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

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

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


1
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

2
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.

3
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.

4
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?
5
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6
Why are ethical questions more salient at the
global scale?
The Consequences Are Potentially Catastrophic
7
US GHG Emissions Also Are Contributing To
Flooding Around the World
8
US GHG Emissions Also Are Contributing To Loss
of Food Supply
9
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10
Glacier Dependent Rivers in Asia
11
Vulnerability to Drought Exposure Sensitivity
Frequency
Mortality
12
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
13
271 Gigatonnes left for the entire world
14
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
15
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16
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17
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18
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

19
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

20
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

21
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

22
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

23
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.

24
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.

25
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

26
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

27
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.

28
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.

29
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)

30
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
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