Climate Change Ethics : Navigating the Perfect Moral Storm 9781136243653, 9780415625715

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Climate Change Ethics

Climate change is now the biggest challenge faced by humanity worldwide and ethics is the crucial missing component to the debate. This book examines why a thirty-five-year discussion of human-induced warming has failed to acknowledge fundamental ethical concerns, and subjects climate change’s most important policy questions to ethical analysis. The ethical dimension to climate change is so crucial because the climate change threat is caused by the wealthiest of the world’s population putting the most vulnerable at risk. The victims of climate change can only hope that those responsible for it will understand their obligation to the rest of the world and reduce their emissions accordingly. Modern assumptions of civilization are also fundamentally challenged as huge reductions in the use of fossil fuels are required to protect life and the ecological systems on which life depends. This book examines why ethical principles have failed to gain traction in policy formation and recommends specific strategies to ensure that climate change policies are consistent with ethical principles. Because climate change is a global problem that requires a global solution, and given that many nations refuse participation due to perceived inequities of an international solution, this book explains why ensuring that nations, sub-national governments, organizations, businesses and individuals acknowledge and respond to their ethical obligations is both an ethical and practical mandate. It is the first book of its kind to go beyond a mere account of relevant ethical questions to offer a pragmatic guide on how to make ethical principles relevant and integral to the world’s response to climate change. Written by Donald A. Brown, a leading voice in the field, it should be of interest to policy makers, and those studying environmental policy, climate change policy, international relations, environmental ethics, and philosophy. Donald A. Brown is Scholar in Residence on Sustainability Ethics and Law at Widener University School of Law, USA.

Climate Change Ethics

Navigating the Perfect Moral Storm

Donald A. Brown

First published 2013 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2013 Donald A. Brown The right of Donald A. Brown to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing- in-Publication Data Brown, Donald A., 1944– Climate change ethics : navigating the perfect moral storm / Donald A. Brown.   p. cm.   “Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada”--T.p. verso.   Includes bibliographical references and index.   1. Climatic changes--Moral and ethical aspects. 2. Global warming--Moral   and ethical aspects. 3. Environmental ethics. 4. Climatic changes-  Government policy 5. Global warming--Government policy 6.   Environmental policy. I. Title.   GE42.B78 2013 179’.1--dc23  2012017131 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN13: 978-0-415-62571-5 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-62572-2 (pbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-10323-4 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman and Gill Sans by Bookcraft Ltd, Stroud, Gloucestershire

Endorsements

Climate change raises some of the most profound ethical issues of our time. And yet, for thirty years our policy responses have evaded comprehensive ethical analysis. This book puts an end to this grave and unjust omission. However, the outstanding contribution of this book is its explanation of how ethical considerations can bring moral responsibility to the forefront of climate policy and action. Prue Taylor, University of Auckland, New Zealand Don Brown, navigates the troubled waters of climate change denial. He deconstructs the cynical efforts by vested interests to pollute the public discourse by means of a climate change disinformation campaign. Brown also makes a compelling argument that limiting carbon emissions and mitigating climate change is the ethical imperative of our time. Michael Mann, Pennsylvania State University, USA In this fascinating book, Donald A. Brown draws on his vast experience to explore one of the great ethical issues of our time, and provides recommendations about how to bring ethical issues into the formulation of global warming policy responses. Richard Alley, Pennsylvania State University, USA Climate change is essentially an ethical challenge to all people in all nations. Donald Brown increases our awareness not only of the ethical dimensions of climate change science, economics, and the allocation of national greenhouse gas targets but also how we might effectively integrate ethical principles into climate policy formation. Shi Jun, Nanjing University of Information’s Science and Technology, China Professor Brown eloquently reminds us that human-caused climate change is no illusion. Our approaching ‹moral storm› promises to shipwreck the global community of nations. Can we stem this rising tide of ignorance, poverty, injustice, and human suffering? Yes. Should we? Most definitely, and Brown carefully charts our ethical course out of these deepest public policy waters with vision and courage. Paul Carrick, Gettysburg College, USA

Contents

Acknowledgements ix Preface x Part I

Introduction: The Climate Change Debate

1

1 Introduction: Navigating the Perfect Moral Storm in Light of a Thirty-Five-Year Debate

3

2 Thirty-Five-Year Climate Change Policy Debate Part II

20

Priority Climate Change Ethical Issues

55

3 Ethical Problems with Cost Arguments

57

4 Ethics and Scientific Uncertainty Arguments about Climate Change 91 5 Atmospheric Targets

138

6 Allocating National Emissions Targets

156

7 Ethical Responsibility of Nations for Climate Change Damages and Adaptation Costs

178

8 Obligations of Sub-national Governments, Organizations, Businesses, and Individuals

195

viii Contents

9 Independent Responsibility to Act

212

Part III

The Crucial Role of Ethics in Climate Change Policy Making 221 10 Why has Ethics Failed to Achieve Traction?

223

11 Conclusion: Navigating “The Perfect Moral Storm” of Climate Change

241

Notes References Index

251 252 268

Acknowledgements

My deep gratitude goes to a number of people who have assisted me with this book. First and foremost is my wife, Linda H. Brown, who patiently helped me with editing and preparing the manuscript. I am indebted to many others including Dr. John Lemons, a good friend who reviewed the book and has provided the Preface; my graduate assistant, Yi Zhang, who helped with many of the book’s logistical issues; and Dr. Paul Carrick for reading the manuscript. I am also indebted to Stephen Gardiner whose book, The Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change, provided inspiration for this one. I am not sure Dr. Gardiner would agree with the conclusions here, yet his book triggered some of my thinking about why there has been so little public response to the ethical dimensions of climate change. Dr. Gardiner’s book was the first on climate ethics that not only delved into the ethical questions raised by climate change, but also examined the failure of adequate ethical responses.

Preface

About 35 years ago, academic and public policy discussions concerning anthropogenic global climate change (AGW) started becoming more contentious. The best available science indicated that human influences, primarily fossil fuel use and secondarily land use changes, were altering the global climate. Policy choices to slow AGW became fraught with difficult and complicated consequences, e.g. whether, how, and at what cost to significantly decrease reliance on fossil fuels. Added to this milieu of difficulties has been the more recent rise of the so-called “climate change denier” industry—individuals and groups ideologically opposed to recognizing the existence of AGW despite overwhelming scientific information about its existence. I first met Don at a conference in 1988, where we served as members on the same panel. As is Don’s wont, we immediately began talking about scientific and policy-relevant issues. Our discussion originated during remarks made on the conference panel but spilled into the conference hotel’s bar, where fueled by several beers we continued to talk while waiting for taxis to take us to the airport and our return home. Later, our discussions extended to many international meetings and venues. I mention this personal history because in the intervening years I have learnt a lot from Don, despite my having a natural science background that allows me to understand scientific and public policy aspects of AGW and other environmental problems reasonably well. In short, becoming a student of Don’s work on AGW taught me a great deal and should teach all of us something valuable. Don “gets something” that many scientists, public policy experts, and philosophers do not. Don recognizes that AGW may, indeed, be the greatest environmental and social threat facing the human community and the planet itself. However, he goes beyond where others have trodden and, as per this book, provides convincing arguments and examples of why solutions to AGW must explicitly be framed, not on abstract and theoretical levels—as too many academics consistently do—but rather on practical levels, so that public policy makers and others understand the concrete value-laden and ethical implications of AGW and simultaneously understand that AGW policies must be understood as having ethical consequences, good or bad, depending on what is embedded in



Preface xi

them. Abstract and theoretical discussions absent embodiment in practical and concrete policy discussions and language are of little use to solving the problem of AGW. In a sense, Don’s book demonstrates this and hopefully will serve as encouragement for others to be less abstract and more concrete. By so doing, Don also expresses his firm belief that people and governments’ representatives must understand that ethical guidance is needed to overcome opposition to AGW policy formulation, and with such understanding will come a commitment to help solve one of the greatest threats to both humankind and those with whom humans share our fragile planet. And if this understanding is achieved, then hope might prevail over despair, which is always lurking in the background when considering the daunting tasks of solving AGW. John Lemons, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus of Biology and Environmental Science Department of Environmental Studies University of New England Biddeford, ME 04005 USA

Part I

Introduction: The Climate Change Debate

Chapter 1

Introduction Navigating the Perfect Moral Storm in Light of a Thirty-Five-Year Debate

The Book’s Purpose This book has been written because although climate change raises many obvious world-challenging ethical issues, there has been a 35-year debate about what should be done to reduce climate change’s immense threat. A debate that for the most part, as we shall see when we examine it in detail, has utterly failed to recognize the ethical dimensions of human-induced warming. Unlike most previous literature on climate change ethics, this book is interested not only in what are the ethical issues entailed by climate change but, more importantly, how to make ethical guidance more influential in policy formation. Any concern about the ethics of climate change needs to consider how to assure that ethics is actually taken into consideration when climate change policies are formed. In addition, ethical analysis of climate change must also be sensitive to the actual ethical issues that arise when solutions to climate change are under discussion. As we shall see, the absence of ethical reflection on positions taken on climate change is stunning given the fact that climate change must be understood as an ethical problem. Climate change has been called the greatest environmental and social threat facing the human community. Of course, there are other grave problems that are competing for recognition as the world’s most dire menace, such as terrorism, or social chaos created by the inability of the global economy to produce living wages for billions around the world. Yet, as we shall see throughout this book, the claim that climate change is the most threatening issue facing humanity is entitled to serious respect given that the scientific “consensus” view about climate change holds that: (a) the planet is heating up due to human actions, (b) the consequences of this, under business-as-usual, are dire particularly for some of the world’s poorest people in the short- to medium-term, and for most of humanity later in this century, (c) some people are causing this problem much more than others and those who are most vulnerable can do almost nothing to reduce the threat, (d) to prevent great harms, hard-to-imagine global policy responses are required, and (e) the chance of these conclusions being wrong, although not 100 percent certain, is increasingly improbable.

4  Introduction: The Debate Climate change is an immense challenge to the human race, not only because of climate change’s potential catastrophic impacts on human health and the ecological systems on which life depends all around the world, but also because of the hard-to-imagine responses from the human community that are needed to avert extraordinarily harsh impacts if the mainstream scientific view is correct. Climate change is, therefore, both an ominous threat and a hard problem to solve. As we shall see in the book, the urgently needed policy responses must be understood not only for civilization’s self-interest, but are also demanded by basic morality. This is because hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest people are most vulnerable to climate change’s harshest impacts, and these same people have done little to cause the problem. In fact, climate change must be understood in its essence as an ethical problem for many reasons discussed throughout this book. Yet a review of the 35-year debate about climate change, looked at in this book, reveals that the ethical dimensions of climate change policy are largely being ignored when actual arguments are made concerning what to do about climate change. This chapter introduces the ethical issues that need to be considered in policy formation in light of a 35-year debate about climate change policy responses. Subsequent chapters review the history of the climate change debate and deduce in more detail the ethical issues relevant to arguments that have been made in support of, or in opposition to, the responses to proposed climate change policy. This analysis has been motivated by the fact that although climate change raises many civilization-challenging ethical issues, for the most part, the international community, national and sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals have not responded to or even acknowledged their ethical obligations. Not only have those who have responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions failed to admit that they have ethical obligations, as we shall see during the 35-year debate discussed here, there has hardly been a murmur in the press or in domestic political discussions about the ethical duties of nations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. This book explores why this is so and makes recommendations about how to assure that ethical guidance is much more influential in government, organizational, and individual responses to climate change. One might ask what hope there is that turning up the volume on the ethical dimensions of responses to climate change will make any practical difference. If people around the world are mostly motivated by self-interest rather than ethical obligations, what evidence is there that expressly injecting ethical reasoning into the policy debate will change anything? If the solution to climate change requires massive social change, one might ask whether ethical arguments are capable of successfully contributing to or causing the needed social change. Although these issues are beyond the scope of this book, several things may be said about the potential efficacy of moral arguments to make a practical difference in public affairs. First, climate change is a problem that requires a global solution. There is little hope of achieving a just solution to climate change unless moral arguments are made. If a global solution is not just, climate change policies will, very likely,



Navigating the Storm  5

exacerbate existing patterns of injustice in the world, making the poor both poorer and more vulnerable to harsh climate impacts. For this reason, encouraging the world to seek a morally acceptable solution to climate change should be the goal of climate policy, for it is the right thing to do. And so, as long as there is any hope that persuasive ethical arguments could lead to more just solutions to climate change, they should be made. In addition to making ethical arguments about just responses to climate change because it is the right thing to do, there is considerable evidence that persuasive ethical arguments have been an indispensable ingredient in causing needed social change in successful social movements including civil, women’s, and human rights movements around the world, the criminalization of genocide and other crimes against humanity, and in the establishment of fair judicial processes in many countries. In other words, moral arguments have often been influential in bringing positive social change on some issues (Appiah 2010). However, moral arguments by themselves may need to be supplemented by other social strategies to achieve significant positive change. For instance, Appiah (2010) describes how moral arguments often had to be coupled with strategies to change a culture’s understanding of when honors should be bestowed on its members before cultural social norms changed. In making this point Appiah examines the end of dueling in England in the early 19th century; the cessation of the practice of foot-binding women in China at the beginning of the 20th century; and the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. In these cases moral arguments needed to be augmented by strategies to convince people that the dominant social codes of the clan, tribe, or social structure were dishonorable; yet moral arguments made initially by a courageous minority in the culture were indispensable elements in achieving positive social change. And so, if widespread social change is necessary before countries like the United States will adopt climate change policies—which are both sufficient to achieve the hard-to-imagine greenhouse gas emissions reductions necessary to prevent dangerous climate change; and also achieve just solutions—ethical arguments are necessary but perhaps insufficient elements in any strategy designed to achieve social change. Therefore, greater understanding of the ethical dimensions of climate change policy issues may not make a significant difference in policy outcomes unless ethical argumentation is supported by additional social action. This action might include, for instance: (a) strategies to raise public awareness about the dishonorable behavior of those who oppose climate change policies on the basis of self-interest, (b) acts of non-violent civil disobedience, or (c) other strategies to heighten awareness of the immense human suffering caused by the unethical behavior of some who are causing climate change. And so discussion of the ethical dimensions of climate change may not alone achieve policy change without organized social action. Ethicists can help those who organize social action designed to achieve acceptance of global responsibilities for climate change, but academic climate change ethics by itself is not likely to achieve social change.

6  Introduction: The Debate Although a few ethicists were engaged in climate change ethics before 2000, during the last decade there has been a growing scholarly and policy interest in climate change ethics.1 Yet for the most part the analyses of ethical questions examined in the recent climate ethics literature have been focused on broad ethical questions, such as what is any nation’s fair share of safe global emissions. Climate change ethicists have rarely engaged in actual climate change policy disputes as they have arisen in contentious climate change policy debates. As we shall see, because there has been little acknowledgement of ethical issues in policy debates about climate change, there has been little recognition of ethical duties, responsibilities, or obligations that should be seen as limitations on national, regional, organizational, or individual self-interest in formulating domestic policy climate change policies, or in international negotiations seeking to create a global solution to climate change that are now more than two decades old. This book both examines priority ethical issues entailed by climate change and makes recommendations on how to make ethical considerations become influential in policy formation. It will explain why those interested in a just climate change solution must engage more directly as policy options are debated and formed. They must focus more on what is ethically problematic with positions taken by disputants in climate change debates rather than on what perfect justice requires of climate change issues. Most of the previous climate ethics literature has focused on ethical analysis of significant climate change issues rather than on ethical problems with specific positions taken by disputants in climate change debates. In its examination of this long-term debate, the book teases out of policy arguments the most important ethical questions that need to be confronted to overcome opposition to the formation of climate change policy. The book will also demonstrate that ethical guidance has been a crucial missing consideration in actual climate change debates, despite the fact that climate change policy disputes raise many civilization-challenging ethical issues. In A Perfect Moral Storm, the Ethical Tragedy of the Climate Change, Stephen Gardiner (2011) argues that climate change must be understood as a moral problem. Yet Gardiner points out that there are certain features of climate change that make citizens resilient to the pull of moral responsibility. Gardiner and a few other ethicists who have written recently on the subject, have emphasized that climate change must be understood essentially as a moral problem. It is a moral matter because many of the policy issues that need to be resolved to achieve a global solution must look to ethical principles for their resolution. In other words, to resolve such questions as to what levels of greenhouse gas emissions each nation is responsible to achieve a global solution that limits warming to tolerable levels, nations will necessarily have to consider what constitutes each nation’s fair share of safe global emissions. The question of “fairness” is not a factual matter that can be resolved by the application of “value-neutral” analytical tools, but can only be resolved by appeal to ethical guidance including principles of distributive and retributive justice.



Navigating the Storm  7

This book will demonstrate that different ethical issues arise in different stages of policy development. They all can’t be understood abstractly in advance of policy making. Even when determining what emissions levels are “safe,” ethical questions arise such as safe to whom, what levels of scientific confidence should be acceptable about safety levels, and who should have the burden of proof to resolve uncertainties about what constitutes “safe” atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. Of course all environmental problems raise both factual and ethical questions. Yet climate change must be understood as a uniquely civilization-challenging ethical problem, because it is a problem caused by some people who are putting others—who have done little to cause the problem—at great risk. Harms to the most vulnerable will likely be catastrophic if significant emissions reductions are not made in the forthcoming decades, and those most vulnerable to harsh climate change impacts may not petition their own governments for protection from climate change. They must hope that those causing the problem will limit their greenhouse gas emissions because they are motivated by duties, responsibilities, and obligations to others. In other words, climate change must be understood essentially as an ethical problem because of the gravity of the problem and the strong likelihood of an inadequate and unjust response if there is a widespread failure to respond to climate change’s ethical dimensions. There are several civilization-challenging ethical issues raised by the formation of climate change policy as discussed in the relevant literature on climate change ethics. They include such diverse issues as how to fairly structure reduction pathways of greenhouse gas emissions, the appropriate role of economic tools such as cost–benefit analysis in climate change policy formation, ethical issues entailed by scientific uncertainty, and the moral dimensions of geo-engineering solutions to climate change, just to name a few. As we shall, each of these ethical issues raises different ethical questions. There is not just one central ethical issue raised by climate change, but different civilization-challenging ethical issues that raise diverse ethical questions which should be considered in global warming policy formation. Although there is a growing literature on climate change, Gardiner’s (2011) recent book is unique in that its major focus is not solely on the evaluation of ethical issues raised by climate change but also on why civil society has thus far mostly failed to respond to some of the obvious ethical questions raised by human-induced warming. Gardiner’s main thesis in this regard is that climate change is a problem having certain attributes, or using the metaphor “storms,” that act to encourage moral corruption or the propensity among those who cause climate change to ignore their duties, responsibilities, and obligations, which must be recognized if climate change responses are to be just. A great portion of Gardiner’s book is devoted to identification of the features of climate change that are responsible for the moral recalcitrance that we have seen in the inadequate responses in the world. Gardiner groups the features of climate

8  Introduction: The Debate change producing the moral storm into: (a) the global nature of the problem, (b) the intergenerational timescale on which climate change takes place, and (c) the inadequacy of current theoretical models, i.e, ethical and political theories that are often called upon to guide public policy on other sustainability issues. Yet the most important contribution of Gardiner’s book may be in explaining why climate change presents extraordinary challenges for those who seek to put climate change policy on a strong moral footing. Some of the many challenges to the morally based climate change policy identified by Gardner include: 1

the propensity of those who want to put off action to hide behind the excuse that the worst impacts will not happen in the present 2 the inadequacy of our analytical tools that are usually used to frame public policy questions such as cost–benefit analysis 3 some scientific uncertainty about consequences 4 the challenges entailed by the fact that this problem is very similar to cases that can be described as examples of the “tragedy of the commons” and cases that create a situation referred to in game theory as the “prisoner’s dilemma” 5 the separation in time and space of those causing the problem and those who will be harmed 6 the complete inadequacy of international institutions to deal with this problem 7 the fact that the fossil fuel industry needing to be transformed to solve climate change is deeply embedded in modern economies 8 the complexity of the problem overwhelms the application of ethical principles that often can be more easily applied to other less challenging public policy problems. Another important contribution made by Gardiner’s book is a description of how moral corruption about climate change has been made possible by the moral storms discussed in the book. Gardiner defines moral corruption as a state of mind which has been developed through rationalization that casts doubt about the validity and/or structure of moral claims. If people are morally corrupt, their sense of moral duty has been weakened or undermined by rationalization, and thus they follow inclinations to do things in their self-interest rather than acting in accord with moral responsibility. One limitation of Gardiner’s thesis, which Gardiner himself acknowledges in his book, is its relative lack of focus on what should be done in light of the ethical challenges he identifies. In fact, the book could be understood as a very pessimistic assessment of the likelihood that ethical principles will guide the world to a just solution for climate change. That is, Gardiner’s book contains few recommendations about what should be done in light of the barriers to ethically based policy formation aptly discussed therein. This is not necessarily a criticism of A Perfect Moral Storm because Gardiner himself acknowledges the



Navigating the Storm  9

need of future climate change ethics work to find a way to make ethics relevant to policy. Dale Jamieson has also written about features of climate change that make it difficult to draw clear ethical prescriptions. Jamieson notes, for instance: Climate change is not a matter of a clearly identifiable individual acting intentionally so as to inflict an identifiable harm on another identifiable individual, closely related in time and space. Because we tend not to see climate change as a moral problem, it does not motivate us to act with the urgency characteristic of our responses to moral challenges. (Jamieson 2007) And so, several ethicists have argued that the failure of ethics to motivate ethically responsible action on climate change stems from the moral complexity of climate change issues. Such conclusions about the challenges in making moral reasoning more influential in policy formation are worthy of consideration but do little to point the way to what should be done to make ethical reasoning more influential in the development of policy. We will make the case that the failure of ethics to get more traction in the formation of climate change policy is not primarily due to the challenges entailed by attributes of the climate change problem identified by Gardiner and Jamieson. This book will demonstrate that if ethical considerations are to become more of a guide to policy responses to climate change, ethicists must either become more engaged in policy formation, or find ways of increasing public awareness of the obvious ethical problems with arguments that have been made in opposition to the adoption of climate change policies. At the very end of his book, Gardiner hints at the way forward to make ethics more influential to policy development by pointing to the need of those interested in just solutions to bear witness to the immense wrongs being done by those causing climate change. We strongly agree that turning up the volume on the ethical harms of climate change is an important ingredient in making ethical considerations become more influential in guiding responses to climate change. However, this book will identify several additional strategies that need to be followed to give ethical arguments traction in climate change policy development. For instance, ethical analyses of positions taken by some in opposition to proposed climate legislation can often lead to a strong ethical condemnation of these positions despite different theoretical disagreements about what perfect justice requires on these issues. And so, although it may be difficult getting agreement about what justice requires in concrete terms about some climate change issues, as Gardiner suggests, achieving strong concurrence that positions taken by some nations, sub-national governments, organizations, and individuals on these issues are ethically bankrupt is often ethically non-controversial. If climate ethics focuses primarily on abstract ethical questions and is not a force in actually evaluating specific arguments about climate change

10  Introduction: The Debate responses, then climate change ethics is likely to continue to be rarely influential in guiding policy. As we shall see, providing ethical analyses of issues actually in contention as policy responses are opposed, shaped and debated is a key strategy for making ethical guidance a consideration in climate change policy formation. Furthermore, strong ethical criticisms can be made of arguments that have often been in opposition to government action on climate change. Even on issues about which different ethical theories reach different conclusions about what ethics requires. Thus ethical analyses of climate change policy options can be practically useful in narrowing policy options so that compromises can be made among ethically supportable alternative positions. Yet, as we have seen, it may be necessary to combine ethical arguments with social action before the ethical arguments by themselves will affect policy responses. For this reason, the analysis argues that it is a practical mistake for ethicists to focus primarily on what perfect justice requires, rather than on identifying the utter injustice of positions actually being taken on specific climate change issues. This book, therefore, seeks to help those who desire to assure that the world adopts morally acceptable responses to climate change by eliminating from serious consideration ethically troublesome opposition to climate change policies. In this way, it is intended to be a map for navigating the perfect moral storm entailed by climate change. We examine ethical issues most frequently raised by human-induced climate change in light of 35 years of intense controversy about what to do about this civilization-challenging threat to people and the ecological systems on which they depend. The book identifies ethical problems with actual scientific, economic, and political arguments that have been made about whether and how governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals should limit greenhouse gas emissions and thereby respond to the human-induced warming that is already undeniable and which poses huge future threats to tens of millions of people around the world. The figure of 35 years in the title of the chapter is premised on the date when quantitative predictions about likely impacts of human-induced climate change started to regularly appear in scientific journals. Yet one could make an argument that the international community was adequately warned about climate change much earlier than 35 years ago since: • • •

In 1824, John Fourier argued that the Earth would be far colder if it lacked an atmosphere, thus bringing scientific attention to the natural greenhouse gas effect (Weart 2008) In 1859, John Tyndall was the first to correctly measure the infrared absorptive powers of the major greenhouse gases including water vapor, CO2, and methane (Tyndall 1861) In 1896, Svente Arrhenius published the first calculation of likely global warming from human emissions of CO2 (Arrhenius 1896)

 • • •

Navigating the Storm  11 In 1938, G.S. Callendar warned that CO2-induced greenhouse global warming was underway (Callendar 1938) In 1958, Charles Keeling accurately measured CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere and detected an annual rise in atmospheric concentrations (Keeling 1960) In 1965, US President Lyndon Johnson was given a report about the threat of human-induced climate change and the need to take action (Report to the President 1965).

Even though an argument can be made that the human community was unambiguously warned about potential climate change threats long before 1975, it was in the mid-1970s that scientists started to make specific quantitative predictions about likely climate change impacts. Predictions that, for the most part, have held up despite thousands of scientific studies since then, billions of dollars of government funded climate change research, and hundreds of skeptical arguments about the mainstream climate change view, which have forced climate change researchers supporting what is generally referred to as the “consensus position” (a subject to be considered in Chapter 2) to more expressly consider in the peer reviewed literature any weaknesses in their original arguments. The use in this book of 35 years as marking the beginning of serious climate change debate is premised on the fact that on 8 August 1975, Wally Broecker published his paper “Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?” in the journal Science (Broecker 1975). In this paper, Broecker correctly predicted “that the present cooling trend will, within a decade or so, give way to a pronounced warming induced by carbon dioxide,” and that “ by early in the next century [carbon dioxide] will have driven the mean planetary temperature beyond the limits experienced during the last 1,000 years.” He also predicted an overall 20th century global warming of 0.8°C due to CO2 and worried about the consequences for agriculture and sea level (Broecker 1975: 460–3). As we shall see, Broecker’s predictions and several other multidecade-old predictions have generally stood the test of time. For the most part, the scientific concern first clearly articulated in the mid-1970s has gotten stronger as climate change science has progressed, sometimes in response to skeptical scientific arguments, and as more sophisticated computers and greater scientific funding has become available. In 1979 a report issued for the US Academy of Sciences acknowledged that humans were changing the atmosphere and predicted that if CO2 was allowed to increase to 560 parts per million (ppm), global temperatures would increase by approximately 3°C (Charney et al. 1975). This report found it highly credible that doubling CO2 will bring 1.5–4.5°C global warming. Thirty years later, despite being informed by the world’s best scientists with increasing levels of certainty that human activities releasing greenhouse gases were gravely threatening the planet, the international community has failed to agree on the details necessary to prevent serious climate change in a global treaty that would prevent serious

12  Introduction: The Debate climate change. And so, three decades after first reported by US Academy of Sciences, the scientific community was still predicting about a 3°C temperature rise if atmospheric concentrations of CO2 could be stabilized in the atmosphere at the 560ppm level discussed in the 1979 report. However, the world may be running out of time to stabilize atmospheric concentrations at this level and there is a growing scientific consensus that a temperature rise of 2°C is very dangerous because temperature increases above this level may trigger rapid, non-linear harmful climate responses. Although, some limited progress has been made under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC 1992), a treaty agreed by almost all countries, the international community has for the most part failed to develop a global approach to climate change that will prevent dangerous climate change. Almost every nation in the world had met at least once a year since 1990 to hammer out an agreement that would give the international community hope of avoiding the harsh climate change impacts that had been discussed for 35 years. Yet by 2012 no comprehensive approach to climate change had been agreed to by the international community. As we shall see in detail in later chapters, for 35 years, opponents of climate change policies have argued about the science and economics of taking action on climate change. In so doing, many participants in this debate have implicitly, if not explicitly, denied that high-emitting countries, sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals have obligations, duties, and responsibilities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In other words, participants—who have opposed action in the three-decade-long climate change debate—have at least implicitly taken a position on the ethical dimensions of climate change. With this understanding, positions on ethical issues are not new to the climate change debate: they have, however, been unacknowledged as ethical issues but remained hidden in what appear on first glance to be “value-neutral” technical arguments about science and economics. In fact, as we will see, rarely have the ethical positions of contending parties been expressly identified in these policy debates, because the implicit ethical positions taken by the parties have appeared at first glance to be “value-neutral” factual descriptions of climate change issues. This book, therefore, explores the urgent practical need to see climate change controversies as ethical problems in light of how the public debate about climate change has unfolded for at least 35 years. The book teases out of three and half decades of climate change controversies the often hidden normative positions of the combatants, and seeks to encourage citizens around the world to see climate change issues as raising profound ethical questions. The book will demonstrate that spotting the ethical dimensions of climate change controversies may be key to moving forward in light of the barriers to enlightened climate change policy that have frustrated the formation of climate change policy since the mid-1970s. It is also motivated by the belief that humans have failed, for the most part, to frame policy options and their



Navigating the Storm  13

justifications in a way that encourages deep reflection on the ethical dimensions of these problems. Because of this, the ethical dimensions of climate change remain, unfortunately, practically invisible in public debates about climate change and in media coverage of these controversies. We will see that making the ethical dimensions of the most frequent arguments about climate change policy more explicit could lead to a progress in adopting more responsible climate change policies. In the United States, for instance, despite a high-profile political debate about climate change, neither the disputants nor the media have identified some of the obvious ethical questions entailed by climate change policy options under consideration, including the idea that climate change triggers duties, obligations, and responsibilities of high-emitting countries and individuals to the poor victims of climate change around the world. And so, those who oppose climate change policies on the grounds of costs to them alone are rarely asked if they acknowledge that they have duties to others to reduce the threat of climate change. Yet it is the very fact that high emitters of greenhouse gases have ethical duties to others that needs to be understood as the basis for adopting climate change policy responses. For this reason, the book seeks to help others to turn up the volume on the ethical dimensions of climate change for practical reasons. The use of the term ethics here denotes the domain of inquiry that examines claims that, given certain facts, actions are right or wrong, obligatory or nonobligatory, or whether responsibilities attach to human activities. Thus, the book is interested in claims that are made about what should or should not be done about climate change and who has duties, responsibilities, and obligations to take action given likely environmental, human health, economic, and social impacts from climate change. As we shall see, arguments for and against climate change policies sometimes raise ethical questions about which different ethical theories may reach different conclusions about what should be done and who should do it. In these cases, spotting ethical issues can lead to disagreement about what ethics requires. Yet the book will also identify ethical conclusions that can be made about some climate change issues about which different ethical theories reach the same conclusions about what should be done and who should do it. On such issues, philosophers sometimes refer to an “overlapping consensus” among diverse ethical theories. Philosopher John Rawls defined an “overlapping consensus” as a matter about which citizens support the same basic laws or justice outcomes for different reasons (Rawls 1987). For instance both utilitarians and Kantians require that the vital interests of all people be considered, regardless of where they live in the world, but base this conclusion on different ethical theories. This book will identify ethical conclusions that can be made about some climate change issues, which are supported by the vast majority if not all ethical theories. Also, there is evidence of cross-cultural agreement on some climate change ethical issues in the form of relevant provisions of international law that all countries have previously agreed on.

14  Introduction: The Debate Ethical issue spotting about the climate change debate may, therefore, lead to either agreement or disagreement about what ethics ultimately requires about the policy issues in contention. A third outcome of ethical issue spotting is disagreement on what ethics requires, yet agreement that some positions taken on these issues should be ethically condemned notwithstanding disagreement about what ethics requires. In other words, for some climate change issues, there is an agreement among ethical theories that positions taken on these issues are ethically unsupportable despite disagreement on what ethics unequivocally requires. In these cases, spotting ethical problems raised by positions on climate change can lead to narrowing policy alternatives to ethically acceptable options through elimination of positions that should be rejected on ethical grounds. As we shall see, ethical issue spotting in such matters is the key to navigating the perfect moral storm of climate change. For over three decades, proponents and opponents of international climate change regimes have made arguments for and against proposed international and domestic regimes on climate change. As discussed later, most of these arguments have been claims and counter claims about: (a) the impacts of human-induced climate change on humans, plants, animals, or ecosystems, (b) the acceptability of costs of taking action to prevent climate change, (c) the fairness of allocating responsibility for climate change, (d) the duties of nations, sub-national governments, organizations, and individuals to prevent climate change and to pay for damages caused by climate change, and (e) funding responsibilities for all of the above. Since formal international climate change negotiations began in 1990, arguments against effective international climate change regimes, as well as meaningful national action on climate change, have frequently been of two types. First, as we shall see in a more focused way in Chapters 2 and 3, by far the most frequent arguments made in opposition to proposed climate change policies are economic predictions about the adverse effects of these policies on national or regional economies, such as claims that proposed climate change legislation will destroy jobs, reduce GDP, damage specific businesses such as the coal and petroleum industries, increase the cost of fuel, or is simply unaffordable. The second most frequent argument made by opponents of climate change policies are assertions that governments should not require costly climate change action because adverse climate impacts have not sufficiently been scientifically proved. Chapters 2 and 4 show that these arguments range from assertions that what is usually called the “consensus view” on climate change is a complete hoax, to the milder assertions that the harsh climate change impacts on human health and the environment predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other scientific institutions are unproven. Both the economic and scientific arguments against climate change policies have argued implicitly that climate change policies should be opposed because they are not in a country’s national interest. The responses of advocates of climate



Navigating the Storm  15

change policies are almost always to disagree with the factual economic and scientific assertions made in these arguments by making counter economic and scientific claims. For instance, in response to economic arguments that oppose climate change legislation, proponents of climate change action usually argue that climate change policies will create jobs or will stimulate the development of new energy technologies that will be vital to national economic health. In responses to the lack of scientific proof arguments, climate change policy advocates usually stress the fact that climate change will impact harshly upon the environment, people, and ecosystems has been well-settled by climate change science. In other words, advocates of climate change action usually respond to the claims of opponents of climate change programs based on scientific uncertainty, by denying that the science is uncertain. By simply opposing the factual claims of the opponents of climate change, the advocates of climate change policies are implicitly agreeing with an essential assumption of the opponents that greenhouse gas reduction policies should not be adopted if they are not in national or regional self-interest. Yet, if climate change raises ethical questions, then nations have not only national interests but also duties, responsibilities, and obligations to others. However, ethical arguments about duties to others, which could counter the national interest-based assumptions of arguments made in opposition to climate change policies, are rarely heard in the climate change debate. And so, this book will argue that the failure of environmental ethics to affect policy making is to be expected given the dominance of certain economic and scientific arguments about climate change policies; the failure of respondents to these arguments to identify ethically problematic assumptions of these arguments; and the mostly abstract theoretical focus of academic environmental ethics. The book will demonstrate that the scientific and economic arguments, often framing serious public policy climate change issues, are usually understood to be derived from scientific and economic disciplines that are ethically “neutral.” But this assumption will be shown to be deeply mistaken particularly for a problem like climate change that must be understood as essentially an ethical one. Most policy makers usually assume that scientists and economists simply provide policy-relevant “facts” to decision makers who then apply these “facts” in policy making, the appropriate domain for the inclusion for the first time of ethical considerations. However, both environmental scientific and economic “facts” are not only frequently built on deeply problematic ethical assumptions, these hidden ethical assumptions are often key determinants of ethically inappropriate policy responses. In light of this, the book will argue that there is a need to integrate ethical considerations into the identification of scientific and economic “facts” about climate change. For this and other reasons identified here, ethicists must find new ways of engaging in climate change policy formation if they hope to be relevant to policy making. Given this, the book will argue that there is an urgent need for an applied environmental ethics that examines specific scientific and economic

16  Introduction: The Debate arguments and their erroneously assumed “value-neutral” underpinnings if ethicists hope to influence policy formation. And so there are now three and a half decades of experience at both the international and national levels with arguments made in support of and opposition to climate change policies. These arguments are fertile ground to examine: (a) the priority ethical questions that the international community needs to face to reduce the threat of climate change, (b) the importance of expressly identifying the ethical questions that arise in policy formation, and (c) the opportunity and need for a new applied climate change ethics. By drawing lessons learned from the three and half decades of experience with climate change policy disputes, the purpose of this book is to: (a) identify the priority ethical questions facing the world on climate change, (b) examine the role that ethical arguments should play in policy formation despite their failure to do so thus far, and (c) describe the features of a new applied environmental ethics that are needed if environmental ethics is going to be relevant to pressing climate change issues.

The Book’s Organization The book is organized into the following divisions and chapters: Part I Introduction: The Climate Change Debate Chapter 2 begins a review of the history of the climate change debate since the mid-1970s to identify the dominant arguments for and against climate change laws, policies, and programs. Later chapters of the book will continue to look at the history of the climate debate in regard to specific priority ethical questions that the world needs to face as identified in Chapter 2. The history of the climate debate is reviewed in considerable detail in this chapter because it reveals: (a) how ethical considerations have been stunningly missing in this debate, despite the fact that the issues in contention raise civilization-challenging ethical questions, (b) the frequency of some arguments more than others that have been made in opposition to climate change policies, and (c) only the history of the debate reveals the major causes of the failure of ethics to be influential in policy formation. Those interested primarily in the substantive ethical issues entailed by climate change could skip Chapter 2, yet this history is important for understanding why ethics has failed to affect policy making. Part II Priority of Climate Change Ethical Issues Chapter 3 initiates the book’s examination of the priority ethical questions identified in Chapter 2 by examining frequent economic and cost arguments made in opposition to climate change policies. This chapter identifies several different economic arguments that have often been made in response to proposed climate



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change policies and teases out from these claims the hidden ethical assumptions and problems raised by them. After discussing several economic arguments, the chapter focuses mainly on the ethical limitations of cost–benefit analyses (CBA) applied to climate change policies, limitations that are shown to be relevant to other cost arguments frequently made in opposition to proposed climate policies. Chapter 3 ends with a number of specific ethical problems that can be frequently made about cost arguments in opposition to proposed climate change policies and creates a guide to navigating economic and cost arguments that have been frequently made in opposition to proposed climate change policies. After continuing the historical review of the arguments made to undermine climate policies on the basis of scientific uncertainty begun in Chapter 2, Chapter 4 examines ethical issues raised by uncertain scientific arguments made in response to proposed climate change policies. This chapter explains why arguments opposed to the adoption of action on climate change, on the basis of scientific uncertainty, almost always ignore important ethical questions such as: who should have the burden of proof in the face of uncertainty; what quantity of proof should satisfy the burden of proof; the appropriate role of skepticism in climate science; and procedural justice questions that arise because of the need to consider the interests of the victims of climate change impacts. Chapter 5 examines ethical questions raised by the need of the international community to stabilize greenhouse gases at safe levels in the atmosphere. This chapter describes why the atmospheric stabilization target issue must be understood as a civilization-challenging ethical issue and, therefore, why national greenhouse gas reduction strategies must be seen as positions on ethical responsibilities for stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations at acceptable levels. Chapter 5 identifies ethical issues that have arisen in an attempt to quantify a greenhouse gas atmospheric concentration stabilization goal. This chapter also identifies ethical conclusions that can be made about positions frequently taken on atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration stabilization goals that could be used in future policy disputes about the goal of climate change policies. Chapter 6 looks at how to fairly allocate responsibility for reducing the threat of climate change among nations to achieve an ethically supportable greenhouse gas stabilization goal. This chapter identifies arguments frequently made about any nation’s fair share of safe global greenhouse gas emissions. The chapter also looks at specific proposals for allocation frameworks including “grandfathering” national emissions from pre-existing levels, “per capita,” “contraction and convergence,” and “greenhouse development rights” regimes that have been under serious consideration by the international community. This chapter demonstrates that some formulas for assigning greenhouse gas emissions target reductions to nations are worthy of more ethical respect than others, and that some arguments, which have been made about a nation’s fair share of safe global emissions, are ethically unacceptable. Chapter 7 examines the issue of who is responsible for climate change damages or reasonable adaptation costs. This analysis also reviews some of

18  Introduction: The Debate the proposals that have been made about adaptation funding amounts, sources of funding, and institutional structure for adaptation funding and adaptation management. The chapter concludes that certain arguments that have been made to deny the obligations of high-emitting countries for the costs of adaptation in poor, vulnerable countries, having done little to cause climate change, are ethically problematic. Chapter 8 examines the ethical duties for climate change of sub-national governments, organizations, and individuals in comparison to the duties of nations. It will argue that the focus on the responsibility of nations in the recent climate change debates may have inappropriately taken the spotlight off the duties and responsibilities of sub-national governments, organizations, and, in particular, individuals. The chapter ends with strong ethical conclusions about the duties and responsibilities of individuals for climate change. Chapter 9 examines a common excuse made by nations for non-action on climate change, namely that they need not act to reduce the threat of climate change until other nations take action. This chapter will identify strong ethical problems with this argument. Part III The Crucial Role of Ethics in Climate Change Policy Making Chapter 10 examines why ethics has failed to influence climate change policy making, despite its essential role in forging a global solution to this immense threat. In drawing conclusions about the causes of the failure of ethics to gain traction, the chapter identifies several reasons other than those postulated by Gardiner in the A Perfect Moral Storm for the lack of response to ethical arguments about just climate change policies. This chapter demonstrates that understanding these additional causes for the failure of ethics to penetrate policy formation is a key ingredient in a strategy to open up deliberation of climate policies to ethical arguments. Chapter 11 makes specific recommendations on how to achieve greater influence of ethical principles in climate change policy formation, in light of everything that has been said so far. This chapter begins with critiquing one of Gardiner’s claims, that is, the failure of ethics to influence policy is attributable to the challenging nature of the ethical issues raised by climate change. Chapter 11 acknowledges that some ethical issues of climate change are difficult but others are easy, therefore, we discuss additional explanations for the failure of ethics to influence climate change policy making. The last chapter identifies ethical and practical reasons for framing climate change policy options through an ethical lens. Because there are differences among ethical theories about what ethics requires, this chapter reviews how ethical issue spotting can lead to: (a) conflict about what ethics requires, (b) an overlapping consensus among different ethical theories about what ethics requires, or



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(c) a consensus that some positions on climate change are ethically problematic, even in cases where there is no consensus about what ethics requires. And so, this chapter makes the case that ethical issue spotting can help eliminate from serious consideration positions often taken by governments, organizations, and individuals that are ethically problematic. Chapter 11 ends with specific recommendations on strategies to make ethical considerations influential in climate change policy formation.

Chapter 2

A Thirty-Five-Year Climate Change Policy Debate

Introduction This chapter identifies the major issues that have plagued climate change policy formation since international negotiations began in the late 1980s in a, so far, failed attempt to find a global climate change solution. Later chapters will examine these issues through an ethical lens, with the goal of determining what practical conclusions can be learned about how ethics may become more influential in climate change policy formation. This chapter seeks to identify the general arguments that most frequently arose about taking action on climate change during the several decades of international efforts to develop a global approach to human-induced warming. Later chapters will examine these arguments and their ethical implications in more detail. The book includes this detailed chapter on the history of the climate change debate because any effort to build a strategy to assure that the world is more responsive to ethical considerations in climate change policy formation will benefit from an understanding of how issues, which should have been seen as raising ethical questions, have managed to ignore public recognition of the obvious ethical dimensions of these matters. This history also reveals the stunning absence of ethical considerations about this problem and why ethics is the crucial missing element in climate change debates.

The Early History There has been a serious, engaged debate about what should be done about climate change that is now over 35 years old. However, this time frame is not congruent with the length of the scientific discussion about the greenhouse effect because, as we have seen in the last chapter, the scientific community has understood many basic scientific facts about the role that greenhouse gases play in warming our planet for much longer than three and a half decades. In fact, for almost 200 years, the scientific community has been aware that certain gases make the planet warmer than it would be without their presence; understood



Thirty-Five-Year Climate Change Debate  21

precisely for 150 years, how much some greenhouse gases initially warm the atmosphere before feedbacks amplify the original warming; started to acknowledge that humans were changing the planet’s climate 75 years ago; and, over 50 years ago, realized that greenhouse gases were accumulating in the atmosphere at ever increasing levels in direct proportion to fossil fuel use around the world. As we shall see, knowledge about how greenhouse gases affect the climate system has been building for 200 years. In 1824, Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier published a paper concluding that the atmosphere absorbs some of the sun’s heat that would otherwise escape back into space, and reradiates this heat back to Earth (Fourier 1824). This study made it clear that certain naturally occurring constituents in the atmosphere make our planet warmer than it would be in the absence of these gases (Christianson 1999: 6–11). The atmosphere’s role in trapping heat would become known as the “greenhouse effect.” Most casual observers of the climate change debates are unaware that the basic physics of how greenhouse gases work to warm the planet have been understood for over 150 years, that is, since John Tyndall set out to find whether there were, in fact, any gases in the atmosphere that could trap heat rays. In 1859, Tyndall’s careful laboratory work identified several gases that did just that. They included water vapor and carbon dioxide (CO2) (NASA 2012). Tyndall understood that if these greenhouse gases, which appear naturally in the atmosphere, did not work the way they do to raise temperatures, the planet would be much colder than it is. Because greenhouse gases reradiate the heat energy back to Earth, the gases “force” the climate. The amount of this climate “forcing” attributable to some greenhouse gas has been known quite precisely since Tyndall did his experiments in 1859. As a result, any question about if one increases atmospheric greenhouse concentrations there will be some initial warming, has not been a controversy for well over a century and a half. Tyndall concluded that among the natural constituents of the atmosphere, water vapor is the strongest absorber of radiant heat and is therefore the most important gas controlling Earth’s surface temperature (NASA 2012). He said, without water vapor, the Earth’s surface would be “held fast in the iron grip of frost” (NASA 2012). Without a natural greenhouse effect, the temperature of the Earth would be about −18°C (0°F) instead of its present 14°C (57°F) (NOAA 2012a). Therefore the scientific controversy about climate change has not been about whether increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases would initially radiate more heat back to Earth, very precisely, in measurable watts per square meter, but rather about what will be the magnitude and timing of the final warming. This is so because the initial forcing creates both positive and negative feedbacks in the climate system—changes that affect the amount of final warming. That is, there has been a serious scientific debate about how much warming will ultimately be caused by the initial forcing due to lack of precise knowledge about how all climate feedbacks work. To know how much warming will finally be created by the initial forcing attributable to the atmospheric

22  Introduction: The Debate greenhouse gases has been a challenging scientific problem. This is because the initial forcing creates some climate system responses that either magnify or decrease the amount of warming finally experienced. The magnifying responses are known as positive feedbacks. Positive feedbacks include such things as the phenomenon that the initial warming caused by greenhouse gases increases the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, which is itself a greenhouse gas that further increases the final warming experienced. Among other known positive feedbacks in the climate system is the “albedo” effect. The albedo of an object is a measure of how strongly it reflects light from light sources such as the sun. Snow and ice have a high albedo; melting ice and snow magnify the warming experienced because less sunlight is reflected back into space as ice and snow diminish, and more heat is absorbed by the Earth’s surface. This is a classical positive feedback. There are also negative feedbacks in the climate system, or responses of the system that decrease the amount of final warming experienced. These negative feedbacks in the climate system include such things as when some species of vegetation grow in a warming world they reflect more incoming radiation; a response that tends to have some cooling effect. As warming creates more plant growth, the plants remove more CO2 from the atmosphere because of increasing photosynthesis, a process which reduces the climate forcing when CO2 is removed during plant growth. Because of the complexity of the climate system’s positive and negative feedbacks, the serious scientific climate change debate has primarily been about how much warming will eventually be caused by the initial greenhouse gas forcing, as the feedbacks in the global climate system respond to a warming world. Therefore, the serious scientific climate change controversy has never been about whether the additions of greenhouse gases would create initial climate forcing, but rather how much warming will eventually be caused if atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases increase due to human activities. Those who support the “consensus” view, a position discussed in detail in Chapter 4, have identified that a range of likely temperature changes will be caused by different atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration levels, while skeptics either disagree with the range or claim that the amount of warming predicted by the consensus view is not sufficiently proved. So the serious climate change scientific debate has been about how much warming will be created as atmospheric greenhouse gases increase due to human activities, and how much scientific confidence can be made about predictions about the timing and magnitude of any warming. The first relatively successful calculation of how much human use of fossil fuel could warm the planet was published in a paper in 1896 by Svente Arrhenius, a Swedish Nobel Prize winning chemist (Arrhenius 1896). Knowing that two gases, CO2 and water vapor, are responsible for natural warming of the atmosphere and heating the planet, Arrhenius calculated that a doubling of CO2 would increase the Earth’s temperature by 4–6°C, an amount within a few degrees of



Thirty-Five-Year Climate Change Debate  23

what the most sophisticated computers would predict 90 years later (Christianson 1999: 115). Arrhenius was not worried about the potential ability of humans to change the Earth’s climate because he believed it would take several thousand years for humans to release enough greenhouse gases to cause a doubling of natural levels of CO2. Yet this would prove to be an erroneous assumption that would become evident about 50 years later. Arrhenius did not foresee the enormous worldwide increase in the use of fossil fuels that would take place after World War II. In the late 1930s, G.S. Callendar, an English chemist, argued that human activities were causing an increase in atmospheric CO2, and that this might have already started global warming (Callendar 1938: 223–40). Despite Callendar’s concern, and although the scientific community has known about the potential of human-induced warming to raise the Earth’s temperature since the early 19th century, global warming received little attention in the scientific community during the first half of the 20th century. Apathy about global warming prevailed during this time because scientists, like Arrhenius, did not see the tremendous growth in fossil fuel use that really took off in the late 1940s. Moreover, in the early part of the 20th century, many scientists, who understood the potential of human actions to change the global climate, were not very concerned because they believed that oceans would absorb much of the carbon that was being emitted by human activities. The world began to wake up to the threat of climate change in 1957 when two scientists with the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, Roger Revelle and Hans Suess, found that much of the CO2 emitted to the Earth’s atmosphere is not absorbed by the oceans, as some had assumed, leaving significant amounts in the atmosphere that could eventually warm the Earth (EDF 2012a). The second wake-up call took place just one year later with the establishment of a CO2 measuring station in 1958 at Mauna Loa, Hawaii. This first reliable station for measuring global CO2 levels was established by an American, Charles Keeling (Christianson 1999: 151). By the late 1960s, the data from Mauna Loa and other stations had established that CO2 was steadily building up in the atmosphere in proportion to human use of fossil fuels (Bodansky 1994:  46). And so the scientific community started to realize that CO2 levels were rising rapidly in the atmosphere as humans all around the world began using more coal, petroleum, and natural gas at the end of World War II.

The 1970s: The Climate Change Debate Begins Although, as we shall see in Chapter 4, President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 mentioned the threat of climate change, it was not, however, until the 1970s that widespread concern over global warming took off in the scientific community. Improvements in the general circulation models and complex computer models that attempt to mathematically describe the Earth’s climate system meant that scientists could look at reasonable potential impacts of

24  Introduction: The Debate

Figure 2.1  Atmospheric CO2 Source: NOAA (2012b)

climate change entailed by future human use of fossil fuels and releases of other greenhouse gases (Bodansky 1994: 46). In 1979 a report of the National Academy of Sciences, taking advantage of the computer models, concluded “a wait-and-see policy [on global warming] may mean waiting until it is too late” (Charney et al. 1979). As touched on in the last chapter and examined in more detail in Chapter 4, a serious international debate on the science of climate change can be traced to the late 1970s when prestigious international institutions like the US Academy of Sciences began to issue warnings about impending dangers from human-induced climate change. While scientific concern about climate change grew in the late 1970s, opposition to climate change policies also grew. This opposition was supported by elements of the business community in the United States and other countries and targeted mainstream scientific conclusions starting to emerge in the 1970s that humans were causing climate change, resulting in the need to take action to avoid serious adverse impacts on human flourishing and the natural resources on which life depends. Opposition was usually motivated by concern that climate change policies would cause significant expense and disruption to the current



Thirty-Five-Year Climate Change Debate  25

geopolitical and economic situation. As we shall see, a significant part of the opposition was funded by some members of the fossil fuel industry and freemarket fundamentalist foundations. From the late 1970s up until the present, opponents to climate change policies from the fossil fuel industry, and others, continued to argue for reasons discussed throughout this book that the United States should not adopt programs that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In making a claim about what “should” be done, these parties were implicitly making ethical type claims about what was right or wrong. For instance, fossil fuel users who opposed climate change policies were implicitly claiming that it was wrong for the government to impose costs on them if the costs to them or the economy outweighed the benefits to society of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And so, from the very beginning in the late 1970s, the arguments in the climate change debate were based upon normative or ethical assumptions, but these assumptions remained hidden in technical economic and scientific arguments. The proponents of climate change policies rarely, if ever, invited citizens to reflect upon the dubious hidden normative assumptions of the arguments of those opposing climate change policies. Ethical arguments simply never came up in the public debate about climate change. As stated in the last chapter, in the mid-1970s papers began to be published predicting the amount of warming that would be caused by various levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In February 1979, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICUN) sponsored the First World Climate Conference in Geneva, Switzerland (IISD 2009). This Conference examined the scientific basis for climate change and issued a declaration that identified the leading cause of global warming as increased atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide resulting from the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, and changes in land use (ISSD 2009). By the late 1970s, many scientists around the world were engaged in serious discussions about the nature of the threats from human-induced climate change. Computer models at this time began to be used to predict future climate change that would occur in response to a build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. As serious scientific concern about climate change grew in the late 1970s, opponents of climate change policies made two types of arguments against response policies. By far the most frequent arguments made in opposition were economic claims of various kinds, e.g. proposed climate change legislation or policies would destroy jobs, reduce GDP, damage specific US businesses such as the coal and petroleum industries, increase the cost of fuel, or should not be adopted during an economic recession. The ethical dimensions of these arguments went unexamined in the public debate. The second most frequent argument made by opponents of climate change policies have been assertions that adverse climate change impacts have not been sufficiently scientifically proved, and therefore costly climate change policies should be opposed.

26  Introduction: The Debate Opponents of climate change policies have fiercely resisted government action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the last three decades, as we will see in Chapter 3, using economic arguments against taking climate change action, and in Chapter 4 using scientific uncertainty arguments. Although, this book will focus mostly on these developments in the United States, similar arguments against governments taking action on climate change have played out in other developed countries including Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Since the intense political debate beginning in the late 1970s, there has been relatively little public recognition that the economic and scientific uncertainty arguments, which were the tip of the spear in opposition to climate change policies, raise important ethical issues that will be discussed later in this book. For the most part, proponents of climate change policies opposed claims that climate change policies were too expensive, by arguing that green technology and sustainable energy would increase jobs. Arguments that opposed climate change strategies on the basis of a lack of scientific certainty were mostly countered on grounds that the science was unambiguous or completely settled. Generally, the ethical issues raised by these arguments were ignored.

The 1980s By the early 1980s, concern over global warming was growing rapidly in the international scientific community. These discussions became the foundation for international negotiations on a climate change treaty that began in the late 1980s (Morrissey 1998). At the end of the Carter administration in the United States in 1980, a report by the President’s Council on Environmental Quality concluded that “the responsibility of the carbon dioxide problem is ours and we should accept it and act in a way that recognizes our role as trustee for future generations” (Charney et al. 1979). The Reagan administration, following on from the Carter US presidency, however, showed little interest in accepting responsibility for global warming. Ronald Reagan brought an anti-regulatory, laissez-faire philosophy to government that was temperamentally opposed to the type of intervention in markets that might be required to make meaningful greenhouse gas emissions reductions. As we shall see in Chapter 4, for 30 years after the beginning of the Reagan administration, organizations believing in a laissez-faire, unfettered free-market approach to government were, mostly, extremely hostile to climate change policies. These organizations were often funded by fossil fuel industries and or corporations that had interests in keeping energy costs low. In 1985 the UNEP and the WMO sponsored the second World Conference in Villach, Austria (EDF 2012b). The Conference concluded that significant anthropogenic climate change is highly probable and first suggested the development of a global convention to address the problem (EDF 2012b). The participants at this Conference also agreed that in the first half of the next century a rise in global



Thirty-Five-Year Climate Change Debate  27

mean scale temperature could occur, which is greater than any in man’s history (Morrissey 1998). At the World Conference on the Changing Atmosphere in Toronto in 1988, politicians and scientists conclude that “humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment whose ultimate consequences could be second only to a global nuclear war” (Suzuki 2011). The Conference recommended reducing carbon dioxide emissions 20 percent by 2005 (Suzuki 2011). In the late 1980s, a number of European countries began to press for concerted international action to begin to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while the United States, first during the Reagan and then the Bush administration, emphasized scientific uncertainty and the unacceptable costs of action. These cost and uncertainty arguments would dominate claims made in opposition to climate change policies over the next two decades as we shall see in Chapters 3 and 4. In 1988, partly in response to the United States’ call for more scientific research before taking global warming action, UNEP and WMO, in accordance with a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly, established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (Morrissey 1998). The IPCC’s mission was to analyze the peer reviewed scientific evidence on the global warming problem and give advice on its potential solutions to the international community (Morrissey 1998). As early as 1988, some nations wanted to take internationally coordinated action to reduce the threat of global warming, but the United States was worried about committing to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions because of the effect that such action could harm its domestic economy (see in Chapter 3). Again there was little public discussion about the ethical issues raised by the US position in US media coverage of these events. As we have seen, by this time, much of the basic physical scientific basis supporting the threat of human-induced global warming was not then in question; however, significant uncertainties remained about timing and magnitude of warming. By this time, there was growing recognition of the fact that the longer the world waited to take action, the more damage could result from human releases of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere if the underlying scientific concern were proved valid. Yet the United States stressed the importance of reducing the scientific uncertainties before taking action to avoid costs to the US economy. A conference entitled, “The Changing Atmosphere: Implications for Global Security” was held in Toronto, Canada, in June of 1988 (Suzuki 2011). This conference called for a reduction in CO2 emissions by about 20 percent of current levels by the year 2005 (Suzuki 2011). This conference is widely viewed to be responsible for mobilizing support for the initiation of international negotiations on a climate treaty. Testifying before the US Senate Energy Committee on 23 June 1988, James Hansen, a United States government scientist, announced that he was “ninetynine percent confident” that the recent warming was not a random event, but

28  Introduction: The Debate a real indication of man-made global climate change (Sabecoff 1988). Hansen also said that: “It is time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here” (Sabecoff 1988). Hansen’s remarks sparked a great controversy among some scientists and many US congressmen. In fact, Hansen was vigorously attacked by fossil fuel interests who claimed that he had jumped the gun on concluding that by 1988 humaninduced global warming could be observed; a conclusion, as we shall see, that the international scientific community would agree to in 1995, just seven years after Hansen’s claimed that scientists could now see human causation in rising global temperatures. In the late summer of 1988, US presidential candidate George H.W. Bush, spoke about what would be his approach to global warming when he said: “Those who think we are powerless to do anything about the greenhouse effect are forgetting about the White House effect. As president, I intend to do something about it” (Agrarwala and Anderson 1999). Like his son’s promise 13 years later, this campaign promise would prove to be misleading. The first meeting of the newly created IPCC convened in November 1988, in Geneva. The plenary meeting of the IPCC included some 35 nations, including the United States, the Soviet Union, several other foreign governments, and international governmental and non-governmental organizations (Morrissey 1998). As a result of this meeting, the IPCC was charged with the task of preparing an integrated, state-of-the-art report on the science, impacts, and responses to global climate change by September 1990 (Morrissey 1998). Two weeks before the inauguration of George H.W. Bush, in January 1989, the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recommended to the President-elect that global warming be placed high on his agenda. NAS warned that “the future welfare of human society” is at risk (Brown 2002: 21). On 11 March 1989, an “environmental summit” was held at The Hague in the Netherlands that brought together presidents, prime ministers, and heads of state from 17 nations and other government officials from seven other nations. The group recommended the creation of a new agency within the United Nations to “be responsible for combating any further global warming of the atmosphere” (Brown 2002: 18). The United States coldly greeted this proposal and as a result it never went anywhere (Brown 2002: 18). In 1989, 22 countries, including France, Japan, Italy and Canada called for negotiations on a global warming treaty (Bodansky 1994:  52). The United States, led by White House Chief of Staff John Sununu, initially resisted the growing international call to begin negotiating a treaty because, according to the United States, too little was known about the economic impacts of a treaty on the United States. Following a public flap created in early May of 1989 when the White House attempted to dilute congressional testimony of US government scientist Jim Hansen about the seriousness of global warming, the United States announced it would support negotiations of a framework convention on climate change (Bodansky 1994: 52).



Thirty-Five-Year Climate Change Debate  29

The 1990s The United States joined the climate change negotiations by hosting a conference on global warming in April 1990 in Washington, DC. At this conference, President George Bush again called for further study on the problem, while representatives from the European Economic Community argued that “gaps in knowledge must not be used as an excuse for inaction” and that “Americans are falling behind on this, and … the time for action has come” (Brown 2002: 18). In November 1990, more than 130 nations met in Geneva, Switzerland for the Second World Climate Conference. The Conference Declaration called for all nations to begin setting targets or establishing programs for reducing the emission of greenhouse gases. However, the setting of specific targets was strongly opposed by the United States and the Soviet Union (Brown 2002: 18). Nevertheless, this Conference provided the political and policy mandate that allowed the United Nations General Assembly to authorize the negotiation of a framework convention on climate (Morrissey 1998). In November 1990, the IPCC issued the First Scientific Assessment of Climate Change, the most comprehensive scientific study on climate change up to that time (Houghton et al. 1990). The IPCC report concluded that global warming was a real problem and caused at least in part by human activities. This first IPCC assessment reported that if states continued to pursue “business-as-usual,” the global average temperature would rise by an average of 0.3°C per decade, a rate of change unprecedented in human history (Bodansky 1994). Despite the fact that the IPCC’s creation had been strongly supported by the United States to resolve issues of scientific uncertainty, the IPCC’s conclusions did not convince the United States that it should make serious enforceable commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The United States again wanted more study and implicitly rejected the advice of the very institution it helped create to make recommendations on global warming science. As we shall see later in this book, fossil fuel and other industrial interests were lobbying the US government during this time against US action on climate change on the basis of increased costs to them, a fact responsible for the US government position. Again, ethical issues raised by the US position on delay were not widely discussed in the United States either in the press or even by supporters of climate change policy action, despite the fact that delay would most threaten poor people around the world by delay. Negotiations on a climate treaty, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), took place in five meetings that started in early 1991 and ended just before the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, usually referred to as the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992 (Morrissey 1998: 30). During these negotiations there were several important contentious issues that were at the center of most discussions. On these issues, the United States would

30  Introduction: The Debate continue to be in the middle of the controversy, often resisting proposals that had the support of many nations. These controversial issues included: • • •

The desirability of establishing targets and timetables to reduce greenhouse gas emissions The responsibility of the developed nations to take the lead in reducing greenhouse gases The responsibility of the developed nations to provide financial assistance to the poor nations for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in the South (Barione and Ripert 1994: 82).

Even before the start of these negotiations, the United States took certain clear-cut positions and was not afraid to often stand alone (Barione and Ripert 1994: 82). Although many nations had concluded by 1990 that it was time to enter into a treaty that would limit world emissions of greenhouse gases, the United States, often isolated from the rest of the world with the exception of a few oil exporting nations, strongly resisted proposals to negotiate enforceable targets and timetables for reducing global greenhouse gas emissions throughout the negotiations. The United States took the most consistently hard-line position and argued for a much less ambitious approach to the global warming problem than proposals of other nations. The US position was based on scientific uncertainty about climate change impacts and the potential adverse impacts on the US economy of a convention with enforceable emission reduction targets. Probably the most contentious matter in negotiations leading up to the climate convention was this issue of whether a climate change should include enforceable emissions targets for each nation. One commentator summed up the approaches of the parties to the convention negotiations as follows: At the time it began, the climate negotiations could be presented in simplified fashion as representing a test of strength among three groups of participants. Defending the concept of an extremely general Framework Convention—the United States argued that there was an overriding need for further scientific research and a better assessment of the economic costs and benefits of the different possible options (including adaptation) before discussing the adoption of quantitative targets and timetables … The United States was joined by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait which sought to avoid any binding commitments to specific quantitative reductions in carbon emissions to a fixed date … .The European Commission adopted the position of stabilizing regional CO2 emissions in the year 2000 at the 1990 level. (Barione and Ripert 1994: 82) During early negotiations, the developing nations generally took the position that, since the developed nations were mainly responsible for the climate change problem, the developed nations should be responsible for the solution



Thirty-Five-Year Climate Change Debate  31

(Dasgupta 1994: 133). In contrast, the United States took the position that any nation’s responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas emissions should be based upon the ability of each nation to respond, not on the responsibility of each nation for causing the global problem (Dasgupta 1994:  133). For this reason, the United States resisted a formula that would assign responsibility for the amount of greenhouse gas reductions on the basis of a nation’s historical share of global emissions. What was each nation’s fair share of safe global emissions became a central issue in negotiations for a climate change treaty and would plague future international climate negotiations for the next two decades up to the present (Dasgupta 1994: 133). As with other issues discussed thus far, there was little dialogue in the mainstream media about the ethical obligations of the United States for climate change. Opponents of climate change policies claimed that it would be unfair if the United States were compelled to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. The opposition claims were not met because of arguments founded on principles of distributive justice that “fairness” required the United States to act were never made. And so, another major ethical issue that consistently arises in disputes about climate change policy is what constitutes any nation’s fair share of safe global emissions. The developing nations were willing to commit to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions provided that the developed nations were willing to commit “new and additional” financial resources to cover the full incremental costs in implementing these measures (Dasgupta 1994:  133). In other words, the developing nations were only interested in committing to reductions that were financed by those nations they believed had caused the problem. During the negotiations, the United States consistently opposed convention provisions creating these new financial commitments. One commentator has summed up the US position on equitable commitments as follows: During most of the Bush administration, US policy toward international fairness and equity, and fair and equitable burden sharing regarding climate change in particular, was one of disinterest and opposition … especially when that was interpreted to mean “targets and timetables” for US greenhouse gas emissions or downward adjustment to consumption patterns in the United States. (Harris 1998) During the treaty negotiations, it became increasingly clear that global warming issues were a priority of the global North, but of less urgency to the global South, where governments were driven to address more urgent problems of development and basic human needs (Dasgupta 1994:  133). But it became increasingly clear to the global South, that is to the world’s poorest nations, that climate change convention could have far-reaching economic implications on all nations.

32  Introduction: The Debate Although the Southern nations became more involved in the negotiations as they went forward, generally speaking the developing nations took the position that since the developed countries were mainly responsible for causing climate change, it was up to them to take action on a global solution (Dasgupta 1994: 131). In stark contrast, the United States opposed this view (Dasgupta 1994: 131). The United States, therefore, wanted the developing nations to accept the need to take action but reluctantly was willing to acknowledge “differentiated responsibilities” for national obligations. “Differentiated responsibilities” was a term that was understood to mean that not every nation had the same responsibility to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, and commitments to reducing national emissions should be based upon equity. Yet, the United States pressed the developing nations to accept commitments that were not necessarily based on a fair sharing of responsibility, which would take into account the negligible historic contributions of the South (Dasgupta 1994: 131). The term “differentiated responsibilities,” would continue to generate conflict between the United States and the developing nations in negotiations in the years ahead. From early in the climate negotiations, the United States also made it clear that text documents regarding global warming, being negotiated at the Earth Summit should not contain rhetoric about the “guilt” or “crimes” of the developed nations (Goldemberg 1994: 181). The United States also fought hard against any language that could be construed as assigning responsibility based upon a nation’s proportional historic share of greenhouse gases that had been emitted into the atmosphere. As before, the mainstream media covering these developments rarely either mentioned questions about justice that arose because of the large historical emissions of high-emitting countries including the United States, or commented on the US reluctance to agree to emissions reduction levels based upon basic fairness. As we shall see, a fourth ethical issue that consistently arises from a review of arguments made about climate change policy is whether highemitting nations have responsibility to the victims of climate change for harms they experience but are not caused by them. Progress toward the final convention was very slow in the first four negotiating meetings in 1991 (Bodansky 1994: 61). As the negotiations got closer to the June 1992 Earth Summit, the US positions on several issues hardened to the point that many questioned whether President Bush would attend the Rio Conference. In defending the positions taken by the United States in the negotiations and explaining why he might not go to the Earth Summit, US President George H.W. Bush stated that the American life-style was not negotiable (Hydar 1994: 209). That the United States might have duties, responsibilities, and obligations to poor people and nations to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions was mostly ignored in the US press. In the waning hours of the May 1992 negotiating meeting, the global warming treaty text, known as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, was finally agreed to (UN 1992a). Soon thereafter, President George H.W. Bush announced that he would go to Rio (PBS 2007).



Thirty-Five-Year Climate Change Debate  33

The United States, having stood virtually alone on most of the greatly contentious issues, finally achieved its major negotiating goals in the final convention text (Nitze 1994: 188). The convention contained no enforceable targets or timetables for greenhouse gases and in particular made no concessions in this respect based upon the US historical role in greenhouse gas atmospheric build-up. The United States also finally agreed to purposely ambiguous and unenforceable language about the goal of the UNFCCC and the need to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions by 2000 at 1990 levels. In the UNFCCC, all nations, including the United States, agreed: • •

To take steps toward stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system (UN 1992a: Art. 2). That developed countries should take the lead in modifying longer-term trends in anthropogenic emissions, recognizing that the return by the end of the present decade to earlier levels of anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases ... with the aim of returning individually or jointly to their 1990 levels these anthropogenic emissions (UN 1992a: Art. 2(a) and (b)).

And so, under the UNFCCC, national governments agreed to a goal for the treaty to take unenforceable steps to stabilize greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at safe levels and, in the interim, to return their greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2000. An issue that would plague the negotiations in the two decades ahead, and which raises profound ethical debate, is how the commitment to return atmospheric concentrations to non-dangerous levels should be interpreted. This issue would turn out to be a civilization-challenging ethical question that also has continued to block a truly global solution to climate change in the years ahead. To get its way on the major issues, the United States also agreed to the inclusion of Article 3 of the UNFCCC on Principles, a section that had been pushed by the developing nations and initially resisted by the United States. In this section, all nations agreed: [T]o protect the climate system for the benefit of present and future generations of humankind, on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. Accordingly, the developed country Parties should take the lead in combating climate change and the adverse effects thereof. (UN 1992a: Art. 3; emphasis added) Even though the United States and other developed countries agreed to this wording, requiring the developed nations to take the lead on reducing greenhouse gas emissions before the commitments are expected from the developing

34  Introduction: The Debate nations, many in the US Congress have continued to insist that this provision be ignored and that the developing nations must make commitments before the United States commits to takes steps to reduce its emissions. And so, as we shall see, a fifth civilization-challenging ethical issue, arising from arguments made in opposition to climate change action, is whether any one nation may justify nonaction on climate change on the basis that other nations have not acted. Again, there has been little recognition in the mainstream US press since the adoption of the UNFCCC in 1992 that the US has agreed that the developed nations, including the United States, have a duty under the UNFCCC to take the first steps to prevent dangerous climate change. Rather, the public debate in the US continued to focus on whether climate change reduction strategies would be too expensive and whether climate change science was certain enough about the links between human activities and warming to support greenhouse gas reduction policies. Also agreed to in the Principles section of the 1992 convention is language dealing with scientific uncertainty that has almost always been ignored by opponents to US climate change action. The specific wording regarding scientific uncertainty, which is usually referred to as the “precautionary principle” is that: The Parties should take precautionary measures to anticipate, prevent or minimize the causes of climate change and mitigate its adverse effects. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing such measures, taking into account that policies and measures to deal with climate change should be cost-effective so as to ensure global benefits at the lowest possible cost. (UN 1992a: Art. 3; emphasis added) Except for these UNFCCC Principles about scientific certainty and that the developed countries should go first—matters which the United States and some other nations who have opposed commitments to climate change action have often ignored during the last two decades—the United States mostly got its way on what it considered the most important issues. The world’s only superpower, the United States, had largely succeeded with help from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, five months after Desert Storm, in blocking a convention that would bind the nations of the world to reducing their growing greenhouse emissions. Again and again, the United States would stress scientific uncertainty and cost to them as justification for its resistance. And yet, throughout this time, there was no public discussion about whether arguments based upon scientific uncertainty or cost to the United States alone were ethically problematic. Proponents of climate change action responded to these economic and scientific uncertainty arguments almost always by making counter economic arguments and claims that the science was clear that the world was headed for harsh adverse climate change impacts. As we shall see in Chapters 3 and 4, during the time the United



Thirty-Five-Year Climate Change Debate  35

States refused to take action consistent with what it has already agreed to in the UNFCCC, a well-financed, well-organized opposition to taking action on climate change was publicly opposing US action through the efforts of think tanks, front groups, astroturf groups, lobbying by various US industrial groups, and other tactics. Shortly before the Earth Summit in Rio in June of 1992, 154 countries finally agreed to the UNFCCC. Having achieved its major objectives in the text of the Convention, the Bush administration signed the UNFCCC in Rio and successfully got the United States Senate to ratify it quickly in October of 1992, just four months after the Rio Conference. William A. Nitze has written a remarkably revealing insider’s view of the United States’ positions in negotiations leading up to the UNFCCC (Nitze 1994: 187–200). Nitze was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environment and Scientific Affairs, and head of the US delegation to the UNFCCC negotiating meetings and to the IPCC. He acknowledged that it was the US strategy from the beginning of the negotiations to avoid binding commitments to hold US CO2 emissions below a specified level (Nitze 1994: 188). Nitze also admitted that it was the US strategy to avoid committing to enforceable reduction targets despite the fact that many in the US government believed that holding US emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000 would not have harmed the US economy (Nitze 1994: 189). He further acknowledged that the US position was not based upon “a rational assessment of the national interest” but the result of the ideology and politics of a small circle of White House advisors led by Chief of Staff, John Sununu (Nitze 1994: 189). According to Nitze, who was at the very center of the US policy making on climate change, this political ideology was in part based upon the power of coal and oil industries in states needed by President Bush in the future election (Nitze 1994: 190). And so, the US positions in negotiations on a climate convention resulted in significant lost opportunities to put mechanisms in place that would help nations avoid damage from global warming, according to a US lead negotiator, William Nitze. The United States, also according to Nitze, did little in climate negotiations to defuse growing mistrust between the rich and poor nations on three issues, a problem that continues to haunt climate negotiations to this day. The three issues are: •

•

The developing nations perceive the rich nations’ efforts to get the poor nations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions as a device to gain control over their development and a threat to their sovereignty—a form of eco-colonialism. The developing nations saw the climate change problem as a pretext for the rich nations to divert development assistance funds from something that is important to poor nations to something that is important to the rich nations.

36  Introduction: The Debate •

The developing nations interpreted the behavior of the rich nations on climate change as an attempt to shift the responsibility of the rich nations that have caused the problem to the poor nations (Nitze 1994: 196).

Once again, the question of what is each nation’s fair share of safe global emissions was at the center of climate change policy debates. Yet, during this time, there was almost no ethical criticism of the US position in the mainstream US press. The Clinton administration came into existence in January of 1993, just seven months after the Earth Summit. From the beginning, the Clinton administration took a much more engaged approach to global warming than either the Reagan or Bush administrations. While campaigning for the US vice-presidency, then Senator Al Gore acknowledged that the developed nations would have to act to reduce the high level of carbon emissions before the developing nations (Gore 1992). Just a month after he took office, President Clinton, unveiled a BTU tax which was designed to raise $72 billion1 over five years while both cutting the federal deficit and cutting greenhouse gas emissions (Agrawala and Andresen 1999: 461). The US Senate quickly made it clear that this tax would not become law. Congress also made it clear that it would not support serious programs to lower US greenhouse gas emissions. Although the US executive branch was willing to move cautiously to accept its responsibilities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the US Congress resisted and followed the positions of the fossil fuel industry and other industrial opponents of global warming programs. By 1995 it was becoming quite clear that the weak non-binding approaches to global warming in the UNFCCC were failing to make much progress on the growing global warming problem. At the first Conference of Parties (COP–1) under the UNFCCC in Berlin in 1995, the parties agreed to begin negotiations on a binding protocol on emissions limitations. Also in 1995, the IPCC released its Second Assessment Report. For the first time in this report, the IPCC scientists concluded that “the balance of the evidence suggests a discernable human influence on climate” (IPCC 1995:  4). In other words, the IPCC scientists— a group comprised of the world’s leading climate scientists, created with the strong support of the United States and other highemitting nations to synthesize the peer reviewed science of global warming— concluded that not only was human-induced climate change a real issue with likely adverse impacts—a conclusion they had reached in 1990— but by 1995 it was possible to observe actual human-caused changes to the world’s climate that could be distinguished from natural climate variability. This conclusion was of great significance because the vast natural variability of the climate system made it difficult to separate human- from natural-caused climate changes. There was empirical evidence of increased global and regional temperature: rising oceans, increased droughts and floods, changes in precipitation patterns and storms. This empirical evidence, coupled with higher levels of confidence in computer models that were successfully predicting these events, led the IPCC to conclude “the balance of the evidence” supports the conclusion that human activities—to



Thirty-Five-Year Climate Change Debate  37

be distinguished from natural causes—were already changing the climate. In other words, scientific evidence available in 1995 supported the conclusion that humans were already changing the climate, and therefore, by then it was already too late to prevent at least some human-induced global warming. Moreover, because of long lag times in the climate system caused by the time it took for the oceans to heat up, the actual climate change that had already been caused by human activities would take decades to see, even if the world were able to stabilize greenhouse gases at 1995 levels—a virtual impossibility. Again there was very infrequent press coverage of the ethical issues raised by those who continued to oppose US climate change policies on the basis of scientific uncertainty, despite the fact, as we shall see in Chapter 4, one can make a very strong ethical condemnation of opposition to taking action to reduce greenhouse on the basis of scientific uncertainty. In 1996 under President Clinton, the United States reversed its previous position on its unwillingness to accept enforceable targets by announcing its support for negotiations of binding national emissions limitations that would be achieved by a certain date. Yet, this reversal would only apply to the executive branch of the US Government as the US Congress would continue to oppose capping greenhouse gases up to the present. The second session of the COP to the UNFCCC was convened in July 1996 in Geneva, Switzerland. On 18 July 1996 in Geneva, the ministers and other heads of delegations present released the Geneva Declaration. It was based on a US policy statement of 17 July 1996 at COP–2 which: (a) recognized and endorsed the Second Assessment Report of the IPCC as currently the most comprehensive and authoritative assessment of the science of climate change, (b) called for parties to set “legally binding, medium-term targets” for limitations and significant overall reductions of their emissions of greenhouse gases, and (c) accepted the US position that nations should be allowed flexibility in applying policies and measures to achieve emissions limitations and reductions (Morrissey 2001). The Chairman of COP–2 called for the parties to consider a “future decision [containing these elements] which would be legally binding on all parties under the UNFCCC.” This decision was to be negotiated in Kyoto at COP–3 in 1997. The Clinton administration agreed to this approach and, therefore, agreed to bind the United States to quantitative emissions limitations (Morrissey 2001). Yet, as we shall see, the United States continued to push for commitments from developing countries and Congress continued to oppose US binding commitments on climate change. Behind the scenes, fossil fuel and other industries, who believed that climate change policies would adversely affect their economic interests, strongly lobbied the US Congress to prevent the adoption of climate change legislation necessary for the US to make meaningful greenhouse gas emissions reductions. As before, the arguments made by the economically motivated corporations and business groups most frequently were based upon scientific uncertainty and unacceptable cost to the US economy.

38  Introduction: The Debate During this time, there was great nervousness about the Clinton administration’s approach to these pending negotiations brewing in the US Congress that was being lobbied heavily by fossil fuel interests (Morrissey 2001). Some US congressmen voiced strong concerns particularly about the principles of “common but differentiated commitments and responsibilities” under the UNFCCC that would require the developed nations such as the United States to commit to begin reduction of greenhouse gas emissions while allowing the developing nations to increase their share of global warming causing emissions. Specifically, questions were raised about whether continued adherence to these Principles along with emission reduction targets could disadvantage the United States economically and competitively in world markets (Morrissey 2001). Because of the perceived adverse economic impacts on the United States that were claimed by lobbyists in Washington, Congress continued to resist emerging approaches to reducing the growing threat of global warming, that were widely acceptable to other nations. And so the US legislature during the Clinton administration, similar to the role played by the executive branch in the Reagan and Bush administrations, became the center of resistance to emerging international consensus on the need to adopt greenhouse gas reduction strategies. It apparently made no difference to the US Congress that the United States had already ratified the UNFCCC in 1992, and in that treaty the United States had already agreed that the developed world needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions before the developing nations, and those nations should not use scientific uncertainty as an excuse for failing to act. Also during the 1990s, the US Congress categorically opposed any programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that were not voluntary unless other nations agreed to mandatory greenhouse gas emissions reductions commitments. Therefore, the claim that the US should not act in the absence of action by other nations was among the most frequent arguments made in opposition to action on climate change. The ethical assumptions and problems with this argument were ignored in the public debate. An official US response to a 1996 meeting of nations in Geneva was issued on 19 July 1996 to clarify how the United States wanted legally binding targets to be structured. Flexibility in how nations could attain any emissions reduction target became an important element in the Clinton administration’s approach to reducing US emissions (Morrissey 2001). That is the US executive branch under the Clinton administration intended to rely on a menu of controversial policy options that would make potential solutions affordable to the United States. These options would include: (a) several global emissions trading schemes, (b) options to pick which greenhouse gases any nation could choose to meet national targets, and (c) the liberal use of greenhouse gas sinks, that is biological carbon absorption methods, as a way of meeting emission limitation targets (Morrissey 2001). The United States would also require the participation of all developed and developing countries contrary to the express provisions in the UNFCCC that the United States had agreed to (Morrissey 2001). For this reason, the Clinton administration, although more engaged in thinking about solutions to global warming



Thirty-Five-Year Climate Change Debate  39

than the Reagan or Bush administrations, would introduce into the international negotiations issues that were also very troublesome for most nations, and would greatly slow down and complicate negotiations in the years ahead. During this time, members of the US Congress expressed strong concerns about the announced Clinton administration’s positions because of Congress’ assessment of potentially adverse impacts of climate change commitments on the US economy (Morrissey 2001). Congress also expressed great concern about the potential effect on the United States if it agreed to different commitments for developed and developing countries (Morrissey 2001). The United States would continue to take the position that it need not make reductions in greenhouse gas emissions unless some large developing countries, including China and India, also made promises to reduce emissions. This despite the fact that the US had already agreed, as a large developed country, it should take the first steps to reduce the threat of climate change. The United States acted as if it had no duty to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions unless other nations agreed to do so. There was little, if any, coverage in the US media of the fairness of the United States’ position in respect of claims made by the United States that it need not reduce its emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions until other nations committed to take action. Nor did the Clinton administration try to publicly make the case that it and developed countries should go first. The “Earth Summit Plus Five” special session of the United Nations General Assembly was held in June 1997 to assess progress since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. (The author of this book was a member of the US delegation to this meeting as the Program Manager for United Nations Organizations at the US Environmental Protection Agency Office of International Environmental Policy.) At this meeting, the United States faced very strong criticism for failing to take leadership in setting specific targets and timetables for limiting greenhouse gas emissions. President Clinton addressed this meeting, but declined to declare US support for a specific numerical emissions reduction target for greenhouse gas emissions. However, in his speech, President Clinton acknowledged that the United States had a special responsibility to act on climate change while admitting that there was not much political support for strong action in the United States. In the fall of 1997, to overcome political apathy in the United States and get domestic support for administration positions, President Clinton announced his intention to hold a White House Conference on climate change. Scheduled for 6 October 1997, the Conference was to bring together various contending interests, including industry, scientists, economists, and environmental groups (Stevens 1997: A1). For the next few months in a number of speeches, the Clinton administration acknowledged that it understood that the United States had certain equitable responsibilities as the largest emitter of greenhouse gases to reduce its emissions (Harris 2000:  30–49). Yet the Clinton administration refused to take equity into account in negotiating specific emissions reductions targets and the US Congress never acknowledged US equitable responsibilities.

40  Introduction: The Debate During the lead up to the Kyoto negotiations, industry lobbyists applied increasing pressure to prevent the United States from making commitments that would too quickly limit use of fossil fuel energy, which they argued would create problems for them and for the economy (Morrissey 2001). At the same time, US environmental groups pressed the United States to take leadership at Kyoto to make specific commitments to limit greenhouse gases (Morrissey 2001). As the then upcoming November 1997 Kyoto negotiations approached, members of Congress warned US negotiators that they should not agree to any new climate protocol that did not bind all parties including developing countries (Morrissey 2001). A US Senate resolution, introduced by Senators Hagel and Byrd along with 64 co-sponsors, passed the Senate by a vote of 95–0 on 25 July 1997 (Byrd–Hagel 1997). This resolution expressed the sense of the Senate that the United States should not be a signatory to any agreement in Kyoto “unless the protocol or other agreement also mandated new specific scheduled commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for developing country parties within the same compliance period” (Byrd–Hagel 1997). In the Byrd–Hagel Resolution, the US Senate implicitly repudiated those Principles of the UNFCCC already ratified by the United States that called for the developed nations, including the United States, to take the lead to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As was the case about many other issues discussed thus far, there was little reflection in the United States about what actions based on ethics or justice were required to reduce its emissions to the US fair share of safe global emission, even if other nations had not acted. And so on this issue, as well as all other major issues, ethics and justice issues was widely ignored. On 22 October 1997 President Clinton announced the long-awaited US positions to be taken at Kyoto in a speech at the National Geographic Society in Washington, DC. The United States would propose that legally binding greenhouse gas targets for six major greenhouse gases would require that 1990 emissions levels be met by 2008–2012 (Morrissey 2001). Therefore, going into Kyoto, the Clinton administration was not willing to commit to anything more than achieving 1990 emissions levels, a level of emissions that the United States had already agreed should be its goal in the UNFCCC five years earlier. Strong protests were quickly made to this proposal by the European Union and the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) who were particularly vocal about the weakness of this US proposal. In response, the United States argued that lowering US emissions to 1990 levels by 2012 would be a reduction of 23–30  percent below what emissions would otherwise be. In other words, the United States defended its initial Kyoto position on the basis of the large amount of reductions that would be required from the spiraling US greenhouse emissions. Additional major elements of the US proposal going into Kyoto were calls for: (a) the creation of international emissions trading systems that would reduce US costs, and (b) developing countries to make specific commitments on global warming (Morrissey 2001). And so the Clinton administration took the position that developing nations must commit to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions,



Thirty-Five-Year Climate Change Debate  41

a position that was in conflict with what the United States had agreed to when it ratified UNFCCC: a treaty that expressly called for the developed nations to take the first steps to reduce the threat of climate change. During this time, opponents of US action on climate change action argued vociferously that it would be unfair for the US to commit to reduce its emissions if other nations failed to make similar commitments (Morrissey 2001). Although this position was widely discussed in the US media, identification of any ethical problems with a nation refusing to reduce its emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions was absent in journalistic coverage of the climate negotiations. The responsibility of the developed nations in comparison to those of developing nations has been a contentious issue in international negotiations since the early 1990s up to the present but virtually absent in press coverage of climate change. But this issue continues to be mostly ignored in the public debate in the United States. In releasing its initial Kyoto proposal, the Clinton administration further contended that domestic implementation could be achieved through tax incentives, trading and other measures that would avoid the need for regulations (Damro and Luacez-Méndez 2003). The Clinton administration was thus arguing to Congress that there were relatively painless ways that the United States could make significant reductions in its greenhouse gas emissions. Implicit in the Clinton administration’s argument was the notion that the United States need only reduce its greenhouse gas emissions if it were economically easy to do so. In addition to the US position, several other proposals were floated by nations before the Kyoto negotiations. The European Union made an early proposal during the summer of 1997 that developed countries should commit to reduce emissions by 15  percent below 1990 levels by the year 2010, with an interim target of 7.5 percent by the year 2005 (Stevens 1997: 3). The Europeans strongly lobbied the United States to adopt this position at the June 1997 Earth Summit Plus Five meeting that took place in New York five months before Kyoto, a meeting at which this author was a member of the US delegation. Before Kyoto, AOSIS, the group representing the islands most vulnerable to rising oceans, proposed that nations should agree to reduce emissions by 20 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2005. These island nations were very aggressive in climate negotiations because they felt that their very existence was at stake. As the United States prepared for Kyoto, an industry coalition of oil companies, electricity utilities, automobile manufacturers, and farm groups launched a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign to generate public opposition to a Kyoto treaty (Warrick and Paley 1997). This campaign asserted that devastating impacts on the US economy would follow from a Kyoto treaty, which would limit United States emissions without obtaining any developing world commitments. One of the TV advertisements paid for by this campaign and frequently seen on US television showed scissors cutting China out of a world map while arguing that Kyoto was unfair to the United States because developing countries would not have an enforceable emissions target. Yet the advertisement made no

42  Introduction: The Debate mention of the fact that the United States had already agreed that the developed nations should take the first steps to reducing emissions in adopting the UNFCCC. Furthermore, charges that the Kyoto Protocol was unfair to the United States went completely unanswered in the US media. During this time, the Mobil Corporation also placed op-ed arguments against binding US commitments in the New York Times that continued to stress issues of scientific uncertainty about global warming and crippling United States’ economic impacts (Mobil 1997). The Mobil articles also urged that any treaty must include commitments from the developing countries (Mobil 1997). The Kyoto Conference was held 1–11 December 1997. Attending the Conference were 6,000 delegates from more than 160 nations (Christianson 1999: 253). In addition to the delegates, 3,600 members of environmental groups and 3,500 reporters followed the negotiations (Christianson 1999: 253). Among the most powerful industry representatives at Kyoto was the Climate Change Coalition, which then included as members, among others, ExxonMobil, and Shell Oil, along with the big three US automotive manufactures, mining, and transport companies, steel makers and chemical producers (Christianson 1999: 253). The British environment minister described the presence at Kyoto of the United States-based industry lobbyists as follows: I saw some of the nastiest big business arm-twisting one could imagine. A corps of sixty lobbyists from United States coal, oil, and car industries, masquerading under the label of Global Climate Coalition, stalked the corridors and meeting rooms cajoling and threatening United States’ delegates and developing countries alike. (IEP 2012) Also attending the Conference was a large US congressional delegation headed by Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, who had introduced the Senate resolution opposing any treaty that would create great costs for the US economy, and that did not include developing world commitments. Many in the US congressional delegation appeared to be in Kyoto to prevent the US government delegates from getting out in front of the very restrictive congressional position announced in the Byrd–Hagel Resolution. Just as was the case in the 1992 Earth Summit negotiations, the United States entered the Kyoto negotiations holding, along with Australia, the least environmentally protective position among major players, despite the fact that the Clinton administration had taken a more engaged approach to US global warming responsibilities. In formulating the US position, President Clinton had been convinced by his economic advisors to go slow because of potential adverse economic impacts on the US economy if the proposals of other nations were adopted at Kyoto (Stevens 1999: 298). Just as in Rio, the stakes were extraordinarily high in Kyoto in terms of the ability to create losers and winners among and within countries. Energy intensive



Thirty-Five-Year Climate Change Debate  43

industries and fossil fuel and automobile companies in the United States apparently believed that they had a lot to lose. Although these lobbyists fought many battles, during negotiations they focused much of their energy on pushing the United States to hold its position on insisting that the developing nations make specific commitments to reduce greenhouse emissions while fighting proposed enforceable targets for the reduction of US greenhouse gas emissions. As negotiations began, many developing nations lectured the richer countries, and in particular the United States, about the failure to make progress in reducing greenhouse gases since the 1992 Earth Summit. In the first week of negotiations little progress was made as charge and countercharge were made. In fact, on the fourth day, the New York Times declared that only a “near-miracle” could salvage the negotiations (Christianson 1999: 264). It appeared to many as if the negotiations would fail, largely because the United States, virtually standing alone again, would not agree to the magnitude of reduction targets being pushed by most developed and developing nations. Not much happened until US Vice President Gore arrived in Kyoto on 8 December and told the American delegation to show “increased negotiating flexibility” (Stevens 1999: 306). Gore’s arrival broke up the negotiating logjam, although significant disagreements still remained among the parties until the very last moment on the last day of the negotiations. Because so much was at stake, during the last few days intense negotiations took place not only between the negotiators in Kyoto, but also between heads of state in their capitals. At the last moment, a final deal was struck when the United States agreed to commit to 7 percent reduction below 1990 emission levels in turn for acceptance of much of its position on “flexibility mechanisms,” particularly those relating to trading (Hapka 1998). These flexibility mechanisms would allow the United States to achieve the majority of its greenhouse reduction target, not through actual emission reductions in the United States, but through paying for greenhouse reduction projects in other countries or by obtaining credit for carbon being stored by US forests. Despite strong opposition to many aspects of the US trading proposals, at the last moment, the developing countries agreed to these trading mechanisms; in part, because many of the functional details of trading mechanisms would have to be worked out in future negotiations. In this way the developing nations believed they could postpone battles over the specifics of the trading mechanisms to another day. Many of the core concepts relating to trading and other “flexibility” elements of the Kyoto Protocol that had been pushed by the United States were not resolved in Kyoto because broad general concepts were only agreed to at the very last moment. These unresolved issues would continue to plague future negotiations for several years. In the Kyoto Protocol, the United States agreed to achieve a 7 percent reduction of its emissions below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012; the European Union agreed to an 8  percent reduction; Japan a 6  percent reduction; while 20 other

44  Introduction: The Debate countries agreed to be bound to emissions reductions which would in total reduce emissions from the developed nations by 5.2 percent (Kyoto Protocol 1997). In achieving its goal in inserting these flexibility elements into the Kyoto Protocol at virtually the last minute, the United States introduced concepts that would be helpful to it to minimize costs of compliance, but made future negotiations much more complex than they would have been without these mechanisms. In fact, many of the flexibility mechanisms successfully pushed by the United States would continue to plague negotiations after Kyoto for the next three years because many of the details of these flexibility mechanisms continued to be hotly contested. One of the major US objectives going into Kyoto was not achieved to the US satisfaction. That is, the United States was not successful in achieving its stated goal of securing meaningful participation of developing nations (US 1998: 23). However, despite the fact that the United States got other nations to compromise their positions in the Kyoto Protocol in return for the US promise to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 7 percent, the Clinton administration announced after Kyoto that it would not submit the Kyoto Protocol to the US Senate for ratification until it secured agreements from developing nations to participate in Kyoto. In this way, the United States was not only repudiating the deal that it had made in Kyoto to support the new Protocol, but also the provision in Article 3 of the UNFCCC that stated that the developed world would take the first steps in reducing emissions.

The Aftermath of Kyoto The reaction to the Kyoto Protocol by opponents in the United States was fierce and swift. These Kyoto opponents cried that the US agreement to a 7  percent reduction below 1990—an agreement that did not include developing world commitments—would create economic havoc in the United States. Some fossil fuel interests and others embarked upon a massive advertising and public relations blitz, trying to convince the public and the government to shun the Protocol. US Senator Chuck Hagel echoed the anger of other US legislators toward the Clinton administration when he said: “Any way you measure this; this is a bad deal for America” (Reuters 1997). Senator Hagel also predicted that the Kyoto Agreement would be dead on arrival if it appeared for ratification in the United States Senate (Reuters 2001). Once again, arguments in support of the fairness of the US commitments were absent in US media coverage of the Kyoto outcome. The media reported the nature of the opposition to the Kyoto deal but refrained from any analysis of whether the Kyoto commitments were consistent with what justice would require. Nor did the proponents of climate action succeed in raising the question of what justice requires of a high-emitting nation, so that it became even a minor issue about Kyoto. The public fight was overwhelmingly, if not completely, about what Kyoto would cost the US economy and whether the science that justified international action was settled.



Thirty-Five-Year Climate Change Debate  45

For the most part, the Clinton administration had not been successful in getting many other developing nations to make commitments on reducing greenhouse gases. As a result, the Clinton administration believed it was not in a position to ask the US Senate to ratify the treaty. In the meantime, most of the developing world resisted the pressure from the United States to make commitments to reduce greenhouse gases. One observer of the role played by the developing nations at a meeting in Buenos Aires said: The reality is that the views of the developing world have not shifted since the Kyoto Conference … [T]he vast majority [of developing nations] have adopted a wait and see attitude with respect to their obligations—or perhaps we should phrase it a “wait and see if the developed countries begin taking steps to meet the obligations they agreed to in Kyoto.” This position dominated discussions on particular commitments from the developing world. Emissions trading and carbon sequestration, of course, still remains suspect, and it will take substantial discussion and negotiation to reach agreement on how to operationalize the Kyoto language. (Hapka 1998) Many of the nations in the developing world bridled at the US position that they should make commitments while the developing nations’ total and per capita emissions were so low compared to the developed world (Hapka 1998). These developing nations also argued that it was not fair for the United States “with the highest levels of both GDP and emissions to insist on developing country positions when the United States itself seems unwilling to make substantial emissions reductions” (Hapka 1998). At the beginning of 2001, the IPCC released its third scientific assessment. This comprehensive report on the science of climate change concluded that the Earth’s average surface temperature could rise by 1.4–5.8°C from 1990 to 2100—much higher than IPCC’s estimate five years before when it predicted a rise of 1.0–3.7°C (IPCC 2001a). Should the higher estimates prove accurate, they would spell potential catastrophe for our planet. The third IPCC report also strengthened its prior conclusions that human-caused global warming was already happening. The Clinton administration was not successful in overcoming the strong opposition on climate change of industrial lobbyists, think tanks, front groups, and their political spokespersons.

The George W. Bush Administration The George W. Bush administration took office in January of 2001 apparently either unaware of the enormous international controversy that had arisen around global warming, or indifferent to it. On 13 March 2001, less than two months after taking office, President Bush announced that he would abandon his

46  Introduction: The Debate campaign promise to regulate CO2 emissions from electrical generation facilities (Jehl and Revkin 2001). In making this announcement, President Bush pointed to the same three reasons that had become an American refrain of excuses for refusing to take action on global warming, namely: scientific uncertainty, cost to the US economy, and the failure of the developing world to make commitments (Jehl and Revkin 2001). A week later, the Bush administration announced that it was backing away from Kyoto. The Bush administration’s decision to reject the international treaty to combat global warming so painfully and arduously agreed to in Kyoto provoked a stunned and angry reaction among America’s allies in Europe and Japan (Drozdiak and Pianin 2001). Many of them loudly urged the United States to reconsider its decision. On 30 April 2001, Vice President Cheney gave a preview of the George W. Bush energy strategy. He stressed that the policy would not include austerity measures like the ones the nation adopted in 1974 in the wake of the Arab oil embargo (Lazaroff 2001). In this speech Cheney said: “The aim here is efficiency, not austerity.” Cheney also said in this speech that saving energy may be “a sign of personal virtue” but is not sufficient for a national energy policy (Lazaroff 2001). Cheney further said that the United States needed to build as many as 1,900 new power plants over the next 20 years to keep abreast of new energy demand. Cheney argued that coal needed to be the primary source for electric power generation for years to come. In February and March of 2001, shortly after the George W. Bush administration came to power, US Vice President Cheney met in the White House with industry representatives. This meeting would lead to the US both withdrawing from Kyoto and a new energy policy that relied heavily on fossil fuel. On 16 May 2001, President Bush released a new US energy policy (US 2001). This policy concluded that over the next 20 years, US oil consumption would increase by 33 percent, and demand for energy would increase by 45 percent (US 2001). Although the Bush policy recognized the need for greater use of renewable energy, the cornerstone of this policy was increased use of fossil fuels to meet rising demand, with coal “playing a significant role,” along with petroleum, natural gas, and nuclear (US 2001). International reaction to the Bush energy plan was harsh for its failure either to rein in galloping US energy demand or to reduce the threat of global warming (Reuters 2001). Some environmentalists charged that the plan was a “disaster” and a “crime” for failing to take global warming seriously (Reuters 2001). On 7 June 2001, the US Academy of Sciences issued a report, which had been requested earlier by the Bush administration, confirming global warming was a real problem and getting much worse (Seelye and Revkin 2001). This report was seen to be a huge embarrassment and rebuke to the Bush administration that was still relying on scientific uncertainty as a basis for rejecting both the Kyoto Protocol and the regulation of CO2. On 11 June 2001, President Bush gave a policy address on global warming in the White House Rose Garden (White House 2001). Although this speech



Thirty-Five-Year Climate Change Debate  47

acknowledged that the National Academy of Sciences had concluded that recent heating of the Earth had been caused in part by human activities and announced new global warming research programs, it also emphasized scientific uncertainty about consequences of global warming. President Bush also attacked the Kyoto Protocol for excluding developing world participation, for not basing the Kyoto reduction targets on sound science, and for having a negative impact on the economy (White House 2001). And so those opposing climate change continued to argue that the United States should not adopt serious climate change emissions reductions policies as long as other nations were not adopting equivalent policies, for this would harm the American economy. As was the case when this argument was made in previous years, neither the press nor even advocates of climate change policies made publicly visible arguments that action by the United States might be required on ethical principles, even if not all other nations were taking action. Not much progress was made in the United States during the Bush administration in developing a US climate change policy. Yet international pressure continued to mount to develop a global response to climate change. However, in the United States, fossil fuel and other interests continued to make arguments against climate change policies on grounds of scientific uncertainty and cost to the US economy (see Chapters 4 and 5). As we have seen throughout this chapter, few if any arguments in support of action based upon US ethical obligations appeared in the press during this time. In November 2004, the Russian parliament ratified the Kyoto Protocol, paving the way for it to come into force in 2005 (BBC News 2004). The United States, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, remained the only developed nation that refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol when Australia ratified the Protocol in 2007. As we shall see in Chapter 4, the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment in 2007, drew much more confident conclusions that the planet is warming, that this warming is at least partially human-caused, and that the world is headed to potentially catastrophic warming unless great reductions are made in the next several decades from business-as-usual. However, despite growing agreement among most climate change scientists that human-induced climate change represented a civilization-challenging problem of the highest urgency, many ideologically driven skeptics made claims that climate change was a hoax or that the scientific consensus view of most mainstream scientists has been completely debunked (see Chapter 4). Because the Kyoto Protocol ends by its own terms in 2012, and there was growing scientific consensus that climate change was an enormous looming threat, international pressure built in 2007 for the international community to agree on a global solution to climate change that would replace the Kyoto Protocol. At the 14th Conference of the Parties under the UNFCCC(COP–14) in Bali, Indonesia, a plan emerged to replace the Kyoto Protocol. As the Bali COP approached in December of 2007, the United States announced its intention to negotiate with the 15 largest national emitters of greenhouse gases

48  Introduction: The Debate on a separate negotiating track from that under the climate convention, leaving out many of the poorest nations that are most vulnerable to climate change damages (Brown 2007b). The Bush administration also asserted that each nation should be able to set its own policies rather than be bound by an international treaty. The United States also consistently argued that in setting national climate change policy it had a right to base its response to climate change on US economic interests. As we shall see, any claims that national interest alone can be justification for climate policy, is implicitly a denial of ethical responsibilities to the victims of climate change, yet this fact went unnoticed in the US press, and even among comments made by most proponents of US action on climate change. In the lead up to the Bali negotiations, opponents of climate change policies in the United States continued to argue against the US agreeing to an international deal on climate change on the basis of cost to the United States and scientific uncertainty, matters which will be examined in detail in Chapters 3 and 4 (Brown 2007a). At the Bali negotiations, delegates from nearly 190 countries emerged from a final 24 hours of bruising negotiations with an agreement on creating a new climate change framework for tackling global warming, and one that called for the first time for both the industrialized world and rapidly developing nations to commit to measurable, verifiable steps. The Bali agreement also called for a twoyear negotiating process to replace the Kyoto Protocol in Poznan, Poland in 2008, and Copenhagen in 2009 (Eilperin 2007).

The Obama Administration Barack Obama, who ran for president promising to take climate change seriously, became president of the United States in January 2009 having been elected in November 2008. Very little progress was made in the two-year negotiation process leading up to the Copenhagen meeting in December of 2009. Yet the world was hopeful that the new US President would lead the United States to a responsible climate position in Copenhagen in 2009, a key missing element in international climate change negotiations since they began in 1990. The December 2008 meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC at Poznan, Poland was not very eventful as President-elect Obama had not taken office and, therefore, could not commit to a US position. Many in the international community were waiting for the United States and did not expect much from it until President-elect Obama took over the US presidency. When Barack Obama became president of the United States in January 2009, he made the world hopeful that he would lead the United States to break from past and take a constructive view on supporting a global climate change treaty. As he took office, Obama took a much stronger verbal position on climate change than his predecessor, George W. Bush. Barack Obama had asserted during his campaign that he would reduce climate-altering carbon dioxide emissions by 80 percent by 2050, and invest $150 billion in new energy saving technologies (Broder 2008).



Thirty-Five-Year Climate Change Debate  49

Although some progress was made on a few issues in the two-year lead up to the December 2009 Copenhagen meeting, which had been designated in Bali two years before as the forum for finalizing a replacement to the Kyoto Protocol, little progress was made on the major issues and particularly on commitments for greenhouse gas emissions reductions and funding for adaptation, deforestation programs, and technology transfer (Brown 2010a). As Copenhagen approached, optimism about a Copenhagen deal faded although there was a short spurt of renewed hope several weeks before the Conference started in late November 2009 as the United States, China, and a few other nations publicly made voluntary commitments on emissions reductions (Brown 2010a). Throughout the two weeks in Copenhagen, attendees from poor, at risk countries could be heard despairingly describing killer droughts and growing deserts in Africa, loss of glacier-fed water supplies on which their agriculture depends for millions in Central Asia and South America, and rising seas that are threatening the very existence of small island states. Suffering caused by the human-induced warming, which the Earth was already experiencing, was now visible around the world although mostly in poor developing countries. Because warming was expected to accelerate over the years ahead, for many poor countries climate change was understood in 2010 to be an urgent matter of life and death (Brown 2010a). When climate negotiations started in 1990, CO2 was approximately 350ppm but by 2010 CO2 had risen to almost 390ppm. Arguments against climate change policies, discussed in this and later chapters, about cost and scientific uncertainty against policies have most likely been responsible for allowing CO2 to rise by 50ppm by 2010 since the climate change debate began. During the Copenhagen Conference representatives from poor, vulnerable nations begged developed countries: (a)  to commit to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to levels necessary to prevent dangerous climate change, and (b) to fund adaptation programs in developing countries that are necessary to protect the most vulnerable from climate change impacts that could be avoided, and compensate for damages that could not be avoided (Brown 2010a). Not much happened during the Copenhagen Conference to resolve the most contentious issues with the exception of getting voluntary commitments from some developed and developing countries to reduce their emissions that would prove to be insufficient to prevent dangerous climate change. Because none of the developed countries were willing to make commitments to emissions reduction congruent with what science said was necessary to protect them, some of the most vulnerable developing countries saw the developed countries’ positions as ominous, perhaps a death sentence (Brown 2010a). Other partial but insufficient steps necessary to achieve an adequate global solution to climate change, and agreed to in Copenhagen included: •

promises by China and some developing countries to allow verification of their voluntary emissions reductions promises

50  Introduction: The Debate • • •

•

an agreement to try and limit warming to 2°C without an agreement on what atmospheric stabilization goal would be targeted to limit warming to this amount a promise to provide adequate, predictable and sustainable financial resources to developing countries for adaptation but no agreement on final amounts of these funds or where these monies would come from a promise to try to jointly mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020, to address the needs of developing countries from a wide variety of sources; including public and private, bilateral and multilateral funds, but no express commitments from governments on the sources of these funds a promise to find economic incentives to prevent deforestation and forest degradation (Brown 2010a).

Despite growing scientific evidence that the world was running out of time to protect the poorest people in the world from the harsh impacts of climate change, the best the international community could do in Copenhagen was to agree on the weak—compared to what was hoped for—non-binding document, the Copenhagen Accord (Brown 2010a). President Obama’s hands were tied in the negotiations because of domestic political constraints in the US Congress due to fierce opposition on climate change legislation on the basis of cost to the US economy and scientific uncertainty. This opposition came primarily from fossil fuel interests and other industrial groups that continued to make arguments against US climate change reduction policies (Brown, 2010a). As we shall see in Chapter 4, a huge campaign on climate change science disinformation broke out over a scandal referred to as “emailgate,” a bogus campaign claiming that hacked emails from several prominent scientific organizations demonstrated that the mainstream scientific view on climate change was a hoax. Although charges about the meaning of the emailgate scandal would be shown to be without merit, the emailgate controversy, along with other arguments discussed in Chapter 4, successfully derailed US domestic climate change legislation much until the present. Those opposing climate change legislation during this time in the United States again often argued that it would be unfair to the United States if it was bound to reduce greenhouse gas emissions if China was not required to do the same, an argument that we have seen was vigorously made about the Kyoto Protocol. This argument was made without visible critical comment in the United States about US ethical obligations, or the fact that the United States had committed itself to take the first steps to reduce emissions along with other developed countries under the UNFCCC. When China became the world’s largest emitter in terms of total tonnes of greenhouse gases in the fall of 2008, this fact was widely publicized in the United States, as if China had moved into first place in terms of global responsibility. In reality, the US press frequently announced that China had become the largest



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climate change polluter, a fact which ignored that United States emits more than four times the amount of greenhouse gases than China on a per capita basis. A fact that, if true, raises important ethical issues about US responsibilities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, even if China makes no commitment to reduce its emissions. The negotiating agenda for the 16th Conference of the Parties in December 2010 in Cancún, Mexico was very modest because of the failure of the Copenhagen meeting and the increasingly unlikely possibility during 2010 to get the United States to make binding commitments beyond what it had agreed to under the Copenhagen Accord. This was due to a growing legislative gridlock in the US Congress. Following Copenhagen, 42 industrialized countries submitted quantified economy-wide emission targets for 2020. In addition, 43 developing countries submitted nationally appropriate mitigation actions (UNEP 2010). These pledges have since become the basis for analyzing the extent to which the global community is on track to meet long-term temperature goals, as outlined in the Copenhagen Accord of 2°C. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) issued a report before Cancún analyzing whether the emissions reductions commitments submitted pursuant to the Copenhagen Accord would achieve the 2°C (UNEP 2010). UNEP concluded that if the highest ambitions of all countries associated with the Copenhagen Accord are implemented, annual emissions of greenhouse gases could be cut, on average by around 7Gt (gigatons) of CO2 equivalent by 2020 (UNEP 2010). Without this action, it is likely that a business-as-usual scenario would see emissions rise to an average of around 56Gt of CO2 equivalents by around 2020. Cuts in annual emissions to around 49Gt of CO2 equivalent would still, however, leave a gap of around 5Gt compared with where we need to be—a gap equal to the total emissions of the world’s cars, buses and trucks in 2005 (UNEP 2010). That is because the experts estimate that emissions need to be around 44Gt of CO2 equivalent by 2020 to have any reasonable chance of keeping temperatures to 2°C or less (UNEP 2010). However, if only the lowest ambition pledges that were pledged in Copenhagen are implemented, and if no clear rules are set in the negotiations, emissions could be around 53Gt of CO2 equivalent in 2020—not that different from business-as-usual (UNEP 2010). And so, the voluntary emissions reductions agreed to in Copenhagen virtually guaranteed that the international community would not succeed in preventing the dangerous climate change that would be caused above 2°C. All of this set the stage for the Cancún negotiations in November 2010, a negotiating agenda which was less ambitious than the Copenhagen agenda because most observers believed it would not be possible in Cancún to obtain the binding commitments on greenhouse gas reductions, the dedicated funding for developing countries for capacity building and adaptation, or funding for forest protection identified in the Bali agreement in 2007.

52  Introduction: The Debate UNFCCC COP–16 concluded in the early hours of 11 December 2010, at Moon Palace near Cancún, Mexico, with a few modest agreements on steps needed to structure a global approach to solving climate change (Brown 2010b). Among other things, negotiators agreed to: • •

• • •

confirm the voluntary commitments, the warming limit, and the national verification procedures agreed to in Copenhagen a collective commitment by developed countries to provide $30 billion in fast-start finance for developing countries in 2010–12; and to mobilize $100 billion a year in public and private finance by 2020 “in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation” establish a Green Climate Fund operating under the “guidance” of, and accountable to, the Conference of the Parties agree on a framework to enhance adaptation efforts by all countries including a process to help least developed countries (LDCs) to develop and implement national adaptation plans establish a technology transfer process.

Like the Copenhagen Accord, most observers saw the outcome of COP–16 in Cancún to be another tragic failure to come up with a legally binding global solution to climate change, 35 years after the world was put on official notice by the scientific community of the seriousness of human-induced climate change and 20 years after negotiations began on a global solution to climate change. During the Obama administration, several bills were introduced in the US Congress to establish US domestic law limiting greenhouse gases. Initially, several of these proposed laws appeared to have some chance of getting through the US Congress. However, extraordinarily strong lobbying by corporate interests opposed to climate change legislation—on the grounds that it would harm their economic interests and the American economy—succeeded in preventing this legislation from getting through the US Congress (Pooley 2010). Starting in the late 1980s and continuing through the present, a well-financed climate change disinformation campaign devoted to undermining the scientific consensus view on climate science thrived in the United States and was strong in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom (see Chapter 4). Although this campaign focused mainly on convincing citizens and politicians that the mainstream scientific view on climate change was flawed, frequently this disinformation machine also made arguments against climate change policies on economic grounds. Without doubt, the disinformation campaign was effective in convincing Americans that climate change was not a serious problem. In 2010, only 55 percent of Americans believed climate change was a threat to them and their families, down 9 percentage points from 64 percent in 2007 and 2008 (Rettig 2011). Although no federal legislation on climate change was adopted at the national level in the United States, some US states and regions adopted climate policies,



Thirty-Five-Year Climate Change Debate  53

including the development of regional greenhouse gas reduction markets, the creation of state and local climate action and adaptation plans, and increasing renewable energy generation (C2ES 2012). Yet these lower-level governments have done little to significantly reduce the US carbon footprint. The only significant progress on climate change at the national level in the United States under the first term of the Obama administration was a series of proposed regulations regulating CO2 from some industrial sources, which evolved from a 2007 US Supreme Court decision that ruled the US Environmental Protection Agency had authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act if the agency declared them a public danger (Schoenberg and Drajem 2012). The EPA issued a so-called endangerment finding in December 2009, clearing the way for regulation of emissions from power plants, factories and other sources linked to global climate change. Yet these regulations were challenged by a large number of US corporations and industry organizations, and are under review. The vast majority of the media coverage on climate change in the 35-year period during which climate policies have been debated in the US and in many parts of the world has focused on the national-level government policies virtually ignoring the obligations of sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Given that some entities below the national level are huge emitters of greenhouse gases in both developed and developing nations, the absence of discussion about the obligations of entities below the national level is also an issue that arises from how climate change has been debated around the world for over three decades.

Ethical Issues Entailed by the Climate Change Debate We can see from the above history of the international community’s attempt for over three decades to come up with a global solution to climate change the following ethical issues that have arisen again and again as barriers to a global climate change solution. These issues will be dealt with in subsequent chapters: • • •

•

Cost to national economies: Is the commonly used justification of national cost for delaying or minimizing climate change action ethically justified? Scientific uncertainty: What is the ethical significance of the need to make climate change decisions in the face of scientific uncertainty? Atmospheric targets: What ethical principles should guide the choice of specific climate change policy objectives, including but not limited to, maximum human-induced warming and atmospheric greenhouse gas targets? Allocating greenhouse gas emissions reductions: What ethical principles should be followed in allocating responsibility among people, organizations, and governments at all levels to prevent ethically intolerable impacts from climate change?

54  Introduction: The Debate •

Responsibility for damages: Are nations ethically responsible for the consequences of climate change, that is, including liability for the burdens of: • • •

• •

mitigation of climate change causing emissions preparing for and then responding to climate change (i.e., adaptation) paying for unavoidable damages?

Responsibility of sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals for climate change: Who other than nations are responsible for climate change? Independent responsibility to act: Is the commonly used justification for delaying or minimizing climate change action, that any government need not act until all others agree on action, ethically justified?

These are the major issues that have consistently become the major barriers to action on climate change in the United States and other nations that emit high levels of greenhouse gases. As we have seen, for the most, the ethical dimensions of these arguments at the center of resistance to action on climate change have been virtually absent in the public policy debate. We will now look in more detail at how these arguments have been made on these issues while examining these arguments through an ethical lens.

Part II

Priority Climate Change Ethical Issues

Chapter 3

Ethical Problems with Cost Arguments

Introduction As we have seen in Chapter 2, with the possible exception of claims that there is no scientific basis for climate change concerns, by far the most frequent arguments made in opposition to climate change policies have been claims that climate change policies are unacceptably costly. These claims take various forms, for example, proposed climate change legislation will destroy jobs, reduce GDP, damage specific businesses such as the coal and petroleum industries, increase the cost of fuel, or simply that the proposed legislation is not affordable to the public. This chapter identifies a host of ethical problems with cost arguments most frequently made in opposition to proposed climate change policies. The purpose of the chapter is not only to identify ethical issues raised by these cost arguments, but also to identify strong ethical criticisms that can be made of some of these arguments, even where it may be difficult to determine what ethics ultimately requires about some cost issues. Of course, not all cost arguments about climate change policies are irrelevant to enlightened climate change public policy. For instance, economists can often help decision makers reduce greenhouse gas emissions to target levels at lowest cost, create economic incentives that will most effectively achieve climate change protection goals, and help with questions about how to distribute climate change reduction burdens in society with least disruption to human flourishing. Without doubt, economic analyses of climate change reduction strategies are vital to finding the most efficient solutions to human-induced climate change’s immense threat. The more low cost solutions to climate change are found, the more hope there is to reduce climate change’s immense menace. Yet, as we shall see, many cost arguments made in opposition to climate change policies are both ethically and factually flawed. This is not surprising as many of the arguments against climate change policies, as we have seen in Chapter 2, are often defensive moves of parties who are trying to protect themselves against perceived reduction in their profits if climate change policies are enacted (Oreskes and Conway 2010). This is not to claim that all costs concerns

58  Priority Ethical Issues should be irrelevant to climate change policy formation but is to explain why so many cost arguments about climate change policies are based upon deeply problematic ethical and factual assumptions. Recent arguments made against proposed US climate change legislation is typical of cost arguments that have been made in opposition to climate change policies in the United States for over 30 years. One example is a comment made by US Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in reaction to US House climate change legislation, who said: “The last thing American families need right now is to be hit with a new energy tax every time they flip on a light switch, or fill up their car—but that’s exactly what this bill would do” (Trygstad 2009). Another typical example of common cost arguments made against climate change is the following statement about the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) on climate change, a proposal to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the existing US air pollution law. Virtually every concern heightened by the economic downturn, especially job losses, would be exacerbated under the ANPR. As with cap-and-trade legislation, the EPA’s suggested rulemaking would be poison to an already sick economy. But even in the best of economic times, this policy would likely end them. The estimated costs—close to $7 trillion and 3 million manufacturing jobs lost—are staggering. So is the sweep of regulations that could severely affect nearly every major energy-using product from cars to lawnmowers, and a million or more businesses and buildings of all types. And all of this sacrifice is in order to make, at best, a minuscule contribution to an overstated environmental threat. (Lieberman 2008) There are often problems with these cost arguments that go beyond the ethical concerns discussed in this chapter. For instance, cost claims often: (a) include factual errors in the calculating the costs and benefits of proposed climate change policies, (b) are based upon questionable assumptions in the economic models used to calculate costs that ignore other potential valid assumptions, (c) fail to consider costs that society would bear from inaction on climate change, and (d) are outright falsehoods. An example of an outright falsehood is a claim recently made by Glen Beck, a US television personality, who informed his audience of a “buried” Obama administration study showing that the Waxman–Markey US House of Representatives bill would actually cost the average family $1,787 per year. There was no such study (Krugman 2009). Despite these other problems with cost arguments that need to be considered to critically evaluate them, this chapter focuses exclusively on ethical issues that often arise when cost arguments are made against climate change



Ethical Problems with Cost Arguments  59

policies. Nevertheless, in addition to the ethical problems with cost arguments made against climate change policies discussed in the chapter, frequently strong factual criticisms of these arguments can also be made.

Ethical Problems Entailed by Cost Arguments against Climate Change Policies Both Factual and Ethical Problems with Cost Arguments Many of the cost arguments made against climate change are simple assertions that climate change policies are too costly. They do not explicitly compare costs of taking action against the benefits of taking action, the form of analysis made in cost–benefit analysis (CBA). To the extent arguments are based upon additional cost alone, serious ethical objections can be raised because, as we shall see, one may not harm others on the basis that it will cost the harming entity money. For instance, it would be ethically problematic for a husband who owed child support to his ex-wife to refuse to give the support on the basis that he would like to use the money for a trip to Bermuda (Garvey 2008: 98). Although many objections to climate change policies are based upon cost alone, this chapter focuses on CBAs as they more explicitly compare costs of climate change reduction strategies against the benefits to society of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. One can usually understand other kinds of cost arguments against climate change policies as implicitly taking the form of CBAs because even though they do not explicitly compare the costs of climate change policies against the benefits of taking action they usually can be understood to implicitly do so. This is behind any objection against climate change policies that simply claims that a proposed policy costs too much, and is usually the unstated assumption that the benefits to society that would be obtained by the implementation of the greenhouse gas reduction policy are not worth it. Therefore, ethical analyses of CBAs are also usually relevant to simple claims that a policy is too costly. CBA is a generic term for a variety of techniques designed to allow decision makers to determine in a rigorous way whether the payback from a program will be greater than the costs of implementing it. If the costs of an environmental program are greater than its environmental benefits, according to mainstream CBA theory, the program should be abandoned. The economic justification for this use of CBA is the notion that society must decide how to spend its scarce resources, and it should spend its money in the most efficient way possible. If money is spent by society on environmental protection programs that do not produce an environmental payback greater in economic value than the cost of the program, it is a bad investment and should not be supported (Shogren and Toman 2000). According to CBA theory, this is because public money should be spent on programs that will produce the largest aggregate benefits. As we shall see, the philosophical justification for this approach is often a form of utilitarianism, sometimes referred to as “preference utilitarianism.”

60  Priority Ethical Issues Like other cost considerations, CBAs can have practical value in guiding public policy on some policy issues. In addition, some policy choices facing governments do not raise the ethical questions entailed by the use of CBAs in the case of climate change and, therefore, the ethical issues considered here may not be applicable to all uses of CBAs in public policy. However, as shown later, CBAs used to determine the acceptability of climate change policies often ignore serious ethical limitations when they are used thus in the case of climate change policy. Yet cost arguments are very commonly used to oppose taking action to reduce the threat of climate change. Ethical Responsibility to All People As we have seen, proponents of CBAs often argue governments should not take action to reduce greenhouse emissions if the cost to reduce emissions is greater than the value of avoiding climate change-caused harms because of the government action. Although CBA may be a very valuable tool for decision makers who are trying to decide whether an investment in a particular project will provide an adequate payoff compared to other projects or investments, CBAs used for some environmental problems such as climate change can be ethically dubious in cases where harms and benefits are significantly disaggregated. That is, climate change is a problem for which harms and benefits are greatly disaggregated because it is a problem caused by some people around the world who are often separated by significant time and space from those who are most vulnerable to a warming world. Therefore, the costs that seek to be avoided by the application of CBAs often fall on different people than those who will benefit by climate change policies. We now know with high levels of confidence, for instance, that greenhouse gas emissions coming from coal fired power plants in the United States and China are already likely contributing to droughts in Africa and Australia, threatening polar bears and walruses in the Arctic as sea ice melts, and endangering millions of people who live near rising seas in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. Future climate change impacts threaten some of the poorest people around the world who do not live in high-emitting nations. That is, climate change harms and benefits are hugely separated across time and geography. This separation between those causing climate change from those who are most threatened by it creates several ethical limitations on the use of CBAs as a guide to climate change policy. One frequent justification for using CBAs as a guide to regulatory action is that if money is spent on a project that will return limited benefits compared to other projects that could return more benefits, there is then a lost opportunity to create greater human welfare (Shogren and Toman 2000). In economics an “opportunity cost” is the cost (sacrifice) incurred by choosing one option over an alternative one that may be equally desired. Thus, opportunity cost is the cost of pursuing one choice instead of another that could provide greater



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benefits. Yet in the case of climate change, there may be no “opportunity cost” experienced by many of those who are most vulnerable to a warming world and would, therefore, benefit from an expenditure on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, which is instead used by high greenhouse gas emitters for other projects. If, for instance, the United States decides not to spend $1billion on climate change reduction strategies because a CBA determines that this money will not return an equal or greater amount of benefits measured in dollars to the United States, then the CBA can act as justification for continuing behavior which harms others without their consent. In this case, if the United States chooses to invest the $1 billion in an alternative project, such as health care for Americans, this alternative investment does not lead to greater benefits for those whom the United States is harming through its greenhouse gas emissions. For this reason, the opportunity cost argument often does not work when harms and benefits are as geographically and temporally disaggregated as they are in climate change. In addition to the fact that the opportunity cost justification does not work for the use of CBAs as a guide to climate change policy formation, there are several ethical issues posed by climate change which flow from the fact that harms and benefits of climate change are so disaggregated across space and time. These will be discussed in later portions of this chapter. The following section examines the conflict between CBAs used as a guide to public action on climate change and the obligations that all humans have to all others to prevent harm. Sometimes CBAs have been used to look at harms and benefits to the polluting country alone. For instance, when the Clinton administration was attacked with the charge that the Kyoto Protocol’s cost in the United States was too expensive compared to the benefits of programs in the United States, the US government simply developed an alternative analysis that looked at harms and benefits to the United States alone, and showed lower costs to the United States than those on which the opponents of Kyoto were relying (United States 1998). The Clinton administration’s defense of Kyoto, based upon its CBA, ignored the benefits of US global warming programs to others outside the United States. Although the Clinton administration may have simply been attempting to refute arguments against the Kyoto deal, its limited focus on costs and benefits to the United States alone was ethically troublesome. This is because such an insular approach treats foreigners as if their US-caused injury is irrelevant to US obligations. Even if the costs of taking action under the Kyoto Protocol were very high to the United States, a fact disputed by many in the Clinton administration, the United States has a strong ethical responsibility to prevent harm to others who neither consented to the harm nor benefited from US activities that cause harm. Given that the environmental harms from human-induced climate change could be catastrophic for some nations, and will likely be grave for many of the world’s poorest people and nations, the US failure to consider the consequences of its activities on others is ethically problematic because it violates the ethical obligations people have to all other human beings to do no harm.

62  Priority Ethical Issues Arguments against climate change policies continue to be made on the basis of cost to the United States alone, in other words on the basis of US self-interest without regard to US duties, obligations, and responsibilities to others to do no harm. No mainstream ethical system would condone one nation causing great harm to another by using the excuse that the harming nation’s costs of reducing its harmful behavior are too high for its domestic economic welfare. As shown later in this chapter, a nation that ignores the harm it could cause to millions around the world through global warming is also inconsistent with rights and duties based on ethical considerations as well as theories of distributive justice; in fact, it is a problem with all mainstream ethical theories. One exception to the view that humans have obligations to others to prevent great harm might be a communitarian approach to global responsibilities. Some communitarians hold the position that humans have ethical obligations only to those who are in their communitarian view of ethical obligations (Harris 2010: 29). A potential consequence of this view is that citizens of one country have no ethical obligations to citizens of another country and consequently the United States’ examination of cost and benefits to it alone is consistent with a strong communitarian view. According to communitarians, there is no duty in general to promote the common good, the good of other states, or individuals living in other states, the latter because individual human beings do not have rights against any other states other than those they live in (Dower 2007: 59). In contrast to communitarians, cosmopolitans hold the view that people have duties to other people regardless of where they are situated. Cosmopolitans would strongly disagree with the notion that the US or citizens of any country can deny their responsibilities to people everywhere. The cosmopolitan believes that: • •

Human beings are the ultimate units of concern rather than family lines, tribes, ethnic, cultural, or religious communities, nations or states (the latter only indirectly). The obligations are to every human being equally—not merely to some subset, such as men, aristocrats, whites, or Muslims (Pogge 2008: 175).

Although support for a communitarian view can be held for some human problems, strong ethical arguments can be made that a cosmopolitan approach to a problem like climate change is mandatory, where the causal link between one’s behavior in one part of the world has such devastating consequences as climate change does to life, health, security, and basic human needs of others around the world. In fact, a cosmopolitan ethic is compelled in the case of climate change because of the huge numbers of distant strangers that may be benefited or harmed, even destroyed or sustained, by the actions of some or their institutionalized embodied action or inaction (Harris 2010: 108). The communitarian denial of responsibility to those not members of the harmer’s community is deeply ethically problematic for human actions such as climate



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change when there is a direct causal link between the actions of some people and significant harm inflicted on others. More and more, patterns of international trade, technology, and economic development have bound us into a single community, and, given this new global community, our moral thinking needs to change to reflect these new realities (Jamieson 2007: 306–7). When humans in one part of the world are harmed through the activities of people in other parts of the world, a strong case can be made that a communitarian ethic that denies responsibility simply because the victims are in other communities is ethically problematic. The communitarian claim that distinct communities have ethically distinct commitments can be justified for some problems, but the communitarian argument that denies ethical responsibilities to others around the world regarding climate change is ethically troublesome since climate change so adversely affects the entire global community. The question of whether I should help the person I harmed is radically different from the question of whether I should help people who need charity because the most basic principle of equity in all cultures is do no harm (Shue 1999: 541). This is not to say that climate change policies cannot be justified also on the basis of charity alone, only that the causal connection between human activities and climate change harms to others around the world creates a fundamental duty to all others without regard to where they are located. Global interdependence created by economic globalization and transboundary environmental problems has created a situation in which national societies are neither self-contained nor self-sufficient and, therefore, a strong argument can be made that only a cosmopolitan approach to these problems passes ethical scrutiny (Harris 2010: 31). Global citizenship, which involves commitment to a global ethic that transcends national borders, “is morally as important as it has always been, and for practical purposes [such as climate change and other transboundary environmental problems] increasingly urgent too” (Attfield 2003: 1600). For this reason, although a communitarian understanding of a citizen’s responsibility may be defensible, for some human problems it is ethically troublesome for human-induced climate change. All mainstream ethical theories assume that people have responsibilities to all human beings regardless of where they are located to do no harm. For instance: •

•

Although utilitarians hold that the distribution of resources should be justified on the total amount of happiness (or utility) it produces measured by summing up the happiness experienced by individuals, classic utilitarian philosophers such as such as Jeremy Bentham, and more contemporary philosophers such as Peter Singer, hold that people are simultaneously citizens of their own nations and of the world, with duties to seek the good of humankind in general (Harris 2010: 39–41). According to deontological theories, or ethical theories based upon duties and rights such as those held by Immanuel Kant, all humans have obligations

64  Priority Ethical Issues

•

•

•

towards one another by virtue of their common humanity (Harris 2010: 41–3). The duty to others to prevent the kind of harms caused by climate change derives from the responsibility to treat all humans with respect (O’Neill 1996: 103). Those who ascribe to a theory of justice articulated by John Rawls, which claims that public policy should be developed out of concern for the least advantaged, argue that in the case of climate change the poor, whose interests need to be considered, include poor people affected by climate change regardless of where they are located on the globe (Beitz 1979: 151). As shown in later sections of this chapter, under several international norms established by international law, nations have clear duties to prevent adverse climate change impacts in other countries including the widely accepted “no harm” principle. We shall also see that under various theories of distributive and retributive justice, persons who harm others must share the burdens of preventing harm to others and compensating others who have already been harmed.

From these ethical considerations, it follows that nations and individuals have clear duties, responsibilities, and obligations to others to prevent harm and the notion that nations or individuals can base climate change responsibilities on the cost to them alone is deeply ethically flawed. As a result CBAs must, at minimum, be calculated by disaggregating all costs and benefits to determine climate change impacts on different people, in parts of the world, and at different times. If this were done, decision makers would at least be able to consider their obligations to those who will be harmed most before making a decision based upon a CBA. Therefore at the very minimum, CBAs should expressly disaggregate harms and benefits: (a) within generations, (b) over time, and (c) according to the nature of the risk imposed, and (d) geographically. With this disaggregated information, decision makers need to consider other ethical issues raised by CBAs that are discussed in this chapter. These include the duty to prevent harm to others, not to violate the human rights of others, the obligation to allow those who will be adversely affected by climate change to participate in decisions that affect their vital interests, and the need to see uncertainties about the magnitude of harms and benefits as an ethical question. CBA and Distributive Justice As we have seen, CBA is a generic term for a variety of techniques designed to allow decision makers to rigorously determine whether the payback from a program will be greater than the costs of implementing it. If costs of an environmental program are greater than environmental benefits produced by a program, according to mainstream CBA theory, the program should be abandoned. The economic justification for this use of CBA is the notion that society must decide



Ethical Problems with Cost Arguments  65

how to spend its scarce resources in the most efficient way possible. If money is spent by society on environmental protection programs that do not produce an environmental payback that is greater in economic value than the cost of the program, it is a bad investment and should not be supported (Shogren and Toman 2000). According to CBA theory, this is because public money should be spent on programs that will produce the largest aggregate benefits. One well-publicized proponent of this approach to climate change is Bjorn Lomborg (Lomborg 2001). Lomborg argued that we should not spend much money on climate change because we would get much more for our investment if we spent it on a variety of social ills such as poverty, AIDs reduction, and drinking water, among many other problems. Lomborg claimed that, for instance, the cost of compliance with the Kyoto Protocol would be UK£180 billion, and that amount of money could alleviate some of the worst aspects of global poverty while not getting much from an investment in climate change. Others who have followed a CBA approach to climate change policy have reached significantly different conclusions than Lomborg about what CBA requires nations should do about climate change. A report prepared by Sir Nicholas Stern, for instance, found that unchecked climate change could lead to losing at least 5 percent of global gross domestic product each year (Stern 2006: vi). According to the Stern analysis, if we take into consideration the reasonable possibility that there could be unexpected abrupt climate changes, the loss to the global economy could be as much as 20 percent of GDP (Stern 2006:vi). However, taking action now would cost just 1 percent of global GDP (Stern 2006: vi). And so, Stern disagrees with the Lomborg assessment that expenditures on climate change are not worth it even though he supports some of the assumptions about CBAs. The Stern report recommends quick and strong action on climate change on the basis that total global welfare will be maximized if action on climate change is taken now. In basing its recommendations on total global welfare, this report is similar to other CBAs of climate change policies in that its conclusions are based upon the value of measurable consequences of policy options or inaction. Although Stern recommends taking strong action on climate change on the basis of his CBA, he also acknowledges certain potential ethical problems with standard CBAs of climate change policies, including many of the ethical problems discussed in this chapter. Although lauded by most commentators, the Stern report also has been criticized by many economists largely on the basis of its approach to discounting future benefits (see, e.g., Nordhaus 2007; and discussed below). Another influential proponent of CBA as a policy tool for climate change is William Nordhaus who has advocated moderate spending on climate change based upon his calculations of the costs and benefits of climate change policies (Nordhaus 2008). The main difference between Stern and Nordhaus is their differing approaches to discounting future benefits, an issue examined below through an ethical lens.

66  Priority Ethical Issues Although Sir Nicholas Stern followed the logic of CBA in making recommendations in support of substantial spending on climate change policies, as expanded in later sections of this chapter he also expressly recognized ethical limitations of using CBAs as a prescriptive guide to climate change policies in a way that Nordhaus Lomborg have not (Brown 2007c). Notable in the Stern report is not only its express acknowledgement of some of these potential ethical problems with the use of standard CBAs, but also his inclusion of some recommendations about how to deal with some of the ethical issues. For this reason, the Stern report can be understood as a positive step in reconciling CBAs of climate change policies with potential ethical constraints on the use of CBAs. Yet, even so, the Stern report does not overcome some of the ethical criticisms of CBAs that apply to the use of this tool to evaluate climate change policies discussed in this chapter. One of the ethical limitations acknowledged by Stern in the use of CBAs for policy guidance on climate change is the need for policy makers to also consider ethical issues entailed by equity, justice, and rights considerations (Stern 2006: 23). In other words, although CBA-based policy may be justified as maximizing human welfare, solutions that maximize total welfare may not provide for distributively just solutions. Distributive justice requires that burdens and benefits of solving climate change be allocated on the basis of equality or other morally relevant criteria and, therefore, reject total welfare maximization as the sole criteria for climate policy. Simply put, CBAs usually (although not necessarily) aggregate costs and benefits (a) within and across generations, (b) over time, and (c) without regard to the greater risk of some individuals and places. If actions are not taken on climate change because the costs determined in a CBA of taking preventative action outweigh the total potential benefits of taking action, then ethical issues may arise. This is because those who are responsible for assuming the costs of reducing the threat of climate change are generally not the most vulnerable victims of climate change harms. Nor do many climate change victims benefit when costs are not imposed on those who are causing climate change. For this reason there is no lost “opportunity cost” experienced by the victims of climate change if high costs are imposed on those causing climate change. From the standpoint of the most vulnerable to climate change, it is unjust to aggregate all benefits of climate change action and compare them to the costs of taking protective action not only because those harming others have violated their duties to avoid harm, but also because the burdens and benefits of preventing harm have not been assigned according to what distributive justice would require. Therefore, ethical issues must be considered as potential limitations on following the welfare maximization logic supported by proponents of CBAs as a prescriptive guide to climate change policies, a conclusion expressly acknowledged by Stern (Stern 2006: 28). Now a claim that the burdens and benefits should be distributed on the basis of morally relevant criteria, does not lead to a single non-contentious ethical formula that prescribes just allocations precisely—as we shall see in Chapter 6. What justice requires of allocations of harms and benefits of climate change



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policies is beyond the scope of this chapter. However, climate change ethicists usually acknowledge that different ethical theories can be justified as a basis for the prescriptive allocation of emissions reductions obligations and duties to compensate those who are harmed by human-induced climate change (see Brown et al. 2006: Issue 1). Yet all mainstream ethical theories that could legitimately be considered a guide for determining how to allocate greenhouse gas targets among nations are premised on the fact that those harming others have duties, responsibilities, and obligations to others; and not only self-interests. And so, although, ethicists may not agree on how to allocate the obligations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, one can say without fear of contradiction that selfinterested cost arguments do not pass minimum ethical scrutiny because those who argue that costs should not be imposed on those who are causing climate change usually do not acknowledge duties and responsibilities to those who are harmed by their greenhouse gas emissions. Governments could combine goals for efficiency maximization with obligations entailed by ethical principles by doing such things as choosing climate change strategies which produce maximum benefit at lowest cost while compensating victims of climate change damages or paying for necessary adaptation measures. However, as we shall see, even if such strategies are pursued, there is still a need to deal with a variety of other ethical issues discussed in this chapter, including the requirements of procedural justice that require the participation of victims of climate change in decisions that affect them. Because climate change policies have global implications, particularly troubling as a matter of ethics are instances where a nation refuses to reduce its emissions on the basis of total global costs to them alone of enacting climate change policies, while ignoring harms they are causing others. It would be one thing, although still ethically problematic, for an international institution, having legitimate authority to act on behalf of the entire global community, to follow a welfare maximization scheme that permits some countries or places to be damaged because of the actions of others on the basis of maximizing global economic efficiency. Yet no single nation has the authority to act on behalf of the community of all nations in absence of a treaty agreed to by those who may be harmed. Therefore, before refusing on the basis of a CBA to reduce national emissions to levels that would be required of them as a matter of justice, a strong argument can be made that nations need to get global authority to use CBAs to guide domestic policy formation. That is, in the absence of legitimate global authority to do so, no nation may use a CBA justification for non-action on climate change, a problem that harms other nations and people around the world. Yet, as discussed in Chapter 2, frequently over the last 30 years, cost arguments about climate change have successfully been made, which prevented national climate change action that implicitly assumes any nation may act as if on behalf of the world’s authority. The use of CBA as a test of whether global warming programs should be implemented is also ethically troublesome because CBA has often been applied

68  Priority Ethical Issues to global warming policy in a way that is indifferent to how costs and benefits of climate change policies are distributed among those affected by global warming. That is, according to some proponents of CBAs, a decision to take action to protect the environment is only authorized when the environmental benefits, which would be experienced because of a proposed policy, exceed the costs of implementing the program. Although not all advocates of CBAs argue for their use in this way (see for example Shrader-Frechette 1997: 34) most advocates of CBAs argue that action to protect the environment should only be taken when all the benefits of taking action exceed total costs. It makes no difference to these advocates of CBA-based decision making that those who might be harmed by the failure to implement a global warming program are different than those who would have to pay the costs of implementing the program. For this reason, for instance, if the costs to the United States of implementing global warming protection programs exceed the damages, which might be experienced in the rest of the world from global warming, the United States should not implement the global warming programs according to some advocates of CBA-based decisions. In fact, this is the very argument made by many in the United States that have opposed US programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, according to some proponents for using CBA in this way, it makes no difference that some of the poorest nations might be greatly harmed by global warming if the costs of global warming programs are considered high by those who are causing the problem. Yet justice demands that those who cause problems to others should be responsible for preventing the harm or compensating those that are harmed (Shrader-Frechette 1997: 96). Some CBAs that have been prepared for climate change have concluded that the harm to the poorest nations will be much greater than the harm experienced by most rich nations such as the United States. For instance, a summary of global CBAs prepared for the United Nations found that while damage to the developed nations from the global warming entailed by a doubling of carbon is estimated to be between 1 and 2 percent of GDP, damage estimates to the developing world range from 2 to 9 percent of GDP (Pierce et al. 1996: 83). Yet those in the United States that have opposed taking action on global warming because of costs to the United States economy usually have not acknowledged the US responsibility to the rest of the world for these damages. Limitations of “Preference Utilitarianism” The philosophical justification for the use of CBAs to guide the formation of climate change policy is often a form of utilitarianism, sometimes referred to as “preference utilitarianism.” Preference utilitarianism holds that governments should choose options which maximize humanity’s ability to fulfill its desires, where the values of human desires are determined by the market value of the objects chosen by the preferences. CBA is classified as “preference utilitarianism” and distinguished from mainstream utilitarianism because it is people’s



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preferences expressed in market transactions that are maximized according to the logic of this analytical tool. On the other hand, mainstream utilitarianism is concerned with maximizing happiness, not simply human desires measured by preferences. When applied to problems like climate change, preference utilitarianism is a much more ethically controversial theory than mainstream utilitarianism because the latter encourages exploration of what actually makes people happy, not just the preferences people express in market transactions (Sagoff 1982). That is, utilitarians urge decision makers to choose alternatives that will produce the greatest happiness, not simply to assume that happiness is equal to what people are willing to pay for something. Most utilitarians, therefore, advise careful thinking about which options under consideration will create the most happiness while preference utilitarianism is often exclusively interested in which options will produce the greatest economic value. For instance, a utilitarian may approve of spending money for such economically low payback activities as schools or parks because a case can be made that these investments produce greater happiness than other investments with higher economic returns. Moreover, most utilitarians do not necessarily believe that all human choices made in market transactions lead to happiness. In fact, utilitarians urge that people reflect upon their desires and they sometimes select behavior that is contrary to desires. As Ernest Partridge points out, happiness may require that people do not act according to their preferences. A recovering drug addict desires not to have the desires that he does. Partridge (1995) asks which economic transaction is responsive to his wants and to his interests: with his therapist or with his dealer? In addition to these problems with preference utilitarianism, since the very idea of morality requires that people reflect upon their preferences and not act in response to them, particularly if they are destructive of other people’s rights or interests, preference utilitarianism can be criticized for failing to consider whether the preferences of people are justifiable on ethical grounds. That is, preference utilitarianism assumes that any preference satisfaction is good without regard to whether it is a preference to buy a bomb by a terrorist or torture device by a dictator. For this reason, a preference to buy a gas guzzling sports utility vehicle is as good as a preference to buy a hybrid fuel cell powered Honda or Toyota. If the United States were to tighten fuel mileage standards for SUVs this would be a cost according to preference utilitarianism. Philosopher Mark Sagoff has argued that preference utilitarianism makes a mistake by confusing a person’s action as a consumer with an action as a citizen. As a citizen, I am concerned with the public interest, rather than my own interest; with the good of the community, rather than simply the well-being of my family (Sagoff 1988: 8). Acting as a citizen, according to Sagoff, I may take actions that are inconsistent with actions I might take as a consumer; I may support policies that harm my economic interests. For instance, as a citizen I might support policies that reduce global warming that might threaten people living on islands by rising sea levels,

70  Priority Ethical Issues even though I may not be personally threatened by rising seas because I live in Nebraska. I might support these policies even though the policies might drive up the cost of my electricity in my home. Yet preference utilitarianism would not acknowledge my vote for responsible global warming policies as a preference satisfaction. Assuming the increased costs of the global warming programs are limiting my individual preference satisfaction and, therefore, should be categorized as a cost. Sagoff gives additional examples of conflicts between people’s roles as consumer and citizen, and thereby demonstrates why individuals often have a greater commitment to their role as a citizen over their role as a consumer. One such example given by Sagoff is as follows: Last year, I bribed a judge to fix a couple of traffic tickets, and I was glad to do so because I saved my license. Yet at election time, I helped vote the corrupt judge out of office. I speed on the highway, yet I want the police to enforce laws against speeding … I love my car, I hate the bus. Yet I vote for candidates who promise to tax gasoline for public transportation … The political causes I support seem to have little or no basis in my interests as a consumer … because I take different points of view when I vote and when I shop … I have an “Ecology Now” sticker on a car that drips oil everywhere it is parked. (Sagoff 1988: 52–3) Even though I may prefer to take action as a citizen that might work against my personal economic interest, preference utilitarianism usually assumes that people only act selfishly or that acting selfishly is morally acceptable. Preference utilitarianism also does not usually count the beauty of a sunset or poem or the intelligence of public debate (see discussion below on “willingnessto-pay”). Therefore, preference utilitarianism often fails to measure things that make life worthwhile or sustainable unless they have substantial market force. Furthermore, the underpinning of CBAs for many arguments, regularly made in opposition to government programs to reduce the threat of climate change, is often ethically dubious or at least raises ethical questions which remain hidden behind the calculations in CBAs. “Willingness-to-Pay” as the Exclusive Measure of Value Closely linked to the problem with the ethical limitations of preference utilitarianism, are ethical issues raised by the exclusive reliance on “willingness-topay” as the exclusive measure of value in CBAs. Many economists advise that benefits of environmental programs should be calculated in monetary terms so that they can be compared to costs. The amount of money a benefit is worth is the price that a market establishes according to mainstream CBA theory, or the willingness of people to pay for protection of threatened environmental entities.



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For instance, the worth of trees that are threatened by global warming is the price that the trees are selling for in the market. Yet for many environmental entities that provide important environmental services for the maintenance of life on Earth, markets recognize little monetary value. For instance, bugs that live in stream beds are vital to support fish, yet these bugs are worth almost nothing in the market. Likewise, quantification of some environmental benefits is often difficult and sometimes impossible. What, for instance is the value of a human life or of a species that might be exterminated by climate change? How does one value an island nation that ceases to exist because it is submerged beneath the ocean due to a global warming-induced rise in sea level? Is the worth of a threatened island nation equal only to what the real estate is worth plus the value of other submerged property? How should nations value native trout streams or winter sports that might disappear because of global warming? Is the value of the loss simply what markets recognize? What about the climate of nations where it becomes harder to live because of the discomfort entailed by much hotter weather? If 100 million people per year contract malaria, because of the increased range of mosquitoes enabled by rising temperatures, how do we measure the malaria victims’ suffering even if they survive? “Willingness-to-pay” has trouble determining these values in a way that captures the non-monetizable aspects of value. This is so because willingness-to-pay commodifies all values. When values of environmental entities cannot be determined directly from prices, economists often advise that alternative techniques be used to determine value in CBA calculations. For instance, values are sometimes determined by asking individuals about their willingness-to-pay in order to protect threatened entities. Furthermore, in recognition of the need to go beyond available market prices to determine value of environmental entities, economists sometimes recommend that these questions attempt to determine values not only for the human use of the threatened environmental entity, but also its “existence” value. And so, people are asked to say what they are willing to pay for its “non-use” value, i.e. the value of the entity’s mere existence. Yet, despite the fact that the economists’ questions attempt to determine “non-use” value, the questions asked of people by these techniques are still directed at what individuals are willing to pay to avoid the harm of concern. The ethically dubious nature of such procedures should be obvious when it is applied to human health and the environment if one reflects on the fact that there are many human behaviors that are outlawed without justifying a law’s prohibition on people’s willingness-to-pay to prohibit the behavior. For instance, society does not subject laws prohibiting child labor, homicide, or slavery to cost–benefit calculations. Laws outlaw these actions and activities because they are morally offensive, not because the economic benefits of their prohibition exceed costs. Using willingness-to-pay as a measure of value is to focus on one type of a value at the expense of other important ethical concerns for some entities or objects, including values which would require that certain things not be traded in commercial markets.

72  Priority Ethical Issues Economists argue that we need to put a monetary value on everything because—whether society likes it or not—money is limited and a monetary value is the only way of comparing the use of money for one purpose versus its use for another. For instance, money allows comparison of the value of the reduction of the threat of climate change and thereby the reduction of heat-caused disease against other potential uses of the money, such as reduction of HIV/AIDS. However, measuring everything in terms of money is to conflate several types of incommensurate values together under one value. For example, using money to reduce climate change is imposing a cost on those who are causing harm to others. But using money to reduce the threat of HIV/AIDS is not imposing costs on those who are causing the problem, rather, awarding research funds to those who are trying to solve the problem. Comparing the two costs as if they are morally equal blurs the moral distinction about the responsibility of someone causing a problem versus someone who is working to prevent a problem. But CBAs would not acknowledge this important moral distinction. In fact, ethics would impose a duty on those who are causing harm to others to accept the costs to them for reducing the harm. CBAs do not make distinctions between these two types of costs but justice does. And so, the use of CBAs that measure all values on the basis of willingness-to-pay as a prescriptive tool for climate change is ethically dubious. This is because such an approach ignores both injunctions entailed by human rights theories to not cause great harm to others, and other ethically based limitations on human behavior. In other words, willingness-to-pay calculations that justify permitting damage to human health and the environment take off the table the idea that behavior that kills people or destroys important environmental entities should be avoided because it is morally offensive. The very process of converting the worth of environmental entities into monetary values is to transform something that some believe should be protected from consumption into a commodity available for human use. These willingness-topay techniques for determining value in CBA assume that everything’s worth is reducible to its price as if everything is for sale and available for consumption. Another problem with willingness-to-pay stems from its inconsistency with biocentric and ecocentric ethical theories. Some ethicists assert that nonhuman sentient beings and other environmental entities have a right to exist that is not dependent upon their use to humans. For this reason, biocentric and ecocentric ethical approaches to value have arisen in the last 20 years. These ethical positions require protection of living things and ecological systems without regard to human use. Therefore, from the point of view of these non-anthropocentric theories of value, the fate of environmental entities should not be determined by human subjective economic preferences. Because market-based prices only measure the strength of human desires, they do not reflect values that are not dependent on human desires to consume and, therefore, are inconsistent with most biocentric or ecocentric ethical theories. According to these theories, putting a market price on something that should be protected because of ethical



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obligations is to agree to a process which transforms the sacred into the profane. Other non-biocentric or ecocentric ethical theories also hold that entities should be regarded as sacred and not be treated as a commodity. For instance, in India cows are sacred; many religions make certain places sacred; most nations have historical and government buildings that are sacred; and many believe that human life is sacred, that is, it should not be treated as a commodity. In fact, if you ask most people how much money they would accept to give up their life, they would say no amount of money would satisfy them. CBAs, however, often put monetary values on statistical lives and in so doing ignore how individuals would value their own life and refuse to sell their life for the amount of money prescribed for that life in CBAs. To value human lives economists often follow three methods. One is to determine how much money people must be paid to accept a defined risk such as accepting a more dangerous job (Alder 2009:  470). Another is to simply ask people how much compensation they would want to accept a defined risk (Alder 2009: 470). Sometimes economists value life by determining earning power over a lifetime. All of these methods for determining the value of life raise methodological and ethical questions (Alder 2009:  471–5). For instance, all these methods run into the ethical problem that those whose life is at stake may value their life infinitely; a problem that the approaches followed in attempts to determine the value of a statistical life cannot capture (Alder 2009: 474). Given that climate change is already killing people and will likely kill millions more under business-as-usual, these problems with valuing a life are another reason why CBA-based logic, as a measure of the acceptability of climate change policies, is ethically dubious. It is one thing to use statistical life calculations to compensate the family of someone who has been killed by the action of another, but another thing when this method is being used to give justification for continuing actions that will kill people in the future. Such a use of CBAs is ethically problematic. In other words, after someone is already dead, financial compensation that may help restore some economic injustice for the loss of life may arguably be legitimately calculated on the basis of market values, because the calculation in this case is not being used to justify the killing. But prohibitions on killing people are almost universal around the world and cannot be overcome because the killer will compensate the dead person’s family. Therefore, there are ethical problems giving some permission to greatly harm others on the basis of how markets value the harm. Yet CBAs can be used to allow some people to kill or greatly harm others if the costs to the killer in eliminating the killing behavior are greater than the value of the life of the person who may be killed. This is clearly ethically problematic. Only human interests are of concern to most utilitarians and as a result no duties or obligations to non-humans are usually recognized. However, even some utilitarians assert that humans have duties to animals (see, for example, Peter Singer 1975). CBA not only assumes that human interests exclusively are what matter, in line with most although not all utilitarians, but also assumes that

74  Priority Ethical Issues only what people are willing to pay is the exclusive measure of value and worth. Therefore, if people are not willing to pay to keep animals from being harmed by global warming, according to CBA theory, a decision that will make animals suffer is perfectly acceptable. If people are not willing to pay to keep pandas or tigers from going extinct, that is also of no concern to CBA-based prescriptions because only what people are willing to pay for is entitled to respect. Only the quantity of money that people will spend to protect animals or plants is relevant in most CBA calculations. For this reason no fundamental distinction is made in CBA between an animal, which suffers pain—a matter that many believe creates ethical obligations—and a rock, which does not. According to CBA, it is only what people are willing to pay for that should guide environmental decision making. No other ethical considerations are relevant and, for this reason, CBA is ethically troublesome because ethics requires us to consider whether our desires are good or morally justified. Another justification for the use of “willingness-to-pay” sometimes made by economists is that market values are actual empirical evidence of how people actually value things, it is therefore a “revealed” not theoretical value (Alder 2009: 481–5). Because it is a method for determining how people factually value things, some economists argue that revealed values more accurately describe how values influence behavior. Yet this argument does not deal with many of the ethical issues already raised in this chapter, including that a revealed value approach conflates “ought” with “is” and thereby leads to comparison of incommensurable values that have been reduced to the value of a commodity. Nor does it acknowledge duties and responsibilities; and it transforms things that are sacred into the profane. CBAs Often Ignore Human Rights The recent report by Sir Nicholas Stern, the chief economist for the United Kingdom, acknowledged that if climate change violates human rights there could be a moral, if not legal, obligation that those nations or groups most responsible for climate change to reduce their emissions, notwithstanding what CBAs conclude (Stern 2006: 42). Therefore, according to Stern, if climate change policies are viewed to create human rights violations, it could be argued that all have the right only to emit some very small amount of greenhouse gases, equal for all, and that no one has the right to emit beyond that level without incurring the duty to compensate (Stern 2006: 42). According to Henry Shue, a human right provides: (a) a rational basis for justification, (b) that actual enjoyment of the substance of the right may be enjoyed by the right holder, and (c) that the right be socially guaranteed (Shue 1980: 13). In other words, to have a right is to be in a position to make demands on others about one’s entitlement to enjoy the right. As Shue asserts, if a person has a right, the right can be insisted on without embarrassment (Shue 1980: 15). To have a right also entitles the right holder to expect that those who can do so guarantee



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that the right can be enjoyed by the right holder. For this reason, if a person has a right to be protected from climate change caused by others, they may expect that those who can act to prevent climate change-caused harm will take protective action. This obligation is not modified by the efficiency concerns that are the goal of CBAs. In other words, if climate change violates human rights, high emitters may not use CBAs to minimize their responsibility to reduce their emissions to their fair share of global emission levels that do not cause human rights violations. A very strong case can be made that human-induced climate change triggers human rights violations because of the destructive nature of climate change damages. If human rights are understood to be recognition of those norms that are necessary to protect human dignity, inadequate climate change policies must be understood to trigger human rights violations because climate change will not only make human dignity impossible for tens of millions of people around the world, including countless members of future generations, but directly threatens life itself and resources to sustain life. That is, inadequate climate change policies qualify as human rights violations because of the enormity of harm to life, health, food, and property, and the inviolability of the right to enjoy the places where people live. According to the scientific consensus view articulated by the IPCC, these harms: (a) are already being experienced by tens of thousands in the world, (b) will be experienced in the future by millions of people from greenhouse gas emissions that have already been emitted but not yet felt due to lags in the climate system, and (c) will increase dramatically in the future unless greenhouse gas emissions are dramatically reduced from existing global emissions levels. The harms include deaths from disease, droughts, floods, and heat; storm related damages, and damage from rising oceans; heat impacts on agriculture; loss of animals that are depended upon for sustenance purposes; and social disputes caused by diminishing resources; sickness from a variety of diseases; the inability to rely upon traditional sources of food; the inability to use property that people depend upon to conduct their life including houses or sleds in cold places; the destruction of water supplies; and the inability to live as normal to sustain life. The very existence of some small island nations is threatened by climate change. Deaths from climate change are not only a future problem but are identifiable at the present. A recent article in the respected scientific journal Nature concluded that human-induced warming, which the world is now experiencing, is already causing 150,000 deaths and 5 million incidents of disease each year from additional malaria and diarrhea, mostly in the poorest nations. Death and disease are likely to soar as warming increases (Patz 2005). Facts such as these demonstrate that climate change is already compromising rights to life, liberty, and personal security and inadequate government climate change policies will assure that these harms will multiply. Human-induced climate change is now discernible and is already adversely affecting some humans, plants, animals, and ecosystems around the world.

76  Priority Ethical Issues While some parts of the world are warming faster than others, damages from climate change are more discernible in others (IPCC 2007a). That is, for instance, destruction of homes from melting permafrost in polar regions is now visible, and increases in vector-borne disease are also discernible in tropical and semitropical areas. The developed nations are mostly responsible for the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to present levels, although total emissions and per capita emissions levels vary greatly among nations, and the percentage of greenhouse gases from developing nations is increasing (Munasinghe 2002; Muylaert and Pinguelli 2002; Paavola 2005). In addition, those most vulnerable to climate change damages are often the least responsible for greenhouse gas emissions (IPCC 2007a). In fact, climate change threatens the very existence of numerous communities around the world that have done little to cause climate change. For instance, climate change is likely to cause agricultural decline in places dependent upon local agricultural production where poor people emit very small quantities of greenhouse gases and may be displaced from their native region. In many parts of the world, very poor people will no longer be able to depend upon water availability that their societies have used for centuries, nor temperatures that have sustained agricultural activity. The type of damage to life and security from human-induced climate change is much more destructive to fundamental human interests than many things that are already recognized as entitled to human rights protection. In fact, climate change damages are likely to far exceed other harms caused by behaviors that are viewed to be heinous, including crimes against humanity and war crimes, matters about which there is little contention in international law that basic rights are violated. For instance, the Rwandan genocide, one of the worst in recorded history, is estimated to have killed as many as 800,000 people (Des Forges 1999). Yet climate change has threatened 12.4 million people in the 2012 drought in the Horn of Africa alone (Allen 2011). The IPCC has found that: The health status of millions of people is projected to be affected through, for example, increases in malnutrition; increased deaths, diseases and injury due to extreme weather events; increased burden of diarrhea diseases; increased frequency of cardio-respiratory diseases due to higher concentrations of ground-level ozone in urban areas related to climate change; and the altered spatial distribution of some infectious diseases. (IPCC 2007a: sec 3.3.1) CBA methods do not recognize the rights of individuals or nations to be protected from greenhouse gas damage, nor the corresponding duties that high emitters have to prevent human rights violations. In fact, CBAs eviscerate the very notion of liability or responsibility for causing damages since the only



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restraint on what actions can be taken are cost considerations, and if costs become too high, then the responsibility to prevent further harm from climate change evaporates. If, for instance, the total costs of implementing global warming programs in the richer nations exceed the benefits of global warming programs to the poorer nations, the poorer nations’ pleas about rights to remain unharmed are not relevant to the decision makers who follow the logic of CBA. In order to consider human rights, logic on CBA-based decisions must be supplemented by rights or other ethical theories. Yet, if a decision maker follows the strict logic of CBA theory alone, it is irrelevant that people have rights to be protected from the type of environmental damage that would be avoided if the global warming programs were implemented. In fact, as Caney (2010: 170) concludes, if emitting greenhouse gases results in rights violations, it should stop, and the fact that it is expensive to stop the emissions is not relevant to the duty to prevent the human rights violations. For all of these reasons, CBAs used as a guide to public policy on climate change are ethically deeply problematic, if by following the logic of CBAs this leads to human rights violations. CBAs Ignore the Requirements of Procedural Justice Procedural justice requires that decisions are made and implemented according to fair processes. Procedural justice requires at a minimum: (a) that like cases are treated alike and any distinctions be ethically justified, (b) that the decision making and implementation treat people fairly and impartially, (c) that those directly affected by the decisions have a voice and representation in the process, and (d) that there be transparency in the decision making process (ShraderFrechette 2002). National climate change responses and strategies affect people far beyond the borders of the nations making such decisions, yet in developing national strategies nations rarely, if ever, consult with residents of other countries who are vulnerable to climate change. Furthermore, CBA procedures usually violate precepts of procedural justice that require those who may be harmed by a decision be given a right to participate in that decision. Yet those who perform CBA evaluations of global warming programs feel no need to consult those who may be affected by global warming to either to determine: (a) the victims’ view of how the CBA calculations should put a value on the victims’ human health and environment, or (b) whether the victims consent to a CBA-based decision on climate change that affects their interests. For this reason, the use of CBA-based decisions often violate principles of procedural justice, particularly in cases where a CBA is used as a basis for a nation’s refusal to reduce its emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions. Given basic human rights to life, health, and security, those who might be harmed by climate change policy options have a right to free informed consent to be exposed to climate change harms or risks of harm (Shrader-Frechette 2002).

78  Priority Ethical Issues In order to give free, informed consent about climate change policy options, persons must: • • •

Not be forced to consent Be in possession of all relevant information Understand policy options.

However, governments relying on CBAs as an excuse for not taking action on climate change not only fail to involve potential victims of climate change in a way that assures that consent is free and informed, they usually seek no input at all from the victims of climate change. Nations that formulate climate change policies based upon CBA have a duty to make CBA assumptions understandable to all those who will be affected by their policies, and to seek their participation in decision making based upon CBAs that will lead to continuing risks to the potential victims’ life, health, and security. That is, governments who desire to follow CBA conclusions to guide their response to climate change have a duty to disclose all assumptions and uncertainties embedded in the CBA to those who might be adversely affected by climate change policy based on a CBA, so that they have an opportunity to exercise free, informed consent to policies that could harm them. In fact, a strong case can be made that governments should provide expertise on CBA-based decisions to explain to the victims of climate change so that they can make informed decisions about risks that will be imposed on them (Brown et al. 2006). Further, governments formulating climate policy based upon CBAs should disaggregate harms and benefits of climate change policy so that subgroups will understand how they will be affected. In fact, only by providing opportunity for free, informed consent by victims of climate change can the failure of CBAs to disaggregate harm and benefits be justified; yet such information must include how possible victims are likely to be harmed. Ethical Problems in Calculation of Benefits and Costs, the Problem of Uncertainty Another difference between Lomborg, Nordhaus, and Stern, all of whom are practitioners of CBA as a guide to public policy, is their factual conclusions about the magnitude of costs and benefits that will be created by climate change policies. All three of these proponents have reached their own conclusions about what are the costs and benefits of climate change strategies. On some issues the differences among these and other CBA practitioners, regarding factual conclusions about the magnitude of costs and benefits of climate change policies, are attributable to the different approaches of discounting future benefits, by varying assumptions about the scope and magnitude of climate change impacts, or in variations in modeling assumptions. These huge differences stem from the



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fact that climate change is a problem that creates huge challenges about how to quantify both costs and benefits because of large uncertainties about the nature, magnitude, and timing of costs and benefits as well as the need to make, as we shall see, normative assumptions about numerous variables in their actual calculations. That is, both calculations of costs and benefits raise challenging methodological questions which, in turn, raise ethical issues. The “benefits” of global warming programs are generally understood to include the damages to human health and the environment that would otherwise have been caused if the programs were not implemented. The “costs” considered in CBAs relating to climate change are usually those incurred by individuals and society in taking action to prevent climate change. To perform CBA calculations for climate change, the persons doing the assessment must determine which consequences of global warming will be considered, whose assessments of harms and benefits will be allowed, and what timescale will be used in assessing the consequences. The CBA analysis, therefore, often rests upon imprecise judgments that are prior to the CBA calculus itself. These decisions cannot avoid making value judgments about how conservative the assumptions should be. But, on the surface, the CBA pretends to be “value-neutral.” CBA was originally developed as a technique to compare alternative building projects whose costs and benefits would be experienced usually in a time span of no more than 15–25 years and whose benefits were relatively easy to quantify because only direct costs and benefits of the project were considered (Munasinghe et al. 1996). However, determining the benefits of global warming programs is a much trickier problem because of its technical complexity, the type of things that may be damaged by climate change, and the inability to determine when and where specific damages will occur. Determining the value of climate change impacts is particularly difficult because of the large time spans for which climate damages may be experienced, and the great scientific uncertainties that must be faced to determine the actual timing, magnitude, and impact of global warming. To determine impacts of future climate change, and therefore the value of harms that will be avoided if climate change policies are enacted and implemented, those making the calculations need to know the amount of emissions that will be released in the future; how much of these emissions will wind up in the atmosphere; how much temperature change can be expected from specific increases in atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases; whether temperature changes will cause further non-linear responses to ocean, terrestrial, and atmospheric systems; what impacts to human health and the environment will be caused by these changes in climate; and on what timescale these impacts will be experienced. Although we know that human activity is changing the climate—the IPCC has produced upper and lower bounds for the amount of warming that will be caused by different atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases—we do not know for sure the exact magnitude and timing of future warming and, therefore, the harms that could be avoided by the climate change policies under consideration.

80  Priority Ethical Issues Because of positive and negative feedback mechanisms in the climate system— such as clouds or releases of stored carbon from forests and Arctic tundra, whose climate impacts are not well understood—it is impossible to know precisely the amount of damage that will be caused by human-induced global climate change at any one time. It is even more difficult, if not impossible, to know where climate change devastation will actually take place. Will the next great flood be in Pakistan, or the next great drought be in the US Middle West, which grows a large share of the world’s great corn and wheat crops, or the next devastating storm damage an Asian city or a city on the US Pacific coast? CBA calculations must make assumptions both about which damages from global warming will occur and then about the value of these impacts. That benefit analysis gets this right can easily be a form of self-deception. Many of the CBAs that have been performed for global warming assume that the climate will respond to increased greenhouse gases in a smooth, mostly linear, fashion and that the damages will be similar to those described by the IPCC (Shogren and Toman 2000: 26). Unfortunately, most climate change assessments rarely consider low probability but high consequence extreme events (Schneider 2003). Instead, they primarily consider scenarios that supposedly “bracket the uncertainty” rather than explicitly integrate unlikely events from the “tails of the distribution” (Schneider 2003). For this reason, the CBAs, which have been developed to guide climate change policy, have usually assumed that the only negative impacts from human-induced climate change are those coming from mostly smooth, linear responses to increases in atmospheric carbon (Pierce et al. 1996). Yet many scientists believe that much more catastrophic and rapid, nonlinear responses are possible. These catastrophic impacts of global warming are sometimes referred to as “climate surprises.” They include rapid changes in ocean circulation patterns; rapid rise in sea levels due to break up of the Antarctic ice shelf; non-linear increases in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, caused by sudden releases in carbon from permafrost melting and forest dieback; and unexpected saturation of carbon “sinks,” which will rapidly increase atmospheric levels of carbon. The scientific disputes about potential catastrophic impacts of global warming have largely been focused on the probability of “climate surprises.” That is, these “surprises” are plausible because it is well known that the climate system is capable of rapid non-linear changes, which could create much greater and more rapid global warming impacts than those identified in the IPCC reports. Although the scientific community agrees that these rapid and non-linear climate responses could occur, the CBAs calculated for global warming have generally not assumed that any catastrophic impacts will occur in the foreseeable future (Schneider 2003). In fact, the most influential CBAs relied upon by critics of climate change programs assume that no large sudden, non-linear climate changes will occur, even though it is possible we could experience some surprises this century (Schneider et al. 2001: 60). Yet, because rapid non-linear responses are possible, any CBA not including identification of potential catastrophic global



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warming damages is making a value judgment that is hidden in the CBA calculations, and biases these calculations in a way that underestimates the potential benefits of global warming programs. Particularly ethically troubling in the case of climate change is how CBAs have dealt with these potentially catastrophic climate change impacts. For instance, some climate models predict as much as 6°C warming by the end of this century and, as one economist honestly admits, the impacts of 6°C warming are “located in the terra incognita of what any honest modeler would have to admit is a planet Earth reconfigured as science fiction” (Weitzman 2007: 716). Alder comments on this problem by noting: “It is simply absurd to attempt to measure these impacts in monetary terms” (Alder 2009: 479). Yet ethics would require that we seriously take into account all possible catastrophic outcomes, a significant fault with how CBAs have usually considered the benefits of climate change policies. CBAs of global warming calculations must also rely upon unproven and hidden assumptions about what costs will be entailed by global warming programs. To determine these costs, the assessor must make an assumption on which mitigation strategies and programs will be implemented and what the costs of each program will be. Along this line, according to one observer of global warming CBAs, “most of the analyses of costs in national studies of the impact of the Kyoto Protocol on the United States assume that the country will rely primarily on a narrow range of legal instruments, especially emissions trading and taxes on CO2 emissions” (Dernbach 2000: 10934). The CBAs, which have looked at the acceptability of the Kyoto Protocol, assume that there will be significant costs from a very limited number of reduction strategies, all of which rely upon economic instruments that use higher costs to reduce demand for polluting energy. However, strategies and programs to reduce greenhouse gases could be implemented, having much lower costs than those assumed in the Kyoto-focused CBAs. In fact, it is well known that some global warming programs could be implemented with savings to those who invest in them (Dernbach 2000: 10948). For example, every dollar spent in California’s electrical demand-side management program in recent years has saved more than two dollars (Dernbach 2000:  10975). For this reason, there is no way of calculating the actual costs of most global warming programs without making assumptions about which method will be employed to achieve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and what costs will be incurred. Therefore, industry and government analyses of costs of global warming programs have diverged greatly. The choice of which cost assumptions to make in a CBA must be understood to entail a value judgment about how optimistic or pessimistic the assumption should be. Yet the value assumptions about methods that will be deployed, and their associated cost, are usually hidden in the calculations that constitute the CBA; while the CBA is often understood to be “value-neutral.” In performing its cost–benefit analysis of the Kyoto Protocol, the Clinton administration itself acknowledged the following major uncertainties in its methods for determining costs:

82  Priority Ethical Issues • • •

First, there are the uncertainties that remain over the operational aspects of the Kyoto Protocol Second, there are the inherent limitations of available models to analyze the costs of abating emissions Third, it is extremely difficult to quantify the long-term economic benefits of climate change (United States 1998).

In the face of such uncertainty about global warming impacts and their costs, every CBA not acknowledging the range of benefits that will be avoided, or costs entailed by climate change programs, is making hidden value assumptions—a problem that is ethically dubious. As we have seen, particularly troublesome in this regard is how CBAs quantify potential catastrophic impacts of climate change, a problem that leads to a false sense of precision about something which is incalculable. Ethics and Discounting Future Benefits Standard CBA methods are also ethically troublesome because of how they assign values to environmental benefits that will be experienced in the future, especially the distant future (Splash 1993). Economic theory urges that the value of future environmental benefits be determined in the same way that the market applies value to future events, i.e., by understanding the present value of future benefits. The transformation of future benefits into present values through discounting is viewed by economists to be a rational way of thinking about future benefits. For instance, if someone waits a year for another person to repay them $1,000 owed, it means that the lender will have to forgo the interest that the money could earn if it were invested now. To not discount future benefits according to some economists is, as we explained above, a lost opportunity cost as any amount of money is worth less in the future than it is now to an investor. How much money $1,000 is worth in the future can be determined by knowing the interest rate that will increase the value of the investment until the money is used. A given amount of money in hand now will escalate in value according to interest that is given for the investment. As a consequence, a fixed amount of money will be worth less in the future if a person to whom it is owed cannot invest it now and take advantage of the increased value that the interest would produce. For this reason, many economists claim that because people prefer welfare or satisfaction now, benefits that will not be experienced until the future should be discounted at rates that approximate likely interest rates to determine their present value (Alder 2009: 476). However, this argument in support of discounting comes under the “lost opportunity cost” argument considered above, even though the “lost opportunity cost” does not work in cases where those who will be harmed do not benefit from alternative investment strategies. Other economists argue in support of discounting because future economic growth means that consumption levels will be higher in the future and so the



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satisfaction from additional consumption will be lower according to the law of diminishing marginal utility (Alder 2009: 476). In other words, the value of benefits experienced in the future will be less than they are now because future people will be wealthier and, therefore, will assign less value to the benefits that they experience in the future than existing generations ascribe to these same benefits. Accordingly, economists urge that CBAs discount future benefits so that investors can know what alternatives will provide a better payback. It should be noted that this technique makes current investors’ interests, not future generations’ welfare, the focus of concern in legitimating CBA discounting. In addition to this justification of discounting practices, the amount of discount rate is also a matter of considerable ethical controversy. The present value of $100 20 years from now is $37.70 at a 5 percent rate or $14.90 at a 10 percent rate. The higher the discount rate and the further in the future the benefits will be experienced, the lower the present value of future benefits. Because climate change decisions based on CBA must consider benefits that will occur several hundred years in the future, particularly if the discount rate is much above zero, the present value of future benefits for global warming programs is often very, very small. In fact, for benefits that will be experienced a hundred years in the future, climate damages in the long term appear acceptable at almost any level of destruction. Discounting climate change benefits in this way is ethically very problematic, because such discounting procedures minimize the interests of future generations. Economists sometimes deal with this objection by claiming that the entire economic setting for future generations will expand if monies are invested in projects that have higher return rates. Yet this objection fails to mention that some members of future generations that will be harmed by climate change may not benefit from alternative investment strategies. Discounting benefits in CBAs assumes that only contemporary investors’ individual interests count in determining worth. In this way discounting ignores the rights or interests of future generations to have a global climate system that has not been degraded by human activities. As one observer of discounting practices in CBAs has noted: In technical terms, this approach is implemented by assuming that the economy behaves as if decisions regarding economy-environment trade-offs were made by a single generation of human beings whose lives stretched from the present into the long-term distant future. The single generation employs conventional discounting, which gives very little weight to the very long term. While this approach may be sensible for analyzing problems with relatively short time horizons, it obscures the ways in which climate change policies will affect the distinct interests and welfare of present and future generations. (Horworth 2000: 43)

84  Priority Ethical Issues A study prepared by the Pew Center for Global Climate Change attempted to determine what additional costs would be imposed upon future generations through discounting (Horworth 2000:  51). The Pew report found that normal discounting procedures imposes $2.4 trillion per year of uncompensated environmental costs on those living in 2420 (Horworth 2000:  51). This study also found that if one takes strong action to stabilize greenhouse gases now, and ignores policy options that would be followed if normal discounting procedures are included in policy analysis, the overall economy in future generations would be much healthier (Horworth 2000: 54). This analysis makes it clear that although discounting future benefits of climate programs might lead to less immediate costs for present generations, such an approach would seriously harm the interests of future generations. For this reason, discounting the benefits of global warming programs in CBA analysis is ethically troublesome as it disenfranchises future generations. As was the case with CBA procedures in general, discounting procedures used to calculate the present value of future benefits are indifferent to how costs and benefits will be allocated among subgroups. For example, the future benefit of a US climate change program may be experienced by the citizens of developing small island nations in the Pacific, while the costs that could be avoided by following discounting logic might primarily be costs to United States fossil fuel interests. The fact that there are different people who will experience costs and benefits is often ignored in discounting procedures. If, for instance, the costs to United States fossil fuel interests exceed the discounted value of the environmental benefits to the residents of the small island nations, conventional ways in which CBAs are used in decision making compel that the damage to the residents of the small island state be tolerated. However, discounting procedures applied to environmental protection controversies make sense, if they make sense at all, only if the person receiving the benefit is the same as the person who will pay the cost. This is because the justification for the discounting process rests on the notion that a single decision maker is attempting to maximize an investment opportunity. For this reason, CBA’s failure to consider questions of distributive justice in discounting is not only ethically troublesome but undermines the very justification for discounting in the first place. That is, discounting practices are justified on the basis that this approach allows a single investor to make a decision knowing whether a project or an alternative has a greater payback. This assumes that either the project under consideration or its alternative will make the investor better off. Yet this is not the case when nations decide whether to invest in global warming programs, because if the alternative of no climate change action is selected, the entity that gains from the decision is not the person who will be harmed by the decision. For this reason, discounting benefits of global warming programs makes neither ethical nor logical sense. The significance of the choice of the discount rate in CBAs is demonstrated by reviewing the discount rate controversy that arose upon the publication of the 2006 Stern Report referenced above. According to Stern, if we take into



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consideration the reasonable possibility that there could be unexpected abrupt climate changes, the loss to the global economy could be as much as 20 percent of GDP per year (Stern 2006: vi). Taking action now would cost just 1 percent of GDP (Stern 2006: vi). For this reason, Stern concluded that from his CBA strong immediate action on climate change was justified. A firestorm among economists erupted over Stern’s approach to the discount rate soon after publication of the report. Stern had employed an effective discount rate of 1.4 percent, while many economists have advocated a rate of 6 percent. But if discounting is at 6 percent, one life now is worth 339 lives in 100 years’ time (Alder 2009: 475). Yet most economists attack zero or very low discount rates because they would lead to excessive sacrifices from existing generations to protect the interests of future generations (Alder 2009: 475). However, most ethicists argue that conventional discounting practices mean that the interests of future generations are ignored and that if discounting is performed in CBAs, they should not use the current 6 percent discount rate advocated by many economists, as only current generations have any sway over these discount rates (Alder 2009: 476). In response to these arguments, some economists have embraced an approach that provides for discount rates to decline over time (Alder 2009:  477). They justify this approach because future generations would argue for smaller discount rates now and averaging the interests of present and future generations is a compromise between existing and future generations (Alder 2009: 477). And so it can be seen that much rides on the selection of the discount rate in CBAs applied to climate change policy. Arrow and his associates for IPCC in 1995 recognized the difference between the “descriptive” approach to discounting and the “normative” approach (Arrow et al. 1996: 126). The descriptive approach seeks to derive discount rates from market data and the normative approach looks to ethical principles. Although different arguments lead to different conclusions about what discount rate should be applied in calculating the benefits of climate change policies, no one can deny the differences between the descriptive approach, advocated by many economists, and the normative approach, recommended by many ethicists, has great ethical significance. In short, discounting future benefits in CBAs that examine climate change policies raises undeniable ethical questions. One commentator on the Stern–Nordhaus debates has noted that the conflict between those who back Stern and those who back Nordhaus on the proper approach to discounting can be understood to be in disagreement about which values approach should be followed (Alder 2009: 481). In this regard, Nordhaus has accused Stern for adopting the lofty vantage point of the world social planner, perhaps stoking the dying embers of the British Empire (Nordhaus 2007: 691). The conflict between the descriptive approach and the normative approach can also be understood as an attempt by economists to retain the “value-neutral” assumptions of science, uncorrupted by subjective value considerations or, as one commentator has asserted is true, when economists deny the ethical dimensions

86  Priority Ethical Issues of discounting (Alder 2010: 482). Yet in so doing the economists fail to admit that their preference for relying on market values is itself a value choice, not a valueneutral observation. In fact, as we have seen in this chapter, there are many value assumptions throughout the development and use of CBA that raise ethical questions. For this reason, CBA must be understood as a qualitative framework for structuring decision making; it is applied moral mathematics rather than science (Alder 2009:  485). As such there is no denial of the normative assumptions in CBA which prevent it from being impervious to needed ethical reflection. Therefore, although reasonable people may disagree on what values to apply to calculation of future benefits, no one may deny that it is a choice based upon ethical assumptions, and that those assumptions are often deeply problematic ethically, yet hidden in dense economic claims.

Conclusion: Navigating the Perfect Moral Storm in Regard to Cost Arguments We have seen that cost arguments against climate change raise a host of very serious ethical issues, which are frequently hidden in these arguments. However, as we have also seen, identifying the ethical questions raised by CBA does not necessarily lead to a consensus on what ethics requires for all issues discussed in this paper. For instance, understanding that CBAs raise unacknowledged distributive justice issues, does not lead to a consensus about what ethics requires of any greenhouse gas emitter in terms of what is its fair share of safe global emissions. There are competing ethical theories about what justice requires and thus how responsibility for pollution should be allocated. Yet there is no denying that any allocation formula should be based upon morally relevant criteria, a problem with many cost arguments made in opposition to climate change policies. This chapter began by acknowledging an important role that economists could play in understanding the costs of various solutions to climate change. It is in everyone’s interest to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at lowest cost. Without doubt, economists have an important role in helping civil society find affordable solutions to the great threat of climate change. However, those economists who advocate the use of CBAs as a prescriptive tool for lessening the obligations of greenhouse gas emitters should be required to explain how they respond to the ethical problems with CBAs discussed in this chapter. In Chapter 1 of this book we acknowledged that as a matter of perfect justice, climate change policy issues sometimes raise difficult ethical questions, pointed to by Gardner’s use of the metaphor of the “perfect moral storm” (Gardiner 2006). Throughout this chapter, we have found that strong ethical conclusions can be drawn about the cost arguments most frequently made in opposition to climate change policies even if identification of the ethical issues does not lead to an overlapping consensus among all theories of what ethics requires for



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them. Yet, because ethical issues spotting can help reduce the number of costbased arguments made in opposition to climate change policies to those that pass ethical scrutiny, it is practically important to identify ethical issues raised by these cost arguments. Even in cases where unambiguous strong ethical conclusions cannot be drawn, spotting the ethical issues that arise in cost arguments about climate change policies can also be practically valuable by requiring that those who oppose climate policies on the basis of cost, justify their positions on the basis of ethics. Thus, spotting ethical issues entailed by cost arguments made about climate change policies has important practical value. In fact, as we have seen in this chapter, most of the cost arguments made against proposed climate change policies are deeply ethically flawed. And so, ethical criticisms of cost arguments that have frequently been used to oppose climate change policies could eliminate many of these arguments because there is an overlapping consensus among mainstream ethical theories that such uses of cost arguments are unjust. Yet, as we saw in Chapter 2, the 35-year history of the climate change debate reveals that ethical criticism of cost arguments has been virtually absent from the public debate. This section now summarizes earlier sections of this chapter’s strong ethical conclusions that can be made about cost arguments regarding climate change policies. To help navigate the perfect moral storm entailed by climate change, the following strong ethical conclusions can be made about most cost arguments that have been relied upon to undermine climate change policies. These conclusions can be understood to be limitations on cost arguments made about climate change policies. As we saw in the first chapter, however, these ethical criticisms may need to be coupled with other forms of political action to change the culture about the use of cost arguments to defeat climate change policies. The following conclusions undermine most of the cost arguments that have been made against action on climate change during the 35-year debate. Duties to All People •

•

Cost arguments made against climate change policies that do not acknowledge the responsibilities, obligations, and duties of greenhouse gas emitters to all people of the world to reduce emissions to the emitter’s fair share of safe global emissions are deeply ethically flawed. Those causing climate change have not only economic interests but obligations to do no harm to all those who people who are vulnerable to climate change. If nations justify their refusal to take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on the basis of cost to them alone, their position is ethically unsupportable because no person or nation has a right either to harm others as a means to achieve their economic health or to endanger life, health, or security.

88  Priority Ethical Issues Distributive Justice and Climate Change •

•

Cost arguments, which do not consider how costs and benefits entailed by climate change policies are disaggregated around the world, are ethically flawed because distributive justice requires a just allocation of the burdens and benefits of climate change. No nation has the authority to use CBA in such a way that they are acting on behalf of the entire world in regard to the distribution of costs and benefits for climate change and, therefore, may not justify their own highemitting greenhouse gas emission levels, which are harming others, on the basis that the whole world will be better off as long as their greenhouse gas emissions, in combination with others, create significant damages to others.

Problems with “Preference Utilitarianism” •

Those who justify the use of cost arguments on the basis of preference utilitarianism often inappropriately conflate “is” with “ought” and for this reason should be required to justify why the preferences relied upon to support cost arguments are ethically supportable and why duties, responsibilities, and obligations to others can be ignored.

Problems with “Willingness-to-Pay” •

•

•

A CBA’s exclusive use of “willingness-to-pay” as a measure of value ignores valid ethical injunctions against harming things that some people highly value for non-monetary reasons and, therefore, is ethically problematic for transforming sacred objects into commodities. To use “willingness-to-pay” as the exclusive measure of value of the benefits of climate change policy in CBAs can result in ethically inappropriate focus on one type of value at the expense of other approaches to value. For instance, as some value systems recognize inherent value in the life of some living beings, an approach that only recognizes the market value of beings transforms inherent value into instrumental value, the very thing prohibited by some value systems. Therefore, putting a market price on something that should be protected because of duty to prevent harm is deeply ethically problematic. Since people have rights to be protected from harm to their life, health, and security, the use of “willingness-to-pay” as the measure of the value of life, health, and security of others, who have not consented to this kind of valuation, undermines duties to do no harm to others without their free, informed consent.



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Human Rights Limitations of CBAs •

•

A CBA that is used as a justification for any entity to emit greenhouse gas emissions at levels that lead to violations of human rights is ethically unsupportable. Because climate change violates the human rights of millions of vulnerable people around the world, high-emitting nations have duties to reduce their emissions to levels that, in combination with emissions of others, prevent human rights violations without regard to cost. The use of cost as a basis for determining the limits of national responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (to be distinguished from the use of cost to determine the least costly methods to achieve a specific goal) is ethically problematic because responsibility for reducing emissions should be derived from rights theories or principles of distributive justice, not on cost to the polluter.

Procedural Justice and CBAs •

•

If a nation desires to base its climate change policy on a CBA that allows that nation to emit greenhouse gases at levels which, in combination with the emissions of others, harm lives or natural resources on which life depends, that nation, either by itself or pursuant to a multilateral agreement, must seek concurrence of those who could be harmed before it may refuse to lower its emissions. In seeking support of those who may be harmed by this policy, the nation must explain all assumptions that affect the conclusions of the cost arguments, so that victims of climate change can exercise their right to fully consent to being harmed or be put at risk by the actions of another. Although choosing policy options on the basis of maximizing total economic welfare has been widely used by some governments as justification for government policy, such an approach is ethically problematic when it leads to depriving others of life, liberty, and security without their fully informed consent. For this reason, cost justifications for responses to climate change, which will continue to harm others, must seek approval from those who are vulnerable to climate change.

Ethics and Quantification of Costs and Benefits •

If a nation has not fully considered all possible catastrophic consequences in calculating the costs and benefits of climate change, it may not rely on a CBA to excuse itself from reducing greenhouse gas emissions to levels that represent that nation’s fair share of safe global emissions. At a minimum, in this regard, justifications for relying on costs considerations, as the basis for refusing to adopt climate change policies, must expressly identify

90  Priority Ethical Issues

•

•

•

assumptions about the magnitude of potential impacts to others who have been considered in calculating the value of benefits that would be avoided if climate change policies were adopted. Failure to clearly identify all methodological assumptions in CBAs in determining costs and benefits, in selecting which reduction strategies will be considered in cost calculations, and in determining which adverse climate change impacts will be considered in benefit calculations given scientific uncertainty about impacts, violates principles of free informed consent that are required to assure fair participation in climate change decision making. Any determination of the value of benefits from climate change policy options that does not consider all potentially catastrophic climate change impacts is ethically problematic if such evaluation is used to justify nonaction on climate change. All CBAs, which are relied upon to guide national climate change policy formation, that do not require immediate reduction of national greenhouse gas emissions to a nation’s fair share of safe global emissions, must identify how all uncertainties about potential climate change impacts have been dealt with in calculating costs and benefits of proposed government action.

Ethics and Discounting In CBA •

Those nations who calculate the value of the benefits of climate change policies by discounting the value of future benefits of proposed policies must justify the chosen discount rate on ethical grounds, especially in regard to the interests of future generations.

These ethical problems with CBAs in total make the use of CBAs as justification for non-action on climate change deeply, ethically problematic. In fact, some economists have recognized the many ethical limitations of CBAs when applied to global warming policy and found the criticisms devastating because of the ethical concerns discussed above (Hasselmann 1999). In recognition of CBAs’ fundamental flaws when applied to global warming, some economists have concluded that CBAs should not be used to determine whether governments should reduce greenhouse gas emissions (Hasselmann 1999). Instead, target greenhouse gas reductions should be determined on the basis of ethical considerations and cost analysis should then be used to determine which policy responses will minimize costs. Such an approach would allow cost considerations of global warming policy options to be seriously considered without violating ethical principles.

Chapter 4

Ethics and Scientific Uncertainty Arguments about Climate Change

Introduction This chapter examines various ethical issues, which arise in light of arguments made for over 30 years, that governments should not take action to reduce the threat of climate change because it is claimed that there is insufficient scientific proof of human-induced warming. As we saw in Chapter 2, ethical issues with decision making in the face of scientific uncertainty have rarely been discussed, at least in the public debate about climate change, despite the fact there are numerous ethical issues entailed by decision making in the face of scientific uncertainty that are extraordinarily applicable to climate change. After reviewing the current “consensus” position of mainstream climate change scientists, the chapter next summarizes arguments based upon scientific uncertainty that have been made for more than three decades against action on climate change, expanding on the history of climate change science first examined in Chapters 1 and 2. This chapter makes a distinction between responsible skepticism and the deeply, ethically problematic arguments made by the ideological climate change denial industry, which has often been at the center of a climate change disinformation campaign that has been building for the last 20 years. In this regard, the chapter examines this climate change disinformation campaign including recent controversies, such as what is usually referred to as the “emailgate” controversy. The chapter then turns to ethical issues raised by scientific uncertainty and explains why decision making about climate change impacts in the face of scientific uncertainty must be understood as raising ethical questions, not simply “value-neutral” scientific questions. These ethical issues include: (a) whether policy makers should follow “normal” or “regulatory” science epistemic norms, (b) whether governments should apply the “precautionary principle” in formulating climate change policies, and (c) what different ethical theories require of climate change decision making in the face of uncertainty. Later this chapter examines a number of particularly ethically odious tactics used by ideological deniers of climate change.

92  Priority Ethical Issues After acknowledging that skepticism in science plays an important role for the advancement of science, the chapter argues that for ethical reasons skeptics challenging mainstream climate change science need to abide by certain ethical principles. Finally, the chapter explains that although spotting the ethical questions raised by decision making in the face of scientific uncertainty does not settle all relevant ethical controversies, some strong ethical criticisms can be made about these long-term arguments based on scientific uncertainty against government action on climate change. Like the previous chapter, this chapter ends with a number of ethical principles about scientific uncertainty and climate change decision making that can be used to navigate climate change’s perfect moral storm discussed earlier in this book.

The Consensus View Before examining arguments made against climate change policies on the basis of scientific uncertainty, we first examine what is frequently called the scientific “consensus” position. The consensus view is usually understood to be that articulated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (IPCC 2010a). As we have seen in Chapter 2, IPCC was established in 1988 by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) so that governments could assess the scientific, technical and socioeconomic information relevant for understanding climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation (IPCC 2010a). The IPCC does not do original research but synthesizes and summarizes the extant peer reviewed climate change science to make recommendations for governments and policy makers (IPCC 2010a). Any government that is a member of the WHO or UNEP may be a member of the IPCC with current membership at 194 countries (IPCC 2011). Its coordinating work is carried out by the IPCC general assembly, where every member country has one vote. Therefore, governments that have often opposed international action on climate change on scientific grounds, including the United States and Saudi Arabia, have the same power as governments that have traditionally strongly supported international action on climate change, such as most of the governments in the European Union and many of the small island developing states, including Tuvalu, Kiribati, and the Maldives. Given that the IPCC’s assessment reports must be unanimously approved by the member countries, including representatives of countries that have for most of the history of international climate change negotiations opposed establishing internationally enforceable climate change regimes, one can conclude that there is broad consensus about the IPCC’s scientific conclusions among all nations around the world, even if there is occasional disagreement about a few of the IPCC’s conclusions.



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The IPCC First Assessment Report was published in 1990; the Second in 1996; the Third in 2001; and the Fourth in 2007. Each IPCC report drew conclusions linking human activities to observable warming with increasing levels of certainty (IPCC 2010a). The IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President of the United States Al Gore. The Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) was completed in early 2007. Like previous reports, this assessment consisted of four reports, three of which were from each of its working groups. Working Group I assesses the physical science basis for climate change. Working Group II examines climate change impacts. Working Group III assesses options for mitigating climate change through limiting greenhouse gas emissions or enhancing activities that remove carbon from the atmosphere (IPCC 2010b). In addition to the reports of these three working groups, AR4 also included a Synthesis Report (IPCC 2010c). The Working Group I Summary for Policymakers in AR4 concluded that human actions were causing dangerous climate change with higher levels of certainty than in previous reports. Its key conclusions were that: • • •

• •

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal. Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increases in anthropogenic (human) emissions greenhouse gas concentrations. Anthropogenic warming and sea level rise will continue for centuries due to the timescales associated with climate processes and feedbacks, even if greenhouse gas atmospheric concentrations are stabilized, although the likely amount of temperature and sea level rise varies greatly depending on the fossil intensity of human activity during the next century. The probability that this is caused by natural climatic processes alone is less than 5 percent. World temperatures could rise by between 1.1 and 6.4°C (2.0 and 11.5°F) during the 21st century. As a result: • • •

• •

Sea levels will probably rise by 18 to 59cm (7.08 to 23.22in.) during the 21st century. There is a confidence level greater than 90 percent that there will be more frequent warm spells, heat waves and heavy rainfall. There is a confidence level greater than 66 percent that there will be an increase in droughts, tropical cyclones and extreme high tides.

Both past and future anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions will continue to contribute to warming and sea level rise for more than a millennium. Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values over the past 650,000 years. (IPCC 2007b: Summary for Policymakers)

94  Priority Ethical Issues Throughout this chapter we refer to these IPCC conclusions about climate change as the “consensus’’ view because, as we will see, this view has been supported by almost all scientific organizations with expertise in relevant climate change science issues and most scientists who actually do climate change research. However, criticisms of the IPCC’s conclusions have frequently been made by skeptical scientists, some of whom are affiliated to conservative think tanks, while others are scientists playing the appropriate role of a scientific skeptic, a role necessary for science to advance—that is, producing peer reviewed scientific papers challenging conventional scientific wisdom. Skeptical claims about the consensus view are of many types and range from claims that the IPCC is overestimating adverse climate change impacts to assertions that there is no evidence that observed warming is attributable to human actions. Some of the ideological deniers of climate change discussed later in this chapter have argued that the entire body of science supporting the consensus view is a hoax. Recent reports have concluded that the vast majority of scientists actually doing research in the field support the consensus scientific view. For example, a 2009 study—published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States—polled 1,372 climate researchers and resulted in the following two conclusions: • •

Of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field, 97–98 percent support the tenets of ACC (anthropogenic climate change) outlined by the IPCC. The relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers. (Anderegga et al. 2010)

Another poll performed in 2009 of 3,146 of the known 10,257 Earth scientists concluded that 76 out of 79 climatologists who “listed climate science as their area of expertise and who also have published more than 50  percent of their recent peer reviewed papers on the subject of climate change” believe that mean global temperatures have risen compared to pre-1800 levels, and 75 out of 77 believe that human activity is a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures (Doran and Zimmerman 2009). In response to arguments from some climate change skeptics, many scientific organizations with relevant expertise have endorsed the consensus position that “most of the global warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities” including the following: • • • •

American Association for the Advancement of Science American Astronomical Society American Chemical Society American Geophysical Union



Ethics and Uncertainty Arguments  95

Figure 4.1 Responses to Peter T. Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman’s Poll to the Question: Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing the climate? Source: Doran and Zimmerman (2009)

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

American Institute of Physics American Meteorological Society American Physical Society Australian Coral Reef Society Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Australian Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO British Antarctic Survey Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Environmental Protection Agency European Federation of Geologists European Geosciences Union European Physical Society Federation of American Scientists Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies Geological Society of America Geological Society of Australia International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA) International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics National Center for Atmospheric Research

96  Priority Ethical Issues • • •

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Royal Meteorological Society Royal Society of the UK. (Skeptical Science 2010a)

The academies of science from 19 different countries all endorse the consensus view. Eleven countries have signed a joint statement endorsing the consensus position. They are: • • • • • • • • • • •

Académia Brasiliera de Ciencias (Brazil) Royal Society of Canada Chinese Academy of Sciences Academie des Sciences (France) Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina (Germany) Indian National Science Academy Accademia dei Lincei (Italy) Science Council of Japan Russian Academy of Sciences Royal Society (United Kingdom) National Academy of Sciences (USA). (Skeptical Science 2010a)

From this it can be seen that the consensus view articulated by the IPCC is strongly supported by the vast majority of climate change scientists, who actually do research on human-induced climate change, and organizations comprised of scientists with relevant climate change expertise. For this reason, the IPCC consensus position identified above is entitled to strong respect that, at the very minimum, climate change poses a legitimate significant threat to human well-being and the natural resources on which life depends. In fact, some critics have contended that the IPCC reports tend to underestimate climate change dangers and risks because the process that leads to the IPCC conclusions gives representatives from countries consistently opposing the adoption of international climate regimes power to pressure the IPCC scientists to report only the lowest common denominator (Brown 2008). In fact observations of actual greenhouse gas atmospheric concentrations, temperatures, and sea level rise are near or exceeding IPCC worst-case predictions. One recent comparison of greenhouse gas concentrations, temperatures, and sea level rise observations versus predictions concluded: Overall, these observational data underscore the concerns about global climate change. Previous projections, as summarized by IPCC, have not exaggerated but may in some respects even have underestimated the climate changes that have been observed. (Rahmstorf et al. 2007)



Ethics and Uncertainty Arguments  97

It is important as a matter of ethics to remember that if the consensus view is wrong, it could be wrong in two directions. That is, not only could the IPCC be overstating the magnitude and timing of climate change in the future, it may be understating both magnitude and timing of climate change and there is some inconclusive evidence that the IPCC reports are underestimating future climate change’s magnitude and timing. However, even if one concludes that there is a strong scientific basis for the mainstream scientific conclusion that human-induced climate change is a great threat to people around the world and the ecological systems on which they depend, this does not mean that responsible scientific skepticism may not play an important role in climate change science in the future. Yet, as we shall see, much of the climate skepticism that has been prominent in the 35-year debate on climate change is deeply, ethically problematic and often ethically abhorrent.

Thirty-Five Years of Scientific Uncertainty Arguments In Chapters 1 and 2, this book looked at the early history of climate change science that began in the early 19th century and continued to build until the 1970s. This chapter now focuses on controversies about climate change science uncertainty over the last three decades. The threat of climate change was recognized by US politicians as early as President Lyndon Johnson in February 1965 when he said in a special message to the US Congress that: “This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through radioactive materials and a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels” (Johnson 1965). As we have seen in Chapters 1 and 2, international interest in reducing greenhouse gas emissions grew dramatically in the late 1970s as computer modelers began to use new computing tools to construct climate models that were increasingly capable of predicting temperature changes caused by human-induced climate change. In 1977, Robert M. White, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, wrote a report for the National Research Council, an arm of the US Academy of Sciences, concluding that CO2 released during the burning of fossil fuel could have consequences for the climate that would pose a considerable threat to future society (White 1978). A report prepared for the Carter administration in the United States in 1981 declared that “[t]he responsibility of the carbon dioxide problem is ours—we should accept it and act in a way that recognizes our role as trustees for future generations” (Charney et al. 1979). This report also estimated that the amount of warming experienced from a doubling of reindustrialized levels of CO2 would be 3°C, very close to the amount that IPCC would predict almost 30 years later (Charney et al. 1979). However, climate change was not a priority of the successive Reagan administration, although international interest in climate change grew rapidly in the 1980s during Reagan’s term as US President (Agrawala and Anderson 1999).

98  Priority Ethical Issues During the 1980s, several economists writing reports for the Reagan administration concluded that not much could be done to avoid the threat of climate change and advised going slow for economic reasons and uncertainties about climate change impacts (Oreskes and Conway 2010: 174–83). In so doing, advisors to the Reagan administration were ignoring what most other climate change scientists were then saying about the magnitude of the threat of climate change and the need to take government action. Not all skeptical claims made in opposition to the consensus view have been ideologically driven, but as we shall see, the significant 30-year-plus campaign to discredit the mainstream consensus view has been driven by some who are affiliated with organizations that are ideologically opposed to government intervention in the market, or in any way limiting fossil fuel use. This is often referred to as the climate change disinformation campaign. During the 1980s a few scientists, who produced bogus information on behalf of the tobacco industry about the risks of smoking, began arguing in reports issued by the George C. Marshall Institute that the sun, rather than human burning of fossil fuels, was responsible for observed warming (Oreskes and Conway 2010:  186–90). These claims would be reviewed by the IPCC and rejected on the basis that if the sun was the source of the warming, the upper atmosphere would warm at the same time the lower atmosphere heated. Yet the upper atmosphere had been cooling as the planet warmed (Oreskes and Conway 2010: 190). Attributing warming to the sun is one of many arguments made by ideological deniers of climate change in the last 20 years that have been extensively examined and refuted by scientists who support the consensus position on climate change (see discussion below on fingerprinting). Also beginning in the 1980s, a number of corporate funded campaigns were created to convince Americans that concerns about potential adverse effects of human-induced climate change were not based upon sound science (Oreskes and Conway 2010). These campaigns were sometimes organized by public relations firms who had been hired by corporations or industry associations having financial interests in cheap fuel. For instance, Western Fuels, the National Coal Association, and the Edison Electric Institute created the Information Council on the Environment (ICE) to “reposition global warming as a theory (not fact)” and “supply alternative facts to support the suggestion that global warming will be good” (Hoggan 2010: 32). ICE worked with the public relations firm Bracy, Williams and Company to convince the public that human-induced climate change may not exist (Hoggan 2010: 32). Among many organizations financed by corporations to fight climate change policies in the 1990s was the Global Climate Coalition, an organization whose members were mostly from the United States and either were large producers of greenhouse gases or whose economic interests could be affected by rising fossil fuel costs (Hoggan 2010: 12). The Global Climate Coalition’s budget in 1997 alone was $1.68 million and up until 2002, this organization worked to convince public officials and the civil society that climate change was not proved and, therefore,



Ethics and Uncertainty Arguments  99

government climate policies were not necessary (Hoggan 2010: 12). The major funders of the Global Climate Coalition were ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, British Petroleum (now BP), Texaco, General Motors, Ford, DaimlerChrysler, the Aluminum Association, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the American Petroleum Institute, among others (Hoggan 2010:  13). The Global Climate Coalition was formed in 1989 but became defunct in 2002 after several of its member withdrew because of a flap, which was ultimately described in an April 2009 New York Times report, that stemmed from a document revealed in court as part of a lawsuit. This document demonstrated that “even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted” (Revkin 2009). In other words, the Global Climate Coalition sought to undermine the consensus position on climate change even though they had been advised by some of their own scientific advisors that the consensus position was entitled to respect. To convince Americans that the IPCC conclusions were not scientifically supportable, Republican pollster Frank Luntz advised US Republican politicians in a memo to continue to make scientific uncertainty a primary issue in the debate (Hoggan 2010: 65). In this memo, Luntz also advised Republicans that: “You need to be more active in recruiting experts who are sympathetic to your view, and much more active in making them part of your message” (Hoggan 2010: 66). During the 1980s up to the present, many conservative think tanks were created for the express purpose of defending free-market capitalism (Hoggan 2010:  81). For the most part, these think tanks do not produce peer reviewed science but, nevertheless, were engaged in producing skepticism about environmental problems because, one could surmise, the think tanks’ mission was to create arguments against government intervention in the market system (Hoggan 2010: 81). These think tanks acted as strategists and lobbyists in the war of ideas to protect free enterprise from government regulation. The number of think tanks in the United States between 1970 and 1996 grew from fewer than 60 to well over 300 (Rich 2001). The conservative think tanks were funded primarily by large businesses and free-market foundations. Although the think tanks that first appeared in the United States in the 1950s were initially non-ideological, in the late 20th century there was enormous growth in think tanks with a clear ideological mission (Rich 2001). That is, most of the think tanks that have arisen in the United States opposed government intervention in the market and, therefore, they were usually strongly opposed to regulations or policies that would impose duties on corporations. It is clear from the mission statements of many of the conservative think tanks that any research they would sponsor, which concluded that human activities threaten human health and the environment, would directly conflict with their goals of promoting unregulated free enterprise. There is, therefore, a built-in bias to the think tanks’ pronouncements on climate change. It is also clear from

100  Priority Ethical Issues examining the sources of these think tanks’ funding that their very existence depends upon funding from philanthropic organizations and corporations that are hostile to environmental regulation. Yet scientific and economic analyses produced by these think tanks are often treated by the media as if they are “valuefree” objective scientific analyses of policy options (Brown 2007d). Although they are producers of scientific and economic policy analyses, these think tanks do not usually subject their work to peer review or the diversity of thought checks that are the norm in academic research. Yet these think tanks implicitly or explicitly claim that their policy analyses are scientifically sound and unbiased. However, it is clear that the ideological think tanks generate analyses which support the interests of their financial sponsors, i.e., right-wing philanthropic organizations and some corporations. It is no mere coincidence that the funding for much of the analysis produced by these think tanks, which has been used to attack the consensus climate change scientific position, has been provided by fossil fuel interests or corporations whose economic interests could be adversely affected by limiting the use of fossil fuels. When the press covers the think tanks’ reports, attacking mainstream climate change science, the ideological focus of these institutions is rarely identified (Dolny 1998). For instance in 1997 only 14 percent of the sampled 130 stories identified the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), one of the largest conservative think tanks, as being conservative, despite the fact the AEI’s mission is “to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism—limited government, private enterprise, and individual liberty” (Dolny 1998). Similarly, the Cato Institute was not labeled in 68 percent of the 130 stories sampled despite its free-market mission. It was identified as “libertarian” 13 percent of the time, “conservative” 6 percent of the time, and twice was referred to as both “libertarian” and “conservative.” One reference called the institution “free-market oriented” (Dolny 1998). Yet the mission of the Cato Institute includes enhancing “individual liberty, free markets, and limited government” (Cato 2010). A few large fossil fuel companies have used right-wing think tanks as tools to prevent regulation of their products to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. According to Mother Jones magazine, ExxonMobil funded 40 think tanks and media outlets to preach skepticism about whether climate change will create serious problems (Mooney 2005). Although ExxonMobil was the leading funder of climate denial organizations for many years, recently Koch Industries has outspent ExxonMobil in support of groups denying climate change (Washington and Cook 2011: 75). Koch Industries is the second largest private corporation refining petroleum in the United States (Open Secrets 2011). Frequent arguments made by the ideological think tanks and ideological climate change deniers who have relied upon the think tank-generated criticism of the consensus view include:

 • • • • • •

Ethics and Uncertainty Arguments  101 The science of climate change has been completely debunked Global warming can actually save lives The science behind global warming is inconclusive, and to teach otherwise is fear mongering Recent evidence shows that global warming may not be happening The scientific hypothesis for global warming is scientifically weak No one seriously claims to know whether the past warming was caused by human activities; whether further warming will occur and, if it does, whether it will result from human activities; and whether such warming in some general sense would be a bad thing (Mooney 2005).

Some of the ideological organizations denying climate change have recently claimed that the consensus view has been completely debunked and that there is no evidence of human causation of the undeniable observable warming, which the Earth is now experiencing. As we have seen, such a claim is not based upon reasonable skepticism but is a clear falsehood. Scientific skepticism is to be encouraged rather than vilified but the disinformation campaign that arose in the early 1990s has consistently used unreasonable tactics. Responsible skeptics are willing to change their views in response to evidence. For this reason, the ideologically driven climate change deniers are not really scientific skeptics but ideologues who are impervious to evidence. But they have often been quoted by the mainstream press as if they were engaged in non-ideological skepticism. (We will see below that responsible skeptics could not honestly make many of the broad claims about climate change science as put forward by the ideological deniers; claims that are often unambiguously false.) The incongruence is stark between the scientific consensus position and claims made by the more ideologically driven think tanks and climate change deniers. The climate change disinformation campaign often claims that the entire science behind anthropogenic warming is a complete hoax while the most prestigious scientific organizations, such as the US National Academy of Science, have concluded many times that human-induced climate change is a great threat with relatively high levels of certainty. Yet it would appear the disinformation campaign created by the ideologically driven think tanks and other climate change deniers has been successful in convincing many in the United States, and in other countries, that climate change is not a threat. We have seen above that only approximately 58  percent of US citizens believe human-induced climate change is real, while those scientists who actually carry out climate change scientific research are above 97 percent (Doran and Zimmerman 2009). In other words, while there is evidence that as the confidence about the consensus view of science has increased among most climate scientists actually undertaking research on climate change, the public’s belief that climate change is a significant threat has declined (Saad 2010). In November 2006, it was discovered that a resident scholar, Kenneth Green, from the AEI, was offering a sum of $10,000 plus expenses to any scientist who

102  Priority Ethical Issues would write a critique of the then forthcoming IPCC Fourth Assessment (Hoggan 2010: 73). Long before the IPCC report was issued, apparently AEI had decided that it would not like the IPCC results and was looking for scientists who would help criticize the findings, whatever they would be. If there was any doubt that some of the think tanks were willing to pay scientists if they produced research that attacked the consensus position, the AEI strategy is an example of funding science—provided that the science gives the answer the funder wants. In addition to corporate funding, the conservative think tanks receive most of their funding from mostly conservative foundations that have had as part of their mission, protecting free-market capitalism. They are: The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Carthage Foundation, the Earhart Foundation, the Charles G. Koch, David H. Koch and Claude R. Lambe charitable foundations, the Phillip M. McKenna Foundation, the JM Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Henry Salvatori Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation. (Covington 2006) And so many, though not all, skeptical arguments made against governmental climate change policies on the basis of scientific uncertainty have been orchestrated by skeptics associated with think tanks and philanthropic organizations whose missions are hostile to government action to reduce the threat of climate change. Given this, it is understandable why their claims are at wide variance with the scientific consensus view that is based upon peer reviewed science. A number of websites have been created to influence citizens that there is no scientific basis for concluding that humans are causing climate change. One prominent website in this regard is climatedepot.com (Climate Depot 2010). This site is financed by the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow. According to the website Source Watch, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow is a nonprofit corporation that advocates for free-market solutions to environmental issues and has been financed by the ExxonMobil Foundation and foundations associated with the billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, a long-time financier of conservative free-market causes (Source Watch 2010). Climate Depot lists 94 websites that support the climate deniers’ position (Climate Depot 2011). Many of these websites circulate claims that must be understood as disinformation; that are clearly false, untruthful claims. For instance, Climate Depot has asserted that: “IPCC science has the same status as Nostradamus’ predictions” (Climate Depot 2010). This is obviously an extraordinarily misleading claim given that many academies of science in the world have issued statements supporting the consensus view, as do the large majority of scientists who actually undertake scientific climate change research. In response to the ideological skeptical websites, a number of other websites have been created that give the consensus view of scientists who support humaninduced climate change. They include:

 • •

Ethics and Uncertainty Arguments  103 Skeptical Science, skepticalscience.com (Skeptical Science 2010b) Real Climate, Realclimate.org (Real Climate 2010)

Skeptical Science lists 119 different arguments that have been made by the ideological climate change deniers. The top ten most frequently made skeptical arguments according to Skeptical Science (2012) are: • • • • • • • • • •

It is the sun causing climate change Climates have changed before and the current warming is part of natural cycles There is no climate change science consensus The planet is cooling The climate change models are unreliable The temperature record is unreliable It has not warmed since 1998 Since an ice age was predicted in the 1970s, climate change science is not trustworthy We are heading into an ice age The Antarctic is cooling.

Each of these arguments has been countered by peer reviewed studies that are at odds with these claims (see Skeptical Science 2012). Yet they are reported by the deniers of ideological climate change as if they are entitled to uncritical scientific support. From this it is clear that there are arguments being made about climate change science by ideological deniers of climate change, which should not just be classified as irresponsible skepticism, but must be understood as disinformation, i.e., claims that are meant to undermine the consensus view. Although there are climate change scientific issues that are not completely settled, such as what will be the actual warming caused by different atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere—usually referred to as the “climate sensitivity” issue—the ideological climate change deniers regularly raise issues that have been thoroughly dealt with in the peer reviewed literature. For matters about which there is remaining scientific uncertainty, non-ideological climate skeptics have important roles to play in establishing a scientifically based understanding of the relationship between human activities and climate change. Yet the ideologically driven climate change skeptics are not primarily interested in truth production but appear to be motivated by defense of economic interests or political ideology. This conclusion is apparent from their unwillingness to acknowledge those aspects of climate change science that are completely settled. Ideological skepticism that ignores evidence is not only unethical; it is dangerously delusional because the potential harms from climate change are so potentially catastrophic. It can be shown that such denial of strong scientific evidence

104  Priority Ethical Issues is deeply unethical because there is an overlapping consensus among ethical theories, as we saw in the last chapter, that people have a duty to not harm others, and this duty is triggered once there is a reasonable basis for concluding that one’s actions could be harmful to others, particularly in cases where waiting for uncertainties to be resolved could make the problem worse. In fact, dangerous behavior is often treated as criminal around the world, especially when the dangerous behavior can lead to great harm. For instance, many cultures make reckless driving or reckless endangerment unlawful. People charged with these crimes cannot defend themselves by claiming that no one had proved that the behavior would certainly lead to harm; the legal question is whether the behavior could lead to serious harm. This kind of ideological denial, which we have seen in the climate change debate, is ethically problematic because, among other reasons, it deprives those who are potentially causing great harm to others of information upon which they should act to curb harmful behavior. That is, disinformation may have serious consequences. By disseminating erroneous information about climate change, the ideological climate change denial is encouraging behavior that is likely causing great harm. The strength of the ethical duty to not mislead people about the potential harm they could be causing others is increased in direct proportion to the magnitude of the harm that could result from the behavior. Given that climate change harms are so potentially catastrophic to millions of people around the world and the natural resources on which they depend, very strong ethical duties exist to not mislead people about the evidence of potential harm. And so, particularly for problems like climate change where the harms to victims are so potentially devastating, there is a strong ethical duty to be extremely careful before making claims that there is no evidence that harm will occur. We will look at the ethical support for this conclusion below after looking at other concrete examples of disinformation.

The Emailgate Scandal In November 2009 a new controversy about the science of climate change broke out with the publishing of thousands of hacked emails and other documents from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. This scandal was quickly labeled the “emailgate” scandal. This controversy received widespread public attention around the world just as the international community was scheduled to meet in Copenhagen for international climate change negotiations at the 15th Conference of the Parties under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in December 2009. The climate change disinformation campaign used the emailgate controversy as support for the claim that the scientific consensus view was a complete hoax, even though, as we shall see, the documents did not seriously threaten the mainstream scientific view that humans were dangerously changing the Earth’s climate (Fahrenthold and Eilperin 2009). Ideological climate skeptics and skeptical



Ethics and Uncertainty Arguments  105

websites rapidly circulated claims about the hacked emails on the internet and in the media that the emails proved the consensus view on climate change was manufactured and fraudulent. However, since then a strong consensus has arisen that the emails do not support the ideological climate change deniers’ interpretations of the emails. That is, they do not provide proof that human-caused climate change was a hoax (Fahrenthold and Eilperin 2009). For a while, the media treated the emailgate controversy as if it disproved the consensus view on climate change. According to Fred Pearce from the Guardian: “Almost all the media and political discussion about the hacked climate emails has been based on soundbites publicised by professional sceptics and their blogs. In many cases, these have been taken out of context and twisted to mean something they were never intended to” (Pearce 2010). Newsweek summarized the emailgate controversy this way: A lie can get halfway around the world while the truth is still putting its boots on, as Mark Twain  said (or “before the truth gets a chance to put its pants on,” in Winston Churchill’s  version) and nowhere has that been more true than in “climategate.” In that highly orchestrated, manufactured scandal, e-mails hacked from computers at the University of East Anglia’s climate-research group were spread around the Web by activists who deny that human activity is altering the world’s climate in a dangerous way, and spun so as to suggest that the scientists had been lying, cheating, and generally cooking the books. (Newsweek 2010) Several investigations have now exonerated Phil Jones from the University of East Anglia and Michael Mann from Penn State University, the targets of the ideological attack in the emailgate controversy who had been charged with hiding scientific information inimical to the positions of the mainstream scientific view (Newsweek 2010). Yet newspapers like the Wall Street Journal and conservative politicians such as James Imhoff, US Senator from Oklahoma, who had previously claimed that global warming was “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people” have asserted that emailgate controversy supports the conclusion that IPCC conclusions about human-induced warming have been pretty well debunked (St. Petersburg Times 2009). At the center of the assertions about the meaning of the hacked emails, made by the ideological climate change deniers, were claims made about Michael Mann’s hockey stick. This graph, prominently displayed by the IPCC, was created from historical reconstructions of past climates, and was the first comprehensive attempt to reconstruct the average northern hemisphere temperature over the last 1,000 years, based on numerous proxy indicators of past temperatures, such as tree rings. The graph shows temperatures holding fairly steady until the latter part of the 20th century, and then suddenly shooting up.

106  Priority Ethical Issues

Figure 4.2 Northern Hemisphere Temperature Changes Estimated from Various Proxy Records Shown in Blue; Instrumental Data Shown in Red Source: Mann et al. (1999)

Some skeptics used the emailgate controversy to discredit the IPCC conclusions about human-induced climate change. The skeptics often made central an email from Phil Jones, which claimed to acknowledge that the hockey stick was constructed to “hide the decline” in temperatures as indicated by tree-ring data. Yet recent exonerations of Jones and Mann have concluded that there is no evidence that either scientist tried to deceive the public about the implications of the tree-ring data, and that “hide the decline” was a term commonly used in science to display data where one source was known to be unreliable. Of greater significance in regard to undermining the consensus position, ideological climate change deniers—who publicized the hacked emails and emphasized the “hide the decline” email in particular to undermine IPCC conclusions that human actions were causing climate change—ignored the fact that the hockey stick was never used as the basis for attributing global warming to human actions. One prominent climate change scientist recently summed up the situation as follows: Unfortunately, Climate Denier Gate is being used by some blogs and the usual suspects in media to lionize the perpetrators as some kind of heroic



Ethics and Uncertainty Arguments  107 stealth investigative reporters who have just in time saved the world from the “big mistake” of fashioning climate policy in Copenhagen. The amazing scientific thing that nobody seems to be covering is that the “hockey stick” was never used as proof of anthropogenic global warming by IPCC—it was the “fingerprinting” studies of many scientists dating back to 1995— three years before the first hockey stick was even published. A fingerprint is an attempt to combine models of climate change with observed data. … That fingerprint history the denier set will almost certainly not mention, just claim that the hockey stick guys are “exposed” and therefore AGW [anthropogenic global warming] is a fraud. The fraud however is on the deniers, I’m afraid, since the hockey stick has (a) never been disproved, and (b) nor was it ever the basis for AGW likelihood assessment. Rather, the fingerprint analyses by many groups over the years were the scientific evidence used for AGW. Would somebody in the mainstream media please cover this? (Schneider 2009)

A common attack of the ideological disinformation campaign has been that there is no evidence that any warming the world is experiencing is humancaused. Yet the scientific consensus position on climate change attributes most of the undeniable global warming to human causation. This attribution has been based largely on how the planet warms up differentially depending upon whether it is caused by increases in greenhouse gases or climate forcing that comes from natural causes such as the sun. This kind of scientific causal attribution is called “fingerprinting.” There are many fingerprints of human causation discussed in the climate science literature. If the upper atmosphere warms as the lower atmosphere cools; if the nights warm up faster than the days; if oceans warm at depth; if the boundary between the lower and upper atmosphere known as the “tropopause” moves higher; if the amount of heat escaping the atmosphere decreases, this evidence points to human-caused warming. Since all of these phenomena are expected by increases in greenhouse gases rather than other natural processes that have historically driven climate change, then there is a strong scientific basis for concluding that human increases in greenhouse gas emissions are the cause of warming (see, e.g., Union of Concerned Scientists 2010). Since all of these phenomena are actually being observed, there is a strong scientific basis for attributing human activities as the cause of climate change. The controversies at the center of the emailgate scandal had nothing to do with the evidence that supported the scientific consensus conclusion on human causation, findings that were based on these fingerprinting and other attribution studies. Yet many of the ideological climate change deniers and think tanks claimed that the emailgate controversy demonstrated that the consensus position, attributing climate change to human activities, was a hoax. This is clearly disinformation, not reasonable skepticism.

108  Priority Ethical Issues In fact many scientific organizations with expertise on climate change science have now issued statements expressly affirming that emailgate has not dented the scientific basis on which the consensus position rests. These include: • • •

•

•

• •

The IPCC has issued a statement asserting that despite the “emailgate” controversy, the IPCC strongly supports its conclusions in the Fourth Assessment released in 2007 (IPCC 2009). The American Meteorological Society stated that emailgate did not affect the society’s position on climate change that supports the consensus view (AMS 2010). The American Geophysical Union (AGU) issued a statement that they found “it offensive that these emails were obtained by illegal cyber attacks and they are being exploited to distort the scientific debate about the urgent issue of climate change.” AGU reaffirmed their 2007 position statement on climate change “based on the large body of scientific evidence that Earth’s climate is warming and that human activity is a contributing factor” (AGU 2010). The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) reaffirmed its position on global warming and “expressed grave concerns that the illegal release of private emails stolen from the University of East Anglia should not cause policy makers and the public to become confused about the scientific basis of global climate change (AAAS 2010). The UK House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee inquiry reported on 31 March 2010 that it had found “the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU [Climatic Research Unit] remains intact and the allegations against him were baseless” (HCSTC 2010). The Independent United Kingdom Scientific Review Committee headed by Sir Muir Russell exonerated the scientists caught up in “climategate” in a lengthy report (Russell et al. 2010). Penn State University prepared two reports completely exonerating Michael Mann, one of the scientists at the center of the emailgate controversies (PSU 2010).

And so, as we saw in Chapter 2, for over three decades, some ideological climate change deniers have made scientific-like arguments in opposition to national governments’ proposals to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Initially some of these same climate change deniers had previously worked on denying the connection between tobacco and cancer (Oreskes and Conway 2010). Also in the last 30 years, many right-wing think tanks have been funded by corporations with financial interests in minimizing the scope of climate change policies or conservative foundations with a free-market agenda. These think tanks have often worked with ideological climate change deniers to convince civil society and politicians that climate change is not a threat. Although, as we have acknowledged, scientific skepticism is necessary for science to advance, some of the



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tactics followed by the ideological climate skeptics and some of the think tanks have been deeply, ethically problematic. Although, as stated, the vast majority of scientists actually publishing in the field of climate change science support the consensus position, not all do. A very small percentage—less than 5 percent—are critical of the consensus view. Because not all climate change scientific issues have been resolved, even if one assumes that the consensus position articulated by IPCC is entitled to strong respect, as the advance of science depends upon the skeptical probing of scientific claims, skepticism about climate change claims is warranted. In fact doubt is necessary for science to progress. But, as we shall see, doubters for a problem like climate change should be expected to expose their doubts to peer review, a process whereby claims are subject to critical scrutiny. Yet many of the assertions of the ideological climate change deniers have never been subjected to peer review scrutiny. According to a paper published in Science by Oreskes, out of 928 articles published in prominent scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, not one disagreed with the conclusion that human activities were causing climate change (Oreskes 2004). Therefore, most of the arguments against climate change policies on the basis of scientific uncertainty cannot be understood to be supported by reasonable skepticism. Moreover, some of the claims of the climate change disinformation campaign are very dangerous falsehoods, e.g., that the scientific consensus view on climate change has been completely debunked. Most of these attacks on the mainstream science of global warming generally do not expressly challenge the notion that global warming is a potential threat to human flourishing and the environment, but rather are based on the unstated assumption that nothing should be done about such a serious threat until the damage that will be caused by the threat has been proved with high levels of scientific certainty. Yet the debate as experienced by the public often appears to be understood as a debate between only two possible positions. They are: • •

Human-induced climate change will cause catastrophic impacts unless huge reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are made. There is no scientific basis for concluding that humans are causing dangerous climate change.

As we shall see, framing climate change issues, as if there are only two potential scientific conclusions, ignores the possibility that real serious risks exist but there is some uncertainty about the nature of the risk. In other words, framing scientific questions about climate change as if there are only two possible conclusions, namely that harm will happen or it won’t, leads to a lack of serious public consideration of the need for policy makers to make decisions in the face of scientific uncertainty about potential harms. Furthermore, because decision making in the face of uncertainty raises ethical questions and ethical principles that should guide decision making in the face of uncertainty, looking at climate

110  Priority Ethical Issues change decisions through only two frames virtually guarantees that there will be inadequate consideration of ethical guidance. This chapter now examines in more detail ethical issues that always arise when policy makers are confronted with some scientific uncertainty.

Ethical Issues Raised by Scientific Uncertainty Epistemic versus Regulatory Norms Climate change is a problem that should force serious consideration of the rules; rules that science should follow when drawing conclusions about its impacts, given that there is so much at stake from potential impacts, yet uncertainty about the magnitude and timing of what will happen under business-as-usual. Different scientific disciplines follow different epistemic norms that guide the scientist in making claims about having established sufficient correlation between a hypothetical cause and its effect. By “epistemic norms” is meant rules that guide scientists in making knowledge claims. Some sciences, for instance, require that researchers demonstrate correlation between a hypothetical cause and its effects with a 95  percent confidence level (Cranor 1993:  32; ShraderFrechette 1993: 179). Other sciences, such as those that make predictions about environmental impacts of human actions based upon ecological models, allow the scientists to make predictions once it is established that the models’ predictions are consistent with empirical observations of what was predicted by the models. Thus, different scientific disciplines follow different epistemic norms to guide truth claims about cause and effect. Policy decisions that turn on predictions about human impacts on ecological systems very frequently must contend with significant scientific uncertainty because mathematical models must simplify extraordinarily complex ecological systems whose responses to stresses are difficult to describe mathematically (Pilkey and Pilkey-Jarvis 2007). Normal scientific methods in many scientific disciplines implicitly take a position on two types of error that could result when science is attempting to determine causation in the face of uncertainty. •

Type I errors (the “false positive”): the error of rejecting the null hypothesis given that it is actually true, e.g.: • • •

•

A court finding a person guilty of a crime that they did not actually commit A scientist concluding that human activity causes human health problems when it actually does not A scientist concluding that a human activity threatens an ecological system when it actually does not.

Type II errors (the “false negative”): the error of failing to reject the null hypothesis given that the alternative hypothesis is actually true, e.g.:



Ethics and Uncertainty Arguments  111 • • •

A court finding a person not guilty of a crime that they did actually commit A scientist finding that that human activity does not cause a human health problem when it actually does A scientist finding that utilization of ecological resources does not threaten the integrity of an ecosystem when it actually does. (Cranor 1993: 32; Shrader-Frechette 1993: 179)

Scientific analyses that are used in environmental policy making often raise ethical questions about dealing with uncertainty. Because of scientific uncertainty, environmental policy makers necessarily confront two types of potential errors resulting in two distinct types of risk. These risks must be examined through an ethical prism. That is, in the face of uncertainty, scientific analysis of policy options often cannot avoid either concluding that something is causing harm when it isn’t, or something is not causing harm when it is. Which one of these risks should be most avoided is a question of values, not a “value-neutral” scientific question. Normal science strives to avoid a Type I error, that is, an error that concludes cause and effect have been established when causation does not exist. Therefore, the rules that scientists are trained to follow are designed to prevent premature claims that a hypothetical cause will create a harm. This makes sense ethically when science is engaged in the search for the truth in basic research. When science is tasked with describing how the world actually works in research activities, science needs to be trustworthy, reliable, and the source of building knowledge that may be called upon to solve human problems. If science is going to be trustworthy, it should adopt procedures which avoid knowledge claims that are not true. For this reason, an epistemic norm of avoiding untruthful conclusions about cause and effect in the face of uncertainty is the norm followed in scientific research. Yet this “scientific norm” is based upon a normative consideration not a “value-neutral” scientific description of the way things “are.” No amount of science can prescribe the norm that should be followed in cases where there is a reasonable basis for concluding that a serious threat exists but some uncertainty about the nature or magnitude of a risk. Because ecological systems and human health responses to stressors are often very complicated, it is sometimes difficult to satisfy disciplinary research epistemic norms when attempting to predict how human health and ecological systems will respond to stressors. Moreover, not to act in the face of knowledge about uncertain dangerous impacts could often have profound consequences for those at risk. That is, not to act to prevent potential harm in the face of uncertainty may guarantee that the harm is experienced if preventative action is not taken before all uncertainties are resolved. Scientists are not able to test responses of ecological systems to climate change in laboratory controlled experiments. This is because laboratory controlled experiments can rarely duplicate and control for all the enormous

112  Priority Ethical Issues variables that are found in nature, or the long time frames that nature may take to completely respond to stresses. Moreover, mathematical models used to predict responses of ecological systems are very frequently wrong and as a result have led to many inaccurate predictions about how ecological systems will respond to pollution and other kinds of stressors. One recent book on the subject, Useless Arithmetic: Why Environmental Scientists Can’t Predict the Future, catalogs how the use of mathematical models has frequently led to identify actual threats to the environment because of the failure of the models to deal with the complexity of ecological systems (Pilkey and Pilkey-Jarvis 2007). For these reasons, insisting on high levels of scientific certainty about exact impacts of human activities on ecological systems, before taking protective action, will often lead to inaction. This is so because it is often quite easy to identify limitations in the models and claim that the models are making uncertain predictions. Therefore, if climate skeptics and ideological climate change deniers are successful in convincing the public that any action to protect against climate change-caused harms should be deferred until proof of harm is conclusively established, no protective action will be taken. Climate change research will always be plagued by theoretical and practical limits of reaching high levels of certainty about climate change impacts. Continuing theoretical uncertainty about climate change impacts is likely because of the amazing complexity of ecological systems; the scientific inability to reduce this complexity to equations that accurately describe this complexity; the fact that changes in ecological responses will surely be affected by multiple causes in addition to those caused by climate change such as losses of biodiversity; overexploitation of niche organisms; and irresolvable ignorance about the timing of changes in ecological systems. Practical uncertainty is caused by matters that are, in theory, resolvable but, due to financial or timing constraints, do not allow for measures needed to conduct research. For instance, although it may be theoretically possible to determine how reductions in water inputs to groundwater systems caused by drought may affect drinking water supplies, it may not be economically feasible to map a groundwater aquifer’s sustainable yield because of the absence of financial resources to do all the required testing. When science is applied to public policy in situations where scientific uncertainty cannot be reduced due to theoretical or practical limitations, science is engaged not in knowledge production but in questions about the need to protect health, life, biodiversity, and ecological systems from risks. In such situations a strong ethical case can be made that science should avoid the Type II errors, i.e., false negatives, or claims that there is no causation when causation exits, particularly in cases where delays to reduce the uncertainties make the harms greater or put victims at greater risk. And so, how much proof is needed and who should have the burden of proof in the face of uncertainty are ethical questions that arise when decisions need to be made in the face of scientific uncertainty. These questions cannot be resolved by “value-neutral” scientific descriptions of the way the world works precisely



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because science cannot explain the way the world works in cases of uncertainty. Therefore, decision making in the face of scientific uncertainty must be understood to raise ethical issues, not simply questions about scientific “facts.” As we have seen, many scientific arguments in the United States and other countries have implicitly argued against climate change policies because they are not in the national interest if there is scientific uncertainty about what harms will be caused by human-induced warming. If, for instance, the United States adopts climate change policies that turn out to be costly but unnecessary to prevent climate change, the US economy is unnecessarily harmed by taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For this reason, there is huge political pressure on policy makers not to follow preventive policies unless there are high levels of proof that damage from climate change will be experienced. As stated, for over 30 years in the United States, opponents of climate change have relentlessly opposed the adoption of climate change policies on the basis of lack of sufficient proof of adverse impacts. These arguments usually implicitly adopt the idea that government should avoid a Type I statistical error or not act until all uncertainties are resolved, even in a case where the harms from non-action could be catastrophic. The responses of advocates of US climate change policies to these arguments are almost always to take issue with the factual scientific conclusions by making counter scientific claims. For instance, in response to arguments regarding the lack of scientific proof, climate change policy advocates usually stress the harsh environmental impacts on people and ecosystems that climate change will cause if action is not taken, or argue that climate change science is settled. In other words, advocates of climate change action respond to claims of opponents to climate change programs by denying their “factual” scientific claims. They rarely discuss the ethical justification for taking action in the face of uncertainty, and thereby reinforce the two frame assumptions of those opposing climate change policies. In other words, by simply opposing the factual claims of the opponents, the advocates of climate change policies are implicitly agreeing with the assumptions of the opponents that greenhouse reduction policies should not be adopted if there is not sufficient certainty of harm and, therefore, preventative action is not in national self-interest. Rarely do advocates of climate change policies argue that high-emitting governments, organizations, and individuals have responsibilities to poor people around the world. Because of these ethical duties, governments of nations that are high greenhouse gas emitters should take action in the face of uncertainty as they could harm others. Ethics requires those engaged in potentially dangerous action to reduce the threat they are creating for others, particularly if waiting to act could increase the harm. Response to the uncertainty of climate change requires consideration of duties to others, not just self-interest. High-emitting governments have a duty to others to take preventative action. From a proposition that a problem like global warming creates a particular threat or risk, one cannot deduce whether that threat is acceptable without first deciding on certain criteria for acceptability. The

114  Priority Ethical Issues criteria of acceptability must be understood as an ethical rather than a scientific question, and there is strong evidence that continuing to emit greenhouse gases will make the existing threat worse. Science cannot determine whether a risk is acceptable. For instance, although science may conclude that a certain increased exposure to solar radiation may increase the risk of skin cancer by one new cancer in every hundred people, science cannot say whether this additional risk is acceptable; science describes facts and cannot generate prescriptive guidance by itself. The scientific understanding of the nature of the threat, of course, is not irrelevant to the ethical question of whether the risk is ethically acceptable, but science alone cannot tell society what it should do about various not fully proved threats. In environmental controversies such as climate change, where there is a strong scientific basis for serious concern, important ethical questions arise when scientific uncertainty prevents confident predictions of human health and environmental consequences. This is so because decision makers cannot duck ethical questions, such as how conservative “should” scientific assumptions be in the face of uncertainty; or who “should” bear the burden of proof about harm. To ignore these questions is to decide to expose human health and the environment to a legitimate risk, that is, a decision to not act on a serious environmental threat may have serious consequences. For this reason, environmental decisions in the face of scientific uncertainty must be understood to raise a mixture of ethical and scientific questions. Yet the ideological climate change deniers often speak as if it is irrational to talk about duties to reduce greenhouse gases until science is capable of proving, with high levels of certainty, what the actual damages will be. Those ideological climate change deniers participating in the disinformation campaign discussed above often are indifferent to the claim that human actions causing climate change are posing a great risk. Even some of the less ideological climate skeptics dismiss the IPCC’s description of climate change impacts on the basis that they have not been adequately proved. This condemnation is made despite the fact that the IPCC only claims that climate changes are likely or very likely, that is, unproved consequences of the continuing human release of greenhouse gases. Even those skeptics, who are not engaged in the ideological disinformation campaign, often fail to acknowledge that epistemic norms should follow ethical considerations, and frequently accuse those who recommend action in the face of scientific uncertainty as being engaged in “bad’ science. And so, the widespread failure to understand the ethical questions entailed by the need to make policy decisions in the face of uncertainty has affected the entire climate change debate. On the other hand, the ideologically driven deniers are either indifferent to the truth or attack the assumptions of the mainstream scientists by offering their own unproven and non-peer reviewed theories about likely timing and magnitude of climate change. By attacking the mainstream scientists’ views of likely impacts, these deniers are either implicitly arguing that only proven “facts” should count



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in the debate or deny the force of well-settled scientific issues. They do this despite the fact that climate models will probably never be able to prove with high degrees of certainty what future temperatures and resulting impacts will actually be. This is the case because, as we have seen, the climate models will always need to simplify a complex and chaotic climate system; rely on speculation about future population, technology, and economic activity; and make reasonable guesses about human health and environmental impacts of temperature change through the use of environmental impact science—an inherently uncertain science. Therefore, all skeptics’ attacks on mainstream climate science on the grounds of scientific uncertainty hide a very controversial but unstated ethical position, namely that governments should not act until absolute scientific proof is in. For this reason, the skeptics appear to be opposed to the use of science in policy making to describe potentially dangerous behavior. In the case of climate change, most ideological climate change deniers appear to want only harms to count in public policy formulation when they are completely proved with high levels of certainty. In taking this position, the ideological deniers are implicitly arguing that the burden of proof should be on those who may be victims of climate change to show that damages to them will actually occur. That only proven facts should count about dangerous behavior can be shown to be ethically problematic by looking at how societies often deal with other kinds of unsafe behavior. For instance, many societies make dangerous behavior criminal, such as dangerous driving, use of hazardous substances, blasting, and negligently setting fire to a forest. Many social norms about dangerous behavior can be found in various cultures that recognize that burdens of proof and quantity of proof should shift depending upon what is at stake, who has been harmed, whether society can wait until the uncertainties are resolved, whether those harmed by the decision have consented to be put at risk. In other words, when the burden of proof should shift to those proposing to do or continue doing something dangerous, and how much proof should satisfy the burden of proof, are ethical questions that need to take into consideration many different factors. Because these are ethical questions, they cannot be answered by a mathematical algorithm or any other “value-neutral” scientific calculation. There is no escaping asking the question what is the right thing to do about policy responses given some uncertainty about consequences once it is established that certain consequences are plausible. The ethical guidance to determine who should have the burden of proof and what quantity of proof should satisfy the burden of proof must take into consideration factors, which might change from problem to problem, such as: • • • •

What are the harms that are at stake? Who are the potential victims of action under consideration? Can the victims of the harm be compensated if the harm occurs? Have the potential victims consented to be put at risk?

116  Priority Ethical Issues • • • •

Are the harms reversible? Are citizens who will be put at risk represented in democratic institutions that have been rightfully assigned the responsibility to make these decisions in their name? If the decision maker waits until the uncertainties are resolved, may it be too late to prevent the harm? If the decision maker waits until the harm is resolved does the harm get worse?

There is simply no “value-neutral” way of assigning ethical importance to these considerations. Therefore, decision makers should assign the burden of proof and determine the quantity of proof that is necessary to satisfy the burden in regard to serious but somewhat uncertain threats to human health or the environment, such as climate change, after consideration of answers to these by ethically triggered questions. Many scientists shy away from express consideration of the ethical questions that arise because of uncertainty, as they have been taught to keep value considerations out of their analyses. This is because they are expected to produce “knowledge” and “value” considerations, which are the domain of policy making not science (Buhl-Mortensen and Welin 1998: 405). Yet if scientists are expected to produce scientific knowledge that can be applied to public policy, they must be able to describe threats that are not fully proved; things that policy makers do not have the expertise to do. And so the epistemic norms, which should be followed when science is applied to public policy questions in matters about which governments are expected to protect against potential harms, are different from research scientific norms, which apply when science is simply engaged in knowledge production (BuhlMortensen and Welin 1998: 401–5). The failure to make this clear is often the source of confusion among the public about environmental controversies because the public often sees science controversies falling into the two categories discussed above. In other words, when science is applied to public policy where there is reasonable basis that some human activity is dangerous, science should often be concerned about a Type II error, namely claiming a human activity is safe, when it is not. Not to take regulatory action would have potential consequences if some human activities are dangerous. In regulatory situations confronting scientific uncertainty, policy makers may not avoid the need to consider the ethical question of which type of error, Type I or Type II is more serious (Shrader-Frechette 1993: 170). That is in such situations there is no escaping the question of what should be done in response to the uncertainty. Many non-scientific social rules deal with uncertainty in ways that are responsive to the kind of ethical considerations that decision makers should consider in the face of scientific uncertainty. For instance the law requires a high level of proof that someone is guilty of a criminal violation before convicting him or her.



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In the United States this is proof “beyond a reasonable doubt.” In this case the law assumes that it would be worse to convict an innocent man than let a guilty man go free. In civil matters the proof needed to prevail is only by “the preponderance of the evidence” which is often understood to be a 51 percent probability. Thus in civil disputes, the law assumes that the party with the better evidence should prevail even in cases where the proof is not unassailable. In some regulatory matters, the law requires even less evidence to support government regulatory action when there is inconclusive evidence that something is dangerous, although this often changes depending upon the particular law. In some regulatory matters, it is common that governments need only have some “reasonable scientific basis for concern” and that decisions in the face of uncertainty only need to pass an “arbitrary and capricious” standard. For instance in Catawba County, NC v. EPA (D.C. Cir. 7 July 2009) it was ruled that a court can set aside a regulation only when they are in excess of the agency’s statutory authority or otherwise “arbitrary and capricious.” Scientific proof is simply not necessary. Thus the law has thus worked out burden of proof and quantity of proof issues, depending upon what is at stake. Science, of course, is not irrelevant to shifting the burden of proof or establishing rules on the necessary quantity of proof, for scientists need to be called upon to establish where there is a reasonable basis for concluding that certain human behavior threatens human health or the environment. In the case of climate change, governments cannot deny that the release of greenhouse gases creates a great risk to human health and the environment around the world. Even if one disagrees with the specific predictions that have been made by mainstream science of the timing and magnitude of climate change impacts—because the basic physics of climate change have been understood for over 150 years—there is uncontestable evidence that human-induced warming is a threat. Therefore, it can be said without fear of contradiction that high-emitting countries and individuals have been engaged in risky behavior in regard to climate change, and that risky behavior has ethical significance even if there is uncertainty about actual consequences. Ideological climate change deniers often attack proposed climate change action by accusing mainstream scientists of doing “bad” science for relying on unproven assumptions. Yet IPCC’s conclusions are based upon its peer reviewed science and IPCC does not claim absolute certainty about their conclusions (Oberthur and Ott 1999). This claim of “bad” science often hides the assumption on which it is based, namely that research norms protecting against a Type I statistical error are the only norms that scientists should apply to controversies such as climate change. And so the “bad” science claims often hide a very controversial ethical assumption, namely that only fully proven facts should be considered by policy makers. When scientists are faced with true ignorance of potential outcomes, they sometimes simply ignore potential but unknown risks because they assume

118  Priority Ethical Issues that standard research epistemic norms must guide their descriptions of the world. This sometimes prevents them from saying anything in the face of true uncertainty. As a result, the IPCC, for instance, has sometimes ignored potential harms, which they felt they did not know enough about, to prescribe risks with enough precision (Brown 2008). One example of this from the recent IPCC Fourth Assessment is sea level rise. The IPCC acknowledged it did not describe potential sea level rise from rapidly melting Greenland and Iceland ice sheets because they did not know enough about the mechanisms that could accelerate the ice melt to predict associated sea level rise, even though they acknowledged that rapid ice melt was possible (Brown 2008). Therefore, a strong ethical case could be made that when science is engaged in describing potential risks for decision makers, it needs to be able to speculate about potentially serious risks in ways that are not limited by standard research epistemic norms, which require high levels of certainty before declaring something a threat. In following this unstated premise of climate change skeptics, climate change action critics fail to acknowledge a basic distinction between the normal epistemic goals of scientific research inquiry, when it is engaged in knowledge production, and the epistemic goals of policy making engaged in protecting people and ecological systems from damage. Should Governments be Bound by the Precautionary Principle? If there is any doubt about the ethical duty of high-emitting nations to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases, notwithstanding some scientific uncertainty about magnitude and timing of climate change impacts, one only need examine the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that has been ratified by 194 countries (UNFCCC 2010b: Essential Background). As stated earlier, the UNFCCC contains the “precautionary principle,” a jurisprudential principle adopted in several international treaties to deal with dangerous behavior. The UNFCCC states in relevant part: The Parties should take precautionary measures to anticipate, prevent or minimize the causes of climate change and mitigate its adverse effects. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing such measures, taking into account that policies and measures to deal with climate change should be cost-effective so as to ensure global benefits at the lowest possible cost. (UNFCCC 1992: Art. 3) Therefore, nations already have a legal duty under the UNFCCC to apply the precautionary principle to climate change problems. Action must be taken even in the face of some scientific uncertainty about climate change impacts,



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notwithstanding the contrary position taken by skeptics and some with economic interests in avoiding climate change action. The precautionary principle is based on the rather uncontroversial ethical norm discussed above that persons should not engage in risky acts, which could cause very serious and irreversible harm to others, even if there is some uncertainty about the consequences that will actually occur. Even if nations were not obligated to follow the precautionary principle because they have already agreed to it in the UNFCCC, a case can be made that nations should follow the precautionary principle in developing policies. This is because climate change science has undoubtedly established that human-induced warming is a threat, notwithstanding some uncertainty about timing and magnitude of impacts, and that the harms from this threat are potentially catastrophic. Cranor suggests that one way the precautionary rule should be operationalized, in cases where there is huge potential harm if regulatory action is not taken, is: “When threats of serious or irreversible damage are supported by credible scientific evidence and this is appropriately verified, this provides a presumptive reason to take cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation” (Cranor 2001: 322). In the case of climate change, it cannot be denied that there is significant credible evidence that human-induced global warming creates a huge threat to human flourishing and the natural resources on which life depends. As we have seen, humans have understood their own potential to change the climate for over 100 years, with that knowledge becoming widely discussed and stronger at least since the 1970s. In addition, for the last 20 years, the threat of human-induced climate change to human health and the environment has been widely discussed in the scientific literature. In fact, for almost two decades, the IPCC, a scientific body created to advise the world about potential harm from climate change, has been telling the world that the great harm from global warming is not only possible but likely. As we have also seen, the United States Academy of Sciences has issued several reports on the threat of climate change spanning 30 years or more. Furthermore, the scientific evidence of the threat of climate change has grown significantly over the last 20 years. For these reasons, the scientific basis needed to support shifting the burden of proof to those who want to continue emitting greenhouse gases is very strong. Many societal decisions follow the precautionary principle without controversy. For instance, we have some scientific doubts about whether the so-called “mad cow” disease can be transmitted to human beings. Yet great effort is expended to assure that people do not eat meat that could cause “mad cow” disease. The precautionary principle simply implements the widely accepted norm: “Better safe than sorry.” Because governments have ratified the UNFCCC that contains the precautionary principle, those ideological climate deniers—who are urging that action on climate change should not be taken until the scientific uncertainties about magnitude and timing of global warming are resolved—are encouraging their

120  Priority Ethical Issues governments to act in violation of their international legal commitments to follow the precautionary principle, which, as we know, is a rule about climate change action based upon compelling ethical obligations. Governments have already consented to be bound by the precautionary principle in relation to climate change. Thus, the failure to apply the precautionary principle to global warming also violates the ethical norm that a nation should keep promises. It is, therefore, a major breach of trust for those governments that have become parties to the UNFCCC to disavow the application of the precautionary principle to climate change.

All Mainstream Theories Would Condemn Justifications for Non-Action on Climate Change on the Basis of Uncertainty The following summarizes the conclusions from several conventional ethical theories about this duty to take action on global warming in the face of scientific uncertainty about climate change impacts. This discussion focuses on more conventional ethical theories rather than recently developed more environmentally focused ethical theories. These include biocentrism and ecocentrism, which support an even stronger ethical duty to refrain from activities that could cause great climate change harm in the face of scientific uncertainty. Utilitarianism As we have seen in Chapter 3, utilitarians assert that actions are right or good that bring about the best end results. According to utilitarian theory, no act is good or bad in itself; its wrongness depends on the consequences of the action. Following utilitarian theory, some economists argue that climate change policy should be guided by cost–benefit analyses (CBAs) that calculate which alternative courses of action will maximize individual preferences. In addition to the ethical problems with the use of CBA to guide climate change policies (see the last chapter), scientific uncertainty about the consequences of human-induced climate change creates difficulties in calculating the actual benefits that will occur if climate change policies are implemented. Because it is often extremely speculative to identify the value of harms that will be avoided by taking action, CBAs that are justified on utilitarian grounds often hide controversial ethical judgments embedded in the calculations concerning how the uncertainties were resolved. Even in the face of scientific uncertainty about consequences, many if not most utilitarians find the status quo on climate change unacceptable. They advise that humans should choose behaviors that will maximize happiness because climate change will potentially cause death and misery for tens of millions of people around the world, in present and future generations; further, that climate change will create such unhappiness, much greater than the costs to the United States, and other high-emitting nations, of moving out of fossil fuels. But, as we have



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seen in the last chapter, various attempts to calculate the costs of doing nothing on climate change have concluded that the costs of inaction far outweigh the costs of reducing climate change’s threat. Some utilitarians and economists urge that expected utility should be calculated in the face of uncertainty by looking at various options and weighting the potential benefits according to the probability that certain consequences will actually occur (see Turner et al. 1993; Shrader-Frechette 1996). An option that creates the greatest utility determined by a calculation that ascertains total damages by multiplying the damages times the probability the damages will occur should be the preferred option, according to some utilitarians. For instance, option “A”, should it occur, has a 50 percent probability of causing harm, creating $1 million of damages, while option “B” is certain to create $550,000 worth of damages, then option “A” is the preferred option because it puts less money at risk. That is so because option “A” puts only $500,000 at risk (i.e. $1 million × 0.5) and option “B” puts $550,000 at risk (i.e., $550,000 × 1). Applying this approach to climate change entails determining the costs of stabilizing greenhouse gases at various levels, comparing these costs with the value of human health and environmental entities that would be damaged if greenhouse gases were not stabilized at the identified level, and multiplying the difference by the probability that the damages would occur. This is one way that some utilitarians would deal with scientific uncertainty about global warming impacts. Because mainstream scientists believe that the probability of harm from global warming is very high and, as we saw in the last chapter, because the damages to human health and the environment are huge, even after discounting the amount of potential damages by the probability that these damages will occur, many utilitarians condemn the status quo in high-emitting countries including the United States. Many ethicists, including some utilitarians, would not condone such an ethical calculus because of its failure to allow those who may be harmed to participate in the process and consent to potential damage. Yet, following the logic of weighting the value of harms by assigning probability to the harms, utilitarian ethical analysis is, in theory, capable of making ethical judgments about problems where consequences of human actions are uncertain. What utilitarian theory cannot easily deal with, however, is to determine which probability number to assign to potential consequences when scientists disagree about what the probability is that a particular harm will occur. In these cases, where there is uncertainty about harm, most ethicists would argue that utilitarian theory must be supplemented by other ethical considerations. These include due process and other procedural requirements entailed by procedural justice that would recognize the rights of those who might be harmed to participate in and consent to decisions that might affect them (Shrader-Frechette 1993:  90–4). Furthermore, since economists often recommend that uncertainties of great harm be resolved by asking experts about what their subjective view is of the probabilities and averaging the subjective guesses about probabilities, utilitarian calculations relying on subjective probabilities raise the same ethical questions about who should have the

122  Priority Ethical Issues burden of proof in determining probabilities, and what quantity of proof should satisfy the burden of proof. This is because some responses of the biosphere are so unknown, that to assume very catastrophic impacts have low probability, as is often the case, is without scientific warrant. It is well known, for instance, that there are tipping points in the climate system which, if exceeded, will create rapid non-linear climate change. Yet, because the climate system is a somewhat chaotic complex system, science cannot describe when these tipping points will be exceeded. Science simply cannot say precisely, for instance, at what temperature oceans will liberate extremely large amounts of stored methane hydrates (Washington and Cook 2011: 28). If these methane hydrates melt (they are presently found in very large quantities in ice/methane lattices in the top levels of continental ocean shelves around the world) then very large quantities of methane will be released into the atmosphere causing extremely rapid temperature increases, as happened 55 million years ago during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (Washington and Cook 2011:  28). However, the levels of hydrates currently stored in the oceans are believed to be much greater than levels released 55 million years ago. The ocean temperatures that will melt the methane hydrates are uncertain, but already rising temperatures have caused some release of methane hydrates (Washington and Cook 2011: 28). Putting subjective probabilities on such events, which could cause such enormous adverse impacts, raises the ethical question about how conservative assumptions should be in the face of this uncertainty. Either the release of methane hydrates will occur in this century, or it will not, under business-as-usual. Therefore, assigning probabilities in utilitarian calculations of harm may be greatly misleading, given the deep uncertainty about when the methane hydrates will be released. In addition to risks caused by the release of methane hydrates, there are other risks of runaway climate change, i.e., rapid non-linear temperature changes. Runaway or rapid climate change means that the Earth is locked in much higher temperatures than currently predicted from the release of greenhouse gases alone. If some positive climate change feedbacks, such as: increased water vapor; reduced ice cover; reductions in oceans’ ability to absorb atmospheric carbon; other forms of methane outgassing; biomass becoming a carbon source rather than a sink; or atmospheric or ocean circulation patterns affecting carbon cycle processes and turning out to be greater than expected, runaway climate change is possible (Washington and Cook 2011: 28–31). Given the state of science and that these events are not only uncertain but cannot be predicted accurately by use of probability calculations, the use of subjective probability judgments, which are likely to give a false impression of the actual value of harms that could be experienced, is deeply ethically problematic. Of course nations and people might be harmed by other governments’ releases of greenhouse gases; governments justifying inaction on the basis of probability adjusted CBAs. Those nations and people might, therefore, be greatly harmed by the application of subjective probabilities to uncertain harsh consequences.



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As a result some particularly vulnerable nations—including the small island developing states and Bangladesh—vehemently condemn the developed nations’ failure to meaningfully respond to climate change in a way that considers their interests given that most philosophers, including utilitarians, agree it is morally unacceptable for some humans to treat others as if they are not entitled to protection from harm (Shrader-Frechette 2002: 96), it is deeply ethically problematic for one nation to harm others through climate changing causing action on the basis of uncertainty and not consider their duties to protect the most vulnerable. As a result many prominent utilitarians such as Peter Singer have argued that governments should act to reduce the threat of climate change, notwithstanding some uncertainty about climate change impacts (Singer 2002: 14–50). Rights and Duties Theories As we have seen, theories about mainstream rights and duties, often classified as deontological ethical theories, require that humans treat other humans as if they have inherent dignity. According to these theories, people should always be treated as ends with certain rights and never as means (Shrader-Frechette 1993: 184). For this reason, theories on rights and duties condemn risky behavior that could seriously harm others without their consent. Uncertainty about consequences is irrelevant to these rights and duties theories because actions of individuals can be wrong without knowing their consequences. Therefore, according to rights and duties theories, the question of the moral acceptability of governments regarding uncertainty does not turn on the probability that harm will occur, but on whether one is engaged in behavior that one has a duty to avoid. Because individuals have a duty to refrain from reckless behavior; and governments have recognized rights “to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature” (Jonas 1984); and as climate change will likely diminish the human health and productivity of millions, governments have deontological duties to prevent climate change. According to theories on rights and duties, one must not engage in actions that could harm others without their consent. Ethical theories on rights and duties, therefore, condemn risky behavior, particularly when that behavior could kill or greatly diminish the quality of lives of others. Therefore, a defense of the status quo on greenhouse gas emissions, on the basis of uncertainty about actual consequences, is ethically unacceptable according to mainstream rights and duties ethical theories. This is particularly true because of the very real potential of global warming to kill millions and greatly diminish the quality of life for tens if not hundreds of millions of people now and future generations. In thinking about how to consider uncertain consequences of problems like global warming, some ethicists, following deontological theories, have argued that humans have a duty to be guided by a “heuristic of fear” in predicting consequences (Jonas 1984). That is, humans should give preference to the bad over good predictions. Particularly where there are possible serious irreversible

124  Priority Ethical Issues consequences from human actions and where the stakes are high, decision makers should give more weight to prognosis of doom rather than of bliss. The philosophical reason for this duty to give more weight to the prediction of harm is premised on the notion that present generations do not have a right to gamble with the interests of other generations nor to act so that life on Earth is jeopardized (Jonas 1984). For this reason, in the face of uncertainty about global warming consequences, governments should consider potential “worst-case” scenarios of global warming impacts when making policy. The ethical norm that one should not engage in behavior that could seriously damage others without their consent is a corollary of the golden rule that one should treat others how one would like to be treated. The golden rule is the philosophical underpinning for many widely accepted international documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document that has broad international support (United Nations 1948). All nations strongly condemn reckless behavior of outsiders that could seriously harm the health and welfare of their citizens. This condemnation has often been made more specific in international treaties including those dealing with nuclear waste, hazardous chemicals, and the loss of atmospheric ozone, among many others. Theories of Justice Theories of justice are particularly relevant to climate change because they provide guidance on how benefits and burdens of climate change should be distributed throughout society. As we have seen in Chapter 3, those most responsible for climate change are mainly people in developed countries, yet those who are most vulnerable to human-induced warming are some of the world’s poorest people in poor countries. Therefore, climate change raises profound justice questions. Shrader-Frechette recognizes three justice considerations that problems such as climate change should consider: (a) distributive justice, (b) procedural justice, and (c) and the principle of prima facie political equality (ShraderFrechette 1993: 23). Distributive Justice Distributive justice requires that burdens and benefits of human action be distributed in line with equality or other morally relevant criteria. According to ShraderFrechette, distributive justice requires a fair or equitable distribution of society’s technological risks and impacts (Shrader-Frechette 2002: 24). Because some of the poorest nations have much more to lose than the highemitting nations, the poorer nations shoulder a much greater burden of risk than the developed countries. For this reason, the developed countries’ approach to global warming in regard to a fair and equitable sharing of the burdens and benefits has been unjust. According to theories of distributive justice, those who are most vulnerable to climate change should not have to shoulder a higher burden



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of risk than those who cause climate change. Yet this is precisely what happens if some high-emitting countries refuse to reduce their emissions based upon uncertainty. In so doing, these countries are putting the victims of climate change at greater harm than themselves, if the consensus view of climate change turns out to be correct and climate change harms are experienced. Procedural Justice Procedural justice requires that decisions are made and implemented according to fair processes. Procedural justice requires at a minimum: (a) that like cases are treated alike and any distinctions be ethically justified, (b) that the decision making and implementation treat people fairly and impartially, (c) that those directly affected by the decisions have a voice and representation in the process, and (d) that there be transparency in the decision making process (ShraderFrechette 2002). Some nations rely on scientific uncertainty as an excuse for not taking action on climate change and have not invited other nations to participate in domestic decisions relating to the degree of risk about uncertain consequences of climate change that is acceptable before reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, those developed nations’ maintenance of the status quo in the face of potentially serious damage to others around the world must be seen as procedurally unjust. Nations who use scientific uncertainty as a basis for not reducing greenhouse gas emissions, while failing to get consent from the rest of the world, are acting in an ethically problematic manner as a matter of procedural justice. Principle of Prima Facie Political Equality According to Shrader-Frechette, the principle of prima facie political equality is needed to correct the deficiencies of institutions that make decisions about distributions of burdens and benefits of environmental decision making (ShraderFrechette 2002:  27). She argues that the principle is necessary to assure that distributions of the burdens of environmental harms will be just, by requiring that those who could be harmed by decisions with potentially harsh impacts have a right to participate as equal partners at every level of decision making (Shrader-Frechette 2002: 27). Without the right of citizens, who may be harshly affected by decisions that may impose risk of harm on them, to participate fully and knowingly about the consequences of such decisions, decisions that may affect their interests are likely to be unjust. So, before any nation may make a decision to not act to reduce its emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions, because of some uncertainties about the amount of harm that non-citizens may experience, those who may be harmed by that decision must not only be consulted but must be fully informed about the nature of the threat, and must be given the right to approve decisions putting them at risk. In the case of climate change, this means that a country like the

126  Priority Ethical Issues United States may not refuse, on the basis of scientific uncertainty, to lower its emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions unless nations that are most at risk including such countries as Bangladesh, Vietnam, and the small island developing states at huge risk to rising seas from human-induced climate change, have agreed to be put at risk. As we have seen, all major ethical systems would strongly condemn behavior that is much less threatening and dangerous than global warming. For climate change is a problem that, if not controlled, may cause the death of tens or hundreds of thousands of helpless victims caused by intense storms and heat waves; the death or sickness of millions that may suffer dengue fever or malaria; the destruction of some nations’ ability to grow food or provide drinking water; the devastation of forests and personal property; and the acceleration of elimination of countless species of plants and animals that are already stressed by other human activities. In summary, global warming threatens many of the things that humans hold to be of most value, i.e., life, health, family, the ability to make a living, community, and the natural environment. Therefore, the nature of the risk from global warming is enormous and using scientific uncertainty as an excuse for doing nothing is ethically intolerable as a matter of procedural justice. All of this leads to the inescapable conclusion that those who wish to use scientific uncertainty as an excuse for not reducing emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions have responsibilities to the potential victims of climate change to allow them to participate in its decisions.

Additional Ethical Issues Raised by Ideological Climate Change Deniers Up until this point, this chapter has argued why general uncertainty about climate change impacts may not be used as justification for non-action on climate change as a matter of ethics. This section will now identify additional ethical issues raised by how uncertainty arguments have sometimes been made irresponsibly by some of the ideologically driven climate deniers. In other words, we now turn from general ethical issues about the use of uncertainty as an argument, to ethical issues about the strategies of using uncertainty that often been followed by skeptics and ideologically driven climate change deniers. As we shall see, the tactics often followed by the ideologically driven skeptics are particularly ethically reprehensible. As previously stated, skepticism in science is necessary for science to advance. Although this chapter has argued that there is by far enough evidence about potential human-induced damages to create strong duties of high-emitting nations and individuals to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions, responsible skepticism must be encouraged as long as there are potentially unknown aspects of how the climate system works. Prominent scientists who advocate strong climate change action, such as James Hansen, even admit that because of the complexity of the climate system, there may be



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feedbacks in the climate system that the scientific community does not currently fully understand. As this could lead to less or perhaps much greater warming and associated impacts than currently predicted by the consensus view, it is possible that temperatures experienced in the future will be different than those predicted by the consensus view (Hansen 2009: 44). In other words, despite high levels of scientific confidence that humans are on a path to catastrophic climate damages under business-as-usual use of fossil fuel and other activities that are increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, the scientific community must admit that there is some uncertainty about the timing and magnitude of climate change impacts. It is possible, although very improbable, that climate change impacts could be less or greater than the range predicted by the IPCC. This is so because climate scientists do not know for sure whether there are positive or negative feedbacks in the climate system that will lead to more or less warming than predicted by the IPCC (Hansen 2009:  44). Responsible skepticism about the consensus view, therefore, is needed to improve the knowledge about the consequences of human emissions of greenhouse gases. Yet at the present time, as we have just argued, no nation or high-emitting individual may use scientific uncertainty as an excuse for not reducing their emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions. Given what is at stake with climate change, extraordinarily strong ethical criticisms can be made about how some ideological climate change deniers have publicly attacked the consensus view. In fact, because some of the claims made by these ideological climate change deniers: (a) must have been known to be untruthful, (b) should have been known to be untruthful, or (c) were made without regard to whether they were truthful or not—some pushing disinformation about climate change must be understood to be guilty of grossly unethical behavior. We have seen, for instance, that some ideologically driven climate change deniers in the emailgate controversy made claims that the threat of human-caused climate change had been completely debunked, when there was abundant evidence to the contrary. A claim that climate change science has been “completely debunked” is so obviously false, given that every academy of science in the world and most scientific organizations with expertise relevant to climate change have supported the consensus view. The record of how some ideologically driven skeptical arguments have been made in response to the consensus position raises numerous ethical questions. These ethical issues arise out of the fact that all scientists publicly commenting on the scientific basis for human-caused climate change have a duty to: (a) subject their findings to the peer review, (b) before making claims about whether humaninduced climate change is a threat, defer to organizations that have the expertise to synthesize the vast amount of peer reviewed science, (c) not make claims about climate science that are inconsistent with what has already been clearly established, and (d) not make claims about which there is little evidence. We shall also see that some climate change denier organizations have engaged in cyber bullying and ad hominem attacks that are particularly ethically odious.

128  Priority Ethical Issues The Duty of Skeptics to Publish in Peer Reviewed Science Frequently some skeptics and ideological deniers of climate change not only offer no proof for their assertions that human-induced climate change is not a threat, they sometimes have attacked the assumptions of the mainstream scientists by offering their own unproved and non-peer reviewed theories about likely timing and magnitude of global warming. As we have seen, according to a paper published in Science by Oreskes, out of 928 articles published in prominent scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, none disagreed with the conclusion that human activities were causing climate change (Oreskes 2004). This is not to claim that no articles of skeptical scientists have been published in peer reviewed journals, but rather that relatively few have been published in leading peer reviewed journals. A strong ethical case can be made that climate skeptics should publish their scientific conclusions in peer reviewed scientific journals before claiming that the science that supports the consensus view is in error. There are several reasons for this. First, scientific claims usually are not entitled to respect by the scientific community until they withstand the scrutiny of peer review. This is so because peer review in science is the very process followed by scientists to weed out bogus scientific claims. If climate change skeptics are offering their scientific conclusions as evidence that the consensus view is in error but have not subjected their claims to the scrutiny of peer review, they may be misleading the public that climate change is not a threat. Because climate change harms are likely to be catastrophic to many if the mainstream scientific view is correct, inaccurate scientific claims made to convince some not to reduce the threat of climate change have potentially significant harmful consequences. Because so much is at stake, peer review should be a minimum requirement in making claims to the public that climate change is not a serious problem. It is ethically problematic to claim that potentially dangerous behavior is safe, if there is inadequate evidence that the behavior is safe. If, for instance, there is reason to believe that a train coming down a railroad track that could greatly injure a child who is lying on the tracks and someone erroneously tells the child that there is no train coming, the misinformation could lead to great harm. It is perfectly acceptable for someone who is skeptical that a train is coming down the tracks to check to see if a train is actually headed in the direction of the child, but before telling the child not to worry, when there is a reasonable basis for assuming a train is coming, the skeptic has a duty to be very careful before asserting the train is not coming. Given that the consensus view of climate change is based upon a voluminous amount of peer reviewed science, and has been supported by every scientific organization with expertise in climate change science, the conclusion that business-as-usual releases of greenhouse gases will greatly harm some of the poorest people in the world is entitled to initial respect. Yet, without peer review, the skeptical scientists have no basis for concluding that the science they rely on



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is truthful. If skeptics make claims not based upon peer reviewed science, they simply have not fulfilled their duty to be careful about scientific claims; an ethical responsibility that exists when significant harm is possible and misinformation about the harm may lead to greater harm. On the other hand, the IPCC and the many scientific organizations issuing statements in support of the IPCC conclusions have based their conclusions on the peer review science. Because there is a strong scientific basis for concluding climate change is a significant threat, and because the harms could be so catastrophic for those who have not consented to be put at risk, as we have seen, those who want to claim that no climate change-caused harm will occur should shoulder the burden of proof to demonstrate there is no danger from continued releases of greenhouse gases. The duty to shoulder the burden of proof by those who want to claim that a potentially dangerous activity is safe is particularly strong when the harms that could be caused by the activity include loss of life and the destruction of resources on which life depends. For this reason, climate change skeptics should, at the very minimum, subject their skeptical claims to peer review. The Duty of Skeptics to Subject Any Broad Claims about Climate Change to Review by Organizations that have Appropriate Expertise The science of climate change is comprised of an extraordinarily interdisciplinary mix of scientific disciplines and a huge scientific literature. Among other disciplines are biology, chemistry, atmospheric physics, mathematical modeling, paleoclimatology, meteorology, oceanology, geophysics, geochemistry, paleohydrology, oceanography, atmospheric sciences, engineering, botany, carbon cycle science, and geology to name a few. Climate change science is a synthesis of these disciplines. The IPCC’s reports cite many thousands of peer reviewed articles to support their conclusions. In other words, the consensus view is based upon numerous scientific journal articles from many different disciplines and studies that have been subjected to peer review. Some ideological deniers have made claims that specific individual scientific studies demonstrate that climate change is not a great threat to human flourishing or the environment in cases where, at best, the scientific study only raises questions with one line of evidence on which the consensus view rests. Yet many conclusions reached by the IPCC and other scientific organizations that have issued statements in support of the consensus view rely on multiple lines of evidence. For instance, the conclusion that the Earth is warming is not only based upon the surface temperature measurements but also the disappearance of ice and snow cover; the movement of plants and animals; the early flowering of plant species; the increased intensity of storms; droughts appearing in places that are expected to become drier as the planet warms; and rising sea levels. In other words, conclusions that Earth is warming are based upon multiple robust lines of evidence.

130  Priority Ethical Issues As seen above, the same is true of conclusions that the Earth’s undeniable warming is very likely human-caused is also based upon many robust lines of evidence including such things as the carbon isotopes measured in the atmosphere; the differential warming being experienced between upper and lower atmosphere; differences in night time versus day time high temperatures; the warming pattern visible in the oceans; the inability to explain the warming by natural forcing; and the numerous attribution studies, among other things. Given these numerous lines of evidence, no one study that relies on things such as some local cooling in a particular place or ice expanding in one glacier can be used as a basis for concluding that the planet is no longer warming. Because there are often multiple lines of evidence supporting IPCC conclusions, only claims that are considered in relationship to the full set of robust lines of interdisciplinary evidence developed in different disciplines that have formed the basis of the IPCC conclusions are entitled to respect. For this reason, skeptics need to subject scientific conclusions to institutions or organizations with a wide breadth of expertise to competently evaluate individual studies in the context of the large extant climate change scientific literature before making broad general claims about climate change. Therefore, skeptics should not only subject their claims about climate change science to the scrutiny of peer review. They should also refrain from making claims about the nature of the overall threats entailed by human-induced climate change until their claims are evaluated by groups or organizations with the broad climate change scientific expertise before drawing ultimate conclusions about the meaning of individual studies. This is precisely the role expected of the academies of science around the world, including the United States Academy of Sciences, and the IPCC. And as we have seen before, the US Academy of Sciences has studied the peer reviewed evidence at least three times over the last 30 years and concluded that human release of greenhouse gases is a huge threat. Given that no known scientific organization with expertise over climate change science has supported the conclusion that climate change is not a threat to human flourishing and ecological systems, skeptical claims that deny the huge threat of climate change are not only unwarranted but constitute ethically problematic behavior, because such claims are like telling the child laying on railroad tracks that no train is coming without checking carefully to see whether a train actually is on its way. The Duty to Not Overstate Potential Conclusions that can be Inferred from Climate Science Data To encourage others not to act in the face of clear threats and in so doing mislead them because of clearly erroneous scientific claims is deeply ethically reprehensible given that the mainstream view clearly concludes that the threat from climate change danger is so monumental. Frequently some ideologically driven skeptics have made claims that the consensus science position that humans are causing global warming has been completely debunked. They make this claim



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either ignorant of (or willfully ignoring) numerous fingerprinting and attribution studies that are the basis for the consensus attribution of human causation for the undeniable warming that the Earth is experiencing. And so these skeptics are making claims that go far beyond what any single scientific study could prove, even if the science on which they are relying is sound. Over and over again the ideological climate change deniers have focused on one aspect of climate change science that has not been completely proved, while ignoring the huge number of climate change scientific issues that are completely settled. That is, ideological climate change deniers frequently “cherry-pick” the climate science. “Cherry-picking” means focusing on possible facts that support a predetermined conclusion, while ignoring other facts. Most arguments supporting climate skepticism have one thing in common— they neglect the full body of evidence and cherry-pick just the select pieces of data that support a particular point of view. In so doing these skeptics are overstating the potential significance of the scientific fact or study on which they rely. This is ethically troublesome because it is analogous to the person who tells the child laying on the train tracks that there is no train coming when the train may actually be on its way after concluding there is no train coming, on the basis that a train did not come down the track at the same time three days before, although it is known that a train came down the track at the same time for the last two days. In this case, climate change skeptics have a strong ethical duty to limit any claims they make about the meaning of any one study or fact to only those inferences that can be made from the study or fact on which they choose to rely. As we have seen in the emailgate controversy, some skeptics claimed that the hacked emails proved that climate change was a complete hoax, even though the issues raised by the controversy did not put in doubt the evidence relied upon to build the consensus view that humans were causing climate change. The emailgate controversy is an example of skeptical claims being made to undermine the scientific consensus view that exaggerates any potential meaning of the facts that the skeptics rely on. Responsible skeptics must limit conclusions about facts to those supportable by all of the relevant evidence. The Duty to Be Truthful about Climate Change Science Particularly troubling from an ethical point of view is the behavior of some of the ideologically driven skeptics who make claims that the science of climate change is a complete hoax and try to convince others of this. They swat down the unprecedented and widely respected amount of expertise that has weighed in on this (such as the world’s academies of sciences, the IPCC, and most major scientific organizations with expertise in climate change) by claiming that the scientists who work for these organizations are corrupt without identifying evidence of corruption and, most troubling of all, frequently attack consensus scientists with ad hominem arguments and other insulting assaults, often with no substantive counter arguments.

132  Priority Ethical Issues Claims that there is no scientific support for human-induced climate change are ethically reprehensible. It is too absurd on its face to conclude that climate change science is a hoax. For it to be true, there would have to be thousands of corrupt scientists working within the most prestigious scientific institutions around the world before one could draw conclusions that the scientists who support the consensus view are engaged in a hoax and, therefore, that the mainstream consensus view has been debunked. A claim that the mainstream scientific view has been debunked is not just misleading it is an obvious falsehood. A claim that all of the scientists who support the mainstream view are corrupt could only be considered if there was evidence of corruption about most of the scientists. Climate science skeptics, who make untruthful claims, are potentially responsible for great damage to human flourishing and natural resources on which life depends. Given this, it is arguably a new kind of crime against humanity to make untruthful claims about the science of climate change. Now, many who repeat untruthful claims about the science of climate change may simply be passing on what they believe to be true because it is consistent with their world view. Such people, of course, are not guilty of crimes against humanity and principles of free speech would strongly support the right of individuals to say what they believe. Yet the duty to be truthful increases for those who are claiming that they are experts in the relevant scientific field and are offering their expert opinion of the science of climate change. Furthermore, those corporations and ideological philanthropic funds that are supporting the spread of untruthful information about the science of climate change can be strongly criticized ethically for spreading misinformation about matters that have such significant potential harsh consequences. Some of these claims about the status of mainstream climate change science are clearly out and out falsehoods in other words, lying. As one commentator states, lying is ethically wrong for several reasons: Lies are morally wrong, then, for two reasons. First, lying corrupts the most important quality of my being human: my ability to make free, rational choices. Each lie I tell contradicts the part of me that gives me moral worth. Second, my lies rob others of their freedom to choose rationally. When my lie leads people to decide other than they would have had they known the truth, I have harmed their human dignity and autonomy. (Mazur 2011) All scientists have a duty to refrain from untruthful claims about climate change science. The Absolute Ethical Duty to Refrain from Intimidation Tactics Particularly ethically odious, bordering on the criminal, are cyber bullying tactics that have been frequently used by some ideological climate change



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deniers. The following from the prestigious scientific journal Scientific American (2010) summarizes the ominous development of cyber bullying of climate change scientists and journalists reporting on climate change science. “I get a lot of hate mail,” said Schmidt, a climate modeler at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies who also runs RealClimate.org, a website devoted to debunking myths and errors about climate change. “I get a lot of praise mail, but pretty much every time I have a quote in a mainstream publication I’ll get a string of emails from various people accusing me of various misdemeanors and fantasizing about my life in prison” (Fischer 2010). Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) has a 19-page document of “extremely foul, nasty, abusive” emails he has received (Fischer 2010). Australian author and academic Clive Hamilton noted that many of the country’s most distinguished climate scientists are increasingly the target of email attacks aimed at driving them from the public debate. “The purpose of this new form of cyber bullying seems clear; it is to upset and intimidate the targets, making them reluctant to participate further in the climate change debate” (Fischer 2010). The bullying has long been part of life for many climate scientists. Retired NCAR climate scientist Tom Wigley said he has been fighting it for the last 20 years or more. Most of the emails appear to be the work of frustrated individuals, ranting into the ether, scientists say. But some appear to be the work of coordinated campaigns, and many, scientists say, appear to be taking their cue from influential anti-climate change advocates like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and ClimateDepot.com (Fischer 2010). “That is chilling the work of science in the agencies,” Schmidt said, “It’s certainly very off-putting for scientists who want to talk about their stuff in public but fear the political consequences” (Fischer 2010). For at least the last decade, some in the ideological climate change denial community have engaged in what appears to be an obvious intimidation strategy; clearly these tactics are not a plea for reasoned discourse. Such behavior would be ethically problematic on any public policy controversy, but in the case of climate change, a threat that could cause great harm to the most vulnerable around the world, cyber bullying is extraordinarily ethically abhorrent, perhaps some new kind of crime against humanity. It is one thing for someone who does not believe in the climate change science to call mainstream climate change scientists names; it is another thing ethically for those with the money to do so to create a campaign to encourage others to verbally attack scientists and journalists who are fulfilling their duty to report the facts as they see them. In one respect, this most likely does not amount to a legal crime because those engaged in this odious behavior may be exercising their free speech, yet their support of cyber bullying is ethically condemnable as repulsive, detestable and repugnant because of its obvious intimidation intent, and the huge harm to humanity it may cause if the intimidation is successful and the consensus scientific view about catastrophic harm proves to have been correct.

134  Priority Ethical Issues And so as a matter of ethics, skeptics must play by the rules of science before making claims about whether climate change is a significant threat to human flourishing and the environment. This is a moral imperative. There is too much at stake not to do otherwise. Without doubt, the tactics used by the ideological climate change deniers are ethically loathsome and repulsive.

Conclusion: Navigating the Perfect Moral Storm in Regard to Scientific Uncertainty Arguments And so there are few ethical issues about the use of scientific uncertainty arguments to challenge action on climate change about which reasonable people may disagree on. They include how much science needs to be sound before the burden of proof should shift to those who desire to continue to emit greenhouse gases to prove that their behavior is safe. Yet, because so much of climate science is based upon settled science and a huge body of peer reviewed scientific literature, a strong ethical conclusion about the duty to act to reduce the threat of climate change is warranted. By attacking the science of proponents of action on global warming, economically interested parties have invited the public to focus on the wrong question, rather than the one that ethics would have us ask. Ethics would have us ask whether there is a reasonable basis to be concerned that certain human activities that increase atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases could damage human health and the environment harm, violate rights, or lead to injustice before the uncertainties are resolved. That is, as a matter of ethics, potentially serious but unproven harm from global warming is a very relevant consideration. That is, ethically, once there is a reasonable basis for concluding that someone is putting others at risk of great harm, they have duties to stop the dangerous behavior unless they can show that the behavior is not harmful. These thresholds have been passed decades ago for climate change. We have seen when decision making about serious threats must take place in the face of some scientific uncertainty about the nature of threats, regulatory epistemic norms would require that the burden of proof and the quantity of the proof should shift, particularly in cases when the potential harms are great and waiting until the uncertainty is resolved will make the problem worse. This insight leads to the conclusion that the quantity of proof that should be required to satisfy the burden of proof might change depending on questions such as what is at stake; who is harmed; whether the harm is reversible; whether those at risk have consented to be put at risk; whether those at risk can be compensated if the worst harms come true; and whether waiting until all of the uncertainties have been resolved makes the problem worse. This understanding leads to the conclusion that if the harm is not deadly or greatly injurious and those who will be harmed will be fully compensated if the worst harm materialized, perhaps proponents of action might only need to establish that a project is safe with a 51 percent probability. However, if the harm is deadly and the



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victims cannot be compensated, the proponents of taking no action to reduce the threat might have to prove it is safe with a 99.9 percent probability. And so, what ethics requires of the quantity of proof, which is needed to satisfy the burden of proof, depends upon many considerations that cannot be completely defined in advance. Yet in the case of climate change, many non-controversial categorical ethical conclusions can be made given the potential catastrophic climate change-caused impacts that include deaths of tens of millions, destruction of natural resources on which people depend, impoverishment, sickness, loss of species, damage to property, animals, and ecological systems, lack of consent of victims, and irreversibility of some damages. These principles can be used to navigate the perfect moral storm entailed by climate change and include the following: Uncertainty as Justification for Non-action on Climate Change The argument that nations or individuals need not reduce their greenhouse emissions because of scientific uncertainty about consequences of timing and magnitude does not withstand minimum ethical scrutiny because of: • • • • • •

The enormous adverse potential impacts on human health and the environment from human-induced climate change The disproportionate effects on the poorest people of the world The fact that much of the science of the climate change problem has never or is not now in dispute even if one acknowledges some uncertainty about timing or magnitude The fact that global warming damage is probably already being experienced The strong likelihood that serious and irreversible damage will be experienced before all the uncertainties can be eliminated. The fact that the longer nations wait to take action, the more difficult it will be to stabilize greenhouse gases at levels which do not create serious damage.

Burden of Proof •

Because there is abundant robust evidence that climate change is a huge threat to human flourishing and the natural resources on which people depend, those who want to claim that climate change is not a threat and, therefore, that high emitters do not have a duty to reduce their emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions, should be seen to have the burden of proof to prove that humans are not changing the climate system in a way that will cause harm to people and the ecological systems on which life depends.

136  Priority Ethical Issues Quantity of Proof •

Given the potential catastrophic nature of the potential harms from climate change—those who oppose taking protective action on climate change have a strong duty to demonstrate, with high levels of proof, that the harm will not occur.

Duty to Seek Consensus from Victims of Climate Change in the Face of Uncertainty •

•

Because non-action to reduce the threat of climate change makes the problem worse if the harm materializes, those who refuse to act on the basis of scientific uncertainty have a duty to get agreement from those who could be harmed by climate change before non-action can be justified on the basis of uncertainty. Those climate change victims who could be harmed if a high greenhouse gas emitter desires to continue emitting at levels above their fair share of safe global emissions have not only a right to consent to being put at risk on the basis of uncertainty, but must be fully informed of all of the risks from non-action on climate change before they are asked to consent to the being put at risk.

Responsible Skepticism • •

•

•

Climate skeptics who argue that consensus climate change science is flawed have a duty to subject their claims to peer review before making claims about climate change science. Before making any broad claims about whether climate change is a threat to human flourishing and ecological systems, climate skeptics must subject the evidence for their conclusions to review by institutions that have the breadth of scientific expertise to evaluate broad climate change science claims in relation to many robust lines of evidence. Climate skeptics may not make broad claims that climate change is not a threat to humans and ecological resources on which life depends unless the evidence that they rely upon to make such claims fully supports these broad claims. Climate change skeptics have duties to not mislead the public about issues in contention in climate change science by cherry-picking the evidence or focusing on what is unknown, and ignoring what is well settled in science. That is, climate change skeptics must acknowledge aspects of climate change science that are not in serious contention if they choose to challenge issues that are in contention.



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Intimidation Tactics • •

Cyber bullying and other non-substantive ad hominem attacks on climate change scientists and journalists are extraordinarily ethically loathsome. Because ethical responsibility to refrain from cyber bullying and nonsubstantive ad hominem attacks on climate change scientists is unequivocal, those who finance or encourage such tactics motivated by their own selfish economic interests, or to protect ideological positions, are guilty of deeply ethically odious behavior.

Chapter 5

Atmospheric Targets

Introduction This chapter reviews ethical issues associated with the need to stabilize atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations at levels that prevent unacceptable harms from human-induced climate change. As we saw in Chapter 2, in 1992, under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (UN 1992a: Art. 2), governments agreed to “stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” The UNFCCC goes on to say “that such a level should be achieved within a time frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.” However, neither in the original UNFCCC nor in subsequent climate change negotiations have nations agreed to an atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration target that gives scientific precision to the commitment about preventing dangerous climate change. More important, there has been no commitment binding nations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to levels that will, in combination with other national emissions commitments, prevent dangerous climate change. As we shall see, the international community has made some progress in setting a warming limit, but, as of yet there is no agreement on an atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration stabilization level, a target necessary to operationalize a global warming limit. Chapter 6 will examine the question of fair allocation of national emissions targets, however, this chapter examines the ethical questions that arise in regard to setting a safe greenhouse gas atmospheric stabilization target. Perhaps no other climate change issue has such important environmental and human health implications as the atmospheric greenhouse gas stabilization level question. This is so because different levels of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations will generate different levels and kinds of damage to human health and the environment, with some of the poorest people around the world being most at risk to suffer the greatest harm (Agarwal and Nairin 1991; Munasinghe 2002).



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Any increases in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will result in additional warming and consequent harm to some people, plants, animals, and ecosystems. The greater the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, the greater the probability that climate change will cause serious and catastrophic climate change damages to humans and the environment.

The Upper Temperature Limit and Potential Tipping Points: Is there a Safe Atmospheric Greenhouse Gas Concentration Level? Since greenhouse gas atmospheric concentration levels will determine the amount of warming that the Earth will experience, it is important to understand the scientific understanding of the relationship between atmospheric concentrations and resulting warming. The amount of warming that will be experienced from different greenhouse gas atmospheric concentrations is usually referred to as the issue of “climate sensitivity.” Climate sensitivity is somewhat uncertain because there are uncertainties about the magnitude of the positive and negative feedbacks discussed earlier in Chapter 4. Climate sensitivity is usually defined to mean the amount of warming that the Earth will experience if atmospheric concentrations of CO2 reach 560 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 equivalent, where CO2 equivalent is the metric which translates other greenhouse gases into an equivalent level of CO2 In its Fourth Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that climate sensitivity is likely to be in the range 2–4.5°C with a best estimate of about 3°C, and is very unlikely to be less than 1.5°C (IPCC 2007d). The IPCC also noted that climate sensitivity values substantially higher than 4.5°C cannot be excluded. And so the temperature change that the consensus view believes is likely if all of the greenhouse gases rise to 560ppm carbon equivalent is somewhere between 2°C and 4.5°C with even higher temperatures possible. The current concentration of CO2 is 393ppm (CO2 Now 2012). It is believed by many scientists that additional warming from human-induced climate change should be kept below 2°C to avoid rapid non-linear impacts from climate change; however, catastrophic harm could be triggered by additional warming of less or more than 2°C because there is uncertainty about how the Earth will respond to different increases in temperatures (Athanasiou and Baer 2002). The 2°C upper temperature limit is quite controversial scientifically because, as we shall see, some scientists believe that lower amounts of additional warming could set into motion rapid climate changes that greatly harm people around the world, with increases of as little as 1°C negatively affecting some people and regions. The IPCC has identified major impacts to the world’s ecological systems that it believes would be experienced if global temperatures are allowed to increase more than 2°C.

140  Priority Ethical Issues A report, “Assessment of Knowledge on Impacts of Climate Change,” prepared by the Potsdam Institute to examine the meaning of “dangerous” climate change under the UNFCCC supported the 2°C danger limit after a rigorous analysis of climate change impacts at various temperatures, concludes: “Above 2°C the risks increase very substantially involving potentially large extinctions or even ecosystem collapses, major increases in hunger and water shortage risks as well as socio-economic damages, particularly in developing countries” (Hare 2003: 89). Yet even this report identified very serious global and regional impacts below 2°C. It concluded that temperature increases below 1°C threaten highly vulnerable ecosystems and between 1°C and 2°C increase the risks of damage for all ecosystems and particularly for some regional ecosystems (Hare 2003: 89). In fact there is substantial scientific evidence that even a 1.5°C temperature limit would not be sufficient to protect those most vulnerable to climate change. For instance, a recent paper by Jim Hansen and seven other authors concluded that additional warming should be limited to 1°C warming to prevent serious harms (Hansen et al. 2008). To do this, existing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 must not only not be allowed to rise the small amount to 450ppm CO2 from current levels of 394ppm CO2, but must be reduced below existing levels to 350ppm CO2. (Hansen et al. 2008). According to this paper, the world has likely already shot past the level of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations that will lead to dangerous climate change for many. According to Hansen and his collaborators, the world has already used up all of the assimilative capacity of the atmosphere and biosphere that has been available to buffer against dangerous climate change. As a result, their paper asserts that to prevent dangerous climate change the world must not only reduce its emissions, but reduce existing greenhouse gas CO2 atmospheric concentrations from the current 394ppm to 350ppm CO2 if we are to avoid dangerous climate change. Although, as discussed in Chapter 2, the international community has recently agreed to try to limit future warming to 2°C, this could prove to be a limit that is too high to protect millions around the world. As one observer recently noted: We feel compelled to note that even a “moderate” warming of 2°C stands a strong chance of provoking drought and storm responses that could challenge civilized society, leading potentially to the conflict and suffering that go with failed states and mass migrations. Global warming of 2°C would leave the Earth warmer than it has been in millions of years, a disruption of climate conditions that have been stable for longer than the history of human agriculture. Given the drought that already afflicts Australia, the crumbling of the sea ice in the Arctic, and the increasing storm damage after only 0.8°C of warming so far, calling 2°C a danger limit seems to us pretty cavalier. (Real Climate 2009) In thinking about an upper temperature limit, many scientists are concerned with avoiding runaway climate change. That is, they fear that global temperatures



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will exceed a tipping point that will trigger a release of stored carbon from the biosphere, an event which would cause further rapid climate change. Runaway climate change would mean that governments would lose the ability to control future climate change, which they would otherwise have done through reducing greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion and deforestation. That is, runaway climate change means that human action would be unable to stop significant temperature increase without massive geo-engineering (Washington and Cook 2011: 30–1). This is because, among other things, there are vast amounts of methane stored in permafrost, methane hydrates on the ocean floor, and carbon in the forests that could be released as the world warms. If the world warms too much, increased temperatures could cause huge amounts of carbon to be released that would overwhelm the quantities of carbon being released through fossil fuel combustion and deforestation. This is known to be a possibility, because such releases of stored carbon have happened in Earth’s history and caused rapid nonlinear Earth temperature changes. In setting a target for atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration stabilization, major scientific uncertainties need to be faced including, but not limited to, uncertainties about: • • • • • • • •

the amount of warming caused by different levels of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, as we have seen, the issue usually referred to as “climate sensitivity” the actual amount of greenhouse gases in the future that will be emitted given unknowns about future technology, population, and economic activity the magnitude, type, and geographic spread of adverse impacts that will be generated by different amounts of warming the timing of temperature change and other climate change impacts, including the possibility of lower amounts of warming triggering rapid larger amounts of warming in response to positive feedbacks exceeding threshold levels that will cause climate surprises and irreversible and potentially catastrophic impacts once exceeded the ability of people to take anticipatory protective action the resiliency of ecosystems the vulnerability of people to certain climate change impacts. (IPCC 2001b)

All these uncertainties need to be considered in setting an acceptable greenhouse gas stabilization target; therefore, any decision about what is a safe atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration level will face ethical questions about how conservative the assumptions should be. As we saw in Chapter 4, decision making in the face of uncertainty raises ethical questions, including who should have the burden of proof, what quantity of proof should satisfy the burden of proof, and what rights do those who are vulnerable to climate change have to participate in any decision, made in the face of uncertainty, that will put them at risk.

142  Priority Ethical Issues One of the most challenging questions that needs to be faced in determining a safe atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration level is triggered by the fact that temperatures may not respond smoothly in proportion to increases in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, but could increase rapidly and unexpectedly. In fact, an examination of the historical climate record makes it clear that for the last 10,000 years the Earth has experienced an abnormally stable climate compared to previous highly unstable and sometimes chaotic temperature changes that it frequently experienced in the past. Regarding the inevitability of climate surprises the National Academy of Sciences has said: The climate record for the past 100,000 years clearly indicates that the climate system has undergone periodic—and often extreme—shifts, sometimes in as little as a decade or less. The causes of abrupt climate changes have not been clearly established, but the triggering of events is likely to be the result of multiple natural processes. Abrupt climate changes of the magnitude seen in the past would have far-reaching implications for human society and ecosystems, including major impacts on energy consumption and water supply demands. (National Academy 2002: Executive summary) Looking at the temperature record in Greenland over the last 15,000 years demonstrates that the last 10,000 years has been unusually stable compared to the 6,000 years before that (see Figure 5.1). The fact that rapid non-linear climate change is not unusual can be seen when the temperature record is displayed for the last 100,000 years as it is in Figure 5.2. Given the potential instability of the climate system displayed in the historical record and the lack of scientific uncertainty about when tipping points will be passed that trigger this instability, it is almost impossible to say what levels of increased warming are “dangerous.” Almost any warming above current levels could be very dangerous for at least some people, as great climate change harms are already being experienced in some parts of the world. But the probability that warming will be catastrophic heightens as future temperature increases rise above current temperatures, and certainly above 1.5°C according to the IPCC. And so, the upper temperature limit that the international community should work cooperatively to protect the Earth is perhaps the most important climate change issue facing the international community. To operationalize an upper temperature limit, the international community must set a limit for atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration stabilization. Since there is scientific uncertainty about how much warming will be experienced by different atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration levels, there is significant scientific controversy about what the atmospheric target should be for the international community in regard to an atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration stabilization level. This is particularly the case because any elevated greenhouse gas atmospheric concentrations may be very dangerous, at least for some people.

Temperature History, Central Greenland (similar to other North Atlantic records) Medieval Warm Period Vikings settle Greenland

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Figure 5.1 Temperature Histories, Central Greenland Source: National Academy of Sciences (2002)

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Figure 5.2 Temperatures Thousands of Years Before Present Source: Cuffey and Clow (1997)

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144  Priority Ethical Issues International Negotiations on Limiting Warming At the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties negotiations in Copenhagen in 2009 and Cancún in 2010, the international community agreed to try to limit warming to an additional 2°C and review whether the 2°C warming limit is sufficient in several years (Brown 2010a; Brown 2010c). Yet these negotiations were unsuccessful in translating the 2°C warming target into a greenhouse gas atmospheric stabilization goal. Without a goal for atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration stabilization, it is impossible to operationalize a warming goal such as the 2°C warming limit target. Given current world demand for fossil fuels, the size of global automobile and transportation fleets, and the unavailability of affordable nonpolluting technologies, monies already invested in existing technologies, and lead time necessary to replace existing technologies, it is likely to be practically impossible to stabilize atmospheric greenhouse gas levels below 450ppm of CO2 equivalent according to some observers (Stevens 1997). It will also prove to be very challenging to stabilize CO2 equivalent below 560ppm, a level that virtually guarantees a 2°C warming limit target will be exceeded. As we saw in Chapter 2, at the 2009 15th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC in Copenhagen (COP–15) some vulnerable developing countries strongly argued in support of a greenhouse gas atmospheric stabilization target that would limit warming to 1.5°C warming. At the conclusion of the COP–15, the parties agreed that deep cuts in global emissions are required according to science and as documented by the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, and that the international community should limit the increase in global temperature to below 2°C, not the 1.5°C limit desired by many vulnerable countries (Brown 2010a). No atmospheric greenhouse gas stabilization target was agreed to, although an atmospheric stabilization target is necessary to operationalize any warming limit. The agreement reached in Copenhagen (2009) and Cancún (2010) failed to require sufficient reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to assure that the international community is on a greenhouse gas emissions reduction pathway that will limit warming to 2°C, let alone the 1.5°C or 1°C warming limit which may be necessary to prevent dangerous climate change harms (see Chapter 2). And so, the emissions reductions commitments, which have been identified under the most recent UNFCCC agreements, almost guarantee that millions of poor people, plants, animals, and ecosystems will be harmed by climate change if the consensus science position turns out to be correct. As we saw in Chapter 2, the United Nations Environment Program issued a report before the December 2010 COP–16 at Cancún analyzing whether the emissions reductions commitments, submitted pursuant to the Copenhagen Accord, would achieve the 2°C (UNEP 2010). This report concluded that, if the highest ambitions of all countries associated with the Copenhagen Accord are implemented and supported, annual emissions of greenhouse gases could be cut, on average, by around 7Gt of CO2 equivalent by 2020 (UNEP 2010).



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Without this action, it is likely that a business-as-usual scenario would see emissions rise to an average of around 56Gt of CO2 equivalents by around 2020. Cuts in annual emissions to around 49Gt of CO2 (the amount that would be achieved by the voluntary emissions reductions agreed to in Copenhagen) would still, however, leave a gap of around 5Gt compared with where we need to be—a gap equal to the total emissions of the world’s cars, buses, and trucks in 2005 (UNEP 2010). That is because the experts estimate that emissions need to be around 44Gt of CO2 equivalent by 2020 to have a reasonable chance of keeping temperatures to 2°C or less (UNEP 2010). However, if only the lowest ambition pledges made by governments at Copenhagen are implemented, emissions could be around 53Gt of CO2 equivalent in 2020—not that different from businessas-usual (UNEP 2010). And so, although the Copenhagen COP agreed to a 2°C warming limit in the abstract, when it came to pledging individual national emissions targets, nations refused to commit to emissions reductions that would be necessary to limit warming to 2°C. In countries like the United States, intense economic and scientific arguments of the type discussed in Chapters 3 and 4 were being made in opposition to US commitments to emission reductions needed to achieve a global warming limit. Yet the ethical problems with these arguments were not discussed in the public debate about the US position. All of this set the stage for the Cancún negotiations at COP–16 in December of 2010, a meeting at which the negotiating agenda was less ambitious than that of Copenhagen because most observers believed it would not be possible in Cancún to obtain binding commitments on greenhouse gas reductions, dedicated funding for developing countries for capacity building and adaptation, and funding for forest protection identified in the Bali agreement in 2007 at COP–14. For these reasons, expectations for Cancún were very modest, particularly compared to hopes for Copenhagen the year before. COP–16 concluded on 11 December 2010 with a few modest additional agreements on steps needed to structure a global approach to solving climate change. The Cancún agreements neither made changes to the magnitude of the voluntary commitments for emissions reductions made pursuant to the Copenhagen Accord, for developed or developing countries; nor did they establish an atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration target. However, developed countries were urged to increase the ambition of their targets “to a level consistent with” the latest recommendations of the IPCC. Under the Cancún agreements, developed countries committed to prepare “low-carbon development strategies or plans,” and developing countries were urged to do so as well, but no process to further define these commitments was agreed to (Brown 2010c). Like the Copenhagen Accord, the Cancún agreements set a goal of limiting average global warming to less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and called for a review to consider strengthening this long-term goal, including to 1.5°C. The first review is scheduled to begin in 2013 and conclude by 2015. Like

146  Priority Ethical Issues Copenhagen, the Cancún agreements set no goal for greenhouse gas atmospheric concentration stabilization (Brown 2010c). At the close of the Cancún negotiations, many scientists expressed strong concern that the world is running out of time to prevent dangerous climate change (Brown 2010c). In the United States during this time, the Obama administration could not get support from the US Congress to adopt any national emissions limitations legislation, not to mention emissions reductions targets, which would represent the US fair share of total global emissions to facilitate stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations at safe levels.

What is at Stake As we have seen in earlier chapters, those who will be affected by climate change include not only people currently living but future generations and non-humans. The interests of future generations are particularly at risk from unchecked climate change’s likely destruction of plants and animals, and increases in sea levels, floods, droughts, disease, and intensity of storms. Even so, many millions of the current generation are also at risk, particularly from rising seas, droughts, and floods. Human-induced climate change has already caused death and damages. According to the World Health Organization, current climatic changes are estimated to cause over 150,000 deaths annually from the 0.6°C warming that Earth had experienced (WHO 2005). Moreover, as we have seen, any additional warming above present levels will cause additional and catastrophic damages to some people and some places. Stabilization of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to a safe level will require reducing global emissions by 60–80 percent from current levels, and by much larger amounts from business-as-usual projections of global emissions (IPCC 2001b). To make the necessary global reductions, decisions must be taken on how much each nation will be responsible for achieving these reductions (see discussion in Chapter 6 on fair allocations). Changing another nation’s climate can seriously affect its interests because the quality of any nation’s climate determines, among other things: (a) its potential for growing food, (b) the type of indigenous plants and animals, (c) the need to use energy to protect from extremes of heat and cold, (d) human health threats from natural pathogens, (e) citizen vulnerability to damage from extreme weather events, (f) the number of hours that citizens can work or recreate in the outdoors in comfort, (g) the amount of fresh water available for human uses, (h) the rate of flow in rivers and streams, (i) weather limitations on travel, (j) the damage caused by floods, and (k) the ability to attract tourists (Landes 1998). As we have seen, many of the world’s poorest people are highly vulnerable to climate change because: (a) the ecological systems of many of the poorest nations are most at risk from climate change, (b) many of the world’s poorest people are the most vulnerable to storms, flooding, and sea level rise, (c) the health of the poorest people is at greatest risk from global warming, particularly from



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vector-borne disease, (d) the food supplies of the poorest people are often at great risk from increases in droughts and heat, and (e) the poorest nations and people have the weakest capacity to adapt to climate change (IPCC 2001b). Ecosystems around the world are at great risk from climate change including ecosystems that provide life support services to humans, plants, and animals. Among those vulnerable to climate change are marine ecosystems, including coral reefs, and terrestrial ecosystems, such as forests and grasslands. Since climate change could cause rapid changes in these ecosystems, climate change further threatens humans, plants, and animals by causing massive changes in these ecosystems on which life depends. Moreover, some ecosystems are already stressed by other human activities that could be put at even greater risk by climate change. For instance, global fisheries around the world are already vulnerable to overexploitation, some tropical forests are in rapid decline from overexploitation, and ecosystems around the world are vulnerable to increases in nitrogen from human activities. For this reason, climate change threatens many ecosystems around the world, some of which are already under great stress. Even though high greenhouse gas-emitting nations can adversely affect poor people in these ways, most nations who have developed or are considering developing national climate change strategies have not consulted with other nations or their citizens, who will be most harmed by climate change, when developing domestic national greenhouse gas strategies. In some countries, including the United States, not only has there been no consultation with vulnerable countries when climate legislation has been under consideration, there has been no publicly visible discussion of the nation’s ethical responsibilities to other parts of the world when national policies were under consideration. As we saw in Chapter 2, when advocates of climate change policies in the United States and several other countries proposed legislation or policies that would help reduce national greenhouse gas emissions, which were contributing to the rise in global greenhouse gas atmospheric concentrations, opponents resisted most frequently on grounds of scientific uncertainty or excessive cost to national economies. Ethical problems with these arguments have been examined in Chapters 3 and 4. This chapter now reviews additional ethical issues that must be confronted in taking a position on safe atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. The question of what is an acceptable target for atmospheric greenhouse gas stabilization must be understood as a civilization-challenging ethical problem of the highest importance because atmospheric greenhouse concentration levels will determine who dies, whose ecological systems on which life depends will survive, and even which nations endure. It is also an ethical question because the harms to the victims from atmospheric concentrations will likely be catastrophic unless action is taken to stabilize atmospheric concentrations at safe levels. Yet the ethics of the atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration level has been infrequently discussed as an ethical issue at all.

148  Priority Ethical Issues

Ethical Analysis of Greenhouse Atmospheric Stabilization Issues The ethical issues raised by cost and scientific uncertainty arguments against action on climate change (discussed in the last two chapters) are also relevant to ethical issues entailed by the need to stabilize greenhouse gas atmospheric concentrations at safe levels. And so, if cost arguments are made against any nation agreeing to reduce their emissions to levels which represent their fair share of total global emissions—and will achieve safe greenhouse gas atmospheric concentration levels—the ethical problems discussed in Chapter 3 remain, concerning: (a) the failure to acknowledge duties to all persons, (b) the need to acknowledge obligations entailed by distributive justice, (c) ethical limitations of “preference utilitarianism” and “willingness-to-pay” as the measure of value, (d) the need to protect human rights, (e) the need to satisfy procedural justice, (f) ethical problems about how costs and benefits are quantified including the use of discounting future benefits. In addition, if scientific uncertainty arguments are made in opposition to any nation making commitments to reduce their emissions to levels that, in combination with the reduced emissions of other nations, will achieve safe greenhouse gas atmospheric concentration levels, the ethical problems discussed in Chapter 4 remain, including ethical problems with the need for opponents of emissions reductions to: (a) assume the burden of proof about what atmospheric concentration levels are safe with adequate levels of proof, (b) seek consensus from victims of climate change to be put at risk through non-action while uncertainties are resolved, (c) refrain from tactics that constitute irresponsible skepticism, and (f) refrain from intimidation tactics. This chapter will now focus on additional ethical issues that arise when considering positions on adequate greenhouse gas atmospheric concentrations levels. For the most part, these issues have not been considered in the 35-year debate about climate change policies. Ethics and Safe Atmospheric Greenhouse Gas Concentration Levels Since some people in some parts of the world are already at the limit of their ability to sustain life because of existing threats from droughts, desertification, or rising sea levels, any additional warming will surely harm more people even if it does not lead to a global catastrophe. The issue of a greenhouse gas atmospheric stabilization target raises profound ethical questions because greenhouse gas atmospheric concentration levels will determine what plants, animals, and people survive, and what damages will be caused to humans and the environment. As we have seen, people’s rights to be protected against threats from others to life, health, and security, as well as the UNFCCC commitment made by



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nations to reduce emissions to levels that would “prevent dangerous anthropocentric interference with the climate system,” are basic ethical principles that must be considered when taking a position on adequate greenhouse gas atmospheric concentration levels. Furthermore, all nations agreed to be bound by the “no harm principle” in the UNFCCC. Under the UNFCCC nations specifically agreed that: States have, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law, the sovereign right to exploit their own resources pursuant to their own environmental and developmental policies, and the responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction (UN 1992a: Preamble; emphasis added) From this it can be concluded that all nations have a duty to cooperate with other nations to prevent greenhouse gas atmospheric concentration levels from rising above existing concentrations, notwithstanding that most nations have agreed upon a 2°C warming limit target. This is so because nations have agreed that they have the responsibility to “prevent harm” outside their jurisdiction and existing elevated levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases are already causing harm around the world; coupled with the fact that current levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases will continue to warm the planet for as much as 100 years due to thermal lags in the oceans. In fact, following the reasoning of James Hansen discussed above, a strong ethical case can be made that nations have an ethical duty to cooperate with other nations to reduce atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases to 350ppm CO2 (Hansen et al. 2012). This is because all people have a right to be protected from threats to their life, safety, and security caused by others, and existing levels of emissions threaten these rights. Therefore, the UNFCCC commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to levels that will avoid dangerous anthropocentric interference with the climate system should be interpreted to require stabilization levels at the lowest possible levels. The fact that the international community has, by itself, agreed to make a commitment to a warming limit of 2°C, which could justify some increases in atmospheric greenhouse concentrations, does not absolve nations of the responsibility to support an international atmospheric greenhouse gas stabilization concentration at the lowest possible levels. So long as atmospheric greenhouse gas levels threaten basic human rights, there is no known ethical system that would justify allowing atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases to rise, thereby additionally jeopardizing human rights (Brown et al. 2006: Issue 6). Various ethical theories converge around the conclusion that atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases should be stabilized at the lowest possible levels above

150  Priority Ethical Issues existing atmospheric concentrations and, if possible, atmospheric greenhouse concentrations should be lowered to lowest possible post-industrial levels (Brown et al. 2006: Issue 6). In fact, as we noted and following Hansen, a strong ethical case can be made that target atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases should be 350ppm, as this level is required to give any confidence of avoiding dangerous climate change (Hansen et al. 2008). There are open questions whether such a goal is now possible to achieve, although technical feasibility should not be seen as changing moral responsibility. Moreover, moral responsibility remains a benchmark for adaptation and compensation obligations, a matter that will be discussed in Chapter 7. Greenhouse Gas Atmospheric Stabilization Level and Distributive Justice The greenhouse gas atmospheric target raises profound questions of distributive justice because climate change impacts will not be distributed equally, nations and peoples have different responsibilities for current levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and nations and peoples are differentially vulnerable to climate change impacts. For this reason, nations who are willing to tolerate some climate change damages to their nation cannot ignore damages that will be imposed upon others without their consent. In setting a target for greenhouse gas atmospheric concentrations, those who emit greenhouse gases, therefore, have a duty to protect the most vulnerable and may not set a national climate change strategy without considering how their domestic climate change strategy will contribute to achieving an acceptable global greenhouse gas atmospheric stabilization target. In other words, as we have noted, every national greenhouse gas strategy must be understood to be implicitly a position on the global greenhouse gas atmospheric stabilization target. As we shall see in the next chapter, this undeniable fact has significance for the nation’s acceptance of a just allocation of global responsibilities to reduce the threat of climate change. When nations set targets for greenhouse gas emissions they are ethically obligated to consider the emissions targets’ effect on global greenhouse gas atmospheric concentration targets. In determining their obligations in regard to the atmospheric greenhouse gas target, they must acknowledge ethical responsibilities to non-represented future generations and non-humans, in addition to their obligations, duties and responsibilities to present vulnerable people around the world. Yet, as we have seen in previous chapters, that discussions about ethical obligations in regard to atmospheric concentration targets has been virtually absent in the public debate on climate change polices. There has been hardly a whimper in the media about the obligations of the United States—and many other countries—in regard to national obligations for doing their part to achieve safe atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration targets, when national legislation or policies have been under consideration. If nations do not act so that national greenhouse gas strategies contribute in combination with other nations



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to achieve safe atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases they are creating additional risk for the most vulnerable around the world who have not consented to be harmed. In so doing, nations are not complying with what distributive justice requires of them. Greenhouse Gas Atmospheric Stabilization Level and Procedural Justice Determining the appropriate greenhouse gas atmospheric target raises important questions of procedural justice because, as we have seen throughout this book, no country or person has the right to put other nations or persons at grave risk without their consent. Procedural justice demands the participation of victims in decision making about what risks cannot be accepted, what risks are acceptable, and under what conditions risks will be accepted. Given that those who are most vulnerable to climate change have contributed little to elevated levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, those vulnerable people who will be harmed by climate change policies, or by their absence, have rights to participate in the development of policies that establish atmospheric targets for greenhouse gases. For this reason, nations or individuals that desire to establish a climate change policy that will lead to any raise in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations have a duty to obtain the fully informed consent of those nations most vulnerable to climate change. And so, the absence of consultation with victims of climate change, when any nation refuses to prevent its greenhouse gas emissions from contributing to escalating atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, is a violation of procedural justice. Greenhouse Gas Atmospheric Stabilization Level and Scientific Uncertainty The issues of scientific uncertainty in setting a greenhouse gas atmospheric target raise important ethical concerns. These include both questions about who should bear the burden of proof with regard to uncertainties, and what quantity of proof should satisfy the burden of proof (see discussion on scientific uncertainty, Chapter 4). As we have seen, the Copenhagen Accord and the Cancún agreements set a target that nations should work together to limit human-caused additional heating to 2°C. There are, however, several ethical problems with this target given scientific uncertainty about this warming limit. They include the following: 1

Any additional warming from current levels is ethically problematic because current temperatures are already dangerous for some vulnerable people around the world, and an additional 1°C temperature rise is already locked in by prior emissions. Because any additional warming from current levels could have serious consequences to those most vulnerable to climate change, those who are most vulnerable should have— as a matter of procedural justice—rights to

152  Priority Ethical Issues

2

consent to being put at risk by the additional 2°C goal adopted in the Accord, particularly in light of the scientific uncertainty about whether an additional 2°C will protect them. Some of the most vulnerable nations in Copenhagen wanted the Copenhagen outcome to adopt a 1.5°C rather than 2°C goal. Although the Copenhagen and Cancún agreements specify that a goal of 1.5°C can be reconsidered in five years, many scientists would argue that, since global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions must take place in the next few years, if there is any chance of limiting warming to 1.5°C, by postponing its adoption virtually guarantees that a 1.5°C warming limit is unachievable. The Copenhagen and Cancún agreements appeared to reject an idea that was under consideration in the negotiating text that the world needed to set. Not just a temperature limit goal, but an atmospheric greenhouse concentration level was needed to be set that would give any temperature goal practical significance. It is necessary to identify an atmospheric greenhouse concentration goal to give the warming target practical meaning, because there is scientific uncertainty about how much warming will be produced by different levels of atmospheric greenhouse concentrations; a scientific issue that, as we have seen, is usually referred to as the “climate sensitivity” problem. Therefore, if the international community is serious about protecting vulnerable people it must take a position on climate sensitivity by adopting an atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration goal. The negotiating text under consideration before the Copenhagen Accord contained unresolved alternative atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration goals such as 350 and 450ppm of CO2. Only by adopting an atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration target, can anyone analyze the sufficiency of national commitments. And so the 2°C warming limit adopted in Cancún is virtually worthless in determining whether national commitments to emissions reductions are adequate to protect human health and the environment from climate change. There is substantial scientific evidence that even the 1.5°C temperature limit would not be sufficient to protect those most vulnerable to climate change. For instance, as we have seen Jim Hansen et al.’s recent paper concluded that additional warming should be limited to 1°C and to do this existing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 must not only not be allowed to rise the small amount to 450ppm of carbon equivalent, but must be reduced from existing levels of 393ppm to 350ppm CO2 (Hansen et al. 2008). According to their paper, the world has most likely already shot past the level of atmospheric concentrations that will lead to a dangerous climate change for many. Under this view, the world has already used up all of the assimilative capacity of the atmosphere and biosphere that has been available to buffer against dangerous climate change. A strong ethical argument can, therefore, be made that all nations have a duty to try to prevent additional warming of almost any amount, while the Copenhagen Accord legitimizes an additional 2°C warming. Given that the Copenhagen and Cancún agreements can also be understood to legitimize any voluntary target for national greenhouse gas emissions, even if it is



Atmospheric Targets  153 insufficient to achieve the 2°C temperature limit goal adopted by the Accord, these agreements are ethically problematic. A case can be made that current atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations levels are already harming or putting people and ecosystems at risk; it is, therefore, difficult to make an ethically acceptable case that atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration targets at higher than current levels are justified, unless consent is given by those who are already being harmed by warming. Yet the Copenhagen Accord and the Cancún agreements justify an additional 2°C warming and, in so doing, ignore responsibilities to those most vulnerable to climate change.

Given this, a strong ethical argument can be made that nations failing to adopt policies to prevent greenhouse gas atmospheric concentrations from rising above existing levels should have the burden of proof to demonstrate that the greenhouse gas atmospheric concentration target levels that they support achieves warming limits, which prevent harm to those most vulnerable to climate change. As discussed in Chapter 4, in the face of uncertainty about climate change impacts, those who argue in support of permitting increased levels of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations above existing levels, not only should accept the burden of proof to establish that their position is protective of human health and ecological systems, moreover, they have an ethical obligation to meet this burden of proof with high levels of proof. Given that there is very little evidence that atmospheric greenhouse concentrations above current levels will be protective of human health and ecological systems on which life depends, it is very unlikely that those in support can satisfy their ethical duty to shoulder their burden of proof with adequate quantities of proof. Precisely what quantity of proof is needed to satisfy the ethical duty to establish that some elevated levels of greenhouse gas concentrations are adequately protective is a matter about which different ethical theories might disagree; particularly in light of the scientific fact that it will never be possible to prove, without some doubt, what levels of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations will be adequately protective of human health and the natural resources on which life depends, owing to the complexity of the climate system. Yet it is quite clear that those who support allowing atmospheric greenhouse gases to continue to rise above existing levels have a duty to demonstrate that the warming limit and associated target for atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration are protective of human health and ecological systems on which life depends.

Conclusion: Navigating the Perfect Moral Storm in regard to Greenhouse Gas Atmospheric Stabilization Target There are several ethical issues related to stabilizing greenhouse gas in the atmosphere about which different ethical theories might reach different ethical conclusions. Probably the most significant of these are ethical issues that arise because

154  Priority Ethical Issues of some scientific uncertainty about what levels of atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are adequately protective of human health and ecological systems on which life depends. Although there are strong ethical duties to prevent greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere from rising above existing levels, these duties become even stronger as greenhouse gas atmospheric concentrations rise. At lower levels of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations the ethical responsibility to prevent greenhouse gases from rising might be lessened if those responsible for rising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are willing to fully compensate those who are harmed by climate change, and the victims of climate change fully consent to higher atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. Yet, because there is significant scientific uncertainty about such things as climate sensitivity, i.e., the amount of warming that will be caused by different atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, it is not possible to determine a priori what compensation will be required because it is not possible to determine what climate change damages will be caused by different atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. For this and other reasons, there are numerous ethical problems with any nation emitting greenhouse gases above its fair share of safe global emissions if they support policies that allow atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations to rise in the future. Despite some ethical uncertainty on some issues relating to national obligations on a greenhouse gas atmospheric concentration levels target, the following strong ethical conclusions can be made in regard to what is an ethically acceptable level of atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. Duty to Support Policies that Prevent Atmospheric Greenhouse Gas Concentrations from Rising •

•

•

Every nation must base domestic climate change policy on the goal of assuring that that their greenhouse gas emissions do not exceed their fair share of safe global atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. In determining national policy about what is a safe global atmospheric greenhouse gas stabilization level, nations have the burden of proof to demonstrate, with high levels of scientific confidence, that their proposed warming limit and associated targets for atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration stabilization levels are fully protective of human health and ecological resources on which life depends. Because elevated atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will create human rights violations, no nation may adopt a policy in regard to an acceptable greenhouse gas atmospheric concentration target on the basis of cost to the nation alone, or on other matters of national self-interest alone, including scientific uncertainty about dangerous climate change. Each national strategy and policy approach to reducing the threat of climate change must ethically consider not only national interests but also duties,



Atmospheric Targets  155 obligations, and responsibilities to others including future generations. Therefore, no national climate change strategy or policy that is not understood as a position on its ethical obligations to keep atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gas at lowest possible levels is ethically unacceptable.

Determining What Levels of Atmospheric Concentrations of Greenhouse Gases are “Dangerous” is an Ethical Question •

The issue of what level of atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases is “dangerous” is an ethical question in which those who desire to claim that certain elevated concentrations of greenhouse gases are not dangerous have the burden of proof to establish that there will be no harm from proposed elevated atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration levels with a relatively high degree of scientific confidence.

Greenhouse Gas Atmospheric Concentration Stabilization Levels and Procedural Justice • •

•

Governments have a duty to prevent atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases from rising above existing levels unless those vulnerable to climate change fully consent to allowing atmospheric concentrations to rise. Although interim warming limit targets have been agreed to in recent climate change negotiations of 2°C, this does not represent the limit of any high-emitting nation’s responsibility to avoid harm to others unless all who may be harmed by increased temperatures have fully consented to this atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration target, and the harms that they may experience from this warming. Each national strategy and policy approach to reducing the threat of climate change must ethically consider not only national interests but also duties, obligations, and responsibilities to others including future generations. Therefore, no national climate change strategy or policy, which is not understood as a position on its ethical obligations to keep atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gas at lowest possible levels, is ethically acceptable unless those who are vulnerable to climate change fully consent to be put at risk.

Chapter 6

Allocating National Emissions Targets

Introduction This chapter examines ethical issues relevant to determining each nation’s fair share of safe maximum global greenhouse gas emissions. As we saw in the last chapter, to prevent potentially catastrophic warming from harshly harming some of the poorest people in the world, future generations, and the natural resources on which their life depends, total global greenhouse gas emissions must be low enough to prevent global atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations from exceeding dangerous levels. We now examine what ethics requires of nations acting in cooperation with other nations to achieve non-dangerous global greenhouse gas atmospheric concentration goals. As we have seen earlier, whatever atmospheric stabilization target is agreed to, global emissions will need to be reduced by vast amounts from existing levels. This could be as much as 80 percent below current emissions levels, although the actual emissions reductions necessary will depend upon a variety of factors, including the atmospheric greenhouse gas stabilization goal, the global pathway achieved for emissions reductions, and when this pathway is initiated. Yet, globally, greenhouse gas emissions are currently rising at dangerous rates, approaching 2 percent per year. From 1990 to 2010 global emissions increased at an average rate of 1.9 percent per year (PLB 2011). In 2010 CO2 emissions jumped to a 5 percent increase after three years during the economic recession of falling to 1.7 percent year (PLB 2011). This chart demonstrates that rather than decreasing atmospheric concentrations over the 35-year period during which the climate change debate has been taking place, global emissions have been increasing, with the result that atmospheric concentrations have been rising at ever faster rates over this period. This is viewed by mainstream scientists as an ominous development because the world is running out of time to prevent dangerous climate change. For this reason, national emissions reduction targets, which will prevent dangerous climate change, are urgently needed to be committed to and achieved. As discussed in the last chapter, to prevent further harms from human-induced climate change nations will need to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in



Allocating National Emissions Targets  157      Annual Mean Growth Rate of CO2 at Mauna Loa

Figure 6.1 Trends in Atmospheric Concentrations and Anthropogenic Emissions of Carbon Dioxide Source: NOAA (2012b)1

such a way that total emissions from all nations do not cause atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations to rise much beyond current levels. In fact, according to Hansen, greenhouse atmospheric concentrations may need to be reduced to 350ppm CO2 from current atmospheric concentrations above 390ppm CO2 (Hansen et al. 2008). Chapter 5 also made the strong case that, as a matter of ethics, nations have a duty to limit additional warming as much as possible. There is also a growing international political consensus that the world should, at the very minimum, limit additional warming to 2°C if not 1.5°C, or even 1°C, to prevent catastrophic harm to many around the world and the natural resources on which life depends. In Chapters 2, 3, and 4, we saw that when advocates of greenhouse gas emissions reductions programs have proposed legislation, or policies, to achieve significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, opponents of these actions have frequently made two types of arguments. First, as we have seen in Chapter 3, opponents of climate change actions have argued that these actions should be opposed on the grounds that they impose too great a cost, reduce jobs, lower GDP, or otherwise create unacceptable economic impacts.

158  Priority Ethical Issues Second, as we saw in detail in Chapter 4, opponents of greenhouse gas emissions reduction programs have argued that there is too much scientific uncertainty about human causation of climate change to warrant action. Chapters 3 and 4 examined the ethical problems with these arguments. This chapter now examines ethical issues associated with determining each nation’s fair share of acceptable total global greenhouse gas emissions.

History of Allocation of National Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reductions Commitments As we have seen, governments under the UNFCCC have agreed to take steps to prevent “dangerous” climate change on the basis of “equity” and “common but differentiated responsibilities.” Despite these promises, there has been little agreement among nations on what “equity” and “common but differentiated responsibilities” require of them in terms of their fair share of safe global emissions. As early as the late 1980s, some European nations proposed making significant binding reduction commitments but these commitments were opposed by the United States (see Chapter 2). During the negotiations leading to the UNFCCC, the United States—having stood virtually alone in most of the most contentious issues—eventually achieved its major negotiating goals in the final UNFCCC convention text (Nitze 1994: 187–94). Among the US goals in the early negotiations that led to the UNFCCC in 1992 was the absence of enforceable national targets for reducing emissions. Earlier chapters showed that although the 1997 Kyoto Protocol contained targets for most developed nations that had to be attained between 2008 and 2012, the United States and large developing countries including China, India, and Brazil have never agreed to any legally binding emissions reduction targets. As we saw in the last chapter, although nations have made voluntary commitments to reduce emissions under the Copenhagen and Cancún Conferences of the Parties under the UNFCCC, these voluntary commitments are both non-binding and fall far short of reducing emissions to levels necessary to avoid dangerous climate change. The failure of nations to agree on adequate quantitative emissions limitations has been at the heart of the concern among many in the scientific community who believe that the international community is running out of time to keep atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases below safe levels. Adequate national emissions reductions targets would need to satisfy two criteria. First, nations would need to commit to large enough emissions reductions so that the total would put the world on a reduction pathway needed to stabilize atmospheric concentrations at safe levels. Given that the world most likely needs to reduce global greenhouse emissions by as much as 80 percent by 2050, nations need to make larger commitments than they have so far to give any hope that the entire world is on a safe emissions reductions pathway. Second, nations must also make commitments that represent their fair share of safe global emissions. This would require high-emitting nations to make an even larger commitment than the total percentage reduction commitments necessary



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for the entire world to prevent dangerous climate change. That is, it is not enough for a large emitting nation to make a reduction commitment equal to what the world needs in percentage reductions because equity and justice necessitates that nations also consider what fairness and justice require of them. If all nations simply reduce their emissions by the same percentage amount, high-emitting emissions would be allowed to continue to emit at unjust levels. Because many poor nations need to increase their economic activity to alleviate poverty, have extremely small emissions on a per capita basis compared to rich countries, and have done almost nothing to cause current elevated levels of greenhouse gas atmospheric concentrations, it is extremely unjust—from the standpoint of poor developing countries—to require of them the same quantitative emissions  percentage reductions as high-emitting nations. For this reason, high-emitting nations must commit to their fair share of safe global emissions, where fairness requires consideration of issues other than the total quantitative percentage reductions necessary to avoid dangerous climate change. However, there has been little evidence in the 20 years of international climate negotiations that most high-emitting nations are willing not only to make emissions reductions commitments at levels required of the entire world to prevent dangerous climate change, but also to levels that take into account what justice requires of them to assure that all nations are fairly sharing the atmosphere as a carbon sink. This chapter explores the ethical guidance that nations should follow in making their commitments to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in accordance with justice and equity. The issue of fair allocation of targets for greenhouse gas emissions reduction is a civilization-challenging ethical issue because to solve climate change the nations of the world will need to reduce their greenhouse gas emission not on the basis of national interest alone, but to levels that represent their fair share of safe global emissions. If nations show no willingness to reduce their emissions to prevent serious harm on the basis of equity, it is unlikely that a global solution to climate change will emerge. As we have seen, the later the international community agrees on acceptable greenhouse gas atmospheric concentration targets, the more difficult it will be to achieve lower atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. And so in addition to the quantity of emissions reductions commitments, the date on which they are to be achieved is a critical element in determining whether the commitment is ethically acceptable. Before discussing what fairness requires of nations in regard to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, some discussion of the historical differences among nations for causing the existing elevated levels of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations is necessary. Nations have made widely different contributions to global greenhouse gas atmospheric concentrations in terms of total tonnes of emissions, per capita emissions levels, and when greenhouse gases were emitted (Agarwal and Narain 1991). Figure  6.2 shows that some nations much more than others have been responsible for increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.

160  Priority Ethical Issues

Figure 6.2 Cumulative CO2 Emissions: Comparison of Different Time Periods Source: WRI (2010)

Many nations believe any fair allocation of national greenhouse gas targets should consider differences among countries in causing the existing problem. As shown in Figure 6.2, there are significant differences between per capita and total emissions in countries. For instance Brazil has consistently argued in support of an emissions reduction allocation formula partially based upon historical emissions (Miguez 2002; Muylaert and Pinguelli Rosa 2002). Another relevant consideration for determining a nation’s fair level for reductions of greenhouse gas emissions is the needs of those countries who have contributed little to the existing atmospheric greenhouse gases to expand their economy. In the absence of funding for new inexpensive low emission technologies, many poorer nations will need to emit more greenhouse gases than their current level in order to meet basic human needs for food, shelter and security (Shue 1994). Given that many developed nations’ current level of greenhouse gas emissions far exceed those needed to meet basic human needs, and far exceed the per capita emissions of most developing countries, there has been widespread agreement among most nations that developed countries have a special responsibility to reduce the threat of climate change. Therefore, by agreeing to the UNFCCC, the developed countries have already consented that they have a special responsibility to reduce emissions. More specifically, developed nations agreed that



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they should “take the lead in combating climate change and the adverse effects thereof” (UNFCCC 1992: Art. 3.1). As we have also seen, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol created the first binding emissions reductions targets for developed countries that ratified it. The Kyoto Protocol was never intended to achieve the magnitude of emissions reductions that would be necessary to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. It was only intended as a first step in implementing the promise made by the developed countries in the UNFCCC to take the first steps in reducing emissions levels. Furthermore, these commitments were never intended to implement the provision of the UNFCCC that nations would reduce their emission on the basis of “equity” and their “common but different obligations.” The Kyoto Protocol was only intended as a start in developing a global solution to climate change. Most observers believed that the international community would begin to implement the fairness requirements in later commitment periods under the UNFCCC after the Kyoto Protocol expired under its own terms in 2012. There has been a failure of the global community to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to levels that will prevent climate change-caused damages to human health, the environment, plants, animals, and ecosystems (Chapter 5). As seen earlier, there has been an unwillingness of nations to commit to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to levels that give some hope of keeping total warming below 2°C let alone the 1.5°C or 1°C warming limit that may be necessary to prevent catastrophic warming. Because international negotiations have taken a voluntary approach to emissions reductions commitments in recent years, there has been no serious attempt to develop an emissions reduction framework that would implement the UNFCCC mandate on an equitable allocation of national greenhouse gas emissions reductions. Under the Kyoto Protocol, all developed nations, with the exception of the United States, agreed to achieve greenhouse gas reduction targets to reduce emissions levels from the baseline year of 1990, with different countries making different greenhouse gas emissions reductions commitments in regard to that baseline year. Any commitment to reduce emissions must take a position on the baseline year from which it will lower emissions and any decision on a baseline year affects the magnitude of any national commitment. Because the Kyoto Protocol ends by its own terms in 2012, the international community has been negotiating since the Bali COP in 2007 to replace the Kyoto Protocol with a second commitment period under the UNFCCC. The United States and a few other nations have resisted adopting the architecture of the Kyoto Protocol in recent climate change negotiations, while other nations have argued in support of building on what was agreed in Kyoto including retaining the 1990 baseline year. The choice of a baseline year in future negotiations will have equity implications. Under the UNFCCC several nations have made specific proposals on criteria to define what principles constitute “equitable” reductions. The IPCC has grouped them as:

162  Priority Ethical Issues • • •

•

Ad hoc proposals including (a) proposals that divide total global emissions into equal shares between developed and developing nations, and (b) proposals that proportion greenhouse gas allocation to a nation’s GDP. Equal per capita proposals suggested by many developing nations have it that national allocations should be based upon the idea that all human beings should be entitled to an equal share of the atmospheric commons. Status quo proposals forwarded by several developed nations suggest that current emissions should be recognized as entitlements. For example, the United States has only been willing to negotiate emissions reductions from current levels. The justification presented for the position is that those who have first used natural resources have a right to continue to use it at levels that are based upon past use. Mixed proposals have suggested allocation rules combining equal per capita considerations, equal percentage cuts, status quo, and historical responsibility. (Banuri et al. 1996)

In addition to these proposals for equitable allocations, others have identified a number of other principles arguably needed to make equitable allocations of greenhouse gas emissions among nations. These include: • •

•

• •

•

Polluter-pays and proportionality principles. These principles would base allocations upon each nation’s historical contribution to damages caused by climate change. Satisfaction of basic needs. This principle urges that the poorest nations should be first in line to receive allocations needed to meet the basic needs of their citizens, so that it is possible for them to fully participate in the world. Comparable burdens principle. This principle would suggest allocations where each nation shares the effort of reducing emissions to safe levels equally, for example, by allocating an equal percentage of its GDP to greenhouse gas reductions. Ability to pay principle. This principle would make the richer nations more responsible than the poorer nations because of their greater ability to pay to reduce emissions. Rawlsian principle of justice. This principle suggests that allocations should be determined, following the presumption on just allocations contained in the theories of John Rawls, that in no case should the poorest nations be made worse off by any allocation scheme. Furthermore, some apply Rawls’ principles to the allocation of national emissions, requiring such allocation schemes should give maximum rights to use the atmosphere to the poorest, least advantaged people. The “Indian Prime Minister’s proposal”. A proposal that would link developing countries’ per capita emissions to those of developed countries.

 •

Allocating National Emissions Targets  163 Brazilian historic responsibility, that is an approach based primarily on historic responsibility for emissions. (Brown 2002; Rose 1998; Banuri et al. 1996; Sharma 2008; Miguez and Santhiago de Oliviera 2011)

In addition to these principles, over the last decade, several new emissions reductions frameworks have evolved, which have received widespread attention in the international community, particularly among non-government organizations participating in international climate change negotiations. These include allocation formulas called “contraction and convergence” (C&C) and the “Greenhouse Development Rights” (GDR) framework. C&C was first proposed in 1990 by the London-based non-governmental Global Commons Institute (GCI 2010) (see Figure 6.3). Basically, C&C is not a prescription per se, but rather a way of demonstrating how a global prescription could be negotiated and organized in a way that ultimately levels off on the basis of equal per capita emissions (Meyer 2000).

Figure 6.3 Contraction and Convergence Source: GCI (2010)

164  Priority Ethical Issues Implementing C&C requires two steps. As a first step, countries must agree on a long-term global stabilization level for atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations as discussed in the last chapter. Once this is done a global greenhouse gas emissions budget can be calculated that would determine how many tonnes of greenhouse gases can be released into the atmosphere that will allow atmospheric concentrations to be stabilized. As a second step, countries need to negotiate a convergence date. That is, a date at which time the emissions allocated to each country should converge on equal per capita entitlements. During the transition period, a yearly global carbon budget is devised, which contracts gradually over time as the per capita entitlements of developed countries decrease while those of most developing countries increase. C&C would allow nations to achieve their per capita-based targets through trading from countries having excess allotments. And so, under C&C, nations eventually receive binding emissions reductions allocations that are distributed on the basis of equal per capita emissions for all humans. How to calculate greenhouse gas allocations between nations has always raised tensions between the developed and developing countries; the latter arguing that they have a right and need for economic development to help poor people rise above grinding poverty. In fact, international climate negotiation has been plagued by global North versus South conflicts. Poor developing nations have been deeply worried that climate change policies will exacerbate existing injustices between rich and poor nations if the poor countries’ ability to develop economically is thwarted by limits on greenhouse gas emissions. The second allocation formula based upon equitable considerations is the GDR framework; a framework specifically designed to assure that poor people are not unfairly constrained in a world in which the global economy is constrained by limits on carbon (Baer et al. 2008). GDR begins with an ambitious emissions reduction pathway which, geared to the latest alarming evidence, has a relatively high probability of holding global warming below 2°C (Baer et al. 2008). GDR specifies that individuals whose income is below $7,500 are given the right to development. Under GDR these, by definition, poor individuals are not expected to help to pay the costs of the climate transition. Yet, individuals with incomes above the development threshold—by stipulation of GDR, the global consuming class—are thought of as having realized their right to development (Baer et al. 2008). Because of this, under GDR, they must shoulder the responsibility of curbing global carbon and the costs of adaptation from unavoidable climate change and compensation for climate damages (Baer et al. 2008). The precise burden sharing between individuals and states respectively under the GDR framework is determined by the so-called Responsibility Capacity Index (RCI). The capacity component of the RCI is defined as income above the development threshold. The responsibility component of the RCI is defined as cumulative per capita emissions since 1990, excluding emissions that correspond to consumption below the development threshold. Income distribution



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within a country is used to calculate the aggregated responsibility and capacity of a given country. In addition to these frameworks, several other proposals for an allocation framework have been proposed. Some differ in the kind of emissions that are counted. Most of the frameworks have been production-based that count emissions physically produced within the territorial boundary of the nation. Others have advocated for a consumption-based accounting of emissions that would allocate all emissions associated with the supply chain of all services and products consumed within the nation. The difference between the two types of framework is the amount of emissions embedded in the consumer goods that enter the nation because of trade (Bows and Barrett 2010). Proponents of the consumptionbased framework argue that it eliminates the possibility of parties avoiding the responsibility that they should otherwise have, by outsourcing production of the commodities they consume. The consumption-based framework also allows for consumers to take responsibility for all the greenhouse gas emissions that can be attributed to their consumption. A current limitation of a consumption-based framework is that it requires complex life cycle accounting methods that are currently very challenging. It is often difficult to track how materials and products move around the world and to know the energy life cycle content of goods produced in foreign countries. Although some governments and organizations have endorsed either C&C or GDR, these frameworks have not yet been seriously considered by governments as the basis for setting emissions reductions commitments during recent climate change negotiations despite high levels of interest in these two approaches among non-government organizations. In fact, most nations have continued to avoid linking their commitments to greenhouse gas emissions reduction to levels that take equity into account. As seen in Chapter 5, following COP–15 in Copenhagen, nations made insufficient voluntary commitments to reduce emissions to achieve the 2°C global warming limit that was also agreed at Copenhagen to be the goal of the UNFCCC. Table 6.1 shows some of the voluntary commitments to reducing emissions that nations agreed to in Copenhagen and Cancún in 2009 and 2010. As we have seen in the last chapter, these emissions targets, even if met, will fall far short of limiting warming to 2°C let alone 1.5°C or 1°C that may be necessary to prevent catastrophic harms. These developed nations’ commitments are not only insufficient to limit warming to acceptable levels but also obviously fail to satisfy what “equity” would require of developed nations. It is clear that nations have failed to commit to levels required by “equity” because a developed nation commitment based upon equity would be more stringent than the percentage reductions necessary to stabilize atmospheric concentrations at a safe level. Because most scientists believe total global emissions need to be reduced by 25–40% below 1990 levels to have any hope of keeping warming below 2°C, only Norway among the above group approaches safe emission reductions commitments.

166  Priority Ethical Issues Table 6.1  Selected Quantified Economy-wide Emissions Targets for 2020 Country

Voluntary target

Base year

Australia Canada EU Japan Norway Russian Federation United States of America

15–25% 17 % 20–30% 25% 30–40% 15–25 %  17% (depending on legislation)

2000 2005 1990 1990  1990 1990 2005

Source: UNFCCC (2012) NB The numbers contain numerous additional conditions that need to be considered to understand each commitment (see UN 2012)

The US commitment of 17% below 2005 emissions (which is only a 4% reduction below 1990 emissions) was the lowest among the developed country commitments and was contingent on getting US congressional legislative action. Pooley (2010) describes a multiyear intense lobbying war waged by American corporations against any US climate change legislation that eventually was successful in thwarting a national cap on carbon and is responsible for the weakness of the US emissions reduction commitment. Although President Obama began his first term strongly supporting congressional climate change legislation, in the last half of his first term climate change failed to appear at all on the Obama legislative agenda. Several commentators on the silence of President Obama on climate issues point to polling in which Americans ranked global warming as the least important of 22 choices they were given, just behind campaign finance reform (PRI 2012). Over the last decade opponents of climate change polices, using mostly unacceptable cost and scientific uncertainty arguments, have successfully lowered US political pressure on adopting a national climate change strategy. As noted before, the duties or obligations of the United States to reduce its emissions to safe levels based upon equity have hardly appeared at all in the public debate on climate change.

Ethical Issues Raised by National Greenhouse Gas Target Allocations As we have seen in Chapters 3 and 4, most arguments against the adoption of climate change policies have been made on the basis of unacceptable cost and scientific uncertainty. These are also the most frequent arguments in opposition to any national proposals to make significant commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the US fair share of safe global emissions. The ethical problems—along with cost and scientific uncertainty arguments described



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in Chapters 3 and 4—are, therefore, also relevant to arguments made against proposed national emissions reduction commitments that would be needed to support a target representative of the US fair share of safe global emissions. This chapter will now focus on additional ethical issues entailed by various approaches to fair national emissions allocations. Any nation’s greenhouse gas emissions target must be understood to be impli­ citly a position on the nation’s response to its duties to not exceed its fair share of global emissions that will prevent atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations from rising to dangerous levels. That is, although it is very infrequently discussed in this way, the magnitude of any national commitment to reduce greenhouse emissions will affect the ability of the entire world to stabilize atmospheric concentrations at a safe level, while at the same time it is implicitly a position on that nation’s fair share of total safe global emissions. As we shall see, different ethically acceptable arguments may reach different conclusions about each nation’s fair share of safe global emissions. But not all proposals by nations to define “equity” under UNFCCC are entitled to respect as a matter of ethics and justice. Furthermore, as a matter of distributive justice (Chapter 3), no nation may deny that it has a duty to keep its national emissions levels below its fair share of safe global emissions. For instance, no nation can base its emissions reduction commitments on national interest alone, such as increased cost, without consideration of duties, obligations, and responsibilities to others. Yet many national commitments made thus far have been based upon national economic interests, not global responsibilities. To adequately address issues of “equity” in allocating greenhouse gas targets among nations raises questions of distributive justice. This is because distributive justice is the topic within ethics that deals with fair distribution of burdens and benefits of public policy. Although “equity” has no precise meaning in ethics, it is usually understood to be synonymous with “fairness” or “justice.” Since allocating burdens and benefits of public policy is understood to be the domain of “distributive justice”, equating “equity” with “distributive justice” is philosophically sound. Distributive justice requires that benefits and burdens of public policy be distributed according to concepts of equality, modified only by morally relevant considerations of, for example, need, or merit. It does not demand equality in allocating burdens, benefits, and responsibilities; deviations from equality are acceptable provided that criteria used to deviate from equality are morally justifiable. As we shall see, ethical problems with specific proposals for allocating national greenhouse gas emissions targets arise when distributions are proposed that cannot be justified on morally relevant criteria. Distributive justice puts the burden on those who want to be treated differently than others in relation to an allocation of responsibility to show that the justification for being treated differently is based on morally relevant criteria. For this reason, as a matter of distributive justice, those who propose a formula for defining equity under the UNFCCC, which is not based upon giving all

168  Priority Ethical Issues people equal rights to use the atmosphere as a sink for greenhouse gases, have the burden of proving that proposed differences in treatment are based on merit, deservedness, or other morally relevant criteria. A relevant basis for treating nations differently in greenhouse gas emissions allocations, as acknowledged by distributive justice, is a difference in responsibility for causing the existing problem. Therefore, the polluter-pays principle is consistent with principles of distributive justice because polluters deserve to have greater responsibilities for the problems they cause. The polluter-pays principle was adopted by the world’s nations as an international norm in the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development in 1992 (UN 1992b). Thus, there is a strong case for allocating greenhouse gas emissions, at least in part, on the basis of prior greenhouse gas emissions. This would allow consideration of both historical tonnes and per capita total emissions as a basis for allocating future allowable emissions. Another distinction that distributive justice would acknowledge as a relevant basis for treating nations differently in the allocation of greenhouse gas emissions is differences in needs and capacities. Developing countries in which citizens cannot meet their basic needs deserve to have smaller responsibilities than other countries, according to some distributive justice theories including those advocated by philosopher John Rawls (Rawls 1971). Rawls believed that distributions should be made to benefit the worst-off. Rawls argued that the principles of justice, which should be followed in allocating society’s burdens and benefits, are those that would be agreed upon by rational self-interested persons under a “veil of ignorance” about their positions in the society. For Rawls a veil of ignorance would mean that those negotiating public policy would not know anything personal about themselves, an imaginary device designed to assure that principles are agreed to that do not represent the interests on any one class, race, family, or other self-interested group. If this were done, policy makers would adopt greenhouse gas reduction allocation schemes that give maximum rights to use the atmosphere to the poorest, least advantaged people (Rawls 1971). Rawls believed those negotiating behind a veil of ignorance would negotiate to maximize the interests of the poorest people because they might be among the poorest in society. In a similar position to Rawls, philosopher Henry Shue has argued the international community should recognize an obvious distinction between emissions that fulfill basic human needs and those used to propagate luxurious lifestyles. Under such a distinction the former can be viewed as a basic human right, while the latter cannot (Shue 1994 and 1999). Shue would, therefore, in any allocation prioritize the needs of poor people and countries to meet subsistence needs. Both the positions of Rawls and Shue on this issue would act in support of the GDR framework discussed above. Differences in current and past emissions levels; actions already taken to reduce emissions; equal rights of humans to use the atmosphere; the needs of poor people, and several additional morally relevant criteria could be considered in determining each nation’s fair share of safe global emissions and satisfy



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minimum ethical scrutiny. And so, different considerations that satisfy morally relevant criteria are arguably consistent with valid theories of distributive justice, and could reach different conclusions about how to allocate national greenhouse gas emissions targets. Therefore, most of the principles identified above for proposed allocation formula pass minimum ethical scrutiny. Yet that does not mean, as we shall see, that anything goes as a matter of distributive justice. Some nations’ justifications for their greenhouse gas emissions targets obviously fail to pass minimum ethical scrutiny. Furthermore, as a matter of distributive justice, no nation can deny that it has a duty to keep its national emissions levels below its fair share of safe global emissions. Therefore, if a nation is exceeding its fair share, that nation has an ethical duty to reduce emissions to its fair share, where fairness must be interpreted in accordance with principles of distributive justice, not national economic interest. Although some developing nations can make a presentable argument that they could increase greenhouse gas emissions without exceeding their fair share of global emissions, developed nations cannot make this argument because it is known that existing emissions levels need to be significantly reduced and the developed nations are very high emitters compared to many developing nations. For this reason, the United States and other developed nations, along with perhaps a few developing nations, have a duty to begin to reduce their emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions and this obligation is compelled by justice, not only a need for leadership. In fact, as we saw in Chapter 2, they agreed to take actions to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system on the basis of equity when they became parties to the UNFCCC in 1992. Thus, in addition to principles of distributive justice, developed nations have another strong reason why they must reduce their emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions. They promised to reduce their emissions based upon “equity” in the UNFCCC to prevent dangerous anthropocentric interference with the climate system. Violating a provision of an international agreement such as the UNFCCC is considered a wrongful act under international law and is, therefore, an unethical action for consenting nations (see, e.g., International Law Commission 2001: Art. 2(a) & (b)). Since parties to the UNFCCC also agreed that developed countries should take the lead in combating climate change and modifying future trends, developed countries must undertake policies and measures to limit their emissions, regardless of actions taken by developing countries. This is now a matter of international law as well as a principle of distributive justice. For these reasons, high-emitting nations, in particular, have a legal and ethical responsibility to reduce emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions. The UNFCCC has established the norm that nations should reduce their emissions on the basis of “equity” and as we have seen, “equity” can be understood to mean distributively just emissions levels. There are several proposed allocation formulas that pass minimum standards of distributive justice, and several that are clearly ethically problematic (Singer

170  Priority Ethical Issues 2010: 87–194). Among the proposed allocation frameworks that pass minimum ethical scrutiny are those that consider equal per capita allocations; capacity to reduce emissions; basic needs of populations; historical emissions levels; contraction and convergence on equal per capita shares; and greenhouse gas development rights. Yet most nations have objected to further commitments to reduce emissions on the basis of national economic interest, not on the basis of equity because of a duty to reduce their emissions. Although most developing countries have contributed comparatively small amounts to elevated levels of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere attributable to human activities, any developing nation that exceeds its fair share of safe global greenhouse gas emissions needs also to take action to maintain emissions levels below its fair share. It should be noted, however, this obligation of developing nations to reduce emissions should not be construed as a limitation on any developing nation’s rights to make morally relevant arguments about what constitutes their nations fair share of global emissions.

Ethical Issues with Specific Proposed Allocation Formulas As we have seen from the above, many principles and frameworks have been proposed to guide national allocations of greenhouse gases. If one asks which of these numerous approaches to allocation are required by justice, we will find that different respectable theories of distributive justice will come to different conclusions about which framework or approach to allocation is most fair. However, some positions on what justice requires of nations in regard to a level of greenhouse gas emissions reductions are deeply ethically problematic, even though not all respectable theories of distributive justice agree on what distributive justice requires. That is to say, although when it comes to what is the quantified level of emissions reductions unambiguously required of any nation by theories of distributive justice, various ethical theories may reach differing conclusions. Yet the inability to say without some disagreement what distributive justice requires does not lead to an inability to condemn, on ethical grounds, many of the positions that nations have taken as justification for their emissions reductions targets. This chapter now looks at some specific positions on just allocation of national greenhouse gas reduction commitments on ethical grounds. As we will see, some proposed allocation formulas fail to pass minimum ethical scrutiny while others do not. Status Quo Rights Some governments have argued that all national targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions should be based on equal percentage reductions from current emissions levels, even though nations vary greatly in the amount of total emissions and per capita emissions. Those who advocate that greenhouse gas emissions



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allocations should be based upon status quo emissions levels sometimes argue that some nations should be given a right in the continued use of the atmosphere as a sink on the basis of their prior use of resources, a justification often framed as a kind of property right by Robert Nozick (1974) who was influenced by John Locke (1690) However, there are serious ethical problems with this view when applied to climate change, including the following: •

• •

Unlike some natural resources such as groundwater or forests, the global atmosphere has never been recognized as a subject of private property rights. Rather, it has been viewed as a global “commons” available for use by all people (IUCN 1980). Because a global commons is, by definition, owned by all of the people, individuals or nations cannot claim property interests and, therefore, nations may not claim that they have a property interest in prior greenhouse gas emissions levels. Those who may be harmed by levels of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere have never consented to the appropriation by others of the atmosphere as greenhouse gas sink. John Locke’s idea of recognizing property rights in natural resources, which have gained higher value through labor, is not applicable to the atmosphere because this line of thinking is based on assumptions that: • •

• •

there will be sufficient quantities of the natural resource left over for others for their use, which is not true of the atmospheric greenhouse gas sinks; the persons claiming property rights in natural resources following Nozick and Locke have increased the value of the natural resources through their labor; however, in the case of climate change they have rather diminished the value of the atmosphere; international law prohibits the use of resources in one country in such a way that it will harm people in other countries; the nations of the world have already agreed that they must reduce the use of atmospheric sinks on the basis of “equity.” (Brown et al. 2002: 210)

And so those nations arguing that all nations should agree to equal percentage reductions of greenhouse gas emissions from some baseline year are impli­ citly claiming that high-emitting nations have a right to their higher emission levels, and may only be modified by equal emission reduction percentages for all nations. This approach would freeze into place very unequal levels of per capita rights to use the atmosphere as a sink to absorb greenhouse gas emissions. Such a position, therefore, fails to satisfy minimum ethical scrutiny.

172  Priority Ethical Issues Efficiency Criteria Some proposed national allocations are justified on increasing the global efficiency of greenhouse gas policies by selecting policies that maximize global welfare. However, efficient solutions may not be just solutions. In fact, in the case of climate change, proposals for defining equity on the basis of efficiency alone are inconsistent with principles of distributive justice. This is because climate change is a problem for which those who are causing the problem, and, therefore, those on whom costs of reducing the threat would be greatest, are different people than those who have the most to gain by imposing reduction costs on higher emitters. (See Chapter 3 for a full discussion of these issues.) Welfare maximization strategies often fail to satisfy distributive justice criteria (Chapter 3). And so if welfare maximization is used as the sole criterion for distributing the costs of reducing greenhouse emissions obligations, equity is ignored if the welfare maximization formula does not include compensation to those who are harmed by climate change. Allocation schemes based upon welfare maximization criteria alone, or cost to national economies alone, raise several serious additional ethical problems, which were dealt with extensively in Chapter 3. Contraction and Convergence An equal per capita allocation, the ultimate goal of C&C, would be consistent with principles of justice because: (a) it treats all individuals as equals and, therefore, is consistent with theories of distributive justice, (b) it would implement the ethical maxim that all people should have equal rights to use global commons, (c) it would not be inconsistent with the widely accepted polluterpays principle, except perhaps with historical emissions, and (d) it could recognize the need of developing countries to increase their emissions to meet the basic needs of their citizens by negotiating when the convergence date would need to be achieved. Before allocating any carbon budget—a budget necessary to achieve a safe global atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases on the basis of equal per capita allocations—a case can be made that per capita emission levels should be adjusted to consider historical cumulative emissions. C&C has been criticized on the basis of its failure to deal effectively with historical emissions; a feature of C&C that could mean poor nations have insufficient levels of greenhouse gas emissions to allow them to use fossil fuels to economically grow out of poverty. Proponents of C&C have proposed some adjustments to C&C to deal with this limitation, including adjustments to the date of convergence and increased funding for adaptation to deal with this problem. And so as adjusted, C&C satisfies ethical scrutiny and can be seen as a way of operationalizing the meaning of equity under the UNFCCC.



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Greenhouse Development Rights The GDR framework discussed above also satisfies the minimum ethical criteria for allocating targets for national greenhouse gas emissions in that differences between national targets are based upon ethically relevant criteria, including basic needs of poor nations for economic development, the economic capacity of rich countries to invest in greenhouse gas-friendly technologies, and historical emissions considerations. Yet GDR is vulnerable to the criticism that the criteria it follows for determining economic prosperity levels—and, therefore, emission reduction obligations (for example the proposed $7,500 economic prosperity level that exempts some below it from emissions reduction targets)—are so arbitrary as to raise questions of distributive justice. Others have criticized GDR on the basis of its attempts to solve not only climate change, but also inequitable economic development. In so doing, GDR conflates two problems in such a way that it makes political agreement very unlikely (Kraus 2009). More specifically, Kraus argues that: In order to make GDRs fully operational, nations need to agree upon a number of matters including the emergency emissions trajectory, the precise level of the development threshold, the year when responsibility starts, the formula to calculate the RCI, and the respective weights of capacity and responsibility. … This reduces the transparency of the GDRs concept and significantly increases the necessary amount of data. Compared to GDRs, C&C has a higher degree of institutional feasibility. Due to its simplicity, C&C only requires data about emissions and population numbers of all nations. (Kraus 2009) Because of the increased complexity of negotiations that would be required to implement GDR, Kraus believes it is not politically feasible. Ethics would not support a formula that is almost impossible to implement. Of course, proponents of GDR deny that complexities of GDR create practical barriers to its adoption and implementation. And so GDR passes ethical scrutiny, although some practical problems need to be answered. Procedural Justice and National Greenhouse Gas Emissions Targets Equity and justice demand that policy makers examine whether those who are harmed by public policy decisions in regard to emissions allocations be treated fairly. Procedural justice requires that those who may be harmed by another’s action have a right to participate in decisions that could put them at risk of harm. For this reason, all people who would be affected by greenhouse gas allocation schemes have a right to fair representation in decision making about greenhouse

174  Priority Ethical Issues gas allocations that would have an impact on their interests. Given this requirement, any high-emitting nation’s commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions should, at a minimum, be based upon consultations with those nations most vulnerable to climate change impacts and the need to be guided by reasonable expectations of vulnerable peoples. Although nations have voluntarily agreed to emissions targets under the Cancún agreements discussed in Chapter 2, many poor developing countries have objected to the insufficiency of these voluntary commitments made by many developed nations. For this reason, the voluntary emissions reduction commitments made at Cancún are not procedurally just. It is true that developing nations have agreed to the voluntary emissions reductions under the Cancún agreements. Yet the most vulnerable countries have continued to argue for legally binding emissions reductions, which are negotiated between developed and developing countries, as demanded by principles of justice. Developing nations have no political power to force high-emitting nations to make ethically responsible commitments to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in a regime that is based upon voluntary emissions. Because only emissions reduction commitments that are consistent with each nation’s just share of safe global emissions pass ethical scrutiny, vulnerable nations should have the right to participate in decisions about what commitments are fair to them. For this reason, high-emitting nations have a strong duty to go beyond national self-interest in making commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and agree to be bound by reasonable expectations of developing nations in regard to fairness.

Ethics and Selection of Baselines for Emissions Reductions There has been a dispute in international climate negotiations about what year to measure emissions reductions from. Under the original UNFCCC, nations agreed to use 1990 as a baseline year to measure the success of emissions reductions commitment. Recently under the Cancún and Copenhagen agreements, disputes have broken out among nations about the baseline year from which emissions reductions commitments would be measured. For instance, the United States wanted to measure its reductions from 2005, while nations in the European Union argued to keep 1990 as the baseline. Now, equity does not necessarily require one baseline year over another if total emissions reductions commitments are sufficient to reduce any nation’s emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions. However, there are legitimate ethical questions about when nations should be responsible for historical emissions, and which have led to atmospheric concentrations to rise from 280ppm CO2 in the pre-industrial era to current atmospheric levels of 393ppm CO2. A strong case can be made, therefore, that nations should be responsible for emissions before 1990 in determining the amount of emissions reductions that equity would require of them.



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In fact, the level of historical emissions of greenhouse gas from countries is a relevant consideration to be looked at in determining responsibility for them, along with other ethically relevant considerations. In the absence of some international agreement on a baseline year for triggering emissions reductions obligations, past historical emissions levels are potentially relevant criteria for determining what equity and distributive justice require of national greenhouse gas emissions targets. This is because levels of historical greenhouse gas emissions are evidence of which nations have caused the elevated greenhouse gas emissions that are already causing some climate change harms. Yet, as we will see in Chapter 7 on responsibility for adaptation and damages, different ethical theories will reach different ethical conclusions about when responsibilities should be triggered for historical emissions.

Conclusion: Navigating the Perfect Moral Storm— Fair Allocation of National Greenhouse Gas Targets A proliferation of frameworks that pass minimum ethical scrutiny have been proposed, which allocate a nation’s responsibility to interpret the meaning of “equity” under the UNFCCC. Therefore, on the issue of what is each nation’s fair share of safe global emissions, spotting the ethical questions raised by different allocation formula—perhaps more than any other ethical issue discussed in this book—does not lead to unambiguous agreement on what ethics requires. As we have seen, there are different theories of distributive justice that are entitled to respect for guiding allocation of national greenhouse gas emissions reductions targets because they pass minimum ethical scrutiny. Therefore, an ethical framing of the question: “What should be any nation’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction target?” does not lead to an unambiguous conclusion of what ethics requires. This does not mean, however, that any proposed formula for the allocation of national greenhouse gas emissions reduction is entitled to respect as an ethical matter. For instance, some greenhouse gas emissions reductions quantification formulas fail to pass minimum ethical scrutiny. More importantly, justifications for proposed national targets have often been based upon national economic interest alone, not on justice. Strong ethical criticisms of these inadequate positions are in order. Therefore, ethics can help identify injustice in regard to proposals for quantifying obligations for national emissions reductions despite reasonable disagreement about what perfect justice requires. For this reason, ethical principles can help policy makers reduce the number of formulas for proposed emissions reduction allocations to those that pass ethical scrutiny. A review of positions taken by most developed nations on their greenhouse gas reduction targets in international climate negotiations reveals that, generally, they have clearly failed to pass minimum ethical scrutiny in regard to what equity would require of them. This is obvious because nations have failed to commit to a reduction in emissions equal to what the entire world needs to do to

176  Priority Ethical Issues prevent dangerous climate change. Yet, high-emitting nations would need to do more than reduce their emissions to levels necessary of the whole world to satisfy what equity would require of them. It is, therefore, safe to say that the majority of developed nations have failed to commit to greenhouse gas emissions reductions required by equity. In addition the following strong ethical conclusions can be made about positions that nations have taken on their emissions reduction commitments. Some Allocation Formulas Fail to Pass Minimum Ethical Scrutiny Proposed national emissions reduction formulas that fail to meet minimum ethical criteria include: (a) uniform emissions percentage reductions from status quo emissions levels, and (b) formula based upon welfare maximization alone. Proposed greenhouse gas emissions based upon equal percentage emissions from a baseline are unjust because they freeze into place unjust use of the atmosphere. Proposed greenhouse gas emissions allocations based upon maximizing global economic efficiency alone are unjust because they fail to deal with distributive justice issues. All nations must reduce their emissions to their fair share of total global emissions reductions needed to achieve an ethically acceptable target to stabilize greenhouse gas atmospheric concentration levels. And so, any national greenhouse gas emissions reduction target should be reviewed on the basis of its obligation to support a safe global greenhouse gas atmospheric concentration, and on the basis of what equity requires. A nation may not base its national emissions reduction target on national selfinterest alone. In setting national greenhouse gas emissions targets, nations must consider duties, responsibilities, and obligations to others—particularly those who are most vulnerable to climate change. Many of the voluntary emissions reductions commitments made under the Copenhagen Accord and Cancún agreements do not meet minimum ethical obligations because they to fail to reduce global emissions to levels that are required to achieve an acceptable greenhouse gas atmospheric concentration stabilization target; nor reduce national greenhouse gas emissions to levels required by any reasonable distributive justice theory. Those who propose frameworks for national emissions reductions different from per capita-based allocations have a duty to demonstrate why their proposed alternative formats pass ethical scrutiny. That is, nations must demonstrate why their national emissions targets are consistent with ethically relevant criteria sufficient to justify deviations from giving each human being an equal right to use the atmosphere as a sink for greenhouse gases.



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National Greenhouse Gas Targets and Procedural Justice Nations have a duty to consider the interests and reasonable views of those who are vulnerable to climate change in setting targets for national greenhouse gas emissions. For this reason, any national emission reduction target needs to consider and respond to the just demands of nations and individuals who are vulnerable to climate change. National commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions must be based on obligations to nations and people vulnerable to climate change, to stabilize atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations at levels that will protect the vulnerable. For this reason, nations must not only consider what is a just allocation to them for total global emissions reductions, they must support total global greenhouse gas emissions reductions as reasonably requested by vulnerable nations.

Chapter 7

Ethical Responsibility of Nations for Climate Change Damages and Adaptation Costs

Introduction We now look at the responsibility of those who cause climate change to its victims. Therefore, this chapter will examine the obligations of large emitting nations for climate change harms that are either unavoidable or have already occurred. As we have seen in Chapters 5 and 6, up until the present time, most highemitting nations have refused to commit to making any serious greenhouse gas emission reduction to levels that would represent their fair share of safe global emissions. This failure has now lasted for 35 years and has consequences for humanity. This chapter will examine ethical questions about national responsibility to pay for compensation or adaptation costs to those who are most vulnerable to climate change harms. Also earlier in the book, we have seen that human-induced climate change is now discernible and is already adversely affecting some humans, plants, animals, and ecosystems around the world. However, because some parts of the world are warming faster than others, some climate change damages are more discernible in some parts of the world than in others. Poor people around the world are not only particularly vulnerable to climate change (Olmost 2001:  8); they are often also located in places that are already being affected by climate change. In addition, developing countries have lesser capacity to adapt and are, therefore, more vulnerable to climate change damages, just as they are to other stresses. Vulnerability to climate change damages is most acute among the poorest people (Olmost 2001: 8). Human activities are believed to be responsible for slightly less than 1°C warming since the beginning of the industrial age although some parts of the world have experienced more than this global average. Climate change is not only a future problem for the world; some regions are currently clearly affected by human-induced warming. For instance, according to the IPCC, from 1900 to 2005, precipitation increased significantly in eastern parts of North and South America, northern Europe and northern and central Asia, but declined in the Sahel, the Mediterranean, southern Africa and parts of southern Asia (IPCC 2007: 17). Globally, the area affected by drought has likely increased since the 1970s (IPCC 2007: 17).



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People already experience many types of harms including, but not limited to, death, disease, ecological harm, floods and droughts, rising seas, more intense storms, and increased heatwaves (IPCC 2007). These harms, due to humaninduced climate change, will grow in the years ahead even if it is possible for the international community to stabilize atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions at current levels. That is, increased warming will continue even if atmospheric greenhouse gas levels are held constant because of thermal lags in the oceans. It is simply too late to prevent additional climate change-caused suffering. But it is possible to take steps to help some people avoid or minimize climate change damages that are headed their way. It is very unlikely that atmospheric levels of CO2 equivalent can be stabilized much below 560ppm during this century because nations have failed, and continue to fail, to act to reduce the threat of climate change. This virtually guarantees significant additional warming and associated harms to some people and places around the world. Given this, even if the international community adopts the most robust emissions reduction strategies possible, some significant future harm to people and ecosystems is unavoidable. Other damages could be minimized or avoided if adaptation steps are taken. Yet adaptation will cost money and some adaptation steps, such as the building of dikes or flood walls, are so very expensive that they are beyond the financial ability of poor nations and people to pay for. Some wealthy nations, states, and local governments may be able to afford climate change adaptation responses; however, many poor regions of the world do not have sufficient income to meet their population’s existing basic subsistence needs, let alone pay for climate change adaptation. Adaptation requirements to minimize just climate change-caused health impacts are huge, not to mention other adverse climate impacts such as property damage. Summing up health impacts of climate change the World Health Organization said: They range from increased risks of extreme weather, such as fatal heat waves, floods and storms, to less dramatic but potentially more serious effects on infectious disease dynamics, shifts to long-term drought conditions in many regions, melting of glaciers that supply freshwater to large population centers, and sea level increases leading to salinization of sources of agriculture and drinking water. Second, the health impacts of climate change-caused infectious diseases are also potentially huge. Many of the most important global killers are highly sensitive to climatic conditions. Malaria, diarrhea, and protein-energy malnutrition together cause more than three million deaths each year. Third, these risks are inequitable, in that the greenhouse gases that cause climate change originate mainly from developed countries, but the health risks are concentrated in the poorest nations, which have contributed least to the problem. Finally, many of the projected impacts on health are avoidable, through a combination of public health

180  Priority Ethical Issues interventions in the short term, support for adaptation measures in healthrelated sectors such as agriculture and water management, and a long-term strategy to reduce human impacts on climate. (Campbell-Lendrum et al. 2011) Increased human misery from death and disease caused by climate change is, therefore, very probable, yet some suffering can be minimized if adaptation measures to climate change are taken in those parts of the world where an increase in diseases is likely.

The Distribution of Harms and Needs for Adaptation to Climate Change As we have seen throughout this book, it is poor people around the world who will continue to suffer the most from climate change. Yet it is often difficult to prioritize adaptation spending. This is because there are scientific challenges in making precise predictions of adaptation needs, at least for some types of climate change harms. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 demonstrated that there remains some scientific uncertainty about timing and magnitude of future climate change impacts; however, this uncertainty is usually described as a range of plausible global impacts, which will be caused by different levels of atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. Although reasonable predictions can be made about global temperature changes, it is virtually impossible to accurately predict where many harsh climate change impacts will actually occur. This is because mathematical models of ecological systems are often incapable of predicting how ecological systems will respond to warming; global climate change models cannot predict with accuracy local scale impacts; and the global climate system is a chaotic system that makes small-scale predictions about time and place of impacts extraordinarily difficult. Also, as we saw in the last chapter, rapid nonlinear responses or climate system surprises may now be likely, yet because of the very nature of these climate surprises, the scientific community cannot predict their timing or magnitude. Although some climate change impacts are very predictable—such as the need to protect low lying communities from rising seas—others are very speculative, such as where killer floods will actually occur. Precise predictions of adaptation needs with high levels of precision are probably, therefore, always to be beyond scientific capability. In addition, for the climate change impacts, which are theoretically predictable, the money to do the research to increase the reliability of the predictions has not yet materialized. And so, although the needs of some to take adaptation steps are now obvious, for others precise predictions about adaptation needs will remain elusive and unreliable. For this reason, some damages from climate change appear to be unavoidable. Because the international community cannot predict all adaptation



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needs, harms that otherwise could be avoided if the appropriate adaptation steps were taken, will not be anticipated and minimized. However, without doubt, there is a need to increase scientific research to better predict adaptation needs. The developed nations are mostly responsible for the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to present levels although total emissions and per capita emissions levels vary greatly among nations. For this reason, allocating responsibility for adaptation raises both ethical questions as well as new questions about quantifying the magnitude of compensation and adaptation responsibilities (see Chapter 6 for discussion on allocating emissions reduction responsibility for safe global greenhouse gas emissions reduction levels). Those who have been harmed by human-induced climate change are located in both developing and developed nations, and those who benefit from greenhouse gas emissions are located in both developing and developed nations. And so, as we shall see in the next chapter, responsibility for adaptation may extend beyond nations to sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals, although this chapter focuses on obligations of nations. As stated in Chapters 5 and 6, the developed countries are most responsible for temperature increases that the Earth has recently experienced and will experience in the short- to medium-term because they have contributed the greatest amount of historical greenhouse gas emissions. However, those most vulnerable to climate change damages are often the least responsible for greenhouse gas emissions (Estrada-Oyeula 2002). Therefore, those who could most benefit from adaptation measures are often least responsible for excessive greenhouse gas emissions. This is true both at the national and the local level. In addition, those most vulnerable to climate change are often least able to afford adaptation measures such as dikes, irrigation to compensate for droughts, moving away from flood or storm prone areas, installing HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) systems and implementing improved public health systems. In general terms, a society’s vulnerability to human-induced climate depends upon its poverty. The Pew Center for Climate Change described vulnerability to climate change as follows: Vulnerability to climate change reflects its degree of exposure and its capacity to adapt. Exposure has two principal elements: the climatic conditions themselves, and the extent and character of the population, wealth, and development exposed to them. Capacity is a society’s ability to adapt to changing climatic conditions, whether by reducing harm, exploiting beneficial new opportunities, or both. This ability to adapt, whether to changing climate or other new circumstances, is in part a function of a society’s level of wealth, education, institutional strength, and access to technology. The nature and the extent of a society’s development, therefore, heavily influence both its degree of exposure to climate risks and its capacity to adapt. (Burton et al. 2006)

182  Priority Ethical Issues Because vulnerability to climate change is both a function of where the impacts of harsh climate change will be experienced and the financial ability of people to adapt, many poor developing countries are particularly vulnerable to climate change. Sadly, those who are most in need of economic development are also likely to suffer the most in a warming world. Therefore, there will continue to be innocent people around the world who most need adaptation and compensation funding because: (a) there is insufficient money to support all the adaptation that is needed, (b) harm has already occurred, (c) time does not allow for the adoption of adaptation measures necessary to protect from harm, (d) it is impossible to predict where some harms will occur, or (e) the technology to protect against some of the harms is not now available. For instance, although biological sciences have produced some drought resistant crops, for other crops no drought resistant strains have yet been developed. From this, the following conclusions can be made. Some climate change harms are unavoidable, others harms can be prevented or minimized through adaptation, and some harms have already happened. Yet those experiencing these harms are rarely those who are most responsible for them.

International Negotiations and Adaptation As we saw earlier, international negotiations to set targets and timetables were called for by many scientists in the 1980s. Since this time, some governments, organizations, and individuals have resisted pleas from potential victims of climate change to take precautionary action to reduce greenhouse emissions, and thereby mitigate climate change damages. Chapters 1 through 6 have highlighted arguments for this resistance were often based on the claims that there was too much scientific uncertainty concerning climate change impacts, or that reducing greenhouse gas emissions would entail unacceptable costs to national, regional, or local economies. When the international community has attempted to negotiate adaptation funding, some high greenhouse gas-emitting countries have refused to make adequate funding available at levels required by the size of the identifiable needs. Some nations have denied responsibility for compensation and adaptation costs in climate change negotiations. Yet norms about responsibility for damages from human-induced climate change are well established in a variety of international agreements, including the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and the Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC. The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development states in relevant part: •

States have, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law, the sovereign right to exploit their own resources pursuant to their own environmental and developmental policies, and the responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or



Climate Change Damages  183 control do not cause damage to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction. (UN 1992b: Principle 2, emphasis added)

•

National authorities should endeavor to promote the internalization of environmental costs and the use of economic instruments, taking into account the approach that the polluter should, in principle, bear the cost of pollution, with due regard to the public interest and without distorting international trade and investment. (UN 1992b, Principle 16, emphasis added)

•

States shall develop national law regarding liability and compensation for the victims of pollution and other environmental damage. States shall also cooperate in an expeditious and more determined manner to develop further international law regarding liability and compensation for adverse effects of environmental damage caused by activities within their jurisdiction or control to areas beyond their jurisdiction. (UN 1992b, Principle 13, emphasis added)

Additional norms relevant to national responsibility for damages caused by one nation to another are contained in the UNFCCC including: •

Recalling also that States have, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law, the sovereign right to exploit their own resources pursuant to their own environmental and developmental policies, and the responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction. (UN 1992a: Preface, emphasis added)

•

The Parties should protect the climate system for the benefit of present and future generations of humankind, on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. Accordingly, the developed country Parties should take the lead in combating climate change and the adverse effects thereof. (UN 1992a: Art. 3, emphasis added)

•

The Parties should take precautionary measures to anticipate, prevent, or minimize the causes of climate change and mitigate its adverse effects. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing such measures, taking into account that policies and measures to deal with climate change should be cost-effective so as to ensure global benefits at the lowest possible cost. (UN 1992a: Art. 3, emphasis added)

184  Priority Ethical Issues These provisions of international law have been agreed by all nations and establish clear national responsibilities to not harm others beyond their jurisdiction, to pay for damages of those beyond their borders who are harmed by domestic activities, and to not use scientific uncertainty as an excuse for failing to take protective action. Yet many nations have caused, and continue to cause, climate change damages while they have refused to limit their emissions to their fair share, compensate those who have been harmed, or provide adequate, predictable funding for adaptation. And so, the above international law provisions make it clear that nations have responsibilities, duties, and obligations to others to prevent climate change damage. Consequently, their failure to take action to reduce the threat of climate change makes them responsible for climate change harms. Since negotiations under the UNFCCC began, developing nations have been advocating for adequate funding for adaptation given the clear responsibility of high-emitting nations for adaptation costs. Slow progress has been made in setting up voluntary adaptation funds during the first decade and a half of negotiations under the UNFCCC. That is, a few small and medium-sized voluntary adaptation funds have been created since 1992 (HBF and ODI 2012). But these funds are a drop in the bucket compared to what is needed to meet projected adaptation needs. The current costs of adaptation in developing countries are huge, and while estimates vary, there is general agreement that figures are in the range of tens of billions of dollars per annum (Ayers and Huq 2009). More recent estimates by Oxfam put the costs of adaptation closer to $50 billion annually, while the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) put forward the most pessimistic scenario to date, suggesting this could spiral to $86–109 billion annually by 2011 (Ayers and Huq 2009). The longer it takes to implement an effective international agreement to halt and then reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the higher these costs of adaptation will be and the more likely that the limits of any adaptation funding will be reached and exceeded (Ayers and Huq 2009). There are four main funds relevant to adaptation under the UNFCCC: 1 2 3 4

The Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) established under the UNFCCC to help developing countries prepare and implement their National Adaptation Programs of Action (NAPAs). The Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF), also under the UNFCCC to support a number of climate change activities such as mitigation and technology transfer, but prioritizes adaptation. The Global Environment Facility (GEF) Trust Fund’s Strategic Priority for Adaptation (SPA), which pilots ‘operational’ approaches to adaptation. The Adaptation Fund, which sits under the Kyoto Protocol (Ayers and Huq 2009). These funds fall far short of meeting projected adaptation needs.

At the COP–13 negotiations in Bali, Indonesia in 2007, Parties to the UNFCCC agreed to replace the Kyoto Protocol with an agreement that would create a



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second commitment period under the UNFCCC. This would include binding emissions reductions for developed countries and new programs on adaptation for developing countries, deforestation, finance, technology transfer, and capacity building. This agreement was referred to as the Bali Roadmap, which provided that the details of these programs would be negotiated over the next two years along with a long-term global goal for emission reductions (Brown 2010a). During the Copenhagen negotiations two years after Bali, conference representatives from poor vulnerable nations begged developed countries to: (a) commit to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to levels necessary to prevent dangerous climate change, and (b) to fund adaptation programs in developing countries, necessary to protect the most vulnerable from climate change impacts that could be avoided, or compensate for the damages that could not be avoided. The Copenhagen Accord, the agreement coming out of COP–15 in December 2009, states that adaptation to the adverse effects of climate change and the potential impacts of response measures is a challenge faced by all countries, and that enhanced action and international cooperation on adaptation are urgently required in developing countries, especially in the least developed countries, the small island states, and Africa. (Brown 2010a) And so, developed countries agreed that certain nations are particularly vulnerable to climate change and need help to adapt. The Parties to the Copenhagen Accord also agreed that developed countries should provide adequate, predictable, and sustainable financial resources, technology and capacity building to support adaptation. However, adequate, predictable funding was not provided in the Copenhagen agreement or since then in climate negotiations (Brown 2010a). For many, the Copenhagen Accord was seen as a tragic failure because it failed to: (a) achieve once again enforceable greenhouse gas emissions reduction commitments from developed countries sufficient to prevent dangerous climate change, (b) identify dedicated sources of funding for adaptation or capacity building in vulnerable developing countries, or (c) stop the deforestation that is a major contributor to climate change (Brown 2010a). A year after Copenhagen, the 2010 agreements coming out of COP–16 in Cancún, Mexico established the Cancún Adaptation Framework to enhance adaptation efforts by all countries—a process to help least developed countries to develop and implement national adaptation plans; and an Adaptation Committee to provide technical support to Parties, facilitate sharing of information and best practices, and advise future COPs on adaptation-related matters (Brown 2010b). The Cancún agreements required that a new committee make recommendations on the composition and functions of the Adaptation Committee for Adoption at COP–17 in Durban, South Africa in December 2011. Yet by the fall of 2011, no commitments were made for adequate dedicated funding. The Adaptation Fund was established to finance concrete adaptation projects and programs in developing countries that are Parties to the Kyoto Protocol. The Fund is to be financed partially with a share of proceeds from clean development mechanism (CDM) project activities and receive funds

186  Priority Ethical Issues from other sources. The developing country Parties to the Kyoto Protocol, which are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change, are eligible for funding to assist them in meeting the costs of adaptation (UN 2012). The Adaptation Fund  will finance concrete adaptation projects and programs that are country driven and are based on the needs, views and priorities of eligible nations. Yet adequate, predictable, dedicated funding for all of this has not as yet materialized (Brown 2010b). Some of the voluntary funds that have recently been the source of adaptation financing have come from national development funding, previously used for assisting poor nations with development needs. This is a concern of many poor countries because they argue that adaptation funding should be additional to development funding. This argument is based upon the idea that high-emitting developed nations have responsibility for adaptation in vulnerable developing countries, and that they should not use funds that would have been provided for development purposes anyway. For this reason, developing countries have insisted on getting Adaptation Fund commitments that are “new and additional” to development funds. One serious controversy about adaptation funding that has arisen in the negotiations is the question of when did high-emitting nations become responsible for climate change, given that humans may have started to cause climate change thousands of years ago, through practices such as cutting down forests and increasing agriculture. A related controversy is the question of whether nations should be responsible for greenhouse gases before human-induced climate change was known to be a serious problem. In fact a representative of the US government expressly disagreed that the United States was liable for an adaptation debt to others for climate change-caused damages. Todd Stern, lead US climate negotiator, said: “I actually completely reject the notion of a debt or reparations or anything of the like” (Roberts 2009). In addition, US negotiator Jonathan Pershing went further when he said, “The donor countries have only so much largess” (Roberts 2009). This statement appeared to be premised on the idea that the United States has no obligations to developing countries for past pollution and that funds given to developing countries for adaptation are simply a matter of charity. These remarks were justified by the United States on the basis that no one knew for sure that it was then dangerous to emit greenhouse gas and that responsibility for climate change damages should begin when all scientific uncertainties have been resolved. When these statements were made in 2010, it had been 18 years since nations agreed in 1992 that they may not use scientific uncertainty as an excuse for not taking cost-effective action to reduce the threat of climate change. And so, if nations are responsible for climate change-caused damages, determining when responsibility should be triggered is a contentious issue in international climate change negotiations. Another controversy encountered in determining responsibility for climate change compensation and adaptation arises from the occasional difficulty of separating human-caused climate change damages from those that would have



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happened before the Earth’s climate was altered by human activities. What, for instance, can be said about whether damages from an event like Hurricane Katrina are human-caused given that large hurricanes have caused havoc long before human activities have affected the Earth’s climate? And so in addition to the factual questions that lead to controversies about what is a fair allocation among nations for emissions reduction, which we saw in the last chapter, responsibility for adaptation raises a few additional tricky issues about how to quantify compensation and adaptation obligations . Although some climate damages are difficult to attribute to human causation, others are easier to identify. For instance, it is relatively scientifically uncontroversial to attribute the level of quantifiable sea level rise to human-induced climate change, and how much additional wind speed in hurricanes are attributable to elevated ocean temperatures, which can also be attributed to humancaused climate change. Yet, because phenomena such as droughts and floods have caused great damages due to natural climate change, it is often very difficult to attribute some climate damages to human causation; some kinds of climate damages are easier than others to attribute to human causes. For this reason, determining the exact amount of damages from human-induced climate change or financial responsibility for some needed adaptation measures is, at times, scientifically controversial.

Ethical Analysis of Adaptation Issues High-emitting Nations are Responsible for Compensation and Paying Adaptation Costs As we have seen, nations have a duty under the UNFCCC and international law to responsibly “ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction” (UN 1992a: Preface). Nations have also agreed that they are responsible for climate change in the various principles adopted in international law identified above. Although there are some interesting questions about how to quantify obligations that flow from this responsibility, no nation may reasonably deny responsibility for climate change harms that they have caused by exceeding their fair share of safe global greenhouse gas emissions. Earlier chapters of this book have shown that the duty to do no harm to others is also a principle of basic morality widely accepted around the word. Furthermore, as a matter of ethics, as well as international law, nations have a duty to compensate those who are harmed by their actions. Because of this duty and to prevent climate change damages, nations also have responsibilities to support adaptation actions that will prevent serious harms if these harms come from climate change. If there is any doubt about this, the “polluter-pays principle” which expressly states that “polluter should, in principle, bear the cost of pollution” makes the duty of high-emitting nations to be responsible for adaptation and compensation

188  Priority Ethical Issues clear (UN, 1992b, Principle 16). Because the polluter-pays principle has been agreed to as an acceptable international norm by almost all nations, it should guide disputes about climate change compensation and adaptation controversies. For these reasons, nations have a duty to compensate those who have been damaged by human-induced climate change in proportion to their contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change damages. Although this obligation is ethically clear, exactly what compensation or adaptation costs fall under this rule is a more complex matter open to various ethical interpretations. This is because there is some evidence, although currently inconclusive, that humans have been altering the climate for thousands of years without knowledge that they were doing it. Although humans have been adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere since the industrial revolution at the end of the 18th century, there is also inconclusive physical evidence, backed by powerful simulations on the world’s most advanced computer climate models, that human-induced climate change began not 200 years ago, but thousands of years ago with the onset of large-scale agriculture in Asia and extensive deforestation in Europe (Science Daily 2008). Although greenhouse gas atmospheric concentrations have been reconstructed for hundreds of thousands of years through the use of ice core data and proxy biological evidence, scientifically it is a much more difficult challenge to attribute atmospheric concentrations to human activities in particular places at specific times. Therefore, it is difficult to determine historical responsibility without relying on value judgments about when responsibility should be commenced. A minimum ethical criterion for judging the adequacy of adaptation funding is that it must provide adequate funding to support adaptation needs in developing countries given that developing countries have done little to cause climate change and must urgently take steps to avoid harsh climate change impacts. A corollary of the clear national duty to do no harm is the duty to compensate those who have been harmed or to support adaptation measures to prevent harm from occurring. Although there have been attempts to calculate historical emissions from developed countries since 1890, some elements of this calculation are highly uncertain particularly in regard to emissions from land use changes and forests going far back in time (Höhne et al. 2008). Furthermore, such calculations are plagued by the need to make somewhat arbitrary decisions in regard to the beginning date for triggering liability and which non-Kyoto gases to include in the calculation (Holne et al. 2008). For this reason, there is no “value-neutral” way of deciding the starting date for determining when historical emissions trigger responsibility, nor which greenhouse gas-emitting activities to include. As we have seen thus far, nations in international climate change negotiations nations have resisted being bound by mandatory adaptation commitments notwithstanding clear responsibility for adaptation. The Cancún agreement did manage to create an adaptation framework to enhance adaptation efforts by all countries and a process to help least developed countries to develop and implement national adaptation plans. Yet Cancún failed to identify dedicated sources



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of funding to implement an adaptation agenda that is financed through “mandatory” contributions to “new, predictable, and additional sources of funding” (Brown 2010b). Therefore, the Cancún agreements failed to satisfy the ethical obligation of developed countries to finance adequate funding for adaptation. Since people around the world have basic rights to be protected from the actions of others that threaten their life, health, and security, and given that the effects of climate change will violate these rights, norms must be agreed upon by the international community to establish responsibility for climate change mitigation, adaptation, and for compensation for climate change damages. Therefore, despite the fact that reasonable people could draw different conclusions about the baseline year from which responsibility for climate change damages and adaptation should start, nations should be willing to enter into good-faith negotiations to resolve these issues, and responsibility cannot be denied after certain dates. According to relevant principles of justice, when multiple parties have contributed to cause harm to others, parties harming others are responsible in proportion to their proportionate share of the harm that they have inflicted. To determine the responsibility of nations for climate change in the form of either compensation or adaptation funding several questions need to be answered. They include the following. •

•

•

How much did the nation contribute through its emissions or land use changes to the build-up of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere beyond what would have occurred naturally? In deciding this question, a baseline year needs to be determined (see below). What damages are attributable to human causation? As we have seen, this is sometimes a difficult question to answer because climatic damages can be caused by events that may have occurred naturally without human contributions. For instance, some storm, flooding, drought, and vector-borne disease harms would have been caused by climate even if there was no humaninduced climate change. Yet as human-induced warming increases, flooding and drought intensity and frequency are likely to increase, as well as other very predictable climate change impacts. For this reason, it will be necessary to determine the contribution from human activities to climate events such as floods and droughts that cause damages in order to assess responsibility for human-induced damages. Statistical techniques are often used to make determinations about such matters in some legal proceedings when unambiguous evidence of proportional evidence is unavailable. Adaptation needs need to be determined by predicting climate change impacts and their effects, at minimum, on human health, and natural resources on which life depends, and the built environment. In this regard, adaptation needs should be determined by relevant scientific impact analysis. As noted above, because it is very difficult to predict exactly when and where climate impacts will be experienced, significant scientific uncertainty is likely to remain in any attempts to prioritize adaptation needs.

190  Priority Ethical Issues •

Because of persistent scientific uncertainty about adaptation needs, it is vitally important that people, who may be affected by climate change, have a right to participate in adaptation planning.

Initial Responsibility for Compensation and Adaptation Different arguments can be made about which year should trigger national responsibility for funding compensation and adaptation efforts. Arguments for different dates for triggering compensation and adaptation responsibility follow. Before 1970s Ethics often requires knowledge that a behavior is dangerous before placing blame or assigning ethical responsibility for that behavior. Some laws, however, assign responsibility for harm without regard to when a person or entity knew that a behavior was responsible. Under this approach, a person or entity is responsible for damages if their behavior contributes to harm regardless of them knowing that their actions were harmful. Under this interpretation of the polluter-pays principle identified above, nations are responsible for climate change damages in proportion to their greenhouse gas emissions that caused elevated atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration, without regard to when they had knowledge of the danger that could be caused by their greenhouse gas emissions. Under the law, this responsibility is sometimes referred to as “strict liability.” Late 1970s Some ethical principles would assign blame once an entity knew or should have known that their actions could cause harm. It is important to note that such an approach does not depend upon knowledge that activities will actually cause damage, but only notice that one is engaged in behavior that could cause damage. And so, the answer to the question about when responsibility for compensation or adaptation funding turns on when a nation became aware that greenhouse gas emissions were threatening people and ecological systems beyond their boarders. Although one could argue that all nations should have been aware that humaninduced climate change was a threat as early as the late 1950s, when the scientific community began serious discussion of human-induced climate change, some countries, including the United States, were expressly warned by their Academies of Science by the late 1970s that human-induced climate change was a serious threat. And so, since there is an ethical duty to prevent harms from dangerous behavior once those engaged in dangerous behavior are notified that their behavior is dangerous, a case can also be made that different nations may have different triggering dates for responsibility; dates which could be determined by an examination of when the government received official notice from some scientific group that climate change was a threat. In the United States, this



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was in the late 1970s. As stated earlier, in 1978 Robert M. White, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, wrote a report for the National Research Council, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences. It concluded that CO2 released during the burning of fossil fuel could have consequences for climate that pose a considerable threat to future society (White 1978). A report prepared by the Carter administration a year later in 1979 declared that “[t]he responsibility of the carbon dioxide problem is ours—we should accept it and act in a way that recognizes our role as trustees for future generations” (Charney et al. 1979). This report also estimated that the amount of warming that would be experienced from a doubling of the pre-industrial levels of CO2 would be 3°C, very close to the amount that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change would predict almost 30 years later (Charney et al. 1979). And so, at least for the United States, a strong case can be made that, in the late 1970s, it had received clear notice of the harm it could be causing. Mid-1980s As we saw in Chapter 2, by the mid-1980s, the international community began to hold meetings on the need to take action on climate change; meetings which had widespread international participation. Among other issues, these international conferences discussed the need for an international treaty on climate change. Therefore, a strong argument can be made that, by the mid-1980s, all nations were aware of potential dangers caused by greenhouse gas emissions. 1990 Some have argued that countries have no historical responsibility for compensation or adaptation because, until recently, they did not know that climate change was harmful. Yet, as we have seen in Chapter 4, all nations agreed in the 1992 UNFCCC that scientific uncertainty cannot be used as an excuse for continuing to release greenhouse gas emissions above their fair share of safe global emissions and that all nations should try and reduce their emissions to 1990 levels by 2000. For this reason, at the very minimum, governments are responsible for damages and adaptation at least for emissions that were released after the baseline year identified in the UNFCCC, namely 1990.

Attributing Responsibility to Nations Some have raised questions about whether moral responsibility can be assigned to a collectivity such as a national government. Yet as we have seen earlier in this chapter, nations agreed they were responsible to reduce the threat of climate change by adopting the UNFCCC. In addition, nations agreed under the UNFCCC that they have duties to prevent harm outside of their borders by virtue of agreeing to the “no harm” principle.

192  Priority Ethical Issues Although nations that exceed their fair share of safe global greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for harms that they cause others, different ethical theories would lead to different conclusions about how to quantify these responsibilities, particularly in regard to when the obligations to reduce the threat of climate change should be triggered. In addition, there are several practical problems with determining how to quantify duties for compensation and adaptation, as identified above. First, it is difficult to quantify all responsibilities for historic greenhouse gas emissions, particularly because measurement metrics for some activities that release greenhouse gases become less reliable going back in time. Second, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between damages that are attributable to human-caused climate change from other naturally occurring climate damages. Third, it is difficult to draw a bright line that identifies when those who emitted large amounts of greenhouse gases should have known that they were engaging in dangerous behavior. And fourth, to assign responsibility, a value judgment needs to be made about whether obligations should be triggered after those who have emitted greenhouse gases emissions first obtained knowledge of potential danger of harm from one’s activities, or whether those who benefited from activities that produced greenhouse gases should bear responsibility even if they were ignorant about the risks they were creating. More specifically, the following considerations need to be taken into account in determining ethical guidance for compensation and adaptation. •

•

Quantifying historical emissions responsibility. Records for some historical emissions in most developed countries go back several decades. These records are incomplete, however, and records about land use changes that produced greenhouse gas emissions are even sketchier. Ethically one could argue that responsibility for historical emissions exists even when those who are responsible were ignorant of the risk because they benefited from the activities. However, once the entity responsible for the activities that emit greenhouse gases should have known that human-induced climate change was a threat, there is no denying responsibility for compensation for climate change harms and costs of adaptation to those who are vulnerable. Separating human-caused damages from other natural climate damages. Some climate-related damages to human health and natural resources can be more easily attributed to human causes than others. The Earth’s climate has varied over time and caused damages before human actions have affected the climate system, and so, without human-induced climate change, there would be climate-caused damages to human health and natural resources. Therefore, when damages to human health, property, or natural resources occur from climatic conditions, quantifying which damages are attributable to human causes can be scientifically challenging. Yet climate change is not the first problem that humans have had to face in which attribution of damages creates challenges. Climate change science can identify increased frequency and the probability of climate-related damages attributable to



•

•

Climate Change Damages  193 human causation. Therefore, questions about how to quantify allocated responsibility for climate change damages in the face of uncertainty about what percentage of the damages come from human versus natural causes can be resolved by such techniques as modifying damage awards by scientifically derived probabilities that climate change damages would increase due to human causation. In addition, it is now possible to identify concrete adaptation needs for such things as dikes or drought resistant crops and to determine costs without much controversy. And so, especially in these cases where adaptation needs are clear, ethics would require that those responsible for climate change accept responsibility for costs. Whether to Attribute Responsibility to Knowledge. Most ethical theories would make ethical culpability follow from knowledge, which someone had or should have had, that their actions could lead to great harm (Lercher 2004). Yet courts often distinguish between moral responsibility and liability for damages by holding those who cause harm responsible for damages, even in cases where they had no knowledge that they were causing damages (Lercher 2004). Some believe, therefore, that liability for climate change damages should not be tied to knowledge of potential harm. Whether responsibility for historic damages should be triggered by any activity that contributes to climate change, or whether responsibility should only start when someone has some knowledge that the activity is a threat to others, is a matter of ethical controversy. Different ethical considerations could, therefore, reach different conclusions about whether some kind of knowledge should be a preliminary requirement to determine responsibility for climate change harms. Yet, as we have explained in Chapter 4, scientific uncertainty about whether harm will actually be experienced is not an excuse for taking action. Responsibility is triggered if there is a reasonable basis for concluding that one’s activities are dangerous. Therefore, moral responsibility should, at minimum, be calculated from the point in time when nations should have known that emitting greenhouse gases could cause climate changed harms. Timelines for attributing knowledge of danger. As far as when nations should have known that greenhouse gas emissions are dangerous, arguments for several dates can be made. They include, but are not limited to the following, as we saw above: (a) late 1970s, (b) the mid-1980s, and (c) 1990. For this reason, making responsibility for compensation and adaptation funding tied to emissions after 1990 is a minimum ethical conclusion.

Conclusions: Compensation and Adaptation Issues Some of the ethical contours for attributing responsibility for compensation and costs of adaptation among nations are clear. Yet different ethical theories would reach different conclusions about how to quantify that responsibility. Nevertheless, the following strong ethical conclusions can be drawn about national duties for adaptation and compensation.

194  Priority Ethical Issues National Responsibility • •

Nations have responsibility for compensation for climate damages or costs of adaptation to climate change if their emissions have exceeded their fair share of safe global emissions. This responsibility is triggered, at the very latest, once a nation should have known that human activities could cause serious harm; not when that harm has been proven.

Quantifying Damages or Responsibility for Adaptation Costs • •

•

•

Although different ethical theories would reach different conclusions about when responsibility for emissions should start, nations cannot deny responsibility for historical emissions after 1990. Since nations benefited from the use of fossil fuels and deforestation practices before they were notified by the scientific community that greenhouse gas emission were dangerous, historical greenhouse gas emissions could be considered an additional factor in quantifying national responsibility for damages and adaptation responsibility, notwithstanding genuine ignorance of the risks of climate change under the polluter-pays principle. Although some climate harms raise difficult quantification issues when human causes are difficult to distinguish from natural causes, nations should be responsible for compensation for climate change damages and costs of adaptation, at the very minimum, for all climate change harms that can be clearly attributable to human causes. The costs of reasonable adaptation measures should be the responsibility of nations who emit greenhouse gases in excess of their fair share of safe global emissions. This would be for all adaptation steps that need to be taken to protect people and ecological resources on which they depend that can be determined by mainstream peer reviewed climate change impact science.

New, Dedicated, and Additional Sources of Funding For Adaptation •

Those nations who have exceeded their fair share of safe global emissions should provide new, additional, and dedicated sources of funding for climate change adaptation in amounts needed to avoid scientifically foreseeable climate change harms.

Chapter 8

Obligations of Sub-national Governments, Organizations, Businesses, and Individuals

Introduction Chapters 3 through 7 have examined ethical issues arising in arguments that have been front and center in the 35-year debate about climate change policies. This chapter examines issues that are critical for diminishing climate change’s immense threat, yet are notable because they have largely been ignored in the three and half decade debate about climate change. As we have seen throughout this book, much of the 35-year debate about climate change has focused on the duties and responsibilities of nations to reduce their emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions. When climate change has been debated in the United States and many other countries, the subject under discussion was almost exclusively about what the national government should do. This chapter now examines the duties of sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals to limit their greenhouse gas emissions to reduce the threat of climate change. It will argue that the international community’s preoccupation with the obligations of nations is partly responsible for its failure to achieve significant greenhouse gas emissions reductions worldwide. As we will see, the precise obligations of sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals to limit their greenhouse gas emissions is a matter about which different ethical theories could disagree. Yet, as was the case for allocating responsibility for nations, most ethical theories will agree that current high-emitting sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals have duties, responsibilities, and obligations to reduce their greenhouse gas emission even though different ethical theories may disagree about what justice requires quantitatively of these entities. Also, we will see, just as was the case for fair distribution of national greenhouse gas emissions, many positions on responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions, because entities below the national level fail to satisfy ethical scrutiny despite the potential for reasonable disagreement on what perfect justice requires about these issues. Paul Harris (2009: 92) has argued that the almost exclusive focus on nations in the public debate about climate change has tragically taken attention off the obligations of sub-national entities that are also responsible for climate change.

196  Priority Ethical Issues Harris also claims that most of the ethics literature on climate change overlooks the responsibility of large consumers in developing countries (Harris 2010: 122). Without doubt, as noted earlier, most of the international debate about climate change has been about national duties. Yet the largest source of climate change is people who use more than their fair share of fossil fuel or cause deforestation. Given the magnitude of the emissions reductions needed worldwide to prevent potentially catastrophic climate change, the world is unlikely to make the huge reductions necessary to prevent dangerous warming unless all sub-national governments, organizations, and businesses, and individuals accept their moral responsibility to reduce emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions. This chapter will argue, following Harris, that responsibilities are clear for sub-national governments and other sub-national entities to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions, both in developed and developing countries. However, for the most part there is little visible public discussion in many high-emitting countries, including the United States, about the obligations of entities other than national governments, to reduce the threat of climate change, and an even lesser attention to the obligations of entities below the national level in developing countries. At the international level, there is widespread recognition that many developing countries have currently little or no obligation to reduce their emissions as a matter of justice because their per capita and historical emissions are so low compared to the most developed countries, coupled with the understanding that desperately poor societies may need to increase their current use of fossil fuel to escape grinding poverty. With only 20 percent of the world’s population, the developed countries have produced 75  percent of the world’s historical emissions, benefiting economically as a consequence (Speth 2008: 280). The United States alone, with 5 percent of the world’s population, produces 25 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases, and per capita emissions of greenhouse gas in the United States in the early 21st century are roughly ten times the global average (Harris 2010: 122). Because of this most literature on climate change has overlooked the responsibility of high-emitting individuals in developing countries (Harris 2010: 122). International negotiations, quite correctly, initially focused on the obligations of developed and developing nations, not entities within nations. Since then, the 35-year climate change debate has largely been about the duties of nation states. Since little progress has been made on this front, the international debate about climate change has largely been stuck on national obligations without ever moving to the obligations of sub-national entities. Not all sub-national entities during this time have refused to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There have been regional governments, municipalities, businesses, organizations, and individuals that have taken serious steps to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Many of these entities have conducted greenhouse gas inventories to calculate their carbon footprint and taken a variety of steps to set and meet greenhouse gas emissions targets. Anecdotally, for the most part, however,



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emissions reductions targets of these sub-national entities, particularly for short- to medium-term emissions targets, have been based upon economic feasibility, not moral obligation. There has been a small minority of individuals and organizations including colleges, universities, and churches in high-emitting countries like the United States, as well as in Europe, that have set targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions; however, these entities are a very small proportion of the population. For the most part, in developed countries, there has been little discussion of the obligations of entities below the national level to reduce their carbon footprint. Although the numbers of sub-national entities conducting greenhouse reductions programs have increased globally every year, most of the world’s sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals are not engaged in serious activities for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. In the United States and many other nations, large greenhouse gas-emitting automobiles and trucks, gigantic high energy consuming homes, stores and bars filled with dozens of televisions all turned on, and many other examples of wasted energy are everywhere. The following chart demonstrates that most of the energy produced in the United States is non-productive, wasted energy

Figure 8.1 US Energy Flows Source: Lawrence Livermore (2002)

198  Priority Ethical Issues In fact, a strong case can be made that the undeniable focus on national responsibility in international, and even national, debates about climate change has been a distraction from placing needed and justified attention on the obligations of entities below the national level to reduce the threat of climate change. Also, if the world is going to solve the problem of climate change, the international community needs to recognize that hundreds of millions of affluent (that is middle and upper class) people now live in developing countries and that they have the power to consume as much as people in developed countries (Harris 2010: 126). There are now millions of organizations and individuals in developing countries that are buying high-consuming automobiles, houses, and appliances that use energy at levels much greater than necessary to meet basic needs. Individuals are purchasing large mansions and limousines in some of the poorest countries, and, in so doing, are without doubt greatly exceeding their fair share of safe global emissions. Yet rich high-emitting people, particularly in developing states, have escaped moral scrutiny (Harris 2010:  7). This is despite the fact that a huge amount of energy—the source of greenhouse gas emissions—is wasted by sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals that could be eliminated not only at low cost, but, in some cases, with monetary savings. Although a strong case can be made that many poor nations may continue to increase national emissions without exceeding their fair share of safe global emissions, this is not necessarily true of businesses, organizations, and individuals in developing countries. Yet there is relatively little discussion about the obligations of sub-national entities in developing countries around the world. In fact, in many places, climate change is seen as a problem caused by wealthy, developed nations, rather than by high-emitting sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals. As Paul Harris points out, there is a very sizable North in the global South, with the new consumers in developing countries constituting a “major consumer force” in the global economy (Harris 2010:  131). The more affluent people in countries like Brazil, Mexico, India, China, and Russia, use about as much energy and materials as their counterparts in the industrialized world (Sachs 2002: 19–20). We need to recognize that hundreds of millions of affluent (that is middle and upper class) people now live in developing countries and they have the power to consume as much as, or sometimes more than, people in developed countries (Sachs and Santarius 2007: 67–8). The debate about climate change at the international level often is framed as a conflict between the rich Northern countries versus the poor Southern countries. But these categories are very misleading. As Sachs says: .

[T]he conventional North-South distinction obscures the fact that the dividing line in today’s world, if there is any, is not primarily running between Northern and Southern societies, but right across all of these societies. The



Obligations of Organizations  199 major rift appears to be between the globalized rich and the localized poor. The North-South divide, instead of separating nations, cuts through each society, albeit in different configurations. It separates the global consumer class on the one side, from the social majority outside the global circuits, on the other. (Sachs 2002: 20)

In international negotiations, developing country governments rightfully focus on unjust luxury emissions of rich countries versus survival emissions of poor people in poor countries (Harris 2010:151). Yet ethical obligations of individuals and organizations exist regardless of country. Consequently, fat cats in Shanghai have just as much of an ethical obligation to reduce their unfair emissions as do fat cats in London (Harris 2010:151). The lack of a more widespread discussion of obligations of sub-national entities in climate change programs is not only to be expected given the strong focus on national obligations in the last several decades. There have been considerable efforts often funded by fossil fuel interests to undermine the notion that anyone has obligations to reduce climate change’s threat (see Chapter 4). In fact, television commercials, financed by fossil fuel interests, can be seen in developed countries, which encourage people to consume high levels of fossil fuel. These commercials always fail to acknowledge that individuals have duties, responsibilities, and obligations to others to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to their fair share of safe global emission (Brown 2010d). As we have seen in Chapter 3, cost arguments against climate change policies are frequently being made that give the impression that there is no obligation of anyone to reduce their carbon footprint if it costs too much to reduce emissions. In fact, it would appear that at least some people in developed nations believe that decisions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions should be made on the basis of cost alone regardless of whether people or governments have duties, responsibilities, and obligations to others to reduce their emissions (Brown 2010b). Given that many people in some developed countries are not convinced that climate change is a real problem, and that, as we have seen throughout this book, there has been a well-financed, well-organized disinformation campaign to convince people that climate change is not a threat, it is not surprising that there is not a large, well-organized campaign in many developed countries to encourage individuals to lower their carbon footprint. And so, the failure of subnational entities to reduce their carbon footprint is also, likely, a byproduct of the 35-year debate on climate change described throughout this book. As we have seen, under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), nations are duty-holders and, as such, have responsibilities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions within their jurisdiction to their fair share of safe global emissions as quickly as possible. This chapter now examines more rigorously the ethical responsibilities of sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals.

200  Priority Ethical Issues

Ethical Duties of Regional and Local Governments, Organizations, Businesses, and Individuals In Chapter 3 we saw that all major ethical systems hold that people have obligations not to harm others, regardless of where they are located around the world. That is, utilitarian, rights-based theories, and justice-based ethical theories hold that humans have duties to others not to do great harm. Different ethical theories, as we shall see, might reach different conclusions about how duties should be allocated among people who are causing great harm to others; but none would deny the responsibility of all people to acknowledge their obligations to all human beings, no matter where they are located. We have also discussed that high-emitting nations and people make ethically flawed claims if they argue that they have no responsibilities, obligations, and duties to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions. Such claims are ethically unsupportable because no person or nation has a right either to harm others as a means to achieve their economic health or to endanger others’ life, health, or security for self-interested reasons (see Chapter 3). Because individuals have duties to do no great harm to others, sub-national governments have duties because these governments are the locus for creating policies that achieve the duties and responsibilities of their citizens. For this reason, both the governments themselves have duties to reduce emissions under their control to their fair share of safe global emissions; and citizens have duties to do all in their power to assure that their governments reduce emissions within their jurisdictions to levels required by distributive justice because: (a) governments in a democracy can be understood to be a means of implementing the collective responsibilities of their citizens, and (b) individuals also have responsibilities to not harm others. Although some philosophers have made arguments that individuals only have moral responsibilities to members of their communities and, therefore, not people outside of their community, this “communitarian” understanding of ethical obligations is very difficult to justify, particularly in cases like climate change where one can demonstrate that individuals are responsible causally for catastrophic harm to others outside their community. As Harris has argued, climate change is a problem about which only a “cosmopolitan” ethic makes sense (Harris 2010). A “cosmopolitan” ethic holds that all people are responsible to all other people to prevent harm to them regardless of where they live. Our moral duty to help protect people from harm in whose production we are responsible is more stringent than our moral duty to help protect people from harm in whose production we are not materially involved (Pogge 2005). This is not to say that people have no duty to help people who are suffering from causes not attributable to them. Peter Singer has argued that if it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without sacrificing something that is morally significant, we have a duty to do it (Singer 1972: 40).



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For example, according to Singer, because we are able to do so, we ought to prevent the starvation of thousands of people outside our country. And so, a case can be made that even if there were no causally based responsibility for people to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, they should as matter of ethics do so, if they are able to. In the case of climate change the causal connection between high emitters and human suffering of others makes duties, obligations, and responsibilities unequivocal. For similar reasons, if people have duties and responsibilities to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions, so do businesses and organizations because they can be understood to be institutions controlled by people who have duties and responsibilities to others. One objection frequently heard to claims that businesses have obligations for doing the right thing in the world is that businesses’ only purpose is profits, and subsequently, they have no social responsibility. Yet, although respectable arguments can be made that businesses have no responsibility for benevolent social goals such as charity, or matters about which there is no causal relationship between their activities and harms to others, climate change is a problem that creates direct responsibility because high emitters are causing harm to others. Although businesses may have limited social duties for some problems, it is the causal connection between emitters and victims of climate change that makes it a clear matter of justice to demand action from the businesses. Businesses routinely make decisions about activities that emit greenhouse gases and, therefore, they can control their greenhouse gas emissions. For this reason, they have responsibility for their greenhouse gas emissions. Because regional and local governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals are responsible for greenhouse gas emissions that have caused, and will continue to cause, harm to others, all have responsibilities to limit their harmful emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions without regard to whether their nation has acted. But, as was the case for nations (see Chapter 6), different theories of distributive justice would reach different conclusions about quantifying each entity’s fair share of safe global emissions. One interpretation of Gardiner’s Perfect Moral Storm, which was discussed in the first chapter as one of the motivating influences in writing this book, is that individuals, in particular, do not respond to their moral obligations for climate change because certain features of climate change encourage moral corruption. One should not completely deny the potential force of moral corruption as an explanation for the lack of widespread recognition of individuals that they have ethical responsibilities to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. However, we would note that the almost complete absence of any discussion of individual responsibility in the 35-year-long public debate points to other causes of the failure of the public recognition of individual obligation for climate change. We will discuss these additional causes in the last two chapters of this book.

202  Priority Ethical Issues

Allocating Responsibilities Among Sub-national Governments, Organizations, Businesses and Individuals Quantitative Calculation of Fairness for Individuals As we have seen, justice, at the very minimum, requires anyone causing serious harms to others to limit their behavior to levels that, in combination with levels from others, no longer cause harm to others where the magnitude of the levels of reductions for each emitter are guided by principles of distributive justice. As discussed, distributive justice theories require that people shoulder burdens equally unless there are morally relevant criteria for being treated differently. For this reason, sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals that cannot make the case that their emission levels are justified by morally relevant criteria are, as a matter of justice, exceeding their fair share of safe global greenhouse gas emissions and have an immediate duty to reduce their emission to their fair share of safe global emissions. Although different theories of distributive justice could lead to different quantitative allocations of responsibility for individuals, it is safe to say that most individuals in developed nations vastly exceed any conceivably just global allocation of safe greenhouse gas emissions. This is because, as was the case for national governments, some high-emitting groups and individuals cannot reasonably argue that they are not currently far exceeding their fair share of safe global emissions in light of: (a) their emission levels are very high compared to others on a per capita basis, (b) huge, in fact hard-to-imagine, reductions in emissions from existing emission levels are necessary to achieve safe atmospheric greenhouse gas stabilization levels, and (c) climate change damages to some people, not to mention plants, animals, and ecological systems, are already occurring. Under these facts, it is simply inconceivable that those sub-national governments, businesses, organizations, and individuals, which are emitting higher levels of greenhouse gases compared to others, are not exceeding their fair share of safe global emissions given the enormity of reductions that are needed globally to return total global emissions to non-harming levels. One might ask how an individual’s obligations can be quantified. At this point several valid competing ethically supportable formulas should be considered. Any person’s individual responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions could be based upon: (a) equal per capita shares, (b) per capita shares adjusted by historical emissions considerations, (d) per capita shares adjusted by other distributive justice considerations, and (d) zero carbon emissions obligations. Equal Per Capita Share As we have seen, distributive justice would require that burdens to reduce harms should be divided equally unless another allocation can be justified on morally



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relevant grounds. And so, equal per capita emissions for all humans need not be the only ethically defensible allocation formula, but it is certainly a helpful way of thinking about individual responsibility at least initially. The use of equal per capita shares as a guide to individual responsibility for future emissions is particularly compelling, because this formula assumes that each individual has an equal right to use the atmosphere to dispose of CO2. The following are per capita CO2 emissions for different countries from burning fossil fuels:   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9 10

Australia: 19.6mt (metric tonnes) United States: 17.7mt Russia: 11.2mt Germany: 9.3mt UK: 8.4mt China: 5.8mt World average: 4.5mt India: 1.4mt Africa average: 1.1mt Chad: 0.03mt

(Guardian 2011)

Thus, if the world per capita emissions average is 4.5mt, and if the world must reduce current emissions by 80 percent by 2050 to prevent dangerous climate change, a case can be made that the global per capita goal should be 0.9mt per person (or 4.5mt per capital, reduced by 80  percent). This would make a 95 percent US reduction from current per capita levels by 2050. Because mainstream scientists believe that to achieve safe global emissions levels, the world must reduce total existing global emissions by 25 percent to 40 percent by 2020, as discussed in Chapters 5 and 6, a case can be made that the global per capita goal for 2020 should be 3.38mt per person (4.5mt reduced by 25 percent). And so, a strong ethical case can be made that any individual’s responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions any place in the world should be, at the very minimum: (a) 3.38mt per person (4.5mt reduced by 35 percent) by 2020, (b) 0.9mt per person (4.5mt reduced by 80 percent) by 2050. Per Capita Shares Adjusted by Historical Emissions Considerations Yet the above individual targets would only equalize on per capita emissions in the future. It does not take into consideration any reductions based upon obligations for historical emissions or for additional consumption-caused emissions in other places. Here are some comparative data for historical emissions from 1850 until 2007:

204  Priority Ethical Issues   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9 10

US: 339,174 MT (million tonnes) or 28.8% China: 105,915 MT or 9.0% Russia: 94,679 MT or 8.0% Germany: 81,194.5 MT or 6.9% UK: 68,763 MT or 5.8% Japan: 45,629 MT or 3.87% France: 32,667 MT or 2.77% India: 28,824 MT or 2.44% Canada: 25,716 MT or 2.2% Ukraine: 25,431 MT or 2.2%

(Guardian 2011)

If these figures are translated to historical emissions per person, the following amounts could be attributed to different countries.   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9 10

Luxembourg: 1,429mt UK: 1,127mt US: 1,126mt Belgium: 1,026mt Czech Republic: 1,006mt Germany: 987mt Estonia: 877mt Canada: 780mt Kazakhstan: 682mt Russia: 666mt

(Guardian 2011)

A case can, therefore, be made that the 0.9mt per person goal should be reduced further for those sub-national entities that have been historically high emitters of greenhouse gases. Exactly how these per capita historical emissions should be allocated quantitatively raises several thorny questions including, among others, the issues about when historical responsibility should be triggered (discussed in Chapter 7). Another issue relevant to the quantification of responsibility for past emissions is whether knowledge about the potential harms of climate change is relevant to quantifying individual responsibility for prior emissions (Chapter 7). Although determining precisely what any individual’s ethically based greenhouse gas emission target should be is complex due to the complicating factor of responsibility for historical emissions and difficulties in determining when that responsibility should be triggered, for purposes of giving individuals a sense of the magnitude of the emissions reduction challenge, we can say without fear of contradiction, that an individual goal of 3.36mt per person by 2020 is the highest defensible goal that can be justified for high-emitting individuals. But this number can be challenged as still being unfair to poor people on a variety of grounds.



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Given that responsibility for past emissions is arguably a factor that should be considered in determining fair allocations, and given that people in most developed countries have historically emitted much higher levels than people in developing countries, it is quite clear that the vast majority of regional and local governments, organizations, and businesses in developed countries may not reasonably argue that they are not far exceeding their fair share of safe global emissions even before taking responsibility for historic greenhouse gas emissions. An obligation to reduce one’s emissions to something approaching equal per capita emissions virtually guarantees that the vast majority of high-emitting sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals are far exceeding their fair share of safe global emissions. If historic responsibility is also considered in defining individual obligations for carbon emissions, almost all individuals in developed countries would need to decrease their emissions targets even further. And so, the above are ways of considering any individual’s very minimum responsibility quantitatively. This is a helpful way in thinking about the responsibility of sub-national governments who have some responsibility for the emissions of their citizens. A case can be made that sub-national governments should think about their responsibility as comprising total emissions from all sources within their jurisdiction and that the sub-national governments could begin to approximate its targets for reducing emissions using a per capita benchmark. Benefiting the Poorest In Chapter 6 we saw that several theories of distributive justice would support alternatives to per capita allocations. These include Rawlsian based allocations that would give priority to the least well off. One could argue, following Rawls, that any theory of individual responsibility based solely on per capita considerations is ethically problematic because poor people need to use more fossil fuels than richer people to alleviate grinding poverty. Following a Rawlsian ethical sensibility, any individual’s carbon target would be adjusted in light of income. If this were the case, for instance, the 0.9mt per person by 2050 that would apply to all individuals on a strictly per capita basis might be understood to be raised for incomes below a certain amount, such as $7,500 per year, and decreased below that figure. Net Zero Carbon Emissions As we have seen throughout this book, climate change will put into jeopardy the very lives, health, and indispensable natural resources upon which lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world depend, while most gravely threatening the poorest people who are also usually the most vulnerable. And so, climate change is a threat to the minimum material conditions for human life and it is interference with the dignity of human life that is usually the predicate

206  Priority Ethical Issues for recognizing that human rights have been violated. In fact, climate change is currently threatening the very existence of nations like the Maldives and Kiribati. These facts demonstrate that excess greenhouse gas emissions violate basic human rights. And so, an ethical case can be made that all entities have a duty to reduce their emissions to the maximum extent practical, even if they are emitting at levels consistent with some quantitatively determined goals calculated on the basis of some theory of distributive and retributive justice. In other words, a strong ethical case can be made that entities and individuals have duties to reduce their emissions as much as possible, even if they are complying with an allocation that is based upon a distributively just quantitative allocation. This conclusion also draws from the fact that poor people around the world are already experiencing climate change harms in the form of droughts, floods, vector-borne and other diseases and thermal lags in the oceans virtually guarantee additional warming in the next century even if global emissions are not increased. If climate change violates human rights, a strong argument can be made that anyone who has the ability to restore human rights has the duty to do so (O’Neill 1989: 224). Basic human rights theories require actors to avoid depriving others of their human rights and to aid those who have been deprived of their rights (Harris 2010:  46). For this reason, a strong case can be made that those subnational governments, organizations, businesses and individuals have a duty to go beyond any quantitative greenhouse gas allocation developed in accordance with theories of distributive and retributive justice, if they have the ability to do so, particularly when they may do so without creating great harm to themselves. For this reason, a case can be made that ethics requires that sub-national, organizations, businesses, and individuals not only meet fair reduction targets established quantitatively, but also, whatever levels of potential emissions reductions that are feasible. In this regard, the unnecessary consumption of fossil fuel is particularly ethically problematic given that it is contributing to such catastrophic harm to others. For instance, as Harris says, it is hardly right to spew carbon dioxide while driving sporty cars for the thrill of it, if so doing will contribute to the adverse effects of climate change (Harris 2010: 49). It may be fairer to have the few “suffer” fewer luxuries to save the planet on which all depend for health and survival (Harris 2010: 49). In fulfilling the responsibility to reduce emissions where feasible, a case can be made that this duty is strongest where energy is being used for non-essential, non-subsistence needs. Following the argument made by philosopher Henry Shue, a strong ethical claim can be made that we have a duty to eliminate emissions generated for “luxury” uses as distinguished from emissions generated to meet “subsistence” needs (Shue 1980). In other words, there is a particularly strong ethical responsibility to reduce energy consumptions from non-essential, wasteful activities. Following this line of reasoning, all people have a particularly strong duty to eliminate energy use that serves no purpose, and particularly,



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when energy is wasted. Next in order of priority, is the duty to eliminate energy use for diversionary amusement or other trivial pursuits. If these duties were taken seriously, we should choose the option that consumes the least energy when we have a reasonable ability to do so. This being so, all individuals have a duty to reduce their carbon emissions to zero if they can do this without harm to themselves. Sub-national Governments, Organizations, and Businesses Sub-national and local governments often exercise authority over human activities that affect greenhouse gas emissions. For instance, regional and local governments often regulate land use and building codes, administer transportation planning, and provide for waste disposal, among other things, which have a direct affect on per capita emissions of people within their jurisdiction. There is a strong ethical case that sub-national governments have a responsibility to assure that citizens within their jurisdiction do not harm others. Therefore, sub-national governments should set greenhouse gas emissions targets that contribute to achieving safe global atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions. Many states, provincial, regional, and local governments around the world have acknowledged this responsibility and completed greenhouse gas inventories, developed emissions reduction plans, and set emissions reduction targets. Some sub-national governments have set ambitious greenhouse gas targets that are consistent with global greenhouse gas emissions reductions needs. For instance California has set a reduction target of 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 (Revkin 2011). However, most sub-national governments around the world have set no targets. A strong ethical argument can be made that sub-national governments should adopt greenhouse gas emissions targets because they have the authority and ability to do so. In setting emissions reductions targets sub-national governments should be guided by the issues that nations need to consider in accepting fair allocations of emissions reductions discussed in Chapter 6. Quantifying the greenhouse gas emissions, ethically based reduction targets of organizations and businesses requires consideration of issues that cannot be resolved by looking primarily at the per capita considerations, which are relevant to government emissions reduction targets. Although quantifying targets for organizations and businesses raises challenging issues, it can be said that organizations and businesses also have a duty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible. Because national per capita emission totals include all emissions from within the nation, including emissions from organizations and businesses, to some extent per capita individual emission targets already account for emissions coming from organizations and businesses. Yet, because organizations and businesses have control over greenhouse gas emissions attributable to their activities, they clearly have a duty to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to the maximum extent feasible, because climate change harms are

208  Priority Ethical Issues already occurring. At the very least, organizations and businesses should reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to the maximum extent feasible. It is a responsibility of national governments to assure that emissions of all organizations and businesses within their jurisdiction combined with all other emissions achieve national greenhouse gas allocation targets. Thus, nations must assure that all greenhouse gas emissions from sub-national governments, organizations, and businesses do not exceed national greenhouse gas emissions targets. Given the comparatively large per capita and historical emissions in developed countries and the need to make hard-to-imagine large reductions from existing global greenhouse gas emissions levels to prevent catastrophic climate change, it is extremely unlikely that regional and local governments, organizations, or businesses in developed countries can make any serious argument that they are not currently emitting greenhouse gases in excess of their fair share of safe global emissions. However, there may be some entities and people in developed countries that are emitting very small amounts of greenhouse gases who can make a credible argument that they are already emitting at levels below their fair share of safe global emissions. Yet, since the world averages 4.5mt CO2 of per capita emissions while countries like the United States are emitting 19mt CO2 per capita, and the world must reduce per capita emissions to less than 2.0mt CO2 per capita to prevent dangerous climate change by 2050, it is extremely unlikely that most groups or people in developed countries can make a minimally acceptable argument that they are already below their fair share of safe global emissions. There are also, surely, regional and local governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals in developing countries that are exceeding their fair share of safe global emissions because wealth differences in many developing countries are great, and there are wealthy and middle classes in most countries, even in countries where the vast majority of the people are very poor. Those groups and individuals in developing countries who are exceeding their fair share of safe global emissions have a duty to reduce them to levels required by retributive and distributive justice, notwithstanding that they are in developing countries. An examination of the ethical obligations of sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals in developed and developing countries may not lead to a clear unambiguous consensus of what ethics requires quantitatively of them in regard to greenhouse gas emissions levels. However, it clearly leads to strong, universal ethical condemnation of status quo emissions levels for many sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals. Given this consensus, all groups and individuals have a burden of demonstrating what justice would require of them, mindful that, as a starting point, all human beings should be entitled to equal per capita shares of safe emissions unless some higher level can be justified on moral grounds.



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National Targets’ Impacts on the Obligations of Domestic Groups and Individuals? Because nations have the authority and responsibility to allocate the responsibility of national greenhouse gas emissions among local and regional governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals within the nation, national governments can create climate change obligations for groups and individuals. If nations create emissions targets in line with their fair share of safe global emissions, and, if sub-national entities comply with these nationally established targets, these entities could make an ethically respectable argument that they are complying with their ethical obligations. In other words, higher-level governments can affect the climate change obligations of lower-level governments, groups, and individuals. Once a national government assigns its constituents the responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to levels sufficient to achieve a national target; that is, a fair share of safe global emissions, the sub-national entities may argue that they have satisfied their duty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, since nations also have a responsibility to allocate emissions to sub-national entities in conformity with principles of distributive justice, an ethical case can be made that sub-national entities should do more if they receive preferential allocations which are not fair to others. Also, as we have seen above, if sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals can reduce their emissions beyond any nationally determined target at no cost or harm to themselves, a case can be made that they have a duty to do this, notwithstanding that a target has been assigned to them by the national government. Without doubt, in the absence of a national allocation, groups and individuals within nations have a duty to limit their greenhouse gas emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions despite legitimate differences about what fairness requires. Principles of distributive justice require that differences in allocations from equal per capita shares to use the atmosphere be justified on the basis of morally relevant criteria. Therefore, at a minimum, sub-national governments and groups should be required to explain how their emissions levels are just, if they assert that their emissions are already below what justice requires of them. Although groups and individuals have respectable ethical arguments to make that they are complying with their ethical duties if they are meeting nationally imposed obligations, ethical arguments remain that they should do more if: (a) the national target does require that the entity move as quickly as possible to reduce the nation’s emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions, or (b) the group or individual could do more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without imposing great hardship on itself because they are wasting energy on unnecessary activities. As we have seen, this is because ethical arguments can be made that those who have the ability to reduce the great suffering of others, have an obligation to do so even if they are complying with a target assigned to them by governments.

210  Priority Ethical Issues

Conclusion: Navigating the Perfect Moral Storm: Obligations of Sub-national Governments, Organizations, Businesses, and Individuals This chapter has demonstrated that sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals have strong, clear duties to reduce their emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions at a minimum. Yet it is not always possible to say unambiguously quantitatively what the actual fair level of emissions is for any of these entities because we must acknowledge that different principles of distributive and retributive justice may lead to different conclusions about what justice requires. But this inability to specify categorically what perfect justice requires does not prevent ethical criticism of those sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals who deny that they have duties to act to reduce their emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions. Therefore, the following principles can be cited as guides to navigating the perfect moral storm of climate change in regard to the obligations of sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals both in developing and developed countries. Duties to Reduce Emissions • • • • •

•

Sub-national governments, organizations, businesses and individuals have obligations, and duties to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions. It is highly likely that most sub-national governments, organizations, businesses and individuals in developed nations are not far exceeding their fair share of safe global emissions. This is also true of high-emitting entities in developing countries. Therefore, high-emitting organizations, businesses, and individuals in developing countries have duties to reduce their emissions. The obligations of sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions should be determined by principles of distributive and retributive justice. For individuals or sub-national governments, principles of distributive justice require that targets should be set, at minimum, on the basis of equal per capita emissions levels necessary to prevent dangerous climate change or other relevant morally acceptable considerations that would justify moving away from global per capita allocations. For reasons discussed in Chapters 3 and 4, high cost arguments alone or scientific uncertainty arguments made by sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals to justify non-action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions do not pass ethical scrutiny.



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The Duty to Go Beyond Fair Allocations •

Those sub-national, organizations, businesses, and individuals that can achieve additional greenhouse gas emissions through the reduction of unnecessary or luxury activities that release greenhouse gases have a duty to do so.

Chapter 9

Independent Responsibility to Act

Introduction As we saw in the early part of this book, one frequent argument against adopting climate change policies has been based on the idea that no nation should put itself in a disadvantageous economic position by adopting expensive climate change policies while other nations, particularly those with competitive economies, do not. In the United States, proponents of this argument usually point to the economic advantage that China or India will have if the United States adopts legislation to limit greenhouse gas emissions and China or India fail to do so. Similar arguments have been made in other countries. For instance, one observer of the climate change debate in Australia has said: “Generally, it is my view that we [Australia] should be willing to reconsider the 5% commitment if there is little sign of credible, comprehensive, global agreement” (Ergas 2011). In 2008, Japan also said that it will not negotiate new targets on CO2 emissions until it sees what the new US President has to offer on climate change (Harrabin 2008). In fact, many countries around the world have been waiting for the United States before, themselves, committing to serious domestic reductions (Brown 2011). Yet this argument has been particularly frequent in the United States. For three decades in the United States, opponents of climate change policies have argued that the United States should not reduce its greenhouse gas emissions unless other nations committed to do the same. In 2009, before COP–15 in Copenhagen, those opposing climate change legislation in the United States argued that it would be unfair to the United States if it was bound to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and China was not required to do the same. Therefore, many Americans opposed the United States committing to greenhouse gas reduction targets (Brown 2010a). A decade earlier, when the Kyoto Agreement was under consideration in the United States, opponents of the Kyoto Protocol frequently ran TV commercials that argued that the Kyoto Protocol was unfair to the United States because China was excluded from emissions limitations (Brown 2002). For several decades these arguments have often been made in the United States without critical public comment, even though, as we have seen, the United States



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committed itself to take the first steps to reduce emissions along with other developed countries under the UNFCCC (UN 1992a: Art 3). As we saw in Chapter 2, the Kyoto Protocol was opposed by the US Congress on the grounds that China did not have enforceable greenhouse gas reduction targets. This argument was largely responsible for the United States’ failure to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and was eventually behind the second President Bush’s announcement that the United States was pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol. Similarly, for domestic political reasons, almost a decade later in 2009 in Copenhagen, moving China on climate change was the key to the weakness of the US position relative to other developed nations regarding its unwillingness to make significant greenhouse gas reduction commitments, even under the more sympathetic Obama administration (Brown 2010a). Some US Senators, including several Democrats—a political party that has been more sympathetic to the need to reduce greenhouse gas emission than the Republican Party—indicated in 2009 that they would oppose US federal legislation on climate change that does not make the US reduction commitments contingent on the action of other nations (Brown, S. 2009). More specifically, ten Democratic US Senators said in a letter to President Obama in 2009 that they would oppose US climate legislation that does not require other countries to make emissions reductions in their manufacturing sector commensurate with US reductions (US Senators 2009). When President Barack Obama was elected the US President in 2008, hopes could be heard around the world that the United States would begin to take its global climate change responsibilities seriously. However, although Obama’s policies were more supportive of US action on climate change than his predecessor, the second George Bush, the United States has not been able to get climate change legislation through the US Congress. This is because strong political resistance has continued to base its opposition on excessive cost to the United States, scientific uncertainty, and the unfairness of any agreement that did not have enforceable emissions reduction targets for China and India. Even the Obama administration has sometimes appeared to believe it need not make greenhouse gas reduction commitments until some others commit, including India and China. In January 2009, the New York Times reported on these issues split between two camps of the Obama team (Broder 2009). One camp, led by Carol Browner, supported strong caps on emissions. The other, led by Lawrence Summers, supported an economic escape clause if caps become too expensive, while requiring developing nations to agree to emissions limits apparently as a precondition to strong US greenhouse gas emissions caps (Broder 2009). The position on climate change attributed to Summers by the Times makes sense if one sees US climate change policy as strictly a matter of national interest. Mr. Summers, according to the New York Times, expressed a belief that developing nations must also adhere to carbon limits, or manufacturing jobs will migrate to countries without them. One could conclude that at least some in the Obama administration argued that the US need not act to reduce its emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions unless other nations commit to equivalent action.

214  Priority Ethical Issues However, if one takes seriously the idea that policy on climate change is not just a matter of national interest but also a fulfillment of global ethical responsibilities, then Summers’ position is seriously ethically flawed for reasons discussed in this chapter. Similar arguments claiming that there is no duty to act to reduce the threat of climate change until others act have been frequently made below the national level at least in the United States. This chapter examines whether the commonly used justification for delaying or minimizing climate change action on the basis that other nations, sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, or individuals have not acted is ethically justified.

The Ethics of a Nation Making Domestic Greenhouse Gas Reductions Commitments Contingent upon Other Nations Doing the Same The Duty to Act As we have explained in Chapter 3, all nations that are exceeding their fair share of safe global emissions have a duty to immediately reduce their emissions to their fair share without regard to national interest alone. This is because, as we have seen, climate change obligations are a matter of global justice, not only self-interest, and justice requires all nations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to levels that are distributively just. Chapter 6 expanded different ethical theories, which lead to different conclusions about what justice requires in determining any nation’s fair share of safe global emissions. But all nations have a duty to others to reduce their emissions to their fair share. The duty to cease activities that harm others is not diminished if others, who are contributing to the harm, are unwilling to cease their harmful behavior. This is so because no nation or person has a right to continue destructive behavior on the basis that others who are contributing to the damage have not ceased their destructive behavior. For example, it would be absurd for one of two factories that are poisoning people downstream by their discharges of toxic substances to argue that it has no obligation to reduce toxic discharges until the other factory agrees to reduce its toxic discharges. One of two persons beating up an innocent victim cannot defend his actions on the basis that he had no duty to stop the beating as long as the other person continued to assault the victim. Yet, climate change is an analogous problem because some very high-emitting countries are largely causing great harm to very low-emitting, poor countries that can do little to protect themselves from the great harm. And so, those poor nations who are the most vulnerable victims of climate change are appropriately dismissive of arguments from high-emitting countries that justify their unwillingness to change the status quo on the basis that other high-emitting countries have not reduced their emissions.



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And so, if some nations are not willing to reduce their emissions to levels consistent with what justice requires of them, no nation, including the United States, can refuse to reduce its emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions levels on the basis that others will not act. The duty that nations have to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions is terminated only when they are below levels required by fair global allocations, which in total will prevent dangerous climate change. Although, as we have seen in the last chapter, even in this case an argument can be made that any nation or sub-national entity that could reduce emissions further, without great harm to itself, should do so to avoid catastrophic harm to others. Without doubt, as a matter of ethics, all nations, at a minimum, have a duty to keep greenhouse gas emissions below their fair share, independent of what other nations are doing. This is a strong unequivocal ethical duty, not a policy option. Although, what fairness requires in determining specific national greenhouse gas allocations is a matter about which ethical theories might reach different conclusions. As we have seen in Chapter 6, only allocations that are based upon morally supportable criteria pass ethical scrutiny. Neither the United States nor any developed country, or for that matter any high-emitting developing country, is able to claim that it is already below its fair share of safe global emissions (see Chapter 6). However, some low-emitting developing countries can make a credible case that their current emissions levels are still below their fair share of safe global emissions. And so, although some poor nations might be able to make a credible case that their existing levels do not yet trigger immediate emissions reductions obligations, no developed country or high-emitting developing country may claim that their emissions are below levels that would be consistent with their obligations. This, as we have seen, is a matter of both international law and basic justice. Yet, those who argue that nations have no duty to reduce their emissions until others do the same are implicitly denying their duty to act as a matter of law and ethical responsibility. If one nation makes an argument that another, such as the United States, should not be required to adopt climate change policies because economic competitors, such as China, have not adopted climate change policies, this nation is implicitly claiming that no nation has a duty to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to its fair share until all other nations reduce their emissions. Yet, if this is so, no nation would need to reduce its emissions until the nation making this argument, such as the United States, does so. Following this logic, China or India would not be required to reduce their emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions until the United States does so. The absurdity of this position is clear because it completely undermines anyone’s duty to limit their greenhouse gas emissions. The Failure to Prevent Harm to Others The argument that no nation need adopt a climate change reduction target consistent with its fair share of safe global emissions until others do the same ignores the immense harm to others that climate change will inflict and is already

216  Priority Ethical Issues inflicting upon the world. An assumption of this argument is that national economic self-interest may be the sole basis for public policy on climate change. Implicit in this position is the notion that high-emitting nations do not have to consider the immense harms to others that their greenhouse gas emissions are already causing around the world, harms that are ominous signs of what may lie ahead. Some climate change impacts are already visible, particularly as we have seen in the Arctic region. In addition, many regions of the world, where climate models have predicted severe droughts, have recently experienced killer droughts causing unspeakable suffering. The head of the UN refugee agency said on 7 August 2011 that drought-ridden Somalia is the “worst humanitarian disaster” in the world, after meeting with refugees who endured unspeakable hardship to reach the world’s largest refugee camp (Kemenade 2011). The World Food Program estimated in August 2011 that 10 million people already needed humanitarian aid because of the Somalian drought, a disaster that overwhelmed the ability of international NGOs to provide food (UN World Food Program 2011). The UN’s refugee agency claimed that in August 2011, a refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya, was hosting more than 382,000 people, while thousands more were waiting at reception centers outside the camp (Kemenade 2011). Now, it is true that part of Somalia’s recent refugee problem has been caused by a dysfunctional government, but there is no denying that much of the conflict in the Horn of Africa has been triggered by drought, and that drought in Somalia has killed thousands of people. Parts of Somalia have not seen rain for three or four years and as a result cattle and crops have died. Climate change studies have predicted worsening drought for many parts of the world, not only Africa. One of these studies, by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), predicted a growing threat of severe and prolonged drought in coming decades for the United States and many other heavily populated countries (UCAR 2011). The UCAR study concludes that warming temperatures associated with climate change will likely create increasingly dry conditions across much of the globe in the next 30 years, possibly reaching a scale in some regions by the end of the century that has rarely, if ever, been observed in modern times (UCAR 2011). Other countries and continents that could face significant drying include: • • • • •

Much of Latin America, including large sections of Mexico and Brazil Regions bordering the Mediterranean Sea, which could become especially dry Large parts of Southwest Asia Most of Africa and Australia, with particularly dry conditions in regions of Africa Southeast Asia, including parts of China and neighboring countries (UCAR 2011).



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Drought, of course, is not the only climate-related problem plaguing the world. In 2010, the world experienced killing floods in Pakistan, Australia, and China and disastrous heat waves in Russia that caused unprecedented widespread burning of Russian forests. In the first half of 2011, the world witnessed a great increase in the number of disastrous tornadoes in the United States, record floods along the Mississippi, devastating droughts in Texas, and the killer droughts in Africa. Now, one cannot say, of course, that human-induced climate change is the sole cause of these events, but rather that climate change makes these events more probable, and, that statistically extreme weather events are increasing in frequency just as the IPCC predicted. In this regard, the IPCC said in its Fourth Assessment: The number of heatwaves has increased and widespread increases have occurred in the numbers of warm nights. The extent of regions affected by droughts has also increased as precipitation over land has marginally decreased while evaporation has increased due to warmer conditions. Generally, numbers of heavy daily precipitation events that lead to flooding have increased, but not everywhere. Tropical storm and hurricane frequencies vary considerably from year to year, but evidence suggests substantial increases in intensity and duration since the 1970s. In the extra tropics, variations in tracks and intensity of storms reflect variations in major features of the atmospheric circulation, such as the North Atlantic Oscillation. (IPCC 2007c) Most skeptics argue that there have always been droughts and floods, freak weather, heatwaves, and temperature extremes, but what concerns most climate scientists and observers is that the extreme weather events are occurring more frequently, their intensity appears to be growing, and the trends all suggest long-term worsening as greenhouse gases steadily build in the atmosphere (Vidal 2011). If the consensus climate science view (identified in Chapter 4) is correct, greenhouse gas emissions from each nation, sub-national government, organization, and individual contribute to total atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration levels, which increase the amount of warming experienced, which increases the intensity of weather events, which increases the suffering of millions of people around the world and harms the ecological systems on which life depends. Each additional tonne of greenhouse gas emitted into the atmosphere makes the situation worse. Therefore, refusing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on the basis that others have not reduced their emissions makes the global tragedy the world is facing worse. Therefore, for a nation to not reduce its greenhouse gases because others have not done the same has consequences.

218  Priority Ethical Issues Ignoring the Benefits of Taking Action An argument that refusal to put limits on greenhouse gases is acceptable because of national self-interest ignores not only duties to others and makes suffering worse, but, it also ignores the benefits that could be generated by the adoption of programs to reduce harms. For this reason, this argument is like one half of a cost–benefit analysis (CBA), that is, it relies only on the cost side, while ignoring the value of harms avoided by taking action. As we have seen in Chapter 3, there are many serious ethical objections to the use of CBA as a prescriptive guide to climate change. Even so, in some cases, the proponents of CBA would require action if the benefits of taking action far outweigh the costs of reducing emissions. Thus, even as a matter of global economic efficiency—a deeply, ethically problematic guide to policy on climate change—an argument made only on the basis of increased cost alone fails if benefits from taking action exceed costs of doing so (see Chapter 3). Given that global climate change will affect agriculture, fishing, forestry, water availability, while harshly affecting human health, and causing widespread property devastation through floods, droughts, and intense storms, ignoring the economic benefits of taking action on climate change could be a cosmically tragic error. In fact, as we have seen, the potential harms that flow from human-induced climate are so potentially catastrophic but uncertain, that economic analyses of the value of harms avoided are likely to be so radically uncertain as to make conventional analysis practically useless (Jamieson 2010: 80–1). Yet, ignoring the benefits of taking action is not a solution to the problems entailed by the limits of quantification methods. This is because the failure to take action on a problem like climate change may very well impose economic losses far greater than those created by taking action. Sub-national Governments, Organizations, Businesses, and Individuals and the Duty to Take Independent Action It is common for states and regional governments to refuse to take action on environmental problems on the basis that industry will move to other states or regions that have more business-friendly environmental regulation. Businesses also, very frequently, lobby against environmental regulations at the state or regional level, on the grounds that competitors located in places without regulation will out-compete them if regulations are imposed by the state, regional, or local governments in which they are located. In almost all US states, anti-regulatory think tanks have been established funded by free-market philanthropic groups or corporations that oppose any regulation on business. At the state level in the United States, according to the State Policy Network, an organization that coordinates some of their activities, there are 58 right-wing think tanks in the US, at least one in every US state (SPN 2011). The mission of the State Policy Network is to support capacity building for



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America’s free-market, state-focused think tank community (SPN 2011). States also have state Chambers of Commerce that, like the US Chamber of Commerce, usually have lobbied against state-level climate change programs. Arguments against state-level regulation by these organizations almost always include claims that environmental regulation at the state level should be opposed because it will make state industries non-competitive with industries in other states or nations that do not have similar environmental regulation. And so, at the sub-national level, many oppose climate change regulations on the basis that others who they compete with are not regulated. As we have seen in the last chapter, sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals have duties to reduce their emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions. For this reason, these entities may not refuse to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions because other similar entities are not required to reduce their emissions. The reasoning for this conclusion is the same for the sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals as it is for nations. Namely, these entities have duties that trump self-interest: they may not harm others, and they may not ignore the benefits that taking action would cause.

Conclusion: Independent Responsibility of Emitters to Act The following strong, ethical conclusions can be made about the duty of nations, sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions despite the fact that others have not done so: •

•

•

Because nations have duties to reduce their emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions and these duties trump national self-interest, nations may not harm others on the basis of national interest and may not ignore the benefits to others of taking action. Sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals have a duty to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions even if other sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals have not done so. This is because these subnational entities have duties to reduce their emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions that trump self-interest; these entities may not harm others on the basis of self-interest and may not ignore the benefits to others of taking action. The failure of other nations, sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to their fair share is not a justification for others who emit greenhouse gases to reduce their emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions.

Part III

The Crucial Role of Ethics in Climate Change Policy Making

Chapter 10

Why has Ethics Failed to Achieve Traction?

Introduction As we have seen throughout this book, despite the undeniable fact that climate change raises many civilization-challenging ethical questions, for the most part ethical considerations have failed to affect climate change policy making, or appear in public debate about climate change issues. This chapter now examines the causes of the failure of ethical considerations to become influential in the 35-year climate change debate despite the obviousness of the claim that climate change raises profound civilization-challenging ethical questions. One of the obvious reasons for this failure (that we have seen in prior chapters) is that at what appear at first glance to be “value-neutral” discourses of science and economics have often framed debates about climate change policies. That is, the public debate about climate change has been largely focused on whether there is sufficient scientific evidence for being concerned about climate change, and whether the adoption of climate change policies will destroy jobs or harm the economy and therefore cannot be afforded. That there are deep ethical problems with these arguments has been the subject of Chapters 3 and 4 of this book. A common feature of these scientific and economic arguments waged in the public debates, is that they have been discussed as if these are “factual,” that is, “valueneutral” controversies. As we have seen, ethical problems with these arguments simply have not appeared in the public debate. Later ethical issues discussed in this book have been derived from other frequent arguments that have arisen in the 35-year debate including: • • • •

What should be the greenhouse gas atmospheric concentration goal of any global climate solution? (Chapter 5) What is any nation’s fair share of safe global greenhouse gas emissions? (Chapter 6) Who should pay for climate change damages or adaptations? (Chapter 7) Does each nation have independent responsibility to act? (Chapter 9)

224  The Crucial Role of Ethics An issue notable by its absence in the public debate is discussed in Chapter 8, namely, what are the responsibilities of sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals? We have seen that what is common about all of these issues is the lack of ethical reflection in the 35-year public climate change debate. Although it is true that there has been ethical reflection in a small but growing climate ethics literature, the ethical dimensions of climate change policy issues has largely been absent in the public policy debate. Nor have opponents to taking action on climate change been publicly confronted on some ethically abhorrent positions that they have pushed to prevent such action. And so, despite the fact that climate change poses obvious, important, and sometimes, although not always, deeply challenging ethical questions, for the most part ethics has been the crucial missing element in the national and international debate. It is a crucial missing element because ethical considerations, if taken seriously, are the indispensable justifications for taking climate change action. If ethical arguments against status quo behavior are absent, then there is an absence in the public debate of compelling reasons why status quo approaches to climate change are unacceptable. And as we have commented on before in this book, it is not that normative arguments are not already present in the debate; opponents of climate change policies are always giving reasons why action on climate change should not be taken. The problematic ethical assumptions of those opposing action on climate change are hidden in what appear to be “value-neutral” discourses of science and economics. For this reason, the widespread failure to examine the ethical dimensions of arguments against climate change policies can be understood to be a tragic failure. We now examine why ethics has failed to be influential in the 35-year debate about matters that raise such obvious civilization-challenging ethical questions. As discussed in Chapter 1 of this book, Stephen Gardiner has argued that the lack of ethical reflection on these issues is attributable to certain features of climate change that makes response to moral dimensions more difficult than other problems. Or, as Gardner characterizes this situation, why these features of climate change lead to a perfect moral storm (Gardiner 2011). Gardiner groups the features of climate change producing the moral storm into: (a) the global nature of the problem, (b) its intergenerational timescale on which climate change takes place, and, (c) the inadequacy of current theoretical models. These features of climate change not only make an ethical response more difficult, but according to Gardiner, they also enhance the potential for moral corruption about ethical obligations for climate change. Gardiner defines moral corruption as a state of mind that has been developed through rationalization that casts doubt about the validity and/or structure of moral claims. If people are morally corrupt, their sense of moral duty has been weakened or undermined by rationalization, and thus they follow inclinations to do things in their self-interest rather than acting in accord with moral responsibility. In short, Gardiner can be understood to claim that the failure of a sense of ethical responsibility to affect



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public policy formation stems from the difficulty of the ethical questions raised by climate change, a state of affairs that encourages moral corruption. Without denying many of Gardiner’s insights in the Perfect Moral Storm, we now examine why his analysis of the causes of the failure of ethics to motivate public policy is at least incomplete. Understanding the causes of ethics to penetrate climate change policy making, we will argue, gives some hope of making ethics more influential in climate change policy formation because each of these causes can be countered with strategies to navigate the perfect moral storm.

Why Ethics has Failed to Influence Climate Change Policy Formation There are at least six reasons why environmental ethics considerations have not been influential in environmental policy formation. They include: • • • • • •

The power of the climate change denial industry to frame climate change issues The dominance of “value-neutral” policy languages to frame policy issues The failure of higher education to train environmental professionals to spot ethical issues The failure of environmental ethics to focus on issue spotting in actual policy arguments The failure of civil society to ask ethical questions about policy matters The failure to join ethical arguments with social action.

The Power of the Climate Change Deniers to Frame Climate Change Issues At the top of the list of the causes for ethical considerations to be taken seriously in climate change policy formation is the well-financed, well-organized climate change disinformation campaign discussed in Chapter 4. This campaign has focused mostly on denying that climate change is a problem worth worrying about. If there is no serious problem caused by the human releases of greenhouse gases, then there is no need to consider ethical duties, responsibilities, and obligations. As we have seen, much of this opposition has been funded by fossil fuel interests, corporations, or free-market philanthropic organizations. The unrelenting claim of this opposition has been that either climate change policies will cause economic disaster, a matter discussed in Chapter 3, or that there is no scientific proof that climate change is a problem as discussed in Chapters 2 and 4. These claims have been not only tenaciously made; they have been repeated by mainstream media outlets. The ideological climate denial industry discussed in Chapter 4, has gone much farther than simply making bogus economic and scientific claims; they

226  The Crucial Role of Ethics have attempted to intimidate the scientists and journalists following the climate change debate. The climate denial machine has also hidden from the public the real parties in interest behind the bogus claims by creating front groups with names that hide the sources of funding. As we have seen, these front groups have also organized letters-to-the-editor campaigns in newspapers to make it appear as if there was a widespread grassroots opposition to climate change policies. Because the content of this misinformation was primarily factual assertions, either about adverse economic impacts from climate change policies or the lack of scientific evidence of human causation of climate change, the public disinformation drumbeat has completely drowned out any notion of duties, responsibilities, or obligations. As we have seen, those fighting back against the disinformation dissembling have often simply made counter economic and scientific claims, not ethical critiques of the disinformation machine. And so the climate change denial campaigns have succeeded in framing the climate change debate at least in the United States in a way that ignores ethical issues. The climate disinformation campaign can be understood as a movement of organizations and individuals that can be counted on to systematically attack mainstream climate change science in ways that radically depart from responsible scientific skepticism (Brown 2012a). The tactics of the disinformation campaign raise serious ethical questions in themselves that have been mostly ignored in the media coverage of this campaign. These tactics have included: •

•

• •

•

Reckless disregard for the truth. An example is saying the science behind climate change is a complete hoax when every academy of science in the world supports the consensus view, as well as most scientific organizations with expertise, and the vast majority of scientists that actually do peer reviewed science (Brown 2012b). Focusing on some unknowns about climate science while ignoring climate science that is not in question. An example is highlighting some unknowns about cloud feedbacks while ignoring other evidence about climate sensitivity. Specious claims of “bad” science. An example is claiming that decisions that are based on the “balance of the evidence” are bad science because they are not fully proven at 95 percent confidence levels (Brown 2012b). Placing the burden of proof on the wrong party. An example is claiming that those who are victims of climate change have a duty to precisely prove climate impacts, before governments take action on climate change, which harms not only cannot be proved without some remaining uncertainty, because of the complex nature of ecological systems, but are also known to include legitimate risks, such as sea level rise (Brown 2012a). Hiding from the public the real parties in interest behind scientific claims. An example is the use of front groups and astroturf groups that hide from the



•

•

•

Why has Ethics Failed to Achieve Traction?  227 public that those making scientific claims are parties with economic interests such as fossil fuel companies (Brown 2012b; Brown 2012c). Manufacturing bogus science. An example is holding fake scientific conferences at which skeptical scientific claims are made about climate science and then publishing the scientific claims while not subjecting the claims to peer review. Frequently these claims are then widely circulated to the press and legislators as if they are entitled to the same respect as peer reviewed science (Brown 2012c). Public relations campaigns. Some fossil fuel interests have hired public relations firms to convince the general public that climate change is not a serious problem by such tactics as focusing on uneducated citizens with misinformation about climate change (Brown 2012c). Cyber bullying scientists and journalists. Some elements of the climate change disinformation campaign have regularly threatened mainstream climate change scientists, or journalists who accurately report on the scientific climate change consensus view, by organizing or encouraging email campaigns that send numerous hate mail and physical threats following claims that human-induced climate change is a significant threat to human health and ecological systems (Brown 2012c).

Skepticism is both the oxygen and catalyst of science and should be encouraged. These tactics of the disinformation campaign are, however, not reasonable skepticism but ethically abhorrent disinformation (Brown 2012d). In fact, given what is at stake in climate change, some of those responsible for the climate change disinformation campaign are engaged in deeply reprehensible unethical activities. These ethical problems are particularly disturbing because they have led to inaction for over 20 years by some of the largest emitting countries including the United States, Canada, and Australia, and in so doing have put millions of poor people at greater risk. Therefore, some of those engaged in the climate change disinformation campaign are responsible for endangering people and ecological systems around the world and appear to have been motivated primarily by economic self-interest or protecting a radical free-market ideology rather than a search for the truth that would be a goal of responsible scientific skepticism (Brown 2012d). One might ask whether anyone engaging in the disinformation tactics identified above is ethically blameworthy. Some skeptics, for instance, who engage in the ethically dubious practice of stressing unknowns while ignoring the large body of well-settled science, are simply expressing their opinions or their interpretations of what they know about the science. If people have a right to free speech, it follows that people should be able to express their views on climate science freely, even if their views are founded upon incomplete knowledge of the peer reviewed science on which the consensus view has been based. Some skeptics appear to be sincerely stating their views about whether humans are responsible for climate change, but at the same time display great ignorance about important elements of climate science on which the consensus view is

228  The Crucial Role of Ethics based—such as the fingerprint and attribution studies that are strong evidence of human causation. Also, sometimes, climate change policy advocates make assertions about likely impacts of climate change that display ignorance of climate science, such as the claim that everything is settled in climate science; a conclusion that is inconsistent with the fact that there are some scientific climate issues about which uncertainty is acknowledged by mainstream climate scientists. These issues include, for instance, how clouds will be formed in a warming world and whether hurricanes will increase both in intensity and frequency. The structure of future cloud formation is one of the unknowns that have led to uncertainty about climate sensitivity, and an example of issues that are not yet fully settled. In cases where individuals make claims that are inconsistent with well-settled science, can it be said that individuals are acting unethically? To this question we would argue that for people who are simply stating their individual views and are willing to revise their opinions in light of previously unconsidered evidence, there is no ethical problem in expressing an opinion about the risks from humaninduced climate change, provided they are willing to have their views tested in the crucible of peer review. Debates about climate change very frequently take place among people on both sides of the argument who are obviously ignorant of a great deal of the vast peer reviewed literature on which the consensus view is based. In fact, the scientific literature relevant to climate change is so voluminous and multi-disciplinary that very few people are knowledgeable about its breadth, scope, and extent. Nor do most people have the intellectual skills to form an educated opinion about this vast literature. When it comes to specific issues like the reliability of the climate models on which projections of future climate are made, only a handful of people around the world understand the assumptions and limitations of the models. In addition few people have been trained to evaluate the reliability of the models, and for these reasons almost everyone engaging in public discussions of climate change science are taking positions based, at least in part, on faith. In addition, the climate change consensus position is founded upon a synthesis of evidence from physics, chemistry, ecology, biology, meteorology, geology, mathematical modeling, botany, geology, oceanography, paleoclimatology, geophysics, geochemistry, hydrology, and carbon cycle sciences. For this reason, even the best of our climate scientists often must rely on the expert opinions of others scientists who have the intellectual skills to evaluate evidence from their disciplines. And so, final conclusions about the state of climate science must rely upon a collaborative effort among scientists from different disciplines, which involves a certain amount of faith in the veracity of some elements of climate science. This extraordinary complexity, however, does not mean that people who have a basic understanding of science may not engage in critical thinking about climate science claims if they are willing to: (a) be guided by a critical thinking process



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that is evidence based, (b) adjust their opinions on the basis of new relevant evidence, and (c) make no final claims about their skeptical views until the views have been tested by peer review. For this reason, those who choose to express opinions about climate change should agree to be guided by an open, transparent, and evidence-based process, which they will rely upon to formulate conclusions about the threat of human-induced climate change. This requirement of being responsive to evidence is applicable to any public policy question that needs to be formed in light of scientific understanding of harms that might be created by human actions. Yet, because predicting how the climate might respond to increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases is so scientifically complex; rests on synthesizing evidence from so many scientific disciplines; and is about something that could create extraordinarily harsh impacts on human health and well-being worldwide, climate change is a problem that particularly requires that those who choose to express opinions on the magnitude of the threat caused by it base their opinions on evidence that has been subjected to rigorous and careful scientific scrutiny. For this reason, skeptical claims about mainstream climate science should be expressed with great care and acknowledged as provisional until they have been subjected to peer review. Because peer review is the process in science designed to check scientific claims for errors, peer review of scientific claims about climate change is a minimum expectation that should be met before scientific claims about climate change impacts are relied upon for expressing the truth about climate change threats. Peer reviewed evidence is only a minimum requirement for scientific conclusions because peer review is not a perfect process for avoiding all scientific errors, and some peer reviewed scientific conclusions must be reconsidered in the face of new evidence and the large body of human-induced climate change evidence. And so, final conclusions about the nature of climate change-caused harms should be reviewed by experts from all the disciplines relevant to drawing conclusions about the nature of dangerous climate change. For these reasons, although there are no initial ethical problems with people expressing their opinions about the extent to which human activities are affecting the environment, individuals must be willing to modify their opinions if there is an evidentiary basis for so doing; subject any claims to peer review; and abide by other norms for responsible skepticism discussed in this chapter. This fact makes several of the disinformation tactics identified above ethically problematic—if the climate deniers are unwilling to revise the claims in response to contradictory evidence— including the tactic of stressing unknowns and ignoring what is known about connections between human behavior and climate change; manufacture bogus scientific claims that have not been subjected to peer review while claiming that the opinions are entitled to scientific respect; and make claims in reckless disregard for the truth. As we have seen, some corporations and ideological philanthropic organizations have been large funders of the disinformation campaign. Corporations and philanthropic organizations are particularly ethically blameworthy if they

230  The Crucial Role of Ethics finance people or organizations that deploy these tactics without any recognition of the need to abide by the norms of reasonable scientific skepticism because their motivation is to undermine mainstream science to protect economic interests. A few of the tactics identified above are always ethically troublesome including: creating front groups, PR campaigns, and astroturf groups whose very creation has been motivated to fool people about who the real parties in interest are behind the claims, and cyber bullying. Corporations and organizations that fund these ethically troubling tactics are particularly ethically loathsome because they are using their economic power to deceive the public or intimidate mainstream scientists or journalists in the pursuit of economic self-interest. And so, not all people who publicly make erroneous skeptical claims about human-induced warming are ethically blameworthy, but some are. In addition, some of the tactics used by the climate change disinformation campaign are always ethically troublesome and those who engage in these tactics are ethically blameworthy. Yet the climate change disinformation campaign has been very responsible for the failure of ethical considerations to be influential in climate change policy formation. The Dominance of “Value-Neutral” Policy Languages in Framing Policy Issues As we have seen throughout this book, the vast majority of arguments made against climate change policies are claims that proposed climate change policies are too costly or that there is not enough scientific proof that climate change is human-caused. As we have seen in Chapters 3 and 4, these arguments are made and responded to as if they are factual contentions, yet, they hide numerous ethical assumptions and issues. Not only do opponents of climate change policies frame climate change arguments as if they were “value-neutral” facts, advocates of climate change action also often fail to identify the obvious ethical problems with arguments made against climate change policies. For instance, when opponents of climate change policies claim that climate change legislation should be opposed because it will cost the US economy too much, advocates often simply reply by pointing to potential increases in green jobs. What goes unnoticed in this debate is that Americans have duties, responsibilities, and obligations to people around the world to prevent harm, and given that greenhouse gas emissions are already, and will in the future be, the cause of great suffering, high emitters have a duty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and that economic self-interest alone is a deeply ethically problematic excuse for not taking action to prevent harm. When opponents of climate change policies claim that there is too much uncertainty to warrant greenhouse gas-limiting government policies, advocates of climate change have often responded by claiming that everything is settled in climate science, while ignoring ethical issues entailed by decision making in the



Why has Ethics Failed to Achieve Traction?  231

face of scientific uncertainty (see extensive discussion in Chapter 4). Therefore, the policy languages of science and economics have mostly framed the climate change debate and, in so doing, have usually assumed that climate change issues can be framed by a “value-free” description of “facts.” In so doing, the debate has ignored numerous deep ethical controversies. In addition, because scientific and economic claims are made in esoteric technical languages they are not penetrable by most citizens, only persons with degrees in science and economics are seen as competent communicators about the issues framing climate change debates. The public, for the most part, cannot effectively participate in disputes about science and economics. Even more likely, the public will not be able to untangle the ethical issues embedded but hidden in the technical languages if they are not competent communicators in science and economics. And so, the technical nature of the economic and scientific language that has framed the climate change debates has disenfranchised people who have views on ethics and morality. As a result neither the public nor policy makers spot the ethical questions raised by the application of science or economics to public policy. Policy makers are taught to use scientific tools to determine the environmental impacts of human activities; economic tools to determine and balance competing values; and the law to look for relevant prescriptions where they exist to guide decision making. Ethics simply never comes up in day-to-day environmental decision making. The only priests allowed into the temple of environmental decision making are scientists, engineers, economists, and lawyers.1 Each of these disciplines follows norms that may be ethically problematic in some environmental controversies, as we have seen throughout this book. Policy makers, therefore, usually miss obvious and deeply problematic ethical issues with arguments based upon such things as CBA or scientific uncertainty. Because environmental professionals and policy makers do not spot the ethical questions, the press almost never covers the ethical issues entailed by the economic and scientific arguments that have been central discourses in climate change debates. As a result there has hardly been a peep or a whimper in the press about the ethical issues entailed by climate change despite the fact that climate change raises deep, civilization-challenging ethical questions, and there are serious ethical problems with the scientific and economic arguments responsible for non-action on climate change. Occasionally someone like Al Gore has claimed that climate change is an ethical or moral problem but there has been very little discussion of the practical consequences of decision making on the understanding that climate change is a moral problem. As a result, for instance, when a politician opposes proposed climate change legislation on the basis that it will hurt jobs in his political district, no one asks the politician does he deny that high emitters of greenhouse gases in his district have duties, responsibilities, or obligations to those who will be harmed by climate change. As a result, the obvious ethical questions simply do not come up in the policy debate.

232  The Crucial Role of Ethics The Failure of Higher Education to Train Environmental Professionals to Spot Ethical Issues Good critical thinking about public policy options requires that technical experts, policy makers, and citizens be able to distinguish between factual assertions and ethical assumptions embedded in arguments about policy options. This is particularly important if factual claims hide ethical assumptions, because hidden questionable ethical assumptions or positions will avoid critical reflection. If for instance a cost–benefit analysis (CBA) concludes that regulatory action to protect vulnerable people or ecological systems should not be taken because costs of taking action outweigh the economic value of harms avoided by the proposed regulation, controversial ethical assumptions are hidden in factual assertions about the value of benefits if: • • • • •

Potentially catastrophic harms were ignored in the CBA. The costs of taking action would be imposed upon parties that are harming others, yet the victims of the harm have not consented to be harmed. Things that were believed to be sacred by one culture are valued in the CBA as if they were commodities whose value can be measured exclusively by “willingness-to-pay” monetary measures. Human rights will be violated if regulatory action is not taken. The proposed regulatory action implements the ethical duty to not harm others. (Brown et al. 2006)

Yet, if the decision to take no regulatory action on climate change is explained only as a matter of balance between costs and benefits, the very controversial ethical assumptions on which the costs and benefits were determined are hidden in the public debate. Similarly if a government decides not to act to reduce the threat of climate change on the basis of lack of proof of harm, such a decision can hide important ethical questions if: • • • • •

The government assumes that the proponents of climate change action should shoulder the burden of proof of demonstrating harm. There is credible but uncertain evidence that the current warming may be approaching thresholds that could trigger rapid climate surprises and other catastrophic consequences. The government waits until all uncertainties are resolved it will be too late to prevent serious harm. The victims of the harm have not consented to be put at risk by a decision to not act in the face of uncertainty. Some very serious potential harm is judged to be low probability just because the mechanism for causing the harm is not completely understood. (Brown et al. 2006)



Why has Ethics Failed to Achieve Traction?  233

And so, if the decision not to take action is explained on the basis of lack of proof of harm, this claim about proof hides very controversial ethical assumptions about what should be done in the face of scientific uncertainty. Despite the potential for factual economic and scientific claims to hide controversial ethical assumptions, higher education usually trains students in economics and environmental science without any exposure to the ethical questions of the type discussed in this book and that frequently arise in the application of these disciplines to environmental policy.2 For instance, students in environmental studies programs of various types are frequently taught to analyze environmental issues by using economic analytical tools such as CBA. These analytical economic tools are also often taught as if they are “value-free” and, as a result, students are simply taught the analytical techniques for determining such things as the economic value of costs and benefits and how to calculate these values in performing CBA. Students are rarely taught the ethical limits of these tools when they are applied to public policy questions such as climate change.3 To understand why ethical issues entailed by scientific uncertainty frequently go unnoticed, one must understand that the ethical assumptions that guide science in basic research —when science is engaged in knowledge production—should be different from scientific epistemic norms that should be followed for ethical reasons, in some cases when scientists are called upon to help guide public policy formation (see Chapter 4). Further, in basic research, different scientific disciplines follow different “epistemic norms” that guide the scientist in making claims about having established sufficient correlation between a hypothetical cause and its effect. By “epistemic norms” is meant rules that guide actions by scientists in making knowledge claims. Some sciences, for instance, require that researchers demonstrate correlation between a hypothetical cause and its effects with a 95 percent confidence level (Cranor 1993; Shrader-Frechette 1993: 179). Other sciences, such as those making predictions about environmental impacts of human actions based upon quantitative mathematical ecological models, allow the scientists to make predictions once it is established that the models’ predictions are consistent with empirical observations of what was predicted. And so, different scientific disciplines follow different epistemic norms to guide claims about cause and effect. These norms must usually be satisfied before scientists can publish in disciplinary journals (Buel-Mortenson and Welin 1998). Therefore, for many environmental issues, if scientists cannot establish causation with statistically sufficient levels of causation or evidence which satisfies other disciplinary norms, relevant scientific journals may not identify potentially dangerous human activities. Insisting on high levels of confidence before a claim about causation can be made makes ethical sense when science is engaged in basic research. That is, when engaged in most kinds of research, scientists are expected by society to develop credible, trustworthy, and reliable understanding of how nature works. And, only by insisting on statistically high levels of correlation between hypothetical cause

234  The Crucial Role of Ethics and effect can the goal of achieving high levels of confidence be met. In other words, the epistemic norms of different scientific disciplines are usually ethically uncontroversial when science is engaged in basic research. However, when scientists are called upon to guide public policy, as we saw in Chapter 4, ethical issues arise including, who should have the burden of proof and what quantity of proof should satisfy the burden of proof. In these cases, epistemic norms of research science may be inappropriate as a matter of ethics, particularly when dealing with potentially very dangerous human behavior about which uncertainties cannot be resolved in a timely manner. Take, for instance, a mining operation that desires to blast in a tectonically active geologic area where the mining could trigger an earthquake. By insisting that the government must prove that an earthquake will be caused by the mining operation with a 95 percent confidence level, rather than requiring the mining company demonstrates that the mining will be safe, may be ethically problematic. Yet, students in higher education are frequently not taught to spot the ethical questions that arise in public policy when decisions must be made in the face of scientific uncertainty. Because students in higher education are usually not taught to spot these ethical questions and because economics and science are technical disciplines that usually require training in higher education to understand and decipher, most policy makers and citizens fail to spot ethical questions entailed by the scientific and economic disciplines that frame many great policy challenges such as climate change. In other words, civil society is usually not equipped to spot ethical issues that arise in scientific and economic descriptions of technically complex social and environmental problems. For these reasons, one of the causes of the failure to identify obvious ethical questions in public policy stems from the failure of higher education to teach students to spot ethical questions when economics and science are used to analyze public policy problems. As a result, many institutions of higher education are training students in highly technical disciplines of environmental science and economics who have very poor skills in spotting ethical questions that often arise when scientific and economic analytical tools are used in public policy. The Failure of Ethics Literature to Focus on Actual Disputes in Contention The failures of environmental science and economics education to teach ethics could be remedied if students were exposed to ethics training and if this ethics training was relevant to the kinds of ethical issues that arise in environmental policy making. Yet, a very large percentage of students taking environmental science and economics courses have no training in ethics of any kind, not to mention the type of ethical issues discussed in the book.4 Many schools of higher education teach environmental ethics usually only as an elective, therefore, many students enrolled in some schools’ courses in



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environmental economics or sciences have no training in ethical reasoning that is needed reflect upon the limits of science and economics. In addition, courses on environmental ethics often fail to include discussion of the ethical questions that arise when environmental economics and science are applied to public policy. This is because the major focus of academic environmental ethics has been to explore ethical questions about human and environmental relationships, not ethical questions that often arise in policy formation such as the ethical limits of economic arguments, problems of procedural and distributive justice, or the ethical issues that arise when government officials must make decisions in the face of uncertainty. Philosophers often categorize training about how to calculate something, the kind of training often provided in higher education in environmental science and economics, as “instrumental” rationality to be distinguished from “ends” rationality, or what are the right ends of society, the domain of ethics or political philosophy. Instrumental rationality is rationality about what means can be used to achieve certain ends where the ends are not in question. Instrumental rationality focuses on how to do something, not on why something should be done. The kind of critical thinking usually taught in science and economics is most frequently “means” rationality, not “ends” rationality. This is because most economic analyses applied in public policy assume that governments should maximize public welfare or efficiency goals of policy that are not often questioned by the economic analysis; despite the fact that welfare maximization goals sometimes conflict with other valid societal goals, such as distributive or procedural justice, and guaranteeing human rights. Science training often focuses on knowledge of how nature works, or how to search for, as yet unknown, answers about how nature works. It is not concerned with ethical questions that frequently arise when science is applied to public policy such as who should have the burden of proof, what quantity of proof should satisfy the burden of proof, or who gets to decide about uncertain harms when some people more than others are at risk. In other words scientific training about research consists primarily of how to do the research to satisfy epistemic norms, not about ethical issues that arise when decisions must deal with uncertainty. What should be the goal of a good life or what is right or wrong are matters of ethics, questions about the “ends” of society. However, how to calculate costs and benefits or how to conduct experiments are understood to be questions of “means” to achieve societal goals and, therefore, the domain of instrumental rationality. Now, occasionally, environmental ethics literature has acknowledged problems with the almost exclusive focus on instrumental rationality that is the domain of science and economics when these disciplines are used to guide public policy. However, much of the environmental ethics literature ignores or minimizes many of the problems entailed by the dominance of instrumental rationality in science and economics, the disciplines which almost always frame environmental controversies and frequently the only disciplines that are taught in environmental policy courses. This is because much of the environmental ethics

236  The Crucial Role of Ethics literature is about human/nature relationships, not about the numerous ethical issues that arise in concrete environmental problems, and are embedded in scientific and economic concepts and analyses. Because certain value-neutral policy languages structure specific environmental controversies, and because the environmental ethics literature does not usually focus on ethical analyses of concrete problems, most environmental ethics literature is not relevant to some of the most frequent issues that arise in policy making, namely economic and scientific arguments about whether to act or not. As we have seen earlier in this book, the most frequent ethical issues arising in climate change policy making do not turn on the duties that humans have to nature, the dominant focus of environmental ethics, but on such ethical issues as distributive and procedural justice, duties of nations to other nations or poor people around the world, and the ethical limits of economic arguments. Yet these issues have not been the primary focus of the environmental ethics literature. Most of the environmental ethics literature has focused on what normative ethical theories should guide human/nature interactions. That is, students in many environmental ethics courses are taught to distinguish between how different ethical theories would reach different conclusions about how humans should interact with nature, including anthropocentric theories of rights and utility, virtue ethics, feminist ethics, along with non-anthropocentric theories of biocentrism and ecocentrism, just to name a few. The field of environmental ethics has largely, although not exclusively, been concerned with the question of whether humans should extend the boundaries of anthropocentric ethical theories to include non-humans or ecological systems, and if so on what ethical grounds. As a result, many environmental ethics courses taught in higher education focus on questions such as the ethical basis for protecting biodiversity and wilderness, or what can be said about human duties to animals. Much of the ethics literature approaches these questions as abstract ethical issues rather than deriving ethical questions from concrete environmental controversies or cases. Yet, as we have seen in this book, the major ethical questions that have arisen in the climate change debate have been through the use of economic analytical tools; decision making in the face of uncertainty; how to distribute benefits and burdens of government action; who is responsible for damages; under what circumstances do nations have duties to other nations; and when should responsibility be triggered because of past action. These issues go beyond questions of human/nature relationships and, therefore, are not matters that have been at the center of focus of much academic environmental ethics scholarship. Even when environmental ethics papers turn to specific controversies such as the ethics of finding a long-term, high-level nuclear waste disposal site, the analysis rarely begins with specific concrete scientific, economic, or legal claims that are in contention and have framed the problem. That is, environmental ethics literature



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has not usually been case-based, but has, for the most part, been focused on theoretical issues about human/nature conflicts. Other subjects of applied ethics have been much more focused on specific cases, such as biomedical ethics. In biomedical ethics, the ethical analyses often begin with a specific patient with a specific disease. In other words, training in biomedical ethics is often case-based. Hospitals often employ ethicists to help the medical staff with thorny, concrete, ethical issues. Not only do governments not seek guidance from ethicists to help with environmental ethical problems, they do not see the need to do this. In addition, for the most part, environmental ethics has been a discourse engaged in by and between environmental ethicists. As a result, environmental ethics literature has rarely been a factor in policy making. In fact, in 2003, Eugene Hargrove, the editor and founder of the journal Environmental Ethics, acknowledged that this failure of environmental ethics to penetrate public policy is widespread (Hargrove 2003). Hargrove lamented the fact that environmental ethics has not been influential in environmental policy making, a remarkable conclusion from someone who has been at the very center of academic environmental ethics for many decades. Those who have worked in both environmental ethics and environmental policy will confirm the fact that environmental ethical considerations rarely, if ever, are considered in environmental policy formation.5 That is, Hargrove’s claim that environmental ethics is almost never considered by policymakers is right on the mark. And so, the issues discussed in environmental ethics scholarship are rarely considered in day-to-day decision making about pressing environmental issues. Yet, the need for ethically based, environmental decisions is as acute as ever since humans continue to gravely threaten human health and the environment. In fact, a strong case can be made that global trends in regard to climate change, loss of biodiversity, and water resources are particularly ominous and the failure of individuals and governments to consider their ethical obligations is likely a major cause of these global environmental problems. For this reason, the failure of the environmental ethics literature to penetrate environmental policy making is worthy of serious reflection. This is particularly so for climate change because, as we have seen, the ethical dimensions of this problem are the crucial missing element in national debates about climate change. In addition, there has been virtually no discussion of ethical obligations of sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, or individuals in the public debate about climate change policy, at least in the United States. From this it can be seen that one of the reasons why ethical considerations have not been influential in climate change policy making is the failure of environmental ethics to engage with the issues that frequently arise in policy making. A strong case can be made that the field of environmental ethics that bloomed in the late 1970s was based, at least in part, upon a misdiagnosis of the causes of ethical failure to protect the environment. In the beginning, the environmental ethics literature often assumed that a narrow anthropocentric ethical footing that

238  The Crucial Role of Ethics underlay 20th century and Western culture was a primary cause of the emerging environmental crisis. As a result, this literature has largely, although not exclusively, consisted of philosophers talking to each other about how to reform, replace, or extend dominant anthropocentric ethical norms to environmental problems. Yet, as we have seen, a valuable contribution that environmental ethics could make to environmental policy making is to help policy makers and citizens understand the limits of instrumental rationality when science and economics are used to define environmental policy, because instrumental arguments are at the center of public policy disputes about environmental issues. For this reason, if environmental ethics is going to be relevant to public policy it must attempt to be engaged in the economic and scientific issues that arise in specific cases. To do this, environmental ethicists must understand the scientific, economic, and legal issues entailed by specific environmental controversies. Therefore, in addition to teaching policy makers and citizens the policy consequences that different ethical theories entail for policy outcomes, environmental ethicists must become competent communicators in scientific, economic, and legal discourses that initially frame environmental problems such as climate change. If they do so, ethicists could make significant contributions to environmental policy formation by uncovering the hidden ethical assumptions embedded in scientific and economic arguments about environmental policy. From this discussion, we conclude that one of the causes of failure of ethical considerations to penetrate climate policy is the inadequate attention to practical ethical questions not only in higher education in general, but even within the field of environmental ethics. The Failure of Governments and Civil Society to Ask Ethical Questions about Policy As we have seen, environmental policy makers usually turn to environmental scientists to examine whether human actions are causing adverse impacts on people or ecological systems and economists to examine the economic effects of environmental policy. Ethicists are almost never consulted to help examine the ethical implications of proposed policy responses. Most environmental regulatory agencies employ lawyers, scientists, engineers, and occasionally economists, to help the policy maker apply the scientists’ and economists’ factual conclusions to the law they are implementing, or a new law or program under consideration. Yet, as we have seen, the crucial missing element in policy making is often ethical analyses of what are mistakenly understood to be “value-free” scientific and economic claims. However, neither policy makers nor those members of civil society engaged in climate change policy development seek ethical analysis of climate change policy options. This is so for a variety of reasons. First, government decision makers usually assume that their responsibility is to apply technically determined “facts” derived from scientific and economic



Why has Ethics Failed to Achieve Traction?  239

analysis to policy guidance contained in relevant law. It is true that technicians working for government are expected to defer to legislative guidance for policy guidance. Government decision makers are not supposed to decide cases based upon their own values, but to apply facts to policy rules decided in a democracy that can be found in laws adopted by legislatures. But this common understanding of government responsibility mistakenly assumes that science and economics can derive “value-neutral” facts about environmental controversies. Making sense of scientific and economic “facts” about environmental problems frequently requires value judgments about which economic “facts” count; how environmental entities should be “valued” in economic descriptions of the consequences of environmental policy; what levels of scientific risks are acceptable; what to do about potentially catastrophic but low probability harms; and how much money should be spent in environmental investigation to better understand potential causes of environmental problems. There are simply no “value-neutral” ways of deciding these questions, and legislative guidance on many of these questions does not exist. Second, government administrators and members of civil society engaged in policy formation have not been trained to spot the ethical issues that arise in policy formation and, therefore, often see no need for ethical guidance. Thus, one of the reasons why ethical issues have failed to penetrate climate change policy making is that policy makers and members of civil society rarely seek ethical guidance. Also neither the public nor the press identifies the ethical issues that arise when science and economic analysis are applied to complex environmental problems such as climate change. As a result, no one identifies obvious ethical questions. The Failure to Combine Ethical Arguments with Social Action In the first chapter we noted that ethical arguments by themselves will not likely create the social transformation needed to effectively deal with climate change unless ethical arguments are made as part of social action campaigns that challenge dominant social norms. If ethical arguments are to gain traction in policy making, ethical arguments will need to be at the tip of the spear of social action designed to publicly challenge the ethically problematic norms that have dominated climate change policy making. This public action might include non-violent civil disobedience, public protests, or adequately funded public campaigns to bring widespread attention to the ethical failure of status quo approaches to climate change. This social action should not only focus on what is ethically supportable climate change policy, but also on the ethically abhorrent aspects of the climate change disinformation campaign, and the positions of those opposing change policies. In addition, these public campaigns need to be sizable enough to effectively challenge the public relations campaigns of the climate change disinformation campaign.

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Conclusion The causes of the failure of ethical considerations to influence climate change policies are more numerous than the features of climate change identified by Stephen Gardiner (2011) in the Perfect Moral Storm, which lead to moral corruption. As we have seen this failure has been caused by: • • • • • •

the power of economic interests in the public disinformation campaign to frame the public debate the dominance of value-neutral analytic tools in policy formation the failure of higher education to train environmental professionals to spot ethical issues embedded in technical discourses the failure of environmental ethics literature to focus on concrete arguments that have arisen in climate change policy debates the failure of policy institutions to encourage express ethical reflection on climate change policy disputes the failure of those interested in ethically supportable climate change to engage in social action needed to bring attention to the massive ethical failures of status quo responses to climate change.

And so, we conclude, that the failure of ethical considerations to influence climate change policy go beyond the issues discussed in Gardiner’s analysis. Yet the vast majority of opposition to enlightened climate change policies is clearly ethically bankrupt. This fact points to several strategies that can be deployed to give more hope that climate change policies will be responsive to ethical obligations of those responsible for climate change. In the last chapter we will examine another claim that we understand to be implicit in Gardiner’s analysis, namely that climate change ethical issues are so difficult that they make avoidance of ethical responsibility predictable.

Chapter 11

Conclusion: Navigating “The Perfect Moral Storm” of Climate Change

Introduction Given what has come before about the causes of ethics to influence climate change policy formation, we now make recommendations on how to make ethical considerations influential in guiding a global solution to climate change. However, we must first examine one last claim of Gardiner (2011) namely that the failure of ethics to affect climate change policy is attributable, at least in part, to some of the features of climate change that make drawing unambiguous or clear ethical conclusions difficult, a fact about climate change that encourages moral corruption. From Gardiner, we understand some climate change ethical issues—such as determining any nation’s fair share of safe global emissions—are matters about which different ethical theories reach different ethical conclusions. This ethical ambiguity encourages ethical lethargy. Other features of climate change, according to Gardiner, encourage an inadequate or untimely ethical response such as the fact that climate change affects people far away in space and time. These and other features of climate change encourage moral corruption (Gardiner 2011). For instance, because it is not absolutely certain what ethics requires of nations, sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals in regard to a target for absolute, unambiguous, quantitative greenhouse gas emissions reduction, governments and other entities can more easily avoid taking ethical responsibility through rationalizing that they have no moral responsibility. That is, difficult ethical questions promote non-responsive ethical behavior because they promote rationalization which encourages people to ignore their ethical duties. According to Gardiner, this explains the lack of ethical responsiveness at least in large part. We do not completely disagree with this insight, but believe this hypothesis misses other extraordinarily important causes for lack of ethical engagement as discussed in the last chapter. In fact, these additional factors are likely to be more responsible for ethical failure. It is important to understand these barriers to ethical engagement because there are practical strategies for dealing with them.

242  The Crucial Role of Ethics This chapter will examine the Gardiner claim, agree with it in part, disagree with it in a few significant ways, and point to a way forward about how to navigate “the perfect moral storm” in light of both the agreements and disagreements with Gardiner’s claim. This concluding chapter consists of the following sections: 1 2

Agreements and disagreements about the difficulty of climate change’s ethical questions Recommendations on navigating the perfect moral storm: an international strategy.

Agreements and Disagreements about the Difficulty of Climate Change’s Ethical Questions As we have seen, Gardiner asserts that some climate change ethical issues are difficult, a fact that can lead to disagreement about what ethics requires, resulting in greater ease in ignoring ethical responsibilities. Throughout this book we have identified some of these issues that raise a certain amount of ethical ambiguity. For instance, as discussed in Chapters 5 and 6, different theories of distributive justice would lead to different conclusions about what is each nation’s fair share of safe global emissions. In Chapter 7 we acknowledged that different ethical considerations would lead to different conclusions about the date that should trigger a nation’s responsibility for historical emissions. Gardiner suggests that the international community has not adopted an ethically appropriate response to climate change because, at least in part, climate change raises difficult ethical issues such as these. Now Gardiner’s claim about climate change being the “perfect moral storm” does not turn exclusively on the difficulty of the moral issues. Other features of climate change encourage non-recognition of ethical duties, according to Gardiner, such as the separation in time and space of those causing climate change and its victims. Yet we understand part of Gardiner’s claim that climate change encourages moral corruption because our ethical principles do not easily match a problem like climate change. We would agree that climate change raises some civilization-challenging ethical questions about which different respectable ethical theories might reach different conclusions about what should be done. However, the fact that different ethically acceptable positions may lead to different ethical conclusions about climate change issues does not lead to ethical agnosticism, or even confusion about all climate change issues, including some of the most important ethical questions that must be faced in climate change policy formation. Three possibilities exist: • •

For some climate change ethical questions, there is an overlapping consensus among ethical theories about what ethics requires. For some climate change issues, ethics issue spotting sometimes leads to conflicts among ethical theories about what ethics requires.

 •

Navigating “The Perfect Moral Storm”  243 For some climate change issues, ethical issue spotting may lead to disagreement among ethical theories about what should be done; yet very strong agreement that some positions taken on these issues are ethically bankrupt even though there is disagreement on what ethics requires.

This chapter reviews examples of these outcomes in climate change. It then concludes with recommendations about how those interested in integrating ethics into climate change policy formation might navigate the perfect moral storm entailed by human-induced warming. These recommendations will be based in part on the reasons discussed in the last chapter for why ethics has failed to obtain traction in climate change policy formation that go beyond Gardiner’s thesis.

Overlapping Consensus among Ethical Theories About Climate Change Policy Issues Throughout this book we described strong ethical conclusions on climate change issues, about which different ethical theories appear to agree despite coming from different ethical theoretical starting points. In such cases, ethicists sometimes refer to an overlapping consensus among ethical theories. Probably the most significant of these is the conclusion that because climate change raises ethical issues, no nation or high-emitting sub-national government, organization, business, or individual can justify high levels of greenhouse gas emissions on the basis of self-interest alone. That is, nations, sub-national governments, businesses, and individuals have duties, responsibilities, and obligations to those who will be harmed by climate change and, because of these, high emitters must immediately reduce their emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions. However, this recognition has not been acknowledged by most nations. Numerous other examples of strong ethical claims can be found throughout this book including, but not limited to, the following: •

•

We saw in Chapter 3, that nations may not justify non-action on climate change solely because total global economic welfare would decrease; questions of distributive and procedural justice, duties to not harm others, or create human rights violations, among other things, also need to be considered. In Chapter 4, we concluded that some scientific uncertainty about climate change impacts from different atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases is not an ethically acceptable justification for non-action on climate change because, among other reasons (a) the longer the international community waits to reduce greenhouse gases, the more difficult it will be to stabilize atmospheric concentrations at safe levels, (b) the victims of climate change have not consented to be put at risk, (c) it is already too late to prevent damages caused by human-induced climate change, and (d) the harms that will be caused by waiting are likely to be catastrophic for some.

244  The Crucial Role of Ethics •

•

•

• •

In Chapter 5, we saw that every nation, as a matter of ethics, must develop domestic climate change policies that take a position on safe atmospheric greenhouse gas stabilization levels and may not base its position on national interest alone. That is, in regard to how its national policy will affect atmospheric greenhouse gas stabilization levels, nations must acknowledge duties to prevent damages to life and the natural resources on which life depends in all parts of the world. In Chapter 6, we saw that ethics requires that all nations must reduce their emissions to their fair and safe global share, where fairness must be based upon morally acceptable reasons and not national self-interest. Therefore, they must understand that their greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets must be responsive to duties to the life on this planet. In Chapter 7, we saw that all high-emitting sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals have responsibilities to reduce their emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions in addition to the duties of national governments. We also saw that this was true in both developed and developing nations. In Chapter 8, we saw that high-emitting nations had strong duties to pay for damages and reasonable adaptation costs of poor, vulnerable people around the world. In Chapter 9, we saw that no nation may ethically justify non-action on climate change on the basis that other nations have refused to reduce their emissions.

These are just some of the clear ethical conclusions that can be said about national domestic policy on climate change. And so we have demonstrated throughout this book that strong ethical conclusions may be made about many climate change issues central to policy formation. Yet we have also seen that many high-emitting nations, sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals have acted over the last 35 years as if there were no ethical obligations that constrain self-interest-based justifications for non-action on climate change. From this it can be seen that even if one agrees that climate change creates a perfect moral storm about some climate change issues that can explain reluctance of greenhouse gas emitters around the world to be guided by ethical principles, the difficulty of the moral issues entailed by climate change is not an adequate explanation for moral failure on many of the most important issues. This is because some ethical conclusions on climate change issues are not controversial, and even for those about which there is some disagreement among ethicists about what ethics requires, positions taken by nations and others on these issues fail to pass minimum ethical scrutiny. In fact, in a surprising number of climate change ethical issues discussed in this book, strong ethical conclusions about positions taken on them are warranted. For instance, as we explained in Chapter 3 and 4, very strong compelling ethical arguments can be made against the economic and scientific uncertainty



Navigating “The Perfect Moral Storm”  245

arguments, which have been the most frequent justifications for non-action on climate change. Although some climate change ethical issues—such as specifying quantitatively what is each nation’s fair share of safe global emissions—are matters about which different ethical theories will reach different conclusions, positions taken on these issues—such as a nation only needs consider its own economic interest in determining what is its fair share—do not pass any test of ethical reasonableness. In fact, opposition to action on climate change has very frequently been based upon arguments and positions that all respectable ethical theories would condemn. That is, opposition to climate change has not turned on issues about which different ethical theories disagree, such as what is any nation’s fair share of safe global issues, but on such matters as whether a nation need only consider its own economic interest in determining domestic climate policy. For this reason, the failure of ethics to guide public policy on climate change cannot be attributed solely to the difficulty of the ethical questions raised by climate change. A stronger hypothesis is that the failure of ethics to be more influential in climate change policy formation is attributable to the other causes of the failure for ethics to penetrate policy formation discussed in the last chapter, namely: (a) the power of economically interested groups to spread disinformation about the science and economics of climate change, (b) the framing of all policy questions as “value-neutral” technical questions, (c) the failure of higher education to train people to spot ethical questions embedded in technical policy questions, (d) the lack of engagement of academic environmental ethics in concrete controversies, (e) the lack of understanding among policy makers and civil society of the need to consider ethical issues hidden in technical discourses, and (f) perhaps most important, the failure of civil society to develop a social action movement that highlights the utter ethical unacceptability of the arguments made by those who oppose policy action on climate change. At the end of Chapters 3 through 9, we identified strong ethical conclusions that can be drawn about all major climate change issues that have arisen in the 35-year climate debate. The ethical conclusions identified in previous chapters about these issues are strong condemnations of the central arguments made most frequently by opponents of climate change policies on these issues. For instance, the conclusions reached in Chapters 3 and 4, regarding economic and scientific uncertainty arguments made against climate change policy, are very strong ethical condemnations of these arguments. Yet these arguments have been the most frequently used justifications for non-action on climate change. Given the strength of ethical criticisms of these arguments and the frequency with which they have been made in opposition to action on climate change, something other than the contentiousness of the ethical issues must be responsible for the failure of ethics to guide public policy. We conclude that the causes of ethical failure identified in Chapter 10 are more explanatory of the failure of ethical arguments to get traction in the formation of climate change policy than the difficulty of the ethical questions, although we agree with Gardiner that some features of climate change promote ethical corruption.

246  The Crucial Role of Ethics

Ethics Issue Spotting Leads to Conflicts among Ethical Theories This book has also demonstrated that some climate change issues raise thorny ethical questions. At the top of the list of such issues is the problem of deciding what constitutes a fair share of safe global emissions for each nation, sub-national government, organization, business, and individual. Similar ethical uncertainty arises on the question of each nation’s faire share of financial responsibility for climate change damages or reasonable adaptation costs. Different ethical theories of distributive and retributive justice would reach different conclusions about any nation’s fair share of responsibility for adaptation and compensation costs. There is also some ethical ambiguity about defining what atmospheric greenhouse gas stabilization target the international community should shoot for. Yet rarely have international negotiations or domestic disputes about climate change policies turned on these questions. For instance, in the United States the central issue in the US debate about climate change policy has not been what national reduction targets should be adopted in legislation or policy to satisfy the US’s obligation to the poor people to protect them from harm; rather whether targets should be accepted at all. When climate change debates have focused on the issue of what targets should be adopted, the public debate has not been about what the US ethical obligation for a specific target is, but whether any target at all should be accepted as a matter of national economic self-interest. For this reason, it unlikely that the difficulty of ethical issues raised by climate change is an explanation for lack of ethically guided action on climate change, even in cases where there is some ethical ambiguity about what ethics requires. In fact, lack of action on climate change is more likely caused by the lack of any serious discussion of any ethical responsibility to take action, not the challenges entailed by a number of complex climate change ethical questions. And so, we conclude that even on thorny ethical questions raised by certain climate change policy issues, causes other than the ethical thorniness of the issues are responsible for lack of ethical guidance in policy formation. Perhaps the largest cause of ethical engagement in policy formation is the climate change disinformation campaign discussed in the last chapter and Chapter 4. In fact, this campaign has most likely prevented any discussion of any ethical obligations at all because it has focused on convincing people that there is no serious problem worth doing something about. The climate change disinformation campaign is likely to have been most responsible for the lack of any US federal government action for almost 30 years. It is very probable that if most US citizens had the same understanding of the extraordinary danger we are facing from climate change as most mainstream climate scientists, they would demand action. It is quite clear from following the 20-year-plus debate about US climate legislation, that those who oppose action on the scientific and economic grounds pushed by the climate change disinformation campaign have prevented US climate change legislation from being enacted.



Navigating “The Perfect Moral Storm”  247

Ethically Bankrupt Positions on Matters about which there is Ethical Ambiguity on What Ethics Requires Throughout this book we have identified strong, ethical conclusions that can be used to condemn positions taken by opponents of climate change policy action even in regard to questions about which different ethical theories might reach different conclusions about what ethics requires. We have, for instance, seen justifications for non-action on climate change based upon self-interest arguments, not on legitimate ethically contentious considerations. This insight leads to the conclusion that requiring those to justify climate change policies on the basis of what ethics would require could help eliminate from consideration positions on climate change policies failing to satisfy minimum ethical scrutiny. This is true even for issues about which there is reasonable disagreement about what ethics requires. That is, on these issues ethical analysis can help eliminate ethically dubious positions. If ethically problematic positions can be removed from consideration in policy formation, this could help to narrow disputes so that compromises can be made among ethically acceptable alternative options. For this reason, ethical analysis of climate change policy options could have important practical consequences, even for matters on which there is no consensus among ethical theories on what is required. Given that there is little hope that there will be a global solution to climate change unless there is an agreement among most of the major parties that a proposed global agreement is just, finding solutions that are compromises among arguably just alternative solutions to climate change creates the best hope for a just global climate solution to emerge in international negotiations. But the only practical way to narrow opposing positions on climate change policies is to eliminate from consideration those positions of contending parties that fail to pass minimum ethical scrutiny. To do this, climate ethics needs to focus as much on what is unjust about positions on climate policies as it does on what justice requires. Thus far, however, most of the debate among climate change ethicists has been on what justice requires, rather than helping others understand what is ethically troublesome about actual positions of some parties in the climate change debate. For instance, the US government even under the more sympathetic Obama administration has acted, at least sometimes, as if the United States need not act until China and India commit to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Although this is an ethically unacceptable position (Chapter 9), we have seen little ethical reflection on this issue in the public debate about US climate change policy. For these reasons ethicists could help move the international climate change debate by helping participants understand ethically problematic positions of participants in the negotiations. But arguments alone will probably not make a difference unless they are tied to political action about these issues. From these observations, we conclude that the first-order problem for climate change ethics is not to determine finally what ethics requires on all issues, but to help people see that positions of contending parties are unjust. That is, a

248  The Crucial Role of Ethics first-order problem is to get ethics considered at all in the climate change debate, not to get agreement on what ethics requires.

Recommendations on Navigating the Perfect Moral Storm: An International Strategy For these reasons, the pathway to navigate the perfect moral storm entailed by climate change requires a global effort to turn up the volume on the ethical dimensions of climate change. To turn up the volume on the ethical dimensions of climate change, certain strategies should be deployed. They include: •

•

•

•

• •

•

Turning up the volume on the moral abhorrence of the climate change disinformation campaign. This can be done by encouraging serious public reflection on the difference between reasonable climate change skepticism and misleading disinformation. Those concerned about climate change should follow the actual climate change debate to identify ethical issues as they arise, and seek to identify ethical problems with arguments made by those opposing a just global solution to climate change while enhancing public understanding of these issues. After spotting the ethical problems with major arguments against policy action on climate change, seek to eliminate ethically problematic positions from contention by working with governments and civil society. To do this, ethical considerations must be expressly integrated into the climate change debate. There are a variety of ways of accomplishing this, including by expressly inviting nations to answer ethical questions about their positions, and by helping civil society understand ethical problems entailed by various positions on climate change policy. Invite the world to understand both the ethical issues in contention, and the ethically problematic positions taken by those opposing action on climate change, by publicizing not only the positions of governments, but also the problematic ethical contentions on which they rest. Raise the visibility of ethically problematic positions of participants in policy debates for policy makers, the press, and citizens around the world. When high-emitting nations, sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals justify unsatisfactory responses to climate change policy issues on the basis of self-interest alone, question these entities about whether they deny having duties, responsibilities, and obligations to others. Encourage religious leaders and others interested in ethical and moral issues to help turn up the volume not only on the fact that climate change is a globally challenging ethical issue, but also on the utter ethical bankruptcy of opponents to adequate climate change policies. This should be accomplished by helping generate greater understanding of specific ethical problems with actual arguments in the climate change debate.

 • •

Navigating “The Perfect Moral Storm”  249 Educate policy makers and citizens about the ethical issues that are hidden in what appear to be value-neutral arguments about science and economics. Connect ethical analysis of positions taken on climate change to social action that raises the visibility of ethically unsupportable responses to climate change. Perhaps this is the most important element of all in a strategy to integrate ethics into policy formation. Ethicists educating people about the ethical dimensions of climate change are not likely to make much significant difference in the failure of national governments and other entities to take their ethical responsibilities seriously. The world needs widespread and rapid social change, particularly in high-emitting countries, which establishes widely held norms that include the notion that unnecessary use of fossil fuel is socially unacceptable, and that huge reductions in existing greenhouse gas emissions levels is ethically mandated. Although ethicists can always help social movements frame social movement objectives so that they are consistent with ethical principles, social change of the scale needed to reduce the threat of climate change is unlikely happen in the absence of visible, persistent, and intensive social action, which effectively communicates to the world the ethical bankruptcy of the status quo positions on climate change. This social action must communicate the idea that climate change as a moral problem can only be solved by citizens around the world who accept their global responsibilities.

Following these strategies on turning up the volume on the ethical dimensions of climate change could help narrow climate change policy options to those that pass minimum ethical scrutiny. This could be of huge practical significance because, as we have seen throughout this book, parties to climate change controversies have frequently taken positions that utterly fail to withstand minimum ethical scrutiny. However, a just global solution to climate change is a practical necessity to get widespread global acceptance of any international response to climate change. We, therefore, conclude that although climate change does raise some difficult ethical questions for certain climate change issues, it is a practical mistake to discuss climate change ethics in the abstract. Ethicists must find some way of engaging in climate change policy formation as it happens, while helping citizens and the press around the world to understand the ethical bankruptcy of specific positions nations and individuals have taken on climate change in the last three and half decades. Over and over again, opponents of climate change policies have claimed that nations may look to national economic self-interest alone as justification for nonaction. This position is obviously, clearly, and unambiguously ethically unacceptable. Over and over again, nations have claimed they may set national emissions reduction targets on the basis of national economic interest alone. This position is also obviously ethically unacceptable. The same could be said about most of the positions discussed in this book that have been frequently taken in the 35-year

250  The Crucial Role of Ethics climate change debate in opposition to climate change policies. That these positions are ethically unacceptable is not an ethically controversial conclusion. In summary, turning up the volume on the ethical dimensions of climate change is not only practically important but a strong ethical mandate in itself. Ethics has been the crucial missing element in the climate change debate that has unfolded over the last 35 years, a fact that can be seen by examining the specifics of how this issue has been debated in Chapter 2. Given what is at stake with climate change, this absence is a monumental tragedy in light of the urgent need for a just global solution to this civilization-challenging problem. Ethicists must help the world turn up the volume on the ethical dimensions of climate change. They need to begin by speaking loudly about actual positions on climate change policies that have and will likely continue to be taken, and that fail any reasonable ethical test. What is so striking about the connection between ethics and climate change policy is not that difficult ethical issues have not been resolved but that obvious ethically obnoxious positions on climate change policies have been so infrequently discussed, or even recognized in the public debate. Many parts of the world are not yet at the stage where they disagree about what ethics requires; they have yet to acknowledge that they have any ethical obligations at all. This is truly remarkable given that climate change raises so many obvious civilizationchallenging ethical questions. The failure to spot and discuss the obvious ethical questions entailed by climate change is unlikely to be caused primarily by the difficulty of the ethical issues, but is a consequence of the power of those who oppose action on climate change to frame the question in discourses that do not acknowledge ethical responsibilities.

Notes

1  Introduction: Navigating the Perfect Moral Storm in Light    of a Thirty-Five-Year Debate 1 Recent books on climate change ethics include: Brown 2002; Gardiner 2011; Gardiner et al. 2010; Garvy 2008; Harris 2010; O’Brien et al. 2010.

2 A Thirty-Five-Year Climate Change Policy Debate 1 All currency is US dollars unless otherwise stated.

6 Allocating National Emissions Targets 1 Alternative version can be found at http://www.esrl noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/ trends/co2_data_mlo_anngr.pdf

10  Why has Ethics Failed to Achieve Traction? 1 The author was an environmental lawyer for New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and worked on climate change as Program Manager for UN Organizations in the US EPA Office of International Environmental Policy. In these experiences, he observed that very few policy makers understood the ethical questions embedded and hidden in environmental science and economics. The scientists employed by policy institutions followed the science, the economists followed the economics, the lawyers helped apply the science and economics to the law, but no one was trained to see the ethical problems with the science and economics. 2 This author has a grant to study the ability of students to spot obvious ethical issues in environmental science and ethics and has found that most students trained in science and economics cannot spot obvious ethical questions in environmental science and economics. 3 This conclusion is based upon the analysis of the author under a grant from the Teagle and Spencer Foundations to improve critical thinking skills in undergraduate education. 4 This is a conclusion drawn from a grant the author had in testing Penn State students who were enrolled in environmental science, economics, and policy courses and also based upon anecdotal information gathered by the author in conversations with faculty from other schools. 5 This conclusion is drawn from the experience of the author who has worked in environmental policy for over 30 years at state, federal and international levels and during this time has written in and followed environmental ethics literature.

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Index

academies of science, international 96 adaptation: responsibility for 177–94; baseline year 188; connection to compensation 180; funding 18, 50, 184, 194; polluter pays 187–8 ad hominem attacks 127, 131 Africa 49, 60, 76, 185, 203, 216 albedo 22 Alder, J. 81 allocation: fair 17, 36, 53, 156–77; efficiency 172; contraction and convergence 17; grandfathering 17; greenhouse gas development rights 17; per capita 17, 196, 201–4, 207–8; status quo rights, 170 Aluminum Association 99 American Association for the Advancement of Science 108 American Enterprise Institute 100, 101,102, American Geophysical Union 108 American Meteorological Society 108 Antarctic 80 Appiah, K. A. 5 Arctic 216 Asia 216 arguments made against government action on climate change: cost, 13, 17, 24, 27, 53, 147, 154, 182, 210, 223; economic 12, 14, 15, 25–6, 57–90, 157, 245; hidden ethical 12, 15, 25, 70, 79, 81, 82, 115, 120, 223–40, 249; history of debate 20–54; scientific uncertainty 15, 25–6, 27, 53, 147, 159, 182, 191, 210, 223, 245; see also uncertainty Arrhenius, Svente 10, 22–3 Arrow, K. 85

atmospheric stabilization target 17, 33, 50, 53, 137–55, 157 attribution of human causation: 107, 131, 189, 192; see also fingerprint studies of human causation Australia 42, 52, 60, 203, 216, 217, 227 Bali Roadmap 47–9, 145, 161, 184–5 Beck, Glen 58 Belgium 204 biocentric ethics 72, 120, 236 Broecker, Wally 11 Bracey Williams and Company 98 Brazil 158, 160, 198, 216, British Petroleum 99 Browner, C. 213 Bush, George, H.W. 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, Bush, George, W. 45–8, 213 Business responsibility 196–211 Byrd-Hagel Resolution 40 California 207 Callendar, G.S. 11, 23 Canada 52, 204, 227 Cancún agreements 51, 52, 144, 145, 146, 151–52, 158, 165, 174, 176, 185, 189 Caney, S. 77 carbon footprint 53, 199 Carter, Jimmy 97 Cato Institute 100 Chamber of Commerce, US and states 219 Cheney, Dick 46 cherry-picking science 131 churches 197 China 39, 41, 49, 50, 51, 60, 158, 198, 203, 204, 212–20 247 clean development mechanism (CDM) 185

 Climate Change Coalition 42 climate change deniers: 101, 114, 119, 126–36, 225–30; see also disinformation campaign climate sensitivity 103, 139–43, 152, 154, climate surprises: 80, 122, 139; see also dangerous climate climatedepot.org 102 Clinton, William 36, 40–5, 61, 81 contraction and convergence 163–5 Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow 102 common but differentiated responsibilities 32, 33, 159, 161, 183 communitarian 62–4, 200 compensation 180–1, 183, 186, 193 Copenhagen Agreements 48–52, 104, 144, 145, 146, 151–2, 158, 165, 174, 176, 185 cosmopolitan 62–4 cost-benefit analysis 7, 17, 59–90, 120, 218 Cranor, C. 119 crime against humanity 132, 133, cyber bullying 132–4, 137, 227 Czech Republic 204 dangerous climate: 142, 144, 148, 152, 155, 156, 161; see also climate surprises DaimlerChrysler, 99 deontology and rights: 63, 123–4, 148, 149, 200; see also human rights and duties discounting benefits 82–6, 90 disinformation campaign: 52, 91, 101, 104, 107, 109, 114, 126–34, 199, 225–30, 239, 246, 248: see also climate deniers duties: 87, 123–4; to act 214; to compensate, 154; to prevent harm 200 ecocentric ethics 72, 120, 236 Edison Electric Institute 98 emailgate 50, 91, 104–10 emissions baseline year 174–5, 188 emissions trading 3, 43, 45 epistemic norms of science 110–18, 233 equity: 32, 33, 124, 158, 159, 161, 165, 167, 169, 183; see also frameworks Estonia 204 European Union 40, 43, 174, extreme weather 217 ExxonMobil 42, 99, 100, 101

Index 269 failure of ethics training in higher education 234–8 failure of governments and civil society to ask ethical questions 238 feedbacks 21–2, 80, 127 feminist ethics 236 fingerprint studies of human causation 107, 131 forcing, climate 21 Ford, 99 forests 50 fossil fuel industry 25–6, 28, 29, 38, 40, 41, 42, 50, 199 Fourier, J. 10, 21 France 204 frameworks, equity: contraction and convergence, 163–5, 172; greenhouse gas development rights 163–5, 173; see also principles, equity free-market fundamentalism 26, 227 free-market foundations 102, 108 future generations, 83–6 ,120, 150, Gardiner, S. 6, 7–9, 18, 86, 201, 224, 240, 241–3, 245 George C. Marshall Institute, 98 General Motors 99 Germany 203, 204 Global Climate Coalition. 98–9 Gore, Al 36, 43, 231, Green, K. 101 Greenland 142 greenhouse gas development rights 163–5 greenhouse gas sinks 38 Hamilton, C. 133 Hansen, J. 27–8, 126, 140, 149, 150, 152, 157 Hargrove, E. 237 Harris, P. 195–6, 198, 200, 206 health impacts 179–80 Hegel, Chuck 42, 44 historical emissions 32, 159–60, 174–5, 186, 188, 192–5, 203–04 human rights: 74–7, 89, 154, 206; Universal Declaration of Human Rights 124 human causation of climate change 130, 186; see also attribution of human causation; see also fingerprint studies of human causation hurricane Katrina 187

270 Index Imhoff, James 105 independent responsibility to act 210–20 Independent United Kingdom Scientific Review Committee 108 India 39, 198, 203, 204, 213, 215 247 Information Council on the Environment 98 injustice 10, 247 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): attack by disinformation campaign 102, 114; creation 28; economic analysis 85; impact prediction 29, 45, 47, 75–6, 217; scientific uncertainty 79, 92–7; response to deniers 98, 108 IUCN 25 Jamieson, D. 9 Japan 43, 204 Johnson, Lyndon 11, 23, 97 Jones, Phil 105–06 justice: distributive 6, 62, 64–8, 88, 124, 150, 167, 168, 169, 176, 209, 210, 246; procedural, 67, 77–8, 89, 90, 121, 124, 125, 151, 155, 173–4, 177, 190, 246; retributive 6, 210 Kant, Immanuel 13 Kazakhstan 204 Keeling, C. 11, 23 Kenya 216 Kiribati 206 Koch Industries 100 Kraus, K. 173 Kuwait 30, 34 Kyoto Protocol 40–7, 61, 65, 81, 158, 161, Latin America 216 least developed nations 185 Locke, J. 171 Lomborg. B. 65 London 199 Luntz, F. 99 Luxembourg 204 Maldives 206 Mann, Michael 105, 106, 108, Mauna Loa 23 McConnell, Mitch 58 Mexico 198 media, see also press ignoring ethical issues Mobil Oil 42

models, climate 23, 97, 112, 115,180, 228 moral complexity 9 moral corruption 8, 201, 224, 242, moral storms 7, 14, 86, 92, 134, 153, 175, 210, 224–5, 241–2, 248 National Association of Manufacturers 99 National Center for Atmospheric Research 133 National Coal Association 98 national self-interest: 14, 113, 159, 169, 175, 214, 219, 245, 249; see also responsibilities of nations Nitze, William 35 NOAA, 97, 191 no harm principle 149, 182, 183 Nordhaus, William 65, 85 Nozick, R. 171 Obama, Barack 48–2, 146, 213, 247 Oreskes, N. 109, 128, 166 overlapping consensus 13, 18, 87, 104 Pakistan 80, 217 Pearce, Fred 105 peer-review science: 128; see also scientific uncertainty Penn State University 108 Pershing, J. 186 Pew Center for Climate Change 84, 181 polluter pays principle 187–8 Potsdam Institute, 140 precautionary principle 34, 91, 118–20, 183 present problem, climate change as a 75–6, 177 President’s Council on Environmental Quality 26 press ignoring ethical issues 4, 29, 31, 32, 34, 37, 41, 44, 47, 100, 104, 150, 231 principles, equity: ability to pay 162; ad hoc 162; Brazilian historic responsibility; 162; comparable burdens, 162 equal per capita162; Indian Prime Minister’s Proposal 162; IPCC grouping 162–3; mixed, 162; polluter pays, 162, 168, 190; Rawlsian basic needs 162, 168, 205; satisfaction of basic needs 162; status quo reductions 162; see also equity frameworks Ravelle, Roger 23

 Rawls, John, 13, 64, 168, Reagan, Ronald 26, 97 Realscience.org 103, Rio Declaration on Environment and Development 168, 182 responsible skepticism 136, 225–30, responsibility for climate change: businesses 181–211; damages, 53, 177–94; developed country 33, 42, 160–1, 169, 176; individual, 18, 53, 181–211; organizations 53, 181–211; polluter pays 183; proportionate 189; national,18, 34, 53,61–4, 67, 126, 146, 149, 154, 166, 182–4, 190–4, 19, 210–20, 214, 243–4; sub-national governments 18, 181–211; to non-humans 150; see also allocation runaway climate change: 122, 140–1; see also climate surprises Russia 47, 198, 203, 204, 217 Sachs, W. 198–9 sacred value 73 Sagoff, Mark 69 Saudi Arabia 30, 34 Scaife Foundation 102 Schmidt, G. 133 Schraeder-Frechette, K. 124, 125 scientific consensus 3, 14, 22, 91, 92–7, 106, 109, 127, 128, 133, 217 Shanghai 199 Shell Oil 42, 99 Shue, Henry 74, 168, 206, Singer, Peter 123, 200, 201 SkepticalScience.org. 103 Small Island Developing States 40, 41, 185 social movement 5, 10, 239, 249 Somalia, 216 State Policy Institute 218 Stern, Sir Nicholas 65–6, 74, 84, 85, Suess, Hans 23 Summers, L. 213 Sununu, John 28, 35 Texaco 99 think tanks, 99–102, 108, 218 threats of harm from climate change 3, 10–11, 60, 75–6, 93, 119, 122, 146, 147, 179–80, 216–18

Index 271 Trenberth, K. 133, Tyndall, John 10, 21 UK House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee 108 Ukraine 204 United Kingdom 52, 203, 204 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development 29, 35 United Nations Environment Program 25, 51, 92, 144 United Nations Framework Convention On Climate Change; allocating national targets 158, 167; atmospheric targets 138, baseline year 174; developed nations responsibility; 183, 213; equity 169, 175; history of negotiations, 29–33, 35, 36, no harm 149, 183; nations as duty holders 199; polluter pays 183; precautionary principle 118, 183; warming limit 12 United States: 13, 20–54; Environmental Protection Agency 53, 58 University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) 216 U.S. Academy of Science, 11, 12, 24, 28, 46, 47, 94, 97, 101, 119, 130, 142, 190, 191, uncertainty: adaptation 180–1; economic, 78–82, 89; scientific 7, 14, 15, 17, 20–54, 91–137; warming limit, 141–55 utilitarianism: 59, 63, 73, 200, 236; preference, 68–70, 88; scientific uncertainty, 120–3 virtue ethics 236 vulnerability 177, 179–82 Wall Street Journal, 105 wasted energy, 198, 206 Western Fuels, 98 White, R., 97, 191 Wigley, T. 133 willingness-to-pay 70–4, 84 World Food Program 216 World Health Organization 92 World Meteorological Organization 23, 26

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