Climate Change Justice (original) (raw)

Abstract

Anthropogenic climate change is a global process affecting the lives and well-being of millions of people now and countless number of people in the future. For humans, the consequences may include significant threats to food security globally and regionally, increased risks of from food-borne and water-borne as well as vector-borne diseases, increased displacement of people due migrations, increased risks of violent conf licts, slowed economic growth and poverty eradication, and the creation of new poverty traps. Principles of justice are statements of what persons are owed either by others or by institutions and policies. Climate change gives rise to many concern of justice. This article brief ly summarizes some of the most important of these, including claims to have climate change mitigated, claims regarding the sharing of the costs of climate change mitigation, claims for investment into adaptation, and claims to be compensated. Anthropogenic climate change is a global process affecting the lives and well-being of millions of people now and countless number of people in the future. 1 Although the effects of climate change are likely to appear as the result of natural processes and disasters – and even though it may be difficult, for the time being at least even impossible, to distinguish them from natural misfortunes – they are in fact the result of human energy use and policy. Without substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, especially CO 2 , the most likely rise in the mean equilibrium surface temperature of the Earth over pre-industrial times by the end of this century is in the range of 3.7 to 4.8 °C, but the possible range is much wider, 2.5 to 7.8 °C. 2 That much warming at that rate is unprecedented in human history. It would produce high to very high risks of severely negative effects, including widespread loss of species and eco-systemic destruction, heat waves, extreme precipitation, and large and irreversible sea-level rise from ice sheet loss. 3 For humans, these consequences would include significant threats to food security globally and regionally, increased risks of from food-borne and water-borne as well as vector-borne diseases, increased displacement of people due migrations, increased risks of violent conf licts, slowed economic growth and poverty eradication, and the creation of new poverty traps. 4 According to some forecasts, such warming could simply overwhelm the capacity of communities in various regions to adapt, rendering certain areas uninhabitable. '[T]he limits for human adaptation are likely to be exceeded in many parts of the world, while the limits of adaptation for natural resource systems would largely be exceeded throughout the world.' 5 Principles of justice are statements of what persons are owed either by others or by institutions and policies. Climate change gives rise to many concern of justice. This article brief ly summarizes some of the most important of these, but due to the need to be brief, some important considerations relevant to justice will not be discussed. For example, although we will discuss formulations of various principles of justice, we will not consider all of the relevant questions regarding the formulation and justification of these principles. Additionally, considerations of justice directly raise questions of responsibility. Accounts of responsibility concern who is called upon to deliver that which is owed to those who are owed. Although there is a reasonably clear distinction in

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References (82)

  1. I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer at Philosophy Compass and Kok-Chor Tan for insightful comments that helped me to improve this paper.
  2. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), Working Group III, Physical Science Basis, Synthesis for Policy Makers, p. 8. Available online at http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/ WG1AR5_SPM_FINAL.pdf. (Accessed 12 June 2014.)
  3. IPCC, AR5, Working Group II, Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability, Synthesis for Policy Makers, pp. 13-14. Available on line at http://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/images/uploads/WG2AR5\_SPM\_FINAL.pdf. (Accessed 12 June 2014.)
  4. Ibid., pp. 17-21.
  5. Rachel Warren, 'The Role of Interactions in a World Implementing Adaptation and Mitigation Solutions to Climate Change,' Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 369 (2001): 234.
  6. Henry Shue, 'Deadly Delays, Saving Opportunities: Creating a More Dangerous World?' in Stephen M. Gardiner et al. eds. Climate Ethics: Essential Readings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 146-162. See also John Nolt, 'Greenhouse Gas Emissions and the Domination of Posterity', in Denis G. Arnold ed. The Ethics of Global Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Nolt argues that the vulnerability threatens the possibility of the domination of posterity by the present generation.
  7. IPCC, AR4, Working Group I, The Physical Science Basis. Global climate Projections, p. 824. Available online at http:// www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter10.pdf. (Accessed 12 June 2014.)
  8. IPCCC, AR5, The Physical Science Basis, Synthesis for Policy Makers, p. 27.
  9. IPCCC, AR5, Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability, Synthesis for Policy Makers, p. 10.
  10. This approach is used for example in both William Nordhaus, A Question of Balance: Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008) and Nicolas Stern, the Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
  11. See also my The Moral Challenge of Dangerous Climate Change: Values, Policy, and Poverty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), chp. 4.
  12. See my 'Justice and the Assignment of the Intergenerational Costs of Climate Change,' Journal of Social Philosophy, 40 (2009a): 204-224; and Axel Schaffer and Darrel Moellendorf, 'Beyond Discounted Utilitarianism-Just Distribution of Climate Costs,' Karlsruher Beitäge zur Wirtschaftspolitischen Forschung 34 (2014).
  13. IPCCC, AR5, Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability, Synthesis for Policy Makers, p. 19.
  14. United Nation Human Development Programme, Human Development Report 2007-08. 15 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Art. 25, para. 1. Available online at http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ index.shtml. (Accessed 14 June 2014.)
  15. International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Article 11, para. 1. Available online at http://www. ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CESCR.aspx. (Accessed 14 June 2014.)
  16. See Simon Caney, 'Climate Change, Human rights, and Moral Thresholds,' in Stephen Humphreys, ed., Human Rights and Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). See also Derek Bell, 'Does Anthropogenic Climate Change Violate Human Rights?' Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 14 (2011): 99-124; Tim Hayward 'Human Rights versus Emissions Rights: Climate Justice and the Equitable Distribution of Ecological Space,' Ethics and International Affairs (2007) 21: 431-450; David Miller 'Global Justice and Climate Change: How Should Responsibilities Be Distributed?' The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Tsinghua University, Beijing, March 24-25, 2008, available online at http://tannerlectures.utah.edu/\_documents/a-to-z/m/Miller\_08.pdf. (Accessed 14 June 2014.);
  17. Henry Shue, 'Bequeathing Hazards: Security Rights and Property Rights of Future Humans' in Dore, M, Mount, T, eds. Global Environmental Economics: Equity and the Limits to Markets (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), pp. 38-53; and Henry Shue, 'Human Rights, Climate Change, and the Trillionth Ton,' in Denis Arnold, ed. The Ethics of Global Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 292-314.
  18. This argument is developed in my The Moral Challenge of Dangerous Climate Change, pp. 24-26 and 230-235.
  19. For a property rights defense of grandfathering, see Luc Bovens, 'A Lockean Defense of Grandfathering Emission Rights,' in Denis Arnold, ed. The Ethics of Global Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 124-144.
  20. Martino Traxler, 'Fair Chore Division for Climate Change,' Social Theory and Practice 28 (2002): 101-134.
  21. Dale Jamieson, 'Adaptation, Mitigation, and Justice,' in Walter Sinnot -Armstrong and Ricard B. Howarth eds. Perspectives on Climate Change: Science, Economics, Politics, Ethics (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2005), pp. 229-233; Peter Singer, One World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), pp. 35-49;
  22. Edward A. Page, Climate Change Justice and Future Generations (Cheltennam: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006);
  23. and Steve Vanderheiden, Atmospheric Justice: A Political Theory of Climate Change (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
  24. Simon Caney, 'Climate Change, Energy Rights, and Equality,' in Denis Arnold, ed. The Ethics of Global Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 77-103.
  25. This criticism is also made by Stepehn M. Gardiner 'Ethics and Global Climate Change,' Ethics 114 (2004): 555-600. 25 Equal per capita shares may not safeguard human development sufficiently. See my 'Treaty Norms and Climate Change Mitigation,' Ethics and International Affairs 23 (2009): 204-224; and my 'Common Atmospheric Ownership and Equal Emissions Entitlements', in Denis Arnold, ed. The Ethics of Global Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 104-123.
  26. See my 'A Right to Sustainable Development,' The Monist (2011) 94: 433-452. See also chapter five of The Moral Challenge of Dangerous Climate Change.
  27. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Article 3, para. 4. Available online at http://unfccc.int/ files/essential_background/background_publications_htmlpdf/application/pdf/conveng.pdf. (Accessed 14 June 2014.)
  28. Henry Shue, 'Subsistence Emissions and Luxury Emissions,' Law & Policy 15 (1993): 39-59.
  29. See Paul G. Harris, World Ethics and Climate Change: From International Justice to Global Justice (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2010).
  30. Eric A. Posner and David Weisbach, Climate Change Justice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), p. 6. 31 Ibid., pp. 73-75.
  31. IPCC, AR5, Working Group III, Mitigation and Climate Change, Summary for Policymakers, p. 8. Available online at http://report.mitigation2014.org/spm/ipcc\_wg3\_ar5\_summary-for-policymakers\_approved.pdf. (Accessed 14 June 2014.)
  32. Warren, 'The Role of Interactions in a World Implementing Adaptation and Mitigation Solutions to Climate Change,' 234.
  33. See also J. Timmons Roberts and Bradley C. Parks, A Climate of Injustice: Global Inequality, North-south Politics, and Climate Policy (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2007), esp. chp. 2.
  34. I have a discussion of these principles in The Moral Challenge of Dangerous Climate Change chp. 6.
  35. IPCC, AR5, The Physical Science Basis, Summary for Policymakers, pp. 8 and 11.
  36. Stephen H. Schneider and Janica Lane, 'Dangers and Thresholds in Climate Change and the Implications for Justice' (Cambridge, MA: the MIT Press, 2006), p. 47.
  37. See also Jamieson, 'Adaptation, Mitigation, and Justice,' p. 223.
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  39. See also Henry Shue, 'Subsistence Emissions and Luxury Emissions.'
  40. I am stipulating that compensation applies in cases of failure to mitigate and adapt. The term compensation is used differently by Daniel A. Farber in 'The Case for Climate Compensation,' Utah Law Review 2008 (2008): 377-413. Farber proposes an international commission 'that would receive claims from countries that have incurred adaptation expenses' (p. 497). Simon Caney discusses the importance of compensation in the same sense that I am using it in his 'Climate Change, Human rights, and Moral Thresholds,' in Stephen Humphreys, ed., Human Rights and Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
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