Category: Science

Last November, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change convened a meeting in Nairobi. One document that resulted from that meeting was the White Paper on the Ethical Dimensions of Climate Change (PDF). On the basis of arguments similar to those I have heard from Henry Shue and Stephen Gardiner, the document lists seven things that states intending to behave ethically on the climate change problem should do:

1. Immediately acknowledge that they have a duty to reduce their emissions as quickly as possible to their fair share of safe global emissions;
2. Immediately agree that an international greenhouse gas atmospheric stabilization target should be set as low as possible unless those who are most vulnerable to climate change impacts have consented to be put at risk from higher levels;
3. No longer use scientific uncertainty or cost to their economies alone as justification for refusing to reduce GHG emissions;
4. No longer refuse to reduce GHG emissions now on the basis that new less-costly technologies will be available in the future or that not all other nations have agreed to reduce their GHG emissions;
5. Accept national targets for assuring that atmospheric concentrations of GHG are protective of human health and the environment that are based upon ethically supportable allocation criteria;
6. Acknowledge that nations commit human rights violations that refuse to reduce their GHG emissions to their fair share of global emissions needed to protect those most vulnerable from climate change to loss of life, health, and well-being;
7. Accept that those who are responsible for climate change have a duty to pay for costs of adaptation to and unavoidable damages from climate change.

Generally speaking, these are fine principles. If every major emitting state adopted them, it is entirely plausible that emissions could be brought down to sustainable levels within the next couple of decades and that the inevitable consequences of climate change from past emission could be equitably addressed. What the list fails to consider is the inherent Nash Equilibrium problem. States do not act as all states would act in an ideal world; rather, they generally act in a way that is rational given their inability to control the actions of other states. Given the Stern conclusion that mitigation is far less expensive than inducing and enduring climate change, it would be in the interest of all states to mitigate. Given how many states are proving reluctant to take that seriously, states that are serious about tackling the problem find themselves pushed towards a rationality of building up adaptive capacity instead of reducing emissions.

All that said, ethicists are not meant to be pragmatists. Having a well-argued idea of what ethical behaviour in the face of climate change would be provides a cognitive platform from which to evaluate current actions. It may also help to raise the overall profile of the issue in democratic states where moral and ethical argumentation can be an important element of the political process.

Virtually everyone acknowledges that the best way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to create a price for their production that someone has to pay. It doesn’t matter, in theory, whether that is the final consumer (the person who buys the iPod manufactured and shipped across the world), the manufacturer, or the companies that produced the raw materials. Wherever in the chain the cost is imposed, it will be addressed through the economic system just like any other cost. When one factor of consumption rises in price, people generally switch to substitutes or cut back usage.

This all makes good sense for the transition from a world where carbon has no price at all and the atmosphere is treated as a greenhouse gas trash heap. What might become problematic is the economics of the situation when greenhouse gas emissions start to approach the point of stabilization. If we get 5 gigatonnes collectively, that means a global population of 11 billion will get about half a tonne of carbon each.

Consider two things: Right now, Canadian emissions per person are about 24.3 tonnes of CO2 equivalent. Cutting to about 0.5 is a major change. While it may be possible to cut a large amount for a low price (carbon taxes or permits at up to $150 a tonne have been discussed), it makes sense that people will be willing to pay ever-more to avoid each marginal decrease in their carbon budget. Moving from 24.3 tonnes to 20 might mean carrying out some efficiency improvements. Moving from 20 to 10 might require a re-jigging of the national energy and transportation infrastructures, carbon sequestration, and other techniques. Moving from 10 to 0.5 may inevitably require considerable personal sacrifice. It certainly rules out air travel.

The next factor to consider if the effect of economic inequality on all this. We can imagine many kinds of tax and trading systems. Some might be confined to individual states, and others to regions. It is possible that such a scheme would eventually be global. With a global scheme, however, you need to consider the willingness of the relatively affluent to pay thousands or tens of thousands of dollars to maintain elements of their carbon-intensive lifestyles. This could mean that people of lesser means get squeezed even more aggressively. It could also create an intractable problem of fraud. A global system that transfers thousands of dollars on the basis of largely unmeasured changes in lifestyle could be a very challenging thing to authenticate.

These kinds of problems lie in the relatively distant future. Moving to a national economy characterized by a meaningful carbon price is likely to take a decade. Moving to a world of integrated carbon trading may take even longer. All that admitted, the problems of increasing marginal value of carbon and the importance of economic inequality are elements that those pondering such pricing schemes should begin to contemplate.