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Climate Change
What Does It Mean to Say It
Is An Ethical Issue?
Donald A. Brown, Associate Professor
Environmental Ethics, Science and Law
Penn State University
[email protected]
Why are moral questions so salient
at the global scale?
This
here
Questions of: Damage
Responsibility:
Distributive Justice?;
Welfare Maximization?
Procedural Justice?
Makes
this
happen
here.
Why are ethical questions more salient
at the global scale?
The Consequences Are
Potentially
Catastrophic
Hurricane Katrina
• August 29, 2005
Photo: NOAA
Source: Getty Images/Marko Georgiev
Source: Getty Images/David Portnoy
Climate change is already happening ,
warming is small compared to what we
will see in the next decades.
Governments interests don’t
coincide with who they may harm
in emitting GHGs
This government
represents the
interest of only its
citizens not the
interests of others
If Climate Change Is An Ethical
Issue, So What?
• People, nations, organizations have
obligations, duties, responsibilities, not just
interests.
• Excuses for not taking action are not
justifiable such as:
– is not in my national interest,
– solution will not maximize global preference
utility,
– Solution will be costly
Climate Change Ethics
Ethics - the domain of inquiry that examines
statements about what is bad or good,
obligatory or non-obligatory, or when duties
attach to human actions.
Basis for ethical positions
conflict
– Religion (see prior slide)
– Anthropocentric
• Utilitarian and other consequentiality
• Relationship based ethics
• Virtue
• Rights based or other duty based
• Distributive and other theories of justice
– Non-anthropocentric
• Biocentric
• Ecocentric
Remove
some
proposals
Overlapping
Consensus
Ethics and Morality
Different
theological statements on
climate change
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Catholic
World Council of Churches
Church of the Brethren
Methodists
Quaker
National Association of Evangelicals,
Episcopal
Anglican
American Baptist
American Jewish Committee,
Central Conference of American Rabbis
Lutheran
Presbyterian
Rabbinical Assembly.
Unitarians
United Church of Christ
Collaborative Program on the Ethical
Dimensions of Climate Change
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Rock Ethics Institute-Penn State
University (Program Secretariat)
The Pennsylvania Consortium for
Interdisciplinary Environmental
Policy
IUCN-Commission on
Environmental Law-Ethics Working
Group
Center for Applied Ethics-Cardiff
University
The Global Ecological Integrity
Project
Sustainability Research Center,
Leeds University
Brazilian Forum on Climate Change
Coordination of Post Graduate
Programs in Engineering of the
Federal University of Rio de
Janeiro-The Energy Planning
Program
•
•
•
•
•
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•
Tyndall Center for Global Climate
Change
Oxford Climate Policy
EcoEquity
Center for Ethics, University of
Montana,
Center for Global Ethics at
Birmingham University,
New Directions: Science, Ethics,
Policy
IVIG International Virtual Institute
on Global Change-Federal
University Of Rio de Janeiro
And individuals with expertise and interest in climate
change or global ethics. Also cooperating with the World
What are the major ethical
issues?
Issues
– GHG atmospheric stabilization
level
– Equitable allocation
– Who will pay for damages?
– Scientific uncertainty
– Cost to national economies
– Can nations wait until others
reduce emissions
– Can nations wait for new
cheaper technologies
– Fair processes and procedure
– Human rights violations
– Ethical Issues In trading
– Solutions
• Biofuels
• Carbon capture and storage
• Nuclear
Why are the ethical dimensions of climate change practical
as well as moral urgent concerns?
• Most of the climate debate structured by scientific and
economic discourses
• Policy-makers turn to scientists to determine facts and
economists to look at harms and benefits of proposed
policy actions-ethics rarely comes up in policy
discussions
• These discourses often hide the ethical issues which
inhibits serious ethical analysis
• Many of the barriers to a global solution are issues that
raise profound ethical questions
• As we go forward scientific and economic uncertainty will
not go away.
GHG Stabilization Issue
• Will determine who
lives or dies and what
nations survive?
• Lots of uncertainty
• Need a global
approach based upon
national targets
CO2 Emissions vs
CO2(atm)
500 ppmv
400 ppmv
382 ppmv
Data from Vostok
Total Primary Power vs Year
1990: 12 TW 2050: 28 TW
China
USRussia
EU
Need a
treaty to
control this
Bathtub will
continue to
overflow unless
water is kept
below this line.
Canada
India
Cant solve the
climate change
problem by slowing
the rate of water
down
Atmospher
e like a
bathtub
has a fixed
volume
Ice Sheets and Sea Level Rise
• Potential for catastrophic sea level rise
• Destabilization threshold 1-4 0C
• Timing very uncertain
5m
7m
Courtesy of M. Oppenheimer
Allocation question
• Who gets the 3 billion
tons?
• Per capita
• Difference between
survival tons and
luxury tons
The Moral Dilemma of Climate
Change
Highest vulnerability vs.
largest per capita CO emissions
2
Highest vulnerability towards climate change vs. largest CO2 emissions (from fossil fuel combustion
and cement production, and including land use change, kg C per person and year from 1950 - 2003)
Largest per capita CO2 emitters
Largest per
capita
emitters, and highest
social and / or agro-economic vulnerability
Highest
social
and CO
/ or2agro-economic
vulnerability
Highest per
social
and CO
/ or2agro-economic
vulnerability
Largest
capita
emitters, and highest
social and / or agro-economic vulnerability
Areas with highest ecological vulnerability
Source:
Who will pay for damages?
• Polluter pays
principle?
• Historical emissions?
• Questions of proof?
Issue 4-Scientific Uncertainty
• Does the fact that there may be some
uncertainty about climate change impacts
raise ethical issues?
• Two ethical questions are raised:
– Who should have the burden of proof?
– And what quantity of proof should satisfy that
burden of proof
Cost As Justification for Nonaction?
• Cost to one country alone ?
• Cost-benefit analysis?
– Disaggregation of harms
and benefits
– Discounting future
benefits
– Everything is a
commodity-nothing
sacred
– Health is more than
income
– Victims rights
Other climate change ethical issues
– A Nation Can Wait Until Others Act
– A Nation Can Wait Until New
Technologies are Invented
– Ethics of Technological Solutions
• nuclear, wind, biofuels,
– Ethics of Geoengineering
– Ethics of Trading
– North-South tech transfer
–
Other major climate change
ethical issues
• Who is going to pay for damages and
adaptation?
• Should developing nations pay for
reducing their greenhouse gas emissions?
• What to do about forests?
• What about excuses many make, such as
scientific uncertainty, cost,
• Solutions to climate change
Who are the duty holders.
• Nations have a duty under the UNFCCC to reduce their emissions
based upon equity to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference
with the climate system
– Nations could distribute their national allocation based upon fair
distribution
• As a matter of international law, the “polluter pays”
• Under human rights theory, any one (federal government, state,
regional, local government, business, individuals) who can prevent
harms to others that interfere with the ability to live a life of basic
human dignity have a duty to take action.
• Climate change is classic problem of distributive justice. According
to distributive justice the burdens of preventing climate change
should distributed equally unless other mo,rally relevant criteria for
distributing the burdens will justify other distributions.
• All persons, businesses, organizations, have a duty to reduce their
emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions.
Carbon Sequestration
Biofuels
• Two major controversies
with ethanol;
– The amount of land
needed to grow the plants
and the consequent effect
on food and loss
biodiversity of such use.
– The amount of energy
used in production of
ethanol
Donald A. Brown, Associate
Professor of Environmental
Ethics, Science, and Law, Penn
State University
[email protected]
http://climateethics.org
814-865-3371