A Growing Problem? Dealing with Population Increases in Climate Justice (original) (raw)
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Human Rights, Population and Climate Change
Recently many environmental ethicists have argued that tackling climate change requires addressing the growth in the world's population. This paper critically examines two different versions of this argument. One which I term Restrictivism argues that there should be limits on people's procreative choice. Sarah Conly, for example, maintains that each couple has a right to one child, no more, and that this limit can be coercively enforced. I argue that such Restrictivist accounts suffer from three serious problems. First, in order to determine how many children people could permissibly limit Restrictivists like Conly would need to provide an account of intra- and inter-generational justice and they would then need to show empirically that realizing this requires that people have a right to one child and no more. Since, however, they do not provide the normative or empirical analysis the numbers they give are arbitrary. Second, Restrictivist accounts are objectionably monocausal and fail to take into account the role of other determinants of ecological sustainability (notably the levels of consumption and the kind of technology available). Third, their imposition of equal procreative limits is unfair. They penalize the poor for the high-emissions lifestyles of the rich. A second strategy adopts what I term the Byproduct Approach. This maintains that realizing human rights to reproductive choice, education, employment and to a decent standard of living would reduce population growth and, indeed, are sufficient to establish ecological sustainability. I argue that this is a more attractive approach and that such measures are necessary. However, I argue, we lack any reason to think that they are sufficient. For to know whether they would be sufficient we would need to know what we owe future generations, what limits on ecological impacts this would in practice require, and whether the net effects of such human rights policies would result in the necessary limits on ecological impacts. In the absence of this we have no reason to think that the Byproduct Approach would be enough. In the final part of the paper I outline a third more promising approach. This holds that humanity must live within certain ecological limits - where these limits are derived from (i) an understanding of our responsibilities to current and future generations and (ii) an empirical analysis of what is needed to comply with these responsibilities. Together (i) and (ii) define what I term the Sustainability Frontier. I then draw on the observation that humanity's environmental impact is a function of three kinds of factor (people's levels of consumption, the technology available and the number of people alive) to argue that there is a plurality of different ways in which people can comply with their responsibility to live within the Sustainability Frontier. They can choose different combinations of procreation, consumption and technological investment and diffusion. This ecological liberalism thus combines a commitment to ecological sustainability with a commitment to individual liberty. In short: Those who emphasize the role of demographic change as a causal factor in climate change are right to do so. However, it is important that we do not treat population in isolation, but rather treat it together with levels of consumption, global inequalities, the role of the built environment in determining energy use, the political economy of energy, and the unequal access to, and control of, clean technology.
Climate ethics and population policy: A review of recent philosophical work
WIREs Climate Change, 2021
It is well-established that human population growth is a leading cause of increased greenhouse gas emissions and accelerating global climate change. After decades of neglect, philosophical ethicists have, over the past decade, taken up the issue of climate change and population policy and there are now numerous articles and books which explore the subject. Both rights-based and consequentialist approaches seek to balance reproductive rights against other human rights and interests threatened by overpopulation and ecological degradation. While biocentric ethicists have additional reasons to advocate for smaller human populations, even anthropocentrists affirm the need to balance reproductive rights against reproductive responsibilities in order to promote the well-being of future generations. There is a particularly strong consensus on the value of choice-enhancing population policies that reduce fertility voluntarily, such as securing universal access to modern contraception and promoting equal rights and opportunities for women. There is strong support for government policies that incentivize smaller families, some support for policies that disincentivize larger ones, and little to no support for punitive policies. Many ethicists warn that failure to enact reasonable population policies now may necessitate harsher policies in the future, a common theme in climate ethics generally.
Population Ethics and the Prospects for Fertility Policy as Climate Mitigation Policy
The Journal of Development Studies, 2021
What are the prospects for using population policy as tool to reduce carbon emissions? In this paper, we review evidence from population science, in order to inform debates in population ethics that, so far, have largely taken place within the academic philosophy literature. In particular, we ask whether fertility policy is likely to have a large effect on carbon emissions, and therefore on temperature change. Our answer is no. Prospects for a policy of fertility-reduction-as-climate-mitigation are limited by population momentum, a demographic factor that limits possible variation in the size of the population, even if fertility rates change very quickly. In particular, a hypothetical policy that instantaneously changed fertility and mortality rates to replacement levels would nevertheless result in a population of over 9 billion people in 2060. We use a leading climate-economy model to project the consequence of such a hypothetical policy for climate change. As a standalone mitigation policy, such a hypothetical change in the size of the future population-much too large to be implementable by any foreseeable government programme-would reduce peak temperature change only to 6.4°C, relative to 7.1°C under the most likely population path. Therefore, fertility reduction is unlikely to be an adequate core approach to climate mitigation.
Fertility, Immigration, and the Fight against Climate Change
Bioethics, 2017
Several philosophers have recently argued that policies aimed at reducing human fertility are a practical and morally justifiable way to mitigate the risk of dangerous climate change. There is a powerful objection to such “population engineering” proposals: even if drastic fertility reductions are needed to prevent dangerous climate change, implementing those reductions would wreak havoc on the global economy, which would seriously undermine international antipoverty efforts. In this article, we articulate this economic objection to population engineering and show how it fails. We argue, first, that the economic objection paints an inaccurate picture of the complicated relationship between demographic change and economic growth, and second, that any untoward economic effects of fertility reduction can be mitigated with additional policies. Specifically, we argue that supplementing fertility reduction with policies that facilitate the emigration of younger people from developing nations to developed nations could allow for both global reductions in GHG emissions and continued economic stability. Further, we show that moral arguments against such unprecedented increases in immigration are unsuccessful. We conclude that population engineering is a practical and morally justifiable tool for addressing the twin evils of climate change and global poverty.
Climate Ethics and Population Policy
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, human population growth is one of the two primary causes of increased greenhouse gas emissions and accelerating global climate change. Slowing or ending population growth could be a cost effective, environmentally advantageous means to mitigate climate change, providing important benefits to both human and natural communities. Yet population policy has attracted relatively little attention from ethicists, policy analysts, or policy makers dealing with this issue. In part, this is because addressing population matters means wading into a host of contentious ethical issues, including family planning, abortion, and immigration. This article reviews the scientific literature regarding voluntary population control's potential contribution to climate change mitigation. It considers possible reasons for the failure of climate ethicists, analysts, and policy makers to adequately assess that contribution or implement policies that take advantage of it, with particular reference to the resistance to accepting limits to growth. It explores some of the ethical issues at stake, considering arguments for and against noncoercive population control and asking whether coercive population policies are ever morally justified. It also argues that three consensus positions in the climate ethics literature regarding acceptable levels of risk, unacceptable harms, and a putative right to economic development, necessarily imply support for voluntary population control.
American Journal of Sociology, 2021
The prevailing assumption that limiting fertility in the Global South will prevent planetary collapse has inspired a new generation of environmental activists. But these young leaders, Jade E. Sasser argues, are merely one node in a network of actors rekindling overpopulation anxieties to revive a shrinking international development sector. On Infertile Ground: Population Control and Women's Rights in the Era of Climate Change contributes a much-needed analysis on the enduring legacy of neo-Malthusianism in environmental advocacy. Drawing from archival material and ethnographic interviews, Sasser reveals that neo-Malthusianism didn't end in the postwar period. Rather, scientists, private donors, and NGOs reimagined neo-Malthusian discourse in the 21st century on the promise of women's empowerment in the Global South-vis-àvis her womb-to slow overpopulation and reverse rising temperatures and habitat destruction.
Climate Change, Intergenerational Justice and Development
2009
The subject of this paper is distributive justice in relation to financing greenhouse gas abatement. After separating the various questions of distributive justice in climate change (first section) and isolating the financing issue (second section), the paper explores whether any effective moral norms resolving this question already exist. It is argued that such norms still have to be constructed. As a basis for the further discussion, a criterion for moral duties is proposed, progressive norm welfarism, which takes up the constructivist idea (third section). Ethical , intuitive, moral and political considerations finally converge into a proposal for ‘no harm to developing countries’ (fourth section).
Medicina y Ética, 2024
Climate change crisis is a global concern for the humanity and for achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). One of the solutions proposed is family planning which plays a dual role. Firstly, family planning must ensure gender equality (SDG 5) and good health (SDG 3) that “strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters in all countries” (SDG 13.1). Secondly, it would make it possible to contribute to the reduction in population growth, which will turn lead to a reduction in the levels of greenhouse gas emissions. This article analyzes this dual role to determine whether family planning could be an ethical solution for climate change and for contributing to sustainable development for a better future of humanity.
Meijers Climate Change and the Right to One Child
Human Rights and Sustainability , 2016
In this chapter I ask whether the right to procreate may be limited for sustainability reasons. I argue that an unlimited right to procreate is not plausible, but I offer several arguments why a limited understanding of the right is. First, people have important interest in the renewal of generations. Therefore, at least sufficient procreation should be allowed for to guarantee the existence of society over time. Second, procreation is important because parent-child relationships involve important goods for many people. This points to a right to one child per couple. Taking these two considerations into account, a sustainability strategy that (morally) requires people to have only one child may be justified. However, taking into account global poverty, I argue that because having less children is often very costly for the global poor, there are good reasons to exempt them from limits on procreation.
Journal of Applied Philosophy, 2023
In this article we argue that duties towards future generations are situated on the collective level and that they should be understood in terms of collective responsibility for structural injustice. In the context of climate change, it seems self-evident that our moral duties pertain not only to the current generation but to future generations as well. However, conceptualizing this leads to the non-identity problem: future persons cannot be harmed by present-day choices because they would not have existed if other choices had been made. Recently, Charlotte Franziska Unruh has proposed a solution that places the duties not on the individual level but on the collective level. The current generation has a responsibility for future generations as a whole. This solution is promising, but we argue that it problematically overlooks the existence of unjust relations within the contemporary collective, as we all contribute differently to bringing future generations into existence. Therefore, we propose to graft Iris Marion Young's Social Connection Model, which is concerned with structural injustice, on to the discussion of responsibility for future generations. Our proposal incorporates the strengths of Unruh's arguments, while also allowing for a differentiated responsibility based on different implications in unjust structures.