Justice and the Assignment of the Intergenerational Costs of Climate Change (original) (raw)
Related papers
Intergenerational Justice, Human Needs, and Climate Policy (Clark Wolf 2009)
Intergenerational Justice, Oxford, 2009
Because present actions will shape the world inherited by our children and by later generations, we can influence their lives for good or for ill. Anthropogenic climate change and the resultant environmental damage presents an especially pressing instance of this influence. There is now no room for serious doubt that human activities, especially those that have occurred over the past fifty years, have warmed the earth and influenced the global climate. Evidence of this influence is not difficult to find: data indicate that the surface temperature of the earth is rising, as are sea levels. Recent decades have seen dramatic increases in the rate of retreat of glaciers and polar ice and permafrost. Biologists record the migration of species up the slopes of mountains and farther from equatorial latitudes as their environment has changed as a result of global warming. In addition to these indicators of change, we have substantial data documenting increased levels of CO 2 and other greenhouse gases in the earth's atmosphere, and good evidence that these increases are the result of human activities. Finally we have a plausible hypothesis linking warming trends to the presence of these gasses in our atmosphere. Under the circumstances, it would be surprising if we found that anthropogenic emissions were not influencing global climate.¹ FN:1
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
Climate Change and Future Generations
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
Efforts to reduce greenhouse gases and control climate change implicate a wide range of social, moral, economic, and political issues, none of them simple or clear. But when regulators evaluate the desirability of climate change mitigation through costbenefit analysis, one factor typically determines whether mitigation is justified: the discount rate, the rate at which future benefits are converted to their present value. Even low discount rates make the value of future benefits close to worthless: at a discount rate of three percent, ten million dollars five hundred years from now is worth thirty-eight cents today-that is more than we would be willing to pay now to save a life than under a standard cost-benefit analysis. Discounting over very long periods, like in the context of climate change, has long perplexed economists, philosophers, and legal scholars alike.
Intergenerational Justice and Climate Change
Political Studies, 1999
Global climate change has important implications for the way in which benefits and burdens will be distributed amongst present and future generations. As a result it raises important questions of intergenerational justice. It is shown that there is at least one serious problem for those who wish to approach these questions by utilising familiar principles of justice. This is that such theories often pre-suppose harm-based accounts of injustice which are incompatible with the fact that the very social policies which climatologists and scientists claim will reduce the risks of climate change will also predictably, if indirectly, determine which individuals will live in the future. One proposed solution to this problem is outlined grounded in terms of 2 See M. Grubb, 'Seeking fair weather: ethics and the international debate on climate change ', International Affairs, 71, 3 (1995), 463-96; H. Shue, 'Avoidable necessity: Global warming, international fairness, and alternative energy', in I.
Climate Change For: Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics
and Keywords Understanding the complex set of processes collected under the heading of climate change represents a considerable scientific challenge. But it also raises important challenges for our best moral theories. For instance, in assessing the risks that climate change poses, we face profound questions about how we ought to weigh the respective harms it may inflict on current and on future generations, and on humans and other species. We face, in addition, difficult questions about how to act in conditions of uncertainty, in which at least some of the consequences of climate change – and of various human interventions to adapt to or mitigate it – are difficult to predict fully (Gardiner, 2006). Even if we agree that mitigating climate change is morally required, furthermore, there is room for disagreement about the precise extent to which it ought to be mitigated (insofar as there is room for underlying disagreement about the level of temperature rises which are morally permissible). Finally, once we determine which actions we ought to take to reduce or avoid climate change, we face the normative question of who ought to bear the costs of those actions, as well as the costs associated with any climate change which nevertheless comes to pass. The primary focus of this chapter will be upon this final issue. On the assumption that limiting climate change is morally required, our mitigation efforts are likely to prove costly for some if not all of us. Moreover, even if we mitigate now, some people will incur losses as a result of greenhouse gas emissions to date. We therefore require guidance on exactly how, from the point of view of justice, the associated burdens ought to be shared.
Climate Change and Future Justice: Precaution, Compensation and Triage
Climate change creates unprecedented problems of intergenerational justice. What do members of the current generation owe to future generations in virtue of the contribution they are making to climate change? This books presents arguments in three key areas: Mitigation: the current generation ought to adopt a strong precautionary principle in formulating climate change policy in order to minimise the risks of serious harm from climate change imposed on future generations. Adaptation: the current generation ought to create a fund to which members of future generations may apply for compensation if the risks of climate change harm imposed on them by the current generation ripen into harms. Triage: future generations ought to keep alive hope for a return to the framework of justice for social cooperation between future people less burdened by climate change.
Climate Change, Justice and Future Generations
Journal of Moral Philosophy, 2010
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Climate Change, Policy, and Justice
Nachhaltige Entwicklung in einer Gesellschaft des Umbruchs
Climate change and climate change policy raise important issues of intergenerational and international justice. Intergenerational justice requires that CO2 emissions be halted by the middle of this century or shortly thereafter. But since human development requires energy, the elimination of emissions raises important questions of international justice. Responding adequately to climate change requires international cooperation in order to affect a rapid transition to renewable energy production and consumption and to safeguard conditions in which continued progress in human development can be made.