1. Climate change Responding to climate change Carbon emissions trading
Sunday, 16 April 2017
Climate change
Responding to climate change
Carbon emissions trading

2. What is climate change?
Climate change is a large-scale, long-term shift in the planet’s weather patterns or average temperatures
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is a United Nations body set up to monitor climate change.
November 2014: the IPCC released the Synthesis Report
Anthropogenic climate change
Sceptics 

3. The greenhouse effect
Human activities of all kinds whether in industry, in the field (e.g. deforestation) or concerned with transport or the home are resulting in emissions of increasing quantities of gases, in particular the gas carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere…Because carbon dioxide is a good absorber of heat radiation coming from the Earth’s surface, increased carbon dioxide acts like a blanket over the surface, keeping it warmer than it would otherwise be. With the increased temperature the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere also increases, providing more blanketing and causing it to be even warmer. John Houghton (lead editor of three IPCC reports)

4. A moral problem
Climate change is an ethical issue of justice: what we have is a very limited resource, and ethical questions concern the justice of distributing a very limited resource
3 ethical questions:
How should we respond to climate change?
Whose responsibility is it?
Is carbon trading ethical?

5. Responding to climate change: mitigation
Mitigation = the efforts to cut or prevent the emission of greenhouse gases.
E.g. using new, cleaner technologies, clean energy sources, changing peoples’ behaviour, or making older technology more energy efficient. It can entail retro-fitting buildings to make them more energy efficient, cutting the impact of transport emissions. Tackling waste. Recycling. Forest regeneration.

6. Responding to climate change: adaptation
This is a policy of adapting to the effects of climate change.
The IPCC defines adaptation as adjustments in ecological, social, and economic systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli and their effects.
It could mean adapting to extreme events such as intensified hurricanes and floods
Or slow-onset events, such as incremental sea-level rise, loss of water resources, gradual changes in ecosystems and habitat loss, species extinction etc.

7. Responding to climate change: adaptation
Adaptation might at first seem to be a slippery slope argument
It’s necessary because we are paying for past and current carbon emissions
All the strategies dealing with climate change envisage that global emissions will continue to rise for at least the next few decades, and this commits us to even more adaptation
Two kinds of adaptation:
Adaptation after the event (or reactive adaptation)
Adaptation oriented towards possible futures (known as pro-active adaptation) 

8. Responding to climate change
If we pursue a policy of just mitigation, we will be unprepared for the effects of past and current greenhouse gas emissions
Adaptation thought to be the most politically expedient (e.g. Bush administration)
A policy of just adaptation risks allowing global warming to continue unchecked (there would be greater problems for pro-active adaptation)
So today, it is not a question of either/or, it is a matter of both/and.

9. How should the costs of our response to climate change be distributed?

10. 3 problems
People not affected in the same way: some parts of the world are going to be better off, other parts are going to suffer a great deal
It’s not a problem now: this is a behavioural problem and concerns getting people (and companies and governments) motivated
Defining equity: it has to be defined within the context of the economy of developing nations and the preservation of the environment everyone.

11. 3 principles If you break it, you pay for it (“the polluter pays”)
Give everyone an equal share
Help the worst off
Cf. Peter Singer’s One Atmosphere.

12. If you break it, you pay for it (“the polluter pays”)
This is the ‘historical principle’. It addresses the common sense ideal: ‘you broke it, you fix it’
The developed countries have done the most to create this problem, they should do the most to fix it.

13. Arguments against
Ignorance: until recently, the developed countries were ignorant of the effects of their emissions on the climate, and so shouldn’t be held accountable for past emissions.
No need for the principle: if the world’s poor suffered severe harm, it would be odd for the rich nations to claim they have no obligation because they were ignorant of the effects of industrialisation.
It’s not pragmatic: if this was the principle of justice, any action on climate change would be suspended indefinitely because there is no external coercive body (cf. Traxler).

14. Give everyone an equal share
Equal per capita emissions: the egalitarian principle is the default position. The rationale for it is the basic needs argument, which holds that:
Justice requires that each person enjoy a certain threshold standard of living, including that their basic needs are met.
People have equal basic needs in the use of greenhouse gas emissions.
Therefore, there should be equal emission rights.
Justice requires equality of goods, which, in turn, requires an equal per capita distribution of greenhouse gas emissions.

15. Arguments against
Justice is concerned with the fair share of a total package of goods, not one particular item. So it doesn’t make sense to talk about the just distribution of greenhouse gas emissions.
We can respond to this challenge with two different theories of justice:
Wholly integrationist: this model of justice is concerned with the fair distribution of an overall package of goods.
Partially integrationist: comprises principles that apply to a total package of goods, but in some cases includes principle that apply to some specific goods in isolation (such as, for example, the right to free speech and freedom of conscience).

16. Arguments against
It forgets the past: if you think historical responsibility should play a part then this leaves the developed world with much less than equal per capita shares.
Unfair to the poor: an equal per capita basis leaves the rich, rich and the poor, poor (cf. 3rd principle).

17. Helping the worst off
Principle aims at stopping the worst off from becoming even worse off.
Cf. John Rawls: when we distribute goods, the only justification for giving more to those who are well off is that this will improve the situation of those who are worst off. In all other cases, we should give to those who are worst off. 

18. Helping the worst off
Unlike the egalitarian approach, this guarantees that conditions for the worst off will improve.
In accordance with Rawls’ principle, the only grounds on which one could argue against rich nations bearing all the costs of reducing emissions would be that to do so would make the poor nations even worse off than they would have been if the rich nations were not bearing all the costs.

19. Utilitarianism What proposal would lead to the greatest net happiness?
Difficulty of calculating costs and benefits (cf. pro- active adaptation)
The polluter pays: if it is upheld as a general rule there would be less pollution, which would be to the general benefit.
The egalitarian principle: harder for utilitarians to justify. But it could be justified on the grounds that it avoids continued fighting and suspended action.
Helping the worst off: increasing the utility of those who have less is more beneficial than increasing the utility of those who have more.
With all three principles, the utilitarian could support them, but not as absolutes.

20. Kantianism
An action is right if it’s something that we can will that every person in the world would do, without damaging the Earth’s climate
E.g. could we will driving to work as a universal law?
Responsibility to future generations: if we act out of self-interest, is this treating future generations as a means rather than as an end?

21. Carbon emissions trading

22. The carbon market
Introduced by the Clinton administration at the Kyoto conference in 1997.
Industrial countries sell ‘emissions reductions units’ to one another, and could also trade them with developing countries to count towards their reduction targets.
A governing body sets a cap on the amount of carbon dioxide that can be emitted and then sells permits (or carbon credits) to companies
The company can’t exceed that amount unless they engage in carbon offsetting (buying carbon credits from another party)
This means that companies are buying the right to pollute
There is now an international carbon market

23. Arguments in favour of carbon trading
It ensures environmental protection: it’s the only policy that places an absolute limit on the level of emissions (compare this to carbon taxing)
It minimises waste: companies are rewarded if they make reductions, penalised if they don’t‘; these incentives encourage companies to reduce their emissions for less than the market price
It maintains liberty: carbon trading is a regulated system that allows companies to decide how to reduce emissions rather than imposing policies on them

24. Carbon trading: Utilitarianism and Kantianism
Utilitarianism: if creating a carbon market produces the greatest happiness, then that’s the right thing to do. But it’s difficult to know whether it will produce the greatest happiness?
Kantianism: would consider the rightness and wrongness of actions in themselves. As we’ve seen, the consequences of actions play a constitutive role in determining rights and freedom. Is there a place for absolutism?

25. Carbon trading: 3 arguments against
Cf. Michael Sandel’s Public Philosophy.
3 reasons why carbon trading is wrong:
It creates loopholes that enables countries to avoid their obligations.
“pollution into a commodity to be bought and sold removes the moral stigma that is properly associated with it. If a company or country is fined for spewing excessive pollutants into the air, the community conveys its judgement that the polluter has done something wrong. A fee, on the other hand, makes pollution just another cost of doing business, like wages, benefits and rent.” (Sandel, Public Philosophy: 94)

26. Carbon trading: 3 arguments against
3. It might undermine the sense of shared responsibility that global cooperation requires. Cf. example of raking leaves in the autumn. It might make cooperation difficult to achieve.

27. 3. Climate change
Sunday, 16 April 2017
Take-home questions
Which principle of distribution (of responsibility) do you find to be the most just? Why?
Which principle do you find to be the most unjust? Why?
Should we buy the right to pollute?