Tillerson Nomination.

Given the enormity of the threat to the world from climate change, the indefensible role that Exxon has played in delaying US action on climate change, and the lack of clarity about whether Rex Tillerson supports policies needed to rapidly reduce global GHG emissions to safe global emissions, concerned ciitzens should strongly oppose the Tillerson nomination while demanding  that the nominee respond to the following questions under oath before a confirmation vote is taken in the US Senate:

  1.  Do you support development and deployment of non-fossil energy in the United States as rapidly as possible until technologies which can sequester carbon or remove carbon from the atmosphere have been demonstrated to be economically feasible and technically effective?
  2. If you agree that the United States should respond to climate change by putting a price on carbon, will you immediately support legislation which creates a price on carbon at levels necessary to reduce US emissions to the US fair share of safe global emissions?
  3. Do you agree that US policy on climate change should seek to achieve the Paris Agreement’s warming limit goals of preventing warming from exceeding as close as possible to 1.5 degrees C but no greater than 2.0 degrees C above pre-industrial levels?
  4. If you agree that US climate policy should seek to limit warming to between 1.5 degrees C and 2.0 degrees C, do you agree that the US should clearly explain how its policies will achieve these warming limit goals of the Paris agreement?
  5. Since you agree that human-induced climate change is a threat to people and ecological systems around the world, do you agree that Exxon should no longer fund the campaigns of politicians that deny that human-induced climate change is a threat worthy of a strong national response?
  6. Since GHG emissions from the United States not only threaten US citizens and ecological systems but people and ecological systems around the world, do you agree that US policy on climate change should respond to the US responsibility to prevent climate change from harming all people and ecological systems around the world?
  7. Do you agree that people and nations who could be harmed by high levels of US GHG emissions from the United States have interests in US climate change policies and if so their interests should be considered in formulating US climate policy?
  8. 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?
  9. If you disagree that high emitting nations have responsibility to help finance reasonable adaptation needs or unavoidable damages from climate change in countries which are largely not responsible for climate change, how do you interpret the “polluter pays” principle of international law?
  10. Do you deny that when the US formulates a GHG emissions reduction target it has a duty both under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which it ratified in 1992 and the Paris Agreement to formulate its commitment after consideration of what “equity” requires of the United States and if so what does the term ‘equity” under the UNFCCC mean to you?

By: 

Donald A. Brown

Scholar in Residence and Professor

Widener University Commonwealth Law School

dabrown57@gmail.com

Exxon changed its position at about the time that Rex Tillerson became the CEO of Exxon.

On January 8, 2009, Rex Tillerson gave a speech in  Washingotn

Reflections on the Marrakech Climate Negotiations In Light of the American Election

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marraketch-symbol

I arrived in Marrakech on Thursday am, November 10 just as the news of the election of Donald Trump was hitting the world like a large meteor hitting the Atlantic Ocean.

I had come to Marrakech to participate in international climate negotiations to which 193 countries had come in hope of making progress on finding a global solution to the increasingly frightening climate change emergency.  All 193 countries had agreed in Paris the year before to work together to try to limit warming to as close as possible to 1.5 degrees C but no more than 2 degrees C. The international community was convinced that their previous promise to work to limit warming to 2 degrees C was much too dangerous particularly for many desperately poor countries. Yet to achieve the new warming limits, nations will need to greatly strengthen their commitments made in Paris, a goal which was the organizing focus of the Marraketch meeting.

On the first day of the negotiations, I was listening to two women, one from the Maldives and the other from Bangladesh, describing the suffering their families and communities were already experiencing from floods and rising seas. They also pleaded for much more aggressive action from developed countries to reduce GHG emissions as  waves of grief, despair and sadness about the US election were reverberating through the huge Marrakech negotiating complex.

As I encountered colleagues from previous climate negotiations, every conversation began with sorrowful laments about the US election. Particularly those of us who were veterans of most of the 23 year climate negotiating history were painfully aware of the anomaly that the Obama administration represented compared to the administrations of prior US Presidents as a positive force in the international efforts to find a global solution to climate change’s enormous threats.  We therefore felt deep grief about the Trump election and his promise to rip up the Paris Agreement and reestablish coal as an energy source.

For most of the 23 year history of the climate negotiations, the United States, along with two or three other nations,  often played a blocking role in international efforts to find a global solution to climate change. In no small part because of the delay caused by US obstruction, the world is running out of time to prevent potentially very dangerous climate change despite the Obama’s administrations recent more positive commitments.

The climate change disinformation campaign funded by many fossil fuel companies and free market fundamentalist foundations that started in the United States in the late 1980s and moved to several other developed countries is in no small part responsible for the rise of atmospheric CO2 to 403 ppm from about 320 ppm, a level that existed when calls to control GHG emissions began in earnest in the 1970s.

Because the international community has not found a way yet to actually reduce global GHG emissions to safe levels, and some parts of the world are already experiencing life-threatening floods and droughts, killer heat waves and storm surges, and rises in tropical diseases, the success of US climate change opponents in blocking meaningful US climate change policies has created a monumental threat to the entire world. Now President-elect Trump is threatening to reinstate the United State as the chief obstructionist on climate change issues among nations.

Yet shortly before the Marrakech COP, optimism about chances for preventing catastrophic warming was rising as 55 countries representing 55% of global emissions ratified the Paris Agreement allowing the Paris deal to come into effect on October 4th of this year, more quickly than expected. At the beginning of the Marrakech negotiation session, it appeared to me that the Trump election had punctured the optimism filled balloon that was rising shortly before the Marrakech COP.

Compared to many of the first 21 international climate negotiating meetings, which are referred to as Conference of the Parties or COPs under the 1992 United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the agenda and expectations for the Marrakech session (COP22) were modest despite a growing sense of urgency and alarm among climate scientists that time is running short to prevent extraordinarily  dangerous climate change.

The most important agenda items for Marrakech were filling in details of general decisions made in the Paris Agreement that must be clarified if the accord’s goal of limiting warming to as close as possible to  1.5 degrees C but no greater than 2 degrees C has any chance of being achieved.

And so much of the Marrakech negotiations were focused on such non-sexy issues as:

(a) how a global dialogue that the Paris Agreement calls for on assessing the state of affairs in 2018 will be organized,

(b) how to assure the clarity and sufficiency of information that nations must provide with their commitments under the Paris agreement prior to five-year “stocktakes” and to implement the Paris Agreement’s “transparency mechanism,”

 (c) how to make progress on the financing promises of developed countries for developing country programs on adaptation and mitigation,

(d) how to assure that the Paris Agreement’s market mechanisms which give governments flexibility in how they achieve GHG emissions reduction commitments don’t undermine the Agreement’s warming limit goal.

Although these issues are not as politically explosive as issues that were under consideration in the other 21 COPs, they are nonetheless crucial steps that must be taken to implement the Paris accord.

The fog of sadness triggered by the Trump election coupled with the lack of visible progress on increasing the ambition of national commitments so urgently needed to keep warming to non-dangerous levels initially created a dark mood in the negotiating complex. However, as the negotiations continued into the second week, at least this writer was buoyed by the determination, if not outright defiance, of people and countries from around the world that I kept experiencing during the last few days of the COP.

In addition to the negotiations, much of what goes on at a COP are in numerous side-events, where reports are heard from non-government organizations, national and international scientific institutions, research organizations, and businesses supporting technologies that have hope of contributing to the solution to climate change. Being at a COP is like having a two-week intensive course on all that is going on with climate change around the world.

marraketch-positive

At one of  the side events I attended, I began to notice the rise of a positive defiance that countries around the world were displaying about the future of the Paris Agreement despite the bad news from the United States. This positive mood was fueled in part by the numerous examples of rapid progress being made around the world in installing non-fossil energy. Also all countries acted at the COP as if they understood that climate change was a very serious global threat that urgently required the cooperation of all nations to prevent catastrophic harm to people and ecological systems on which life depends.

In one side event, the energy Secretary from Vermont reported that one in every twenty jobs in her state were in the solar industry and that solar energy is already transforming Vermont’s energy supply.

Johnathan Pershing, lead US negotiator, claimed that the US solar industry was employing over 2,500,000 people while only 86,000 were working in the coal industry.

One of the side events discussed growing cooperation on climate change between California and several Canadian Provinces along with growing regional cooperation around the world on climate issues

Many of the 193 countries participating in the Marrakech negotiations had displays which depicted not only significant amounts of installed renewable energy in their countries, but plans for greatly expanded use or climate friendly technologies including electric vehicles and green building in the years ahead.

There was considerable discussion in Marrakech about the rapidly expanding and ambitious role that cities around the world have committed to play to fight climate change. Recently 7,100 cities from 119 countries and six continents, representing more than 600 million inhabitants, over 8% of the world’s population have committed to cooperate together under the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy. In addition 20 of the world’s largest cities have committed to achieve carbon neutrality or at minimum to reduce GHG emissions by 80% by 2050. The cities include: Adelaide, Australia, Berlin, Germany, Boston MA, Boulder CO, Copenhagen,Denmark, London, United Kingdom, Melbourne, Australia, Minneapolis MN, New York City NY, Oslo, Norway, Portland OR, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, San Francisco CA, Seattle WA, Stockholm, Sweden, Sydney, Australia,Toronto, Canada, Vancouver, Canada, Washington, DC, and Yokohama, Japan.

Several times throughout the COP I heard participants proclaim defiantly that they were going to “Trump Proof” the world. They claimed they were going to go ahead with or without the United States.  Several claimed that if the United States pulled out of the Paris deal, they would pursue economic sanctions against the United States

The day before I left Marrakech, I felt a positive change in my mood. I had been affected by positive energy from thousands around the world attending the COP. They promised to strive to implement the Paris Agreement without the United States. However, only if the United States aggressively reduces its GHG emissions is there much hope of preventing climate change that will harm millions of the worlds poorest people because 20 % of global GHG emissions come from the United States..

The Marrakech COP produced a few very modest advancements in the Paris deal while deferring important decisions to the next COP which will be held in Bonn, Germany next year.

By:

Donald A. Brown

Scholar in Residence and Professor

Widener University Commonwealth Law School

dabrown57@gmail.com

Three Videos on Why the Fossil Fuel Funded Climate Change Disinformation Campaign Is Neither an Exercise of Free Speech nor Responsible Scientific Skepticism and Should Be Understood as Some Kind of New Crime Against Humanity

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wizardweb of denial

 

This post identifies three updated 15 minute videos which have previously appeared on this site.  These videos describe, analyze, and respond to controversies about the climate change disinformation campaign. They include descriptions of:

(1) The enormous damage to the world that has been caused by a mostly fossil fuel corporate funded disinformation campaign on climate change,

(2) What is meant by the climate change disinformation campaign, a phenomenon sociologist describe as a “countermovement,”

(3) The tactics of the disinformation campaign,

(4) An explanation of why the tactics of the campaign cannot be excused either as an exercise in free speech or as responsible scientific skepticism,

(5) What norms should guide responsible scientific skepticism about climate change.

Continue reading →

Obama Implicitly Acknowledges the Enormous Damage Caused By the Fossil Fuel Corporate Funded Climate Change Disinformation Campaign and Its Political Mercenaries

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obama alaska

During his speech on August 31 in Alaska, President Obama not only spoke about the enormity of the climate change threat and the urgency of strong action, he also acknowledged that the United States has responsibility for causing the problem. He said:

I’ve come here today, as the leader of the world’s largest economy and its second largest emitter, to say that the United States recognizes our role in creating this problem, and we embrace our responsibility to help solve it. 

He spoke in clear terms about the enormity of the climate change threat:.

Our understanding of climate change advances each day.  Human activity is disrupting the climate, in many ways faster than we previously thought.  The science is stark.  It is sharpening.  It proves that this once-distant threat is now very much in the present. But the point is that climate change is no longer some far-off problem.  It is happening here.  It is happening now.  Climate change is already disrupting our agriculture and ecosystems, our water and food supplies, our energy, our infrastructure, human health, human safety — now.  Today.  And climate change is a trend that affects all trends — economic trends, security trends.  Everything will be impacted.  And it becomes more dramatic with each passing year. 

But if those trend lines continue the way they are, there’s not going to be a nation on this Earth that’s not impacted negatively.  People will suffer.  Economies will suffer.  Entire nations will find themselves under severe, severe problems.  More drought; more floods; rising sea levels; greater migration; more refugees; more scarcity; more conflict.

If we were to abandon our course of action, if we stop trying to build a clean-energy economy and reduce carbon pollution, if we do nothing to keep the glaciers from melting faster, and oceans from rising faster, and forests from burning faster, and storms from growing stronger, we will condemn our children to a planet beyond their capacity to repair:  Submerged countries.  Abandoned cities.  Fields no longer growing.  Indigenous peoples who can’t carry out traditions that stretch back millennia.  Entire industries of people who can’t practice their livelihoods.  Desperate refugees seeking the sanctuary of nations not their own.  Political disruptions that could trigger multiple conflicts around the globe.

President Obama also acknowledged that because nations have delayed in taking meaningful climate action, the world is running out of time to prevent catastrophic warming. More specifically he said:

On this issue, of all issues, there is such a thing as being too late. That moment is almost upon us.

And so President Obama admitted that: (a) climate change is a civilization challenging problem with dire potential consequences for nations and vulnerable people around the world, (b) the world is running out of time to prevent catastrophic warming, and, (c) the United States has responsibility for causing the problem.

The United States is not only responsible for the current crisis because, as President Obama noted, it is the second highest emitter of ghg in the world behind China,  it has historically emitted much more ghgs into the atmosphere than any other country including China, it is currently near the top of all nations in per capita ghg emissions, and the US has been responsible more than any other developed nation for the failure of the international community to adopt meaningful ghg emissions reduction targets from the beginning of international climate negotiations in 1990 until the Obama administration. (For a detailed description of the blocking role that the United States has played in international climate negotiations since 1990 until the Obama administration, See Brown, 2002, American Heat; Ethical Problems the US Response to Global Warming, and Brown, 2013,  Climate Chang Ethics: Navigating the Perfect Moral Storm)  

climate change ethics navigatingamercan heat

In the Alaska speech, President Obama did not discuss the forces in the United States that have successfully undermined proposals for serious US climate change policies, matters which have been extensively discussed here under the category of “climate change disinformation campaign.”  Since the mid-1980s a well-funded  climate change disinformation campaign has successfully fought against US climate change policies. (For a discussion of the climate change disinformation campaign see, for example: The Climate Change Disinformation Campaign: What Kind Of Crime Against Humanity, Tort, Human Rights Violation, Malfeasance, Transgression, Villainy, Or Wrongdoing Is It? Part One: Is The Disinformation Campaign a Crime Against Humanity or A Civil Tort? ) This campaign has largely been funded by fossil fuel companies and free-market fundamentalists foundations although recently it has been difficult to track the funding. (See, New Study Concludes That Tracking Funding Of The Ethically Abhorrent Climate Disinformation Campaign Is Now Impossible)

As we have documented in numerous articles on the disinformation campaign on this website, although responsible scientific skepticism is necessary for science to advance, the climate change disinformation campaign has been involved not in the pursuit of responsible scientific skepticism but in tactics that are morally reprehensible including: (a) telling lies about mainstream climate scientific evidence or engaging in reckless disregard for the truth, (b) focusing on unknowns about climate science while ignoring settled climate change science, that is cherry-picking the evidence, (c) creating front groups and Astroturf groups that hide the real parties in interest behind claims, (d) making specious claims about “good science”, (e) manufacturing science sounding claims about climate change by holding conferences in which claims are made and documents are released that have not been subjected to scientific peer-review, and (d) cyber bullying journalists and scientists. These tactics are not responsible scientific skepticism but disinformation.

In the late 1980s, the European Union proposed that all developed countries should accept binding ghg emissions reductions targets. These targets would have likely been agreed to in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change if the United States did not oppose them. The  United States virtually standing alone prevented the inclusion of binding targets in the treaty which was finalized in 1992 and ratified by the US in that same year. During the next 20 years, the US continued to block a meaningful global solution to climate change while being one of only a handful of nations that did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty in which most developed countries accepted a ghg reduction target.

During this time, the climate change disinformation campaign also successfully prevented enactment of meaningful US domestic climate change laws and policies.

For the last several decades, US media has largely failed to cover the fact that the longer the world waits to make significant reductions in ghgs, the more difficult the problem becomes to solve. In this regard, the staggering enormity of the current challenge to the world to prevent dangerous climate change is rarely commented on in the US media despite the fact the 25 year delay in facing this problem has now made the  problem a civilization challenging problem.  For instance, James Hansen in a recent affidavit submitted in a legal proceeding against the State of Oregon asserted that the world must now reduce ghg emissions at a rate of 6% per year to avoid dangerous climate change. Yet as Hansen notes, if the world began to phase out of fossil fuel in 2005 the rate of reductions needed would only be 3.5% while waiting until 2020 will require a 15% reduction per year. Thus the delay in confronting climate change that is attributable to a large extent to the climate change disinformation campaign and its political mercenaries has made the problem much more difficult to solve with the result that harsh climate change impacts are much more likely. Because the harshest impacts from climate change will likely be experienced by some of  the world’s poorest people in Africa,Southeast Asia, and other parts of the world, the damage caused by the climate change disinformation campaign may become a global catastrophe.

And so the world is now facing a civilization challenging problem entailed by the need to rapidly reduce greenhouse gases to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Although President Obama has announced administrative measures that would begin to reduce US ghg emissions, these measures are now being intensely fought by the climate change disinformation campaign and its political representatives and the Obama commitments still don’t represent the US fair share of safe global ghg emissions. In fact, in his August 31 speech, President Obama said after describing his climate initiatives: “But we’re not moving fast enough.”   And now it may be too late to prevent huge climate change induced harms because the world has lost 25 years in reducing the threat of climate change in no small measure due to the United States opposition to a meaningful global solution.

President Obama’s August 31 speech in Alaska implicitly acknowledged this conclusion. Yet the US media largely continues to fail to cover the enormous damage that has been caused by the delay in confronting human-induced warming  .

By:

Donald A. Brown

Scholar In Residence and Professor

Widener Commonwealth Law School

dabrown57@gmail.com

Questions That Should Be Asked of Opponents of Climate Change Policies, Including Politicians, To Help Expose the Ethical, Moral, and Justice Problems with Their Positions

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Bathtub revised

I. Introduction

If climate change, as the Pope’s recent encyclical claims, is a profound global justice, ethical, and moral problem, this paper identifies questions that should be asked of opponents of climate change policies to expose the ethical problems with their positions.

Although the Pope bases his claim that climate change is a moral problem on theological arguments derived mostly from Catholic teachings, this paper begins with a brief description of unique features of climate change that lead to an understanding that this enormous global threat must be understood fundamentally and essentially as a moral, ethical, and justice problem as a matter of secular ethics also. This is followed by questions designed to assure that opponents of climate change policies are required to expressly respond to ethical problems with their most frequent arguments made against climate change policies. These questions are organized according to the most frequent arguments made against climate change policies which are claims that climate change policies: (a) will impose unacceptable costs on a national economy or specific industries or prevent nations from pursuing other national priorities, (b) should not be adopted because of scientific uncertainty about climate change impacts, or (c) are both unfair and ineffective as long as high emitting nations such as China or India do not adopt meaningful ghg emissions reduction policies. Following each question is a short explanation of the strong ethical arguments for rejecting the arguments of the climate change policy opponents that have triggered the specific questions.

II. Why Climate Change Must be Understood as an Ethical, Moral, and Justice Problem.

Climate change must be understood and responded to as a profound problem of global justice, ethics, and morality. This is so because in addition to the theological reasons given by Pope Francis recently: (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 ethics, morality and 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 cost to national economies, scientific uncertainty, or unfairness if other high emitting nations refuse to reduce their ghg emissions. .

III.  Questions That Should Be Asked of Those Opposing Climate Change to Expose the Ethical and Moral Problems with Their Opposition.  

A. Questions to be asked of those opposing government action on climate change on the basis of cost to the economy, cost to specific industries, job destruction, or other economic arguments that oppose adoption of climate change policies.

When you argue that governments should not adopt policies to reduce ghg emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions on the basis that climate policies will impose unacceptable costs on national economies, destroy specific industries, kill jobs, or prevent the nation from investing in other national priorities:

1. Do you deny high-emitting nations not only have economic interests but also duties and obligations to nations and people most vulnerable to climate impacts to limit their ghg emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions?

This question is designed to expose a strong ethical and moral problem with those who refuse to reduce their ghg emissions on the basis of costs to them, a position that ignores that those harming others have strong ethical, moral, and legal responsibilities to not harm others. This strong ethical and moral responsibility is derivable both from the universally accepted moral principles including the widely accepted golden rule which requires people to treat others as they wish to be treated, and international law including, but not limited to the “no harm” rule  which is a widely recognized principle of customary international law whereby a State is duty-bound to prevent, reduce and control the risk of environmental harm to other states and a rule agreed to by all nations in the preamble to the UNFCCC, the “polluter-pays principle” agreed to by almost all nations in the 1992 Rio Declaration, human rights law which requires nations to assure that their citizens enjoy human rights, and many other legal theories including tort law. 

2.  Do you agree that no nation has a right to kill other people or destroy the ecological systems on which life depends simply because reducing ghg emissions will impose costs on the high-emitting nation?

Like question one, this question is designed to expose more explicitly than previous questions that those nations who refuse to limit ghg emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions are implicitly ignoring their very strong ethical duty to not kill or greatly harm others.

3. Do you deny that all high ghg emitting developed nations under the UNFCCC has a duty to adopt policies that prevent harms from climate change to  human health and ecological systems on which life depends which the nation is causing in other nations?

In addition to the ethical problems with cost arguments identified above in response to questions one and two, this question is also designed to expose that a nation that refuses to reduce its ghg emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions is violating promises it made under the UNFCCC to adopt ” policies and measures to prevent dangerous anthropocentric interference with the climate system.” and that the developed nations have promised to take the lead in reducing ghg emissions.

4. Do you deny the applicability of the well-established international norm that polluters should pay for the harms caused by their pollution and that if a nation or entity refuses to reduce its ghg emissions it is responsible for any damages or harms caused by their ghg emissions?

This question is designed to more expressly expose the ethical issue identified in response to question one, namely that high-emitting nations are responsible for the harms they are causing to others under the “polluter pays” principle of international law. This rule is also a basis for concluding that high-emitting nations have a duty to pay for the damages caused by ghg emissions from their country that exceed their fair share of global emissions.

5. Do you agree that a nation that refuses to reduce its ghg emission to its fair share of safe global ghg emissions on the basis of cost to it is implicitly taking  a position on how high atmospheric concentrations of ghgs should be allowed to rise and that the higher atmosphere ghg concentrations rise the more people and the ecological systems on which life depends will be harmed?.

This question is designed to expose that refusals of nations to reduce their emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions is implicitly a position on acceptable levels of atmospheric ghg concentrations which is essentially a moral issue because a position on acceptable atmospheric ghg concentrations is a position of a nation on who it is willing to kill or greatly harm by their ghg emissions. 

6. Do you agree that a national ghg emissions target that is based on cost to it must be understood as implicitly a position on a global emissions reduction pathway necessary to stabilize atmospheric ghg concentrations at safe levels and that the longer a nation waits to reduce its ghg emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions the smaller is  the remaining carbon budget for the entire world that may not be exceeded to prevent dangerous climate change?

This question is designed to expose the fact that because delays in ghg emissions based on costs to the polluter makes the enormous threat of  climate change much more difficult to solve and more likely that serious harms and damages will be experienced, therefore arguments for delays in reducing ghg emissions based upon cost raise moral and ethical issues because the delays are making the problem worse. 

7. Do you agree that nations which 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 vulnerable countries and individuals who have done little to cause climate change?

This question is designed to expose the fact that a nation’s  refusal to lower its  ghg emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions on the basis of costs creates financial obligations to pay for resulting harms and damages.

8. Do you agree that all the costs of inaction on climate change must be considered by nations who refuse to reduce their ghg emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions on the basis of cost to them?

This question is designed to expose that fact that a nation which refuses to reduce its ghg emissions on the basis of costs to it have a strong duty to expressly consider all the costs of damages created by inaction.  

9. Given that the United States and most other developed anions have  for over twenty-five years failed to adequately respond to climate change because of alleged unacceptable costs to each nation and that due to the delay ghg emissions reductions now needed to avoid potentially catastrophic climate change are much steeper and costly than what would be required if these nations acted twenty five years ago, is it just for the United States and other developed nations  to now defend further inaction on climate change on the basis of cost to it?

This question is designed to expose the fact that previous unwillingness to reduce ghg emissions by a nation has caused dangerous delays which should be understood to create moral obligations to delay no longer in reducing ghg emissions to the nation’s fair share of safe global emissions. 

10. Do you believe that a nation who desires to delay to reduce its ghg emissions on the basis of costs to it, should have a responsibility to consult with those who will be harmed by the delay before delay is initiated?

This question is designed to expose the fact that procedural justice requires that that those who seek to put others at greater risk on the basis of cost has a duty as a matter of procedural justice to seek consensus from those who may be harmed by non-action. 

B. Questions to be Asked of Those Opposing Action on Climate Change on the Basis of Scientific Uncertainty.

When you argue that nations such as the United States or states, regional, or local governments, businesses, organizations, or individuals that emit high levels of greenhouse gases (ghg) need not reduce their ghg emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions because of scientific uncertainty about adverse climate change impacts:

1. On what specific basis do you disregard the conclusions of the United States Academy of Sciences, and numerous other Academies of Sciences Around the World including the Royal Academy of the UK,  over a hundred of the most prestigious scientific organizations whose membership includes those 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 according to the American Academy of Sciences 97 percent of scientists who actually do peer-reviewed research on climate change which conclusions hold that the Earth is warming, that the warming is mostly human caused, and that harsh impacts from warming are already being experienced in parts of the world, and that the international community is running out of time to prevent catastrophic warming.

This question is designed to expose the ethical conclusion that nations who are put on notice by the most prestigious and responsible scientific organizations  in the world that ghg emissions from their jurisdictions are causing great harm to vulnerable people around the world have an ethical duty to accept the burden of proof to prove that their ghg emissions are not causing harm. That is once there is a reasonable scientific basis for concluding that some nations or entities are causing great harm, the question of who should have the burden of proof is an ethical and not simply a scientific question.  Thus the question is designed to bring attention to the ethical duty of those who are engaged in risky behavior to produce credible scientific evidence that demonstrates that their behavior is not causing harm if they choose to use uncertainty as justification for continuing the risky behavior.   That risky behavior is not acceptable because there is some uncertainty about the harm that will be caused by the behavior is clear from law around the world that makes dangerous behavior unacceptable and often criminal. For instance, it is not a defense to reckless driving that the police could not prove the driving would cause harm. Nations and people have a moral duty to  stop engaging in behaviors that might be causing harm once they are put on notice that their behavior is dangerous.  

2. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that there are some remaining scientific uncertainties about climate change impacts, are you arguing that no action of climate change should be taken until all scientific uncertainties are resolved given that waiting to resolve uncertainties before action is taken will virtually guarantee that it will too late to prevent catastrophic human-induced climate change harms to people and ecological systems around the world?

This question is designed to bring attention to the ethical duty to take action in the face of uncertainty if waiting until the uncertainties are resolved will produce greater harm if the harms are caused particularly for problems like climate change that the predicted harms are likely catastrophic to some people and regions.. 

3. Given that waiting until uncertainties are resolved will make climate change harms worse and the scale of reductions needed to prevent dangerous climate change much more daunting, do you deny that those who are most vulnerable to climate change’s harshest potential impacts have a right to participate in any decision about whether a nation should wait to act to reduce the threat of climate change because of scientific uncertainty?

This question is designed to expose the ethical duty entailed by procedural justice to obtain consensus from those who will be harmed by any delay in taking action on the basis of uncertainty when delay will likely increase the harms to those most vulnerable to the dangerous behavior. 

4. Should a developed nation such as  the United States which has much higher historical and per capita emissions than other nations be able to justify its refusal to reduce its ghg emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions on the basis of scientific uncertainty, given that if the mainstream science is correct, the world is rapidly running out of time to prevent warming above 2 degrees C, a temperature limit which if exceeded may cause rapid, non-linear climate change.

This question, following up on question one is designed to expose the ethical duty of high-emitting developed countries like the United States to refrain from further delay on climate change on the basis of scientific uncertainty given that the nation’s  non-action on climate change is  already responsible for putting the international community in great danger from climate change. 

5. If you claim that there is no evidence of human causation of climate change are you aware that there are multiple “fingerprint” studies and “attribution” studies which point to human causation of observed warming?

This question. following up on question one, is designed to expose the fact that there is a strong ethical duty to assume human causation of climate change if there is reliable evidence of human causation and that those who seek to justify non-action on climate change because they claim that human causation has not been proven have a very strong ethical duty to demonstrate that humans are not causing climate change with high levels of proof. More specifically in regard to the question of human causation, opponents of climate change policies that deny human causation should be expected to specifically respond to the numerous “foot-print” and “attribution” studies that the international community has relied on to make conclusions about human causation.

6. When you claim that the United States or other nations emitting high levels of ghgs need not adopt climate change policies because adverse climate change impacts have not yet been proven, are you claiming that climate change skeptics have proven in peer reviewed scientific literature that human-induced climate change will not create harsh adverse impacts to the human health and the ecological systems of others on which their life often depends and if so what is that proof?

This question is designed to expose that those who seek to rely on scientific uncertainty as justification for non-action on climate change have a strong ethical duty to produce very credible scientific evidence that supports the conclusion that human activities releasing ghgs are not causing climate change and its impacts. 

7. If you concede that climate skeptics have not proven in peer-reviewed journals that human-induced warming is not a very serious threat to human health and ecological systems, given that human-induced warming could create catastrophic warming the longer the human community waits to respond to reduce the threat of climate change and the more difficult it will be to prevent dangerous warming, do you agree that those responsible for rising atmospheric ghg concentrations have a duty to demonstrate that their ghg emissions are safe?

This question is designed to provoke express ethical reflection on the fact that those most responsible for dangerous atmospheric concentrations of ghg have a strong ethical duty to demonstrate that additional levels of ghg in the atmosphere are safe. 

8. Given that in ratifying the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) the United States 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. (UNFCCC, Art 3)

This question is designed to bring attention to the fact that because all nations that ratified the UNFCCC agreed to not use scientific uncertainty as an excuse for not reducing their ghg emissions, they have an ethical duty to keep their promises.

9. If a nation such as the United States which emits 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 seriously harms the health of tens of millions of vulnerable people around the world and ecological systems on which their life depends, should the nation be financially responsible for the harms that could have been avoided if preventative action had been taken earlier?

This question is designed to bring attention to the ethical duty of nations to pay for damages that result from their delays in taking action on the basis of scientific uncertainty. 

10. Do you agree that if a government is warned by some of the most prestigious scientific institutions in the world that activities within its jurisdiction are causing great harm to and gravely threatening hundreds of millions of people outside their government’s jurisdiction, government officials who could take steps to assure that activities of their citizens do not harm or threaten others should not be able escape responsibility for preventing harm caused by simply declaring that they are not scientists?

This question is designed to expose that those politicians who refuse to reduce their government’s ghg on the basis that they are not scientists cannot ethically justify non-action on climate change on this basis because once they are put on notice by respected scientific organizations that ghg from their government jurisdiction are harming others, they have a duty to prevent dangerous behavior or establish credible scientific evidence that the alleged dangerous behavior is safe. 

C. 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 emission because other nations such as China 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 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 dose 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.

By:

Donald A. Brown

Scholar In Residence and Professor

Sustainability Ethics and Law

Widener Commonwealth University Law School

dabrown57@gmail.com