The Urgent and Practical Need To Turn up the Volume on The Ethical Dimensions of Climate Change

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The Urgent and Practical Need To Turn up the
Volume on The Ethical Dimensions of Climate
Change

• Donald A. Brown
• Scholar In Residence and Professor
• Widener University School Of Law

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Objectives of Presentation

• There are features of climate change unlike any
  other environmental issue, that scream for
  attention as seeing it as a moral problem.
• Neither the US media nor most environmental NGOs
  groups are bringing to the attention of the
  public the ethical, justice, and fairness issues
  of climate change.

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Goals of Presentation

• Governments cannot think clearly about policy
  options until they think clearly about the
  ethical issues
• The strongest arguments made against the five
  most frequent arguments made against climate
  policies are arguments based upon ethics and
  justice
• We need to call on the US government (federal and
  state) and all governments to expressly respond
  to the ethical issues raised by various climate
  policy.

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Why are ethical questions more salient at the
global scale?
Makes this happen here.
This here
Questions of Damage Responsibility Distributive
Justice? Welfare Maximization? Procedural
Justice? Human Rights?
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Why are ethical questions more salient at the
global scale?
The Consequences Are Potentially Catastrophic
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US GHG Emissions Also Are Contributing To
Flooding Around the World
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US GHG Emissions Also Are Contributing To Loss
of Food Supply
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Glacier Dependent Rivers in Asia
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Vulnerability to Drought Exposure Sensitivity
Frequency
Mortality
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Governments interests do not coincide with
those harmed by the emission of greenhouse gases
These people cant petition their government for
protection
In general, the U.S. government represents the
interest of its citizens only, not the interests
of others!
Who represents these people ?
responsible for climate change
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271 Gigatonnes left for the entire world
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The Equity Question Who gets to fill the rest of
the atmospheric bathtub given limited remaining
space to limit atmospheric GHG concentrations to
safe levels, different historical and per capita
emissions that have filled the bathtub to current
levels, and the needs of poor countries to grow
economically.
The Justice Question What levels of GHGs will be
permitted in the bathtub given that the higher
the levels (a) the greater the harms to those
countries and millions of poor people that have
done little to fill the bathtub, and (b) the
greater the threat of rapid, abrupt, potentially
catastrophic climate change.
Developing Countries
Other EU
The atmosphere is like a bathtub a space with a
limited volume
Russia
Germany
France
India
Above this line very dangerous climate change
Brazil
450 ppm CO2 , 50 chance gt 2 deg C
Australia
Some nations filled this space much more than
others
400 ppm CO2 now
USA
280 ppm CO2, approximate 10, 000 year
level before industrial revolution
Canada
China
Donald A. Brown, Scholar In Residence and
Professor, Widener University Law School,
dabrown57_at_gmail.com
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Lima Call to Action

• Reiterates its invitation to all Parties to
  communicate their intended nationally determined
  contributions well in advance of the twenty-first
  session of the Conference of the Parties (by the
  first quarter of 2015 by those Parties ready to
  do so) in a manner that facilitates the clarity,
  transparency and understanding of the intended
  nationally determined contributions

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Lima Decision

• Agrees that the information to be provided by
  Parties communicating their intended nationally
  determined contributions, in order to facilitate
  clarity, transparency and understanding, may
  include, as appropriate, inter alia, quantifiable
  information on the reference point (including, as
  appropriate, a base year), time frames and/or
  periods for implementation, scope and coverage,
  planning processes, assumptions and
  methodological approaches including those for
  estimating and accounting for anthropogenic
  greenhouse gas emissions and, as appropriate,
  removals, and how the Party considers that its
  intended nationally determined contribution is
  fair and ambitious, in light of its national
  circumstances, and how it contributes towards
  achieving the objective of the Convention as set
  out in its Article 2

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Issues on the Paris Agenda

• More ambition from nations to close the ambition
  gap, whether nations will take their
  responsibility to reduce their emissions based
  upon equity seriously.
• Whether all, some, or developed nations will
  accept a legally binding target
• Funding for adaptation, where will the 100
  billion needed for least developed nations be
  based upon secure, predictable funding
• Whether a loss and damages fund will be created
• Whether 2 degree C warming limit will remain or
  whether 1.5 degree target replace current
  agreement.
• Will Kyoto trading mechanisms survive? New market
  mechanism?
• Issues surrounding green fund, adaptation fund.
• Issues surrounding REDD and tech transfer

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Twenty-Five Year Attack on Proposed US
Climate Policies In Which the Press and Many US
NGOs Have Ignored the Strong Ethical Response
Arguments

• Cost Too Much
• Destroy jobs or specific industries
• Cost-Benefit
• The US Should Not To Do Anything Until Other
  Countries Like China Act
• Not Sufficient Scientific Support For Action

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The major ethical issues

• The atmospheric stabilization goal
• Any nations or governments fair share of safe
  global emissions
• Who should pay for adaptation costs
• Who has responsibility for losses and damages.
• The ethical obligations of subnational
  governments, organizations, entities, and
  individuals to stop emitting ghgs

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The need for applied ethics

• All claims about what should be done about
  environmental issues already have an implicit
  factual claim and an implicit normative claim.
• Most academic environmental ethics has been
  focused on theoretical distinctions such as how
  to ground a non-anthropocentric basis for
  protecting the environment. We need an applied
  climate ethics
• There is a huge need to help citizens and policy
  makers unpack the implicit normative claims in
  arguments about environmental policy that are
  often hidden in technical language.

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An Applied Ethics

• An applied environmental ethics groups main
  function would be to spot ethical issues raised
  by various claims
• Get policy makers to understand that one not need
  to agree on what perfect justice requires to make
  progress on ethics and justice.
• The IPCC recent work on ethics and equity is an
  interesting example.

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What DO We Actually Know About How Nations Have
Considered or Ignored Ethics and Justice

• National Climate Justice
• Research Project on Ethics and Justice in
  Formulating National Climate Change Policies

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What Have We Learned

• All Governments are relying in part on economic
  self-interest rather than global responsibilities
• No nation has explained how its commitment
  quantitatively links to an atmospheric carbon
  budget or an equity framework.
• Some nations have acknowledged that their
  commitments needs to achieve a 2 0C budget and be
  based upon equity but dont describe how their
  target accomplishes this goal

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How do we get the US media to cover?

• The ethical issues already at the center of
  international climate negotiations
• All nations must reduce their ghg emissions to
  their fair share of safe global emissions
  regardless of what other nations do
• IPCC conclusions on ethics and equity in Working
  Group III
• The unacceptable ethical responses to arguments
  against US climate policies that have been made
  for 20 years.

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We must demand

• That US and all governments respond expressly to
  the ethical issues such as
• What atmospheric stabilization goal does your
  emissions goal seek to achieve?
• How did you consider fairness in setting your
  emissions reduction percentage goal?
• How does your climate policy lead to emissions
  reductions in the short- medium- and long term
  to prevent catastrophic harms to others
• On what ethical basis can you claim that
  high-emitting governments and individuals have no
  responsibility to pay for adaptation, harms, and
  damages to vulnerable poor people around the
  world.

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Two web sites

• Ethicsandclimate.org (150 articles on ethics and
  climate)
• Nationalclimatejustice.org (detailed analysis of
  the extent to which ethics and justice have been
  taken into account in setting climate policy in
  Australia, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Cameroon, Canada,
  Chile, China, Equator, Germany, Ghana, India,
  Japan, Kenya, Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway,
  Malawi, Mauritius, Marshall Islands, Nepal,
  Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Russia, South Africa,
  South Korea, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, United
  Kingdom, USA, Zimbabwe)

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Contact Information

• Donald A. Brown
• Scholar In Residence and Professor, Widener
  University School of Law
• Part-time Professor, Nanjing University Of
  Information Science and Technology
• Ethicsandclimte.org
• dabrown57_at_gmail.com