Climate Change and Future Justice

Precaution, Compensation and Triage

Catriona McKinnon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136625183
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Environment & Energy Policy

Climate change creates unprecedented problems of intergenerational justice. What do members of the current generation owe to future generations in virtue of the contribution they are making to climate change?

Providing important new insights within the theoretical framework of political liberalism, Climate Change and Future Justice presents arguments in three key areas:

• Mitigation: the current generation ought to adopt a strong precautionary principle in formulating climate change policy in order to minimise the risks of serious harm from climate change imposed on future generations
• Adaptation: the current generation ought to create a fund to which members of future generations may apply for compensation if the risks of climate change harm imposed on them by the current generation ripen into harms
• Triage: future generations ought to keep alive hope for a return to the framework of justice for the social cooperation of future people less burdened by climate change harms.

This work presents agenda-setting applications of important principles of democratic equality to the most serious set of political challenges ever faced by human society. It should be required reading for political theorists and environmental philosophers.

1

Introduction

Climate change is not a new phenomenon. The last three million years of the Earth’s history have been punctuated by Ice Ages, and during most of the past five hundred million years the Earth was much warmer than it is today, and probably completely free of ice sheets. Major shifts in the climate, and large fluctuations in global mean temperature with all this entails for weather patterns, extinction events, and the direction of evolution of species, are a normal, and sometimes predictable, feature of the planet’s history. Past climate change has had natural causes: changes in incoming solar radiation (for example, as a result of solar flares), changes in the fraction of solar radiation reflected back into space (for example, as a result of changes to the planet’s albedo), and alterations in the longwave energy reflected back into space (for example, as a result of clouds of volcanic ash which have a cooling effect).¹ The climate change we are currently experiencing differs from past shifts in two crucial respects: it is man-made, and it is happening more speedily than at any time in the last fifty million years.² If current climate change were not anthropogenic, its time scale and potential effects on life on Earth would still make it the biggest, most difficult global political challenge ever faced by humanity. That the causes of current climate change are anthropogenic mean that there is an increased – although annually diminishing – chance that we can mount adaptation strategies to deal with the effects of climate change already in the pipeline, and take action to prevent and mitigate climate change further down the line.³

The following features of climate change and its effects combine to make doing something about it hugely – and perhaps uniquely – challenging.

• The seriousness of the problem. In worst-case scenarios of runaway climate change, Homo sapiens could go extinct, and even in best-case scenarios it is likely that many other species will become extinct in virtue of being less able than human beings to adapt to quickly changing environmental conditions.
• The immediacy of the problem. Optimistic authorities estimate that we have a period of ten years in which to make drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, in particular, cuts in carbon dioxide (CO₂) to prevent concentrations of it exceeding 400 parts per million (ppm). Beyond this concentration the probability of preventing a global surface temperature rise of 2°C above pre-industrial levels is severely restricted, and climate change may become irreversible. In March 2004 the concentration of CO₂ stood at 379ppm. Less optimistic authorities claim that the point of no return for climate change is almost upon us.
• The duration of the problem. The most common greenhouse gas, CO₂, remains in the atmosphere for around a century: per impossibile, achieving zero emissions of CO₂ tomorrow would likely not affect the climate until 2105.
• The complexity of the problem. Consensus in the scientific community on the existence of climate change, and its roots in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, masks much disagreement about the mechanisms and processes of climate change, and its likely impacts (on, for example, ecosystems, weather systems, ice sheets, the thermohaline ocean circulation).⁴ Our scientific understanding of climate change lags behind the phenomenon.
• The global scope of the problem. Emissions do not remain at their source but rather, spread evenly throughout the atmosphere across the globe. Climate change creates a collective action problem for the global community on a scale never before encountered.

The climate change we are experiencing requires swift, far-ranging, globally coordinated and probably very unpopular political action. Depending on the action taken in the next ten to twenty years, the current generation will either stand as the cohort who pulled humanity back from the brink of environmental disaster – possibly even from extinction – or as the cohort who missed the last big opportunity to do so. The current generation did not create the climate change problem (although many of us are doing much to exacerbate it), and are horribly unlucky in having been born at a time in human history when the science that reveals the scale and potential devastation of anthropogenically caused climate change is maturing just in time to show how little time we have left to do something about it. The intractability of the climate change problem, and its epic – indeed, melodramatic – dimensions can paralyse thinking about what must be done, and how to do it. Thinking through the political problems of climate change and – worse – the consequences of doing nothing can have an unreal and nightmarish quality.

This book presents some arguments in political theory for principles to guide policy making with respect to climate change. The focus is on securing justice for future generations, who will be the worst affected by climate change, and the inspiration for the approach taken is the work of John Rawls. The urgency of the political challenges of climate change, and the complexities of framing and implementing policies fit to meet them, renders the ideals of pure political theory puny tools. Nevertheless, this book is written with the conviction that even if – as is likely – these ideals have no influence on policy, it still matters enormously that we know what they are, and why they are justified. Justice is a matter of trying to realise ideals, and its scope extends to the problems of climate change, however enormous and frightening they are. It is part of our humanity to think in terms of justice, and we should not abandon that even if the grounds for hope that we can achieve it disappear.

Chapter 2 elaborates aspects of the theoretical framework to be adopted in the book, and the final section of this chapter gives an outline of the arguments made throughout and how they proceed. For now, let me turn to the science and potential impacts of climate change, and to existing policy frameworks to address it.

Science and Impacts

Current climate change is a result of the ‘greenhouse effect’. This is a process whereby infrared radiation emitted from the surface of the Earth – which has been warmed by the Sun – is absorbed and re-emitted back towards the lower atmosphere and the Earth by greenhouse gas molecules and water vapour in clouds. The primary greenhouse gases are water vapour (H₂O), carbon dioxide (CO₂₎, methane (CH₄), and nitrous oxide (N₂O). Without the warming of the natural greenhouse effect, the average temperature at the surface of the Earth would be below zero degrees, and life on Earth as we know it would not be possible.⁵ However, this natural greenhouse effect has been enhanced and intensified by human activity creating a higher atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases, and of CO₂ in particular, which formed 77 per cent of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions in 2004.⁶ Overall, greenhouse gas emissions increased by 70 per cent between 1970 and 2004, and CO₂ by 80 per cent.⁷ The study of ice cores – in which bubbles of ancient air are trapped and can be analysed – shows that the current concentration of CO₂ and CH₄ in the atmosphere far exceeds the natural range of concentrations for the last 650,000 years.⁸ For example, in (pre-industrial) 1750 the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere was 280ppm, rising to 380ppm in 2006.⁹ Corresponding to the increased concentration of greenhouse gases such as CO₂ are other indicators of climate change: for example, global mean surface temperature has increased 0.74° ± 0.18 over the period 1906–2005; global mean sea level rose at an average annual rate of 1–2mm in the twentieth century, and 3mm in the decade 1993–2003 (sea water expands as it heats up); total global snow cover has decreased by 10 per cent since the 1960s; and the growing season has lengthened by one to four days per decade in the last fifty years in the northern hemisphere.¹⁰

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),¹¹ most of the observed increases in global mean surface temperature since the mid-twentieth century are very likely (i.e. have a 90 per cent probability) to have been caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases.¹² When temperature rises 1900–2000 are plotted as predicted by models using only natural causes, and those using natural and anthropogenic causes, the latter correspond far more closely to actual observed temperature rises than do the former.¹³ Human beings are the cause of current climate change, and industrialisation (with associated increased demands for energy from coal-based sources, and increased use of oil-based transport systems), agriculture (e.g. methane emissions from livestock) and changes in land use (e.g. large-scale deforestation, which deprives the planet of carbon sinks) are the key activities.¹⁴

Many discussions of climate change in popular, and scientific, literature treat a 2°C global mean temperature increase (relative to 1750) as a significant threshold. One reason for this is that it is possible that beyond this threshold our chances of averting various positive feedbacks which will accelerate climate change start to diminish dangerously, and the likelihood of our being able to avoid catastrophic climate change events is reduced.¹⁵ As Mark Lynas puts it,

If … we cross the ‘tipping point’ of Amazonian collapse and soil carbon release which lies somewhere above two degrees, then another 250 parts per million of CO₂ will unavoidably pour into the atmosphere, yielding another 1.5°C of warming and taking us straight into the four degree world. Once we arrive there, the accelerated release of carbon and methane from thawing Siberian permafrost will add even more greenhouse gas to the atmosphere, driving yet more warming, and likely pushing us on to the five degree world. At this level of warming … oceanic methane hydrate release becomes a serious possibility, catapulting us into the ultimate mass extinction apocalypse of six degrees.¹⁶

To have a decent chance of avoiding global warming of 2°C and above requires cuts in global emissions of CO₂ of 50–85 per cent by 2050 so as to achieve stabilisation at 350–400ppm CO₂ (445–490ppm of CO₂-equivalent), with CO₂ emissions peaking between 2000 and 2015.¹⁷ This is the so-called ‘peak early/ rapid decline’ scenario. There are reasons to be pessimistic with respect to the likelihood that we will stay below the thresholds it contains. Consider the following two facts about the emissions stabilisation targets. First, stabilisation at 350–400ppm CO₂ would deliver warming below 2°C only if climate sensitivity is towards the lower end of the range of likely values,¹⁸ rather than the ‘best estimate’ of IPCC experts, which actually delivers a range for warming of 2°C–2.4°C. Second, the stabilisation and emissions-reductions targets of the ‘peak early/rapid decline’ scenario do not take account of positive feedbacks and abrupt climate change created by events such as those identified by Lynas. Indeed, the IPCC lists such ‘low probability/high impact events’ as a ‘key uncertainty’ with respect to the ‘drivers and projections of future climate changes and their impacts’.¹⁹ And even less dramatic positive feedbacks, created by ‘climate-carbon cycle coupling’,²⁰ are not factored in to the emissions reduction target for avoiding 2°C+ warming, which means that this target (and all the others similarly computed) might (in a typically cautious IPCC statement) ‘be underestimated’.²¹

If, as seems increasingly likely, we fail to stay below the 2°C target we expose future generations to possible climate change catastrophes as tipping-points are passed, powerful positive feedbacks are unleashed, and average temperature rises above 5°C. However, we need not speculate about climate change catastrophes in order for the writing on the wall for our descendants to come, hazily, into view. Remembering that the IPCC does not take into account ‘low probability/high impact’ events causing positive feedbacks, or even less dramatic positive feedbacks created by climate-carbon cycle coupling, we can consider the impacts associated with its six stabilisation scenarios for CO₂ emissions,²² each projecting a range for CO₂ and CO₂-eq ppm concentrations at stabilisation, global emissions of GtCO₂ per year en route to stabilisation, and global average temperature increases at equilibria corresponding to the stabilisation levels.^23,24 Using the IPCC’s best estimate of climate sensitivity at 3°C, all of these scenarios project minimum temperature increases at equilibrium of over 2°C. Using the lowest estimate of climate sensitivity at 2°C, four scenarios project minimum increases at equilibrium over 2°C; and taking the highest estimate of climate sensitivity at 4.5°C, even the ‘peak early/rapid decline’ scenario – when CO₂-eq emissions stabilise at 445ppm (350ppm CO₂) and peak early – projects a minimum temperature increase at equilibrium of 3°C. Looking at things from the other end, the worst stabilisation scenario projects maximum temperature increases at equilibrium of just under 4°C with the lowest estimate of climate sensitivity, 6.1°C with the best estimate, and over 8°C with the highest estimate.²⁵

Perhaps reaching equilibrium will seem a distant event – a set of conditions creating problems for people very different from us, who may have technofixes available, or who will at least have had time to adjust to the myriad changes and difficulties that stabilisation at anything over 535ppm CO₂-eq could bring.²⁶ So let us consider conditions in which our grandchildren, and/or their children, could live. The IPCC’s lowest value in the likely range of temperature increase for the best-case scenario is 1.1°C; the highest value in the likely range of increases for the worst-case scenario is 6.4°C; its best estimates for these scenarios are 1.8°C and 4°C respectively. These projections are for the next 80–90 years.²⁷ The increases are given relative to 1980–99 levels; for comparison with pre-industrial levels (against which the 2°C threshold is measured by many commentators), 0.5°C should be added to each figure, i.e. 2.3°C and 4.5°C respectively. And remember that these projections do not take account of possible high impact/low probability abrupt events causing positive feedbacks, or those caused by the climate-carbon cycle.

Taking the last category of feedbacks into account, measuring against pre-industrial average temperatures, and working with the latest figures for global emissions increases, consider the UK Met Office’s characterisation of the worst-case scenarios for climate change, to which it urges policy makers to turn their attention.²⁸ On its account, this involves an increase in global average temperature of 7.1°C by 2100 which, it claims, has a 10 per cent chance of occurring.²⁹ This is an almost unthinkable increase. Virtually no climate models exist for temperature increases at this level, and the speed at which this increase would take place – leaving no time for evolutionary adaptation – is unprecedented in the history of the planet. At 7.1°C we would likely have no chance of adapting to climate change, let alone mitigating it, and would probably be on the verge of extinction, if not...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• 2. A Rawlsian approach to climate change justice
• 3. Precautions
• 4. Intergenerational corrective justice
• 5. The end of the world as we know it: catastrophes and triage
• 6. Conclusion: getting motivated in the last-chance saloon
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index