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Oslo lecture October 2014 Climate Change and the Prospects for Eco-Social Policies Prof Ian Gough LSE, UK Scope of this lecture • Attempt to discuss together both global policies and national policies – Local policies left to one side • Re national policies I mainly draw on the UK as exemplar of rich countries • Focus on climate change – not other environmental challenges – The non-correspondence of places of pollution and spaces of impacts The diabolical problem: global ‘carbon space’ vanishing fast • To achieve a 50-50 chance of avoiding global warming exceeding 2℃ by the end of the century, and taking population growth into account, global emissions must be cut from around 7 tonnes CO2e per person per year now to no more than 2 by 2050: decline of c3.5 times • If global ouput per person continues to grow at its present rate (roughly trebling by 2050), then global emissions per unit of output must fall by a factor of c9 times by 2050 – only 34 years away • And remember a 50-50 chance is like playing Russian roulette with bullets in three chambers! Social impacts of climate change • Working Group II Report on ‘Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability’, IPCC Fifth Report 2014: chapter headings: – – – – – – – – – – – • Freshwater resources Terrestrial and inland water systems Coastal systems and low-lying areas Ocean systems Food security and food production systems Urban Areas Rural Areas, Key economic sectors and services Human health Human security Livelihoods and poverty. 2011 UK Foresight Report adds (among others): – – – – resource scarcity degraded coastal infrastructure disruption of shipping and oil supplies collapse of weak states and rising distress migration. The distributional justice problem • Climate change impacts across space and time • Brundtland: sustainable development meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs • This entails three components of justice: – global justice – intergenerational justice – national social justice • This talk discusses some of the interrelations The double injustice Developed first to explain global environmental injustice: – Nations and peoples least responsible for climate change are and will suffer the greatest impacts of CC But can be applied within countries: – Higher income households contribute more to CO2 emissions than lower income households – poor and vulnerable households suffer more from environmental degradation From double to triple injustice • In addition, poorer nations and peoples may suffer more from climate mitigation policies – extending biofuels can drive up food prices • Again, this can occur within countries – raising carbon taxes or prices has regressive effects, burdening lower income households more • This is the fundamental case for ‘eco-social’ policies that pursue both social distributive and environmental goals Global dilemmas: human needs and necessary emissions • World Bank: – ‘If all 40 million drivers of SUVs in the US switched to fuelefficient cars, the savings alone would offset the emissions generated in providing electricity to 1.6 billion people in the South’ • Other studies show the trivial costs of bringing everyone up to HDI abd other basic need standards • Agarwal and Narain, then Henry Shue distinguished: – Necessary emissions – Luxury emissions ‘Just emissions’ • ‘It is inequitable to ask some people to surrender necessities so that other people can retain luxuries’ • I want to research whether this provides a normative and operational distributive criterion between and within countries • This informs the ‘Greenhouse Development Rights’ campaign – The best worked out proposal so far? ‘Greenhouse Development Rights’ Distinguishes: • National responsibilities for climate change – cumulative emissions of CO2 since 1990 • National capacities to fund mitigation and adaptation programmes: GDP per head • But recognises luxury v necessary emissions within countries – Discount incomes below $8500 per head – Chakravarty et al predicts that by 2030 of one billion ‘high emitters’ one half will live outside the OECD • This could provide an international allocation of obligations which meets both environmental and social justice Stern’s argument against GDR • To focus on distributive justice in terms of equal allocations is to divert attention from the urgent need to decarbonise the entire world’s energy system • ‘There is little point in equitable access to a train wreck’ • Equity issues should take the form proposed by the Indian government at Cancun: ‘equitable access to sustainable development’ • This OK, but insufficient, even on pragmatic grounds – Global inequities will block a global agreement – National social inequities will hamper rich country’s support Needs, emissions and social policies • We need a firmer basis for conceiving of necessary emissions • Won’t ‘necessary emissions’ differ widely across the world? • Can we within rich countries distinguish necessary from luxury emissions? • A very brief summary here A theory of human need • Basic needs- those preconditions that enable people to – Form and pursue their own goals – Participate in society – Critically reflect on the conditions in which they find themselves • Universal basic needs: – Health – Critical autonomy Human needs and sustainable wellbeing • I argue that only human needs can provide a sound conception of human wellbeing across cultures, countries and generations • See new article on my website: http://personal.lse.ac.uk/goughi/ Calculating basic emissions • These needs are universal • But need satisfiers vary according to time, place and context – Goods, services, activities and relationships • To construct and estimate these requires combining two sorts of knowledge: – Codified knowledge of experts – Experiential knowledge of people in communities • Can this be used to estimate basic satisfiers and then basic emissions? Example: calculating basic emissions in the UK • The Bradshaw ‘decent life budget’ methodology – consensual discussions – Expert feedback • On this basis negotiated quite radical shifts in consumption in the UK: – No private cars – Housing geared to family size • Druckman and Jackson: If everyone on this standard, necessary emissions in UK would be 37% lower than actual consumption emissions – A significant saving, but not enough ‘Luxury’ versus ‘lock-in’ • Not all excess consumption and emissions are ‘luxury’ • Part driven by ‘lock-in’: structures and institutions outside individual choice – Commuting, shopping in supermarkets etc • These necessary for participation in society as it currently exists – and thus critical for satisfaction of basic needs Towards an eco-social policy • To target consumption emissions in the West requires more radical policies to modify preferences and behaviour, and to constrain total consumption demand • Will need to tackle both luxury and lock-in • To combine these goals with social equity will require novel forms of policy integration: new proactive eco-social policies • Consider seven here 1. Variable energy prices • Rising block tariffs? • Ie. Extend the range of basic goods subject to some measure of non-price allocation – Household energy – Water • Can this be achieved with private ownership of basic utlities? 2. Energy efficiency policies • Green Deal to retrofit homes and buildings in UK • German KfW programme more successful here (Power reserch): – regulatory framework – financial incentives – clarity of the message about integrating home energy efficiency and micro-generation’ • Requires regional banks and strong local government? 3. Feed-in tariffs • Feed-in tariffs for domestic and community electricity generation • Again German success: 700,000 energy suppliers • A means of diversifying ownership of energy supply and building a political constituency? • But evidence that dominated by large farmers and landowners? 4. Tax consumption/ high energy luxuries These different: • Robert Frank: tax consumption – spending habits of the rich foster an unending expansion in general notions of material adequacy – equals a progressive income tax that excludes savings – But this would benefit higher-income groups – who save more – and would over time increase, not diminish, wealth inequality. • More appropriate is selective taxation of high emissions consumption, such as air travel – Here idea of ‘luxuries’ challenges orthodox assumptions about consumer sovereignty 5. Personal carbon allowances and trading • A downstream version of upstream carbon trading – Directly progressive (though still some low income losers) – Direct impact on consumer behaviour likely – But would require carbon labelling of thousands of goods (and services?); Tesco experience suggests unlikely without regulation – Problem of combining with ETS 6. Reduce working hours • Likely ‘scale effect’ on emissions, but also ‘composition effect’ • Incremental by taking out productivity increases in ‘leisure’: – Change in annual hours of work 1980-2010: US -33 hours, Germany -300 hours • But would require ancillary ‘traditional’ social programmes to avoid low pay and ‘time inequality’ • The opposite to current ‘social investment’ strategy 7. A preventive welfare state? • Move social policy upstream and integrate with emissions policy • Eg.1. Policies to shift personal transport modes away from cars • Eg.2. Policies to reduce meat-eating, could potentially – Improve health – Reduce GHG emissions, and – Reduce health care costs • Requires integrated policy-making The political economy of eco-social policies • But many of these policies interact with the organisation of the economy • Implies a more socialised, regulated, directed form of capitalism • Neo-liberal capitalism at the opposite extreme: excessive financialisation, shorttermism and anti-social greed • This leads to vareties of capitalism Varieties of capitalism and differences in climate mitigation • Christoff and Eckersley: – ‘Laggards’: US, Canada, Australia – ‘Leaders’: Germany, Nordics – and UK • Obvious links here with coordinated economies and welfare states: – Dryzek and Meadowcroft: coordinated market economies with social democratic welfare states tend to see economic and ecological values as mutually reinforcing Do welfare regimes matter? • Max Koch argues that generous welfare states still rely on high income/high growth capitalism – And redistribution may worsen emissions – Thus finds that lower income Med countries and some Anglo countries, eg NZ, do well – But much depends on dependent variables: total emissions v policies in place and future targets • But affirms the truth that welfare states thus far have been built on ‘growth states’ Conclusion: Building an eco-welfare state Requires: • New policies on consumption • New policies on work • But these cannot be disentangled from economic policy • So how build this in context of unfettered capitalism? • ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t start from here’