EGS1003: Section on International Environmental Justice and the Climate Change ChallengeMary Lawhon This work by Mary Lawhon is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

 Distribution of responsibility  who caused it?  Distribution of impacts  who will suffer most because of it?  Distribution of costs and benefits  who will pay to fix it? By Sean Wilson/ SEI

 Does responsibility for causing climate change mean responsibility for addressing it?

 The science isn’t sure yet- we shouldn’t waste money until we know it’s real and what the impacts will be

 Most scientists ask: what do we know about climate change impacts?  Those opposing climate change policies have managed to make scientific uncertainty the major focus of climate change policy debates, a focus that is often irrelevant to ethical duties to act once science generates a respectable description of likely impacts

 We should be asking: what are the scientifically plausible harms that could happen if we wait until remaining scientific uncertainties are resolved?  Given these potential harms, do ghg emitters have duties to climate change victims to take action even if we concede scientific uncertainty about timing and magnitude of climate change impacts?

 We didn’t know about climate change before, so we shouldn’t be responsible for historic emissions.

 Look at all the technology, knowledge and (superior) culture which has come about as a result. We shouldn’t be punished for all this progress- plus, you all can benefit from this now…

Stern 2004

 We’re bigger, stronger and more powerful. Sure, we did it, sure, you’ll suffer. So?

 [Current] climate diplomacy assumes that, once the major actors have accepted the consensus science in the IPCC reports, they will recognize an overriding common interest in gaining control over the greenhouse effect. But global warming is not H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds, where invading Martians democratically annihilate humanity without class or ethnic distinction…  Coordinated global action on behalf [of the poor] presupposes either their revolutionary empowerment—a scenario not considered by the IPCC—or the transmutation of the self-interest of rich countries and classes into an enlightened ‘solidarity’ with little precedent in history” (Davis 2010)

 If taking some responsibility, what does that actually look like?

 equality, distributive injustice and corrective justice for historical emissions  -> equal rights per capita entitlement  (Bond, 2011)

 most economically efficient path for minimising climate impact and delivering global ecological health and stability  ->equal emission reduction, equal net welfare change across nations, net welfare change proportional to GDP per capita, opportunity to abate, and ability to pay (Bond, 2011)

Bond, Patrick (2011) From Copenhagen to Cancún to Durban: Moving Deckchairs on the Climate Titanic. Capitalism, Nature, Socialism. 22:2, Brown, Donald A. (2010) Have We Been Asking the Wrong Questions About Climate Change Science? Why Strong Climate Change Ethical Duties Exist Before Scientific Uncertainties are Resolved. Posted July 16, Stern, David The Rise and Fall of the Environmental Kuznets Curve. World Development Volume 32, Issue 8, August 2004, Pages Davis, Mike Who will build the Ark? New Left Review. Posted January 29,