Transcript Presentation by Nigel Dower

Climate Ethics/Justice
Nigel Dower
[email protected]
Two factual
assumptions (1)
• Need to reduce carbon emissions by
80% by 2050 to achieve stabilization at
2 degree above pre-industrial
temperatures in order to avoid
collective catastrophe. Most of this
burden lies with the industrialised
countries. Average per capita emissions
of most people in North much higher
than what is required.
Two factual
assumptions (2)
• Changes in climate are already
happening and will continue to happen
on a greater scale because of what has
been emitted and will continue to be
emitted even if we achieve 80%
reduction by 2050. A disproportionate
portion of the negative effects are and
will be in developing countries.
Ethics/Global Ethics
• Ethics is about the norms governing how
we relate to other people (and beings
more generally); broadly about how we
affect their well-being (helping them and
avoiding harming them), more
specifically about whether our
relationships to them are fair/just and/or
respect their (human) rights.
• Global ethics: explicit concern for
our relationships with people
anywhere in the world.
• Climate change is par excellence
an issue for global ethics:
• Our carbon habits affect people
everywhere, now and in the future;
and arguably a carbon intensive lifestyle contributes however indirectly
to harming others if changing
climate negatively affects the
conditions of their well-being.
Three sets of distinctions
• Mitigation/facilitating adaptation
• Countries & other collective groups
of human beings/individuals
• Ethical motivation: doing good and
reducing harm done by others /
reducing harm done by oneself and
compensating for past emissions
• Mitigation/facilitating adaptation
• Ethical arguments for reducing (dramatically)
carbon footprint: general effects on
humanity in future plus special effects on
certain groups now, especially the poor and
vulnerable.
• Ethical arguments for facilitating with
adaptation for those already negatively
affected by climate change especially the
poor in poor countries
• Countries & other collective groups of human
beings/individuals
What should e.g. nation states do? General
ethical arguments or the specific arguments for
entering into and abiding by international
agreements.
What should individuals do? Reduce their
personal emissions and reliance on others’
emissions (indirect carbon footprint) - but by how
much? Campaign for change – again how much?
• Ethical motivation: doing good and reducing
harm done by others / reducing harm done by
oneself and compensating for past emissions
Humanitarian impulse: we are trying to
make/encourage others to act/work for a
better/less bad world:
• by changing our carbon behaviour
and/or
• contributing to measures to facilitate adaptation
especially for the very poor.
The latter may be simply a special case of the
humanitarian impulse to help the poor, whatever
the cause of the poverty.
Climate justice
• Forward looking: carbon-intensive states or
individuals are acting unjustly if they continue to
live this way.
e.g. we each have an entitlement to that share of
the atmospheric commons which if everyone
emitted the same would lead to carbon stability;
if we exceed that we are acting unjustly towards
others, present and future
or: (more simply) what if everyone (people in
every country) lived the way I (those in my
country) live? (golden rule)
In its simplest form the arguments are
very radical. But:
• How much do we expect individuals e.g.
to go beyond what is generally
practised/expected?
• Other complications/moral
considerations: e.g. family obligations;
willingness to offset; Al Gore effect.
• backward-looking:
If individuals or states have emitted well
above their entitlement/what is
sustainable (and will continue to do so),
then they ought to compensate for past
wrongs/injustice especially to those who
suffer as a consequence
cf. global economic injustice arguments