Climate change

Responding to climate change

Carbon emissions trading

What is climate change?

• Climate change is a large-scale, long-term shift in the planet’s weather patterns or average temperatures• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

Change (IPCC), is a United Nations body set up to monitor climate change. • November 2014: the IPCC released the

Synthesis Report• Anthropogenic climate change• Sceptics 

The greenhouse effect

Human activities of all kinds whether in industry, in the field (e.g. deforestation) or concerned with

transport or the home are resulting in emissions of increasing quantities of gases, in particular the gas

carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere…Because carbon dioxide is a good absorber of heat radiation coming from the Earth’s surface, increased carbon

dioxide acts like a blanket over the surface, keeping it warmer than it would otherwise be. With the

increased temperature the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere also increases, providing more

blanketing and causing it to be even warmer.

John Houghton (lead editor of three IPCC reports)

A moral problem

Climate change is an ethical issue of justice: what we have is a very limited resource, and

ethical questions concern the justice of distributing a very limited resource

3 ethical questions:1. How should we respond to climate change?2. Whose responsibility is it?3. Is carbon trading ethical?

Responding to climate change: mitigation

Mitigation = the efforts to cut or prevent the emission of greenhouse gases.

E.g. using new, cleaner technologies, clean energy sources, changing peoples’ behaviour, or making older technology more energy efficient. It can entail retro-fitting buildings to make them more energy efficient, cutting the impact of transport emissions. Tackling waste. Recycling. Forest regeneration.

Responding to climate change: adaptation

• This is a policy of adapting to the effects of climate change. • The IPCC defines adaptation as adjustments

in ecological, social, and economic systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli and their effects. • It could mean adapting to extreme events

such as intensified hurricanes and floods• Or slow-onset events, such as incremental

sea-level rise, loss of water resources, gradual changes in ecosystems and habitat loss, species extinction etc.

Responding to climate change: adaptation

• Adaptation might at first seem to be a slippery slope argument• It’s necessary because we are paying for past and

current carbon emissions• All the strategies dealing with climate change

envisage that global emissions will continue to rise for at least the next few decades, and this commits us to even more adaptation

Two kinds of adaptation:1. Adaptation after the event (or reactive

adaptation)2. Adaptation oriented towards possible futures

(known as pro-active adaptation) 

Responding to climate change

• If we pursue a policy of just mitigation, we will be unprepared for the effects of past and current greenhouse gas emissions• Adaptation thought to be the most politically

expedient (e.g. Bush administration)• A policy of just adaptation risks allowing

global warming to continue unchecked (there would be greater problems for pro-active adaptation)• So today, it is not a question of either/or, it

is a matter of both/and.

How should the costs of our response

to climate change be distributed?

3 problems

1. People not affected in the same way: some parts of the world are going to be better off, other parts are going to suffer a great deal

2. It’s not a problem now: this is a behavioural problem and concerns getting people (and companies and governments) motivated

3. Defining equity: it has to be defined within the context of the economy of developing nations and the preservation of the environment everyone.

3 principles

1. If you break it, you pay for it (“the polluter pays”)

2. Give everyone an equal share3. Help the worst off

Cf. Peter Singer’s One Atmosphere.

If you break it, you pay for it (“the polluter pays”)

• This is the ‘historical principle’. It addresses the common sense ideal: ‘you broke it, you fix it’• The developed countries have done the

most to create this problem, they should do the most to fix it.

Arguments against• Ignorance: until recently, the developed

countries were ignorant of the effects of their emissions on the climate, and so shouldn’t be held accountable for past emissions.• No need for the principle: if the world’s poor

suffered severe harm, it would be odd for the rich nations to claim they have no obligation because they were ignorant of the effects of industrialisation.• It’s not pragmatic: if this was the principle of

justice, any action on climate change would be suspended indefinitely because there is no external coercive body (cf. Traxler).

Give everyone an equal share

Equal per capita emissions: the egalitarian principle is the default position. The rationale for it is the basic needs argument, which holds that:• Justice requires that each person enjoy a certain

threshold standard of living, including that their basic needs are met.• People have equal basic needs in the use of

greenhouse gas emissions.• Therefore, there should be equal emission rights.

Justice requires equality of goods, which, in turn, requires an equal per capita distribution of greenhouse gas emissions.

Arguments against

Justice is concerned with the fair share of a total package of goods, not one particular item. So it doesn’t make sense to talk about the just distribution of greenhouse gas emissions.We can respond to this challenge with two different theories of justice:1. Wholly integrationist: this model of justice is

concerned with the fair distribution of an overall package of goods.

2. Partially integrationist: comprises principles that apply to a total package of goods, but in some cases includes principle that apply to some specific goods in isolation (such as, for example, the right to free speech and freedom of conscience).

Arguments against

• It forgets the past: if you think historical responsibility should play a part then this leaves the developed world with much less than equal per capita shares.• Unfair to the poor: an equal per capita

basis leaves the rich, rich and the poor, poor (cf. 3rd principle).

Helping the worst off

• Principle aims at stopping the worst off from becoming even worse off.• Cf. John Rawls: when we distribute goods,

the only justification for giving more to those who are well off is that this will improve the situation of those who are worst off. In all other cases, we should give to those who are worst off. 

Helping the worst off

• Unlike the egalitarian approach, this guarantees that conditions for the worst off will improve.• In accordance with Rawls’ principle, the

only grounds on which one could argue against rich nations bearing all the costs of reducing emissions would be that to do so would make the poor nations even worse off than they would have been if the rich nations were not bearing all the costs.

Utilitarianism• What proposal would lead to the greatest net happiness?• Difficulty of calculating costs and benefits (cf. pro-active

adaptation)• The polluter pays: if it is upheld as a general rule there

would be less pollution, which would be to the general benefit.• The egalitarian principle: harder for utilitarians to

justify. But it could be justified on the grounds that it avoids continued fighting and suspended action.• Helping the worst off: increasing the utility of those

who have less is more beneficial than increasing the utility of those who have more.

With all three principles, the utilitarian could support them, but not as absolutes.

Kantianism

• An action is right if it’s something that we can will that every person in the world would do, without damaging the Earth’s climate• E.g. could we will driving to work as a

universal law?• Responsibility to future generations: if we

act out of self-interest, is this treating future generations as a means rather than as an end?

Carbon emissions trading

The carbon market• Introduced by the Clinton administration at the Kyoto

conference in 1997. • Industrial countries sell ‘emissions reductions units’ to

one another, and could also trade them with developing countries to count towards their reduction targets. • A governing body sets a cap on the amount of carbon

dioxide that can be emitted and then sells permits (or carbon credits) to companies• The company can’t exceed that amount unless they

engage in carbon offsetting (buying carbon credits from another party)• This means that companies are buying the right to

pollute• There is now an international carbon market

Arguments in favour of carbon trading

• It ensures environmental protection: it’s the only policy that places an absolute limit on the level of emissions (compare this to carbon taxing)• It minimises waste: companies are rewarded if

they make reductions, penalised if they don’t‘; these incentives encourage companies to reduce their emissions for less than the market price• It maintains liberty: carbon trading is a

regulated system that allows companies to decide how to reduce emissions rather than imposing policies on them

Carbon trading:Utilitarianism and Kantianism• Utilitarianism: if creating a carbon

market produces the greatest happiness, then that’s the right thing to do. But it’s difficult to know whether it will produce the greatest happiness?• Kantianism: would consider the

rightness and wrongness of actions in themselves. As we’ve seen, the consequences of actions play a constitutive role in determining rights and freedom. Is there a place for absolutism?

Carbon trading: 3 arguments against

Cf. Michael Sandel’s Public Philosophy. 3 reasons why carbon trading is wrong:1. It creates loopholes that enables countries to

avoid their obligations.2. “pollution into a commodity to be bought and

sold removes the moral stigma that is properly associated with it. If a company or country is fined for spewing excessive pollutants into the air, the community conveys its judgement that the polluter has done something wrong. A fee, on the other hand, makes pollution just another cost of doing business, like wages, benefits and rent.” (Sandel, Public Philosophy: 94)

Carbon trading: 3 arguments against

3. It might undermine the sense of shared responsibility that global cooperation requires.

Cf. example of raking leaves in the autumn.It might make cooperation difficult to achieve.

Take-home questions

1. Which principle of distribution (of responsibility) do you find to be the most just? Why?

2. Which principle do you find to be the most unjust? Why?

3. Should we buy the right to pollute?