The Perfect Problem

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The Perfect Problem
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Americans and Climate Change

• Why climate change is the perfect problem
• complex and inaccessible scientific content
• a substantial (and uncertain) time lag between
  cause and effect

Abbasi, D. Americans and Climate Change, Yale
School of Forestry Environmental Studies 2006.
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Americans and Climate Change

• inertia in all the key drivers of the problem,
  from demographic growth to long-lived energy
  infrastructure to ingrained daily habits at the
  household level
• psychological barriers that complicate
  apprehension and processing of the issue, due in
  part to its perceived remoteness in time and
  place

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Americans and Climate Change

• partisan, cultural, and other filters that cause
  social discounting or obfuscation of the threat
• motivational obstacles, especially the futility
  associated with what is perhaps the
  quintessential collective action problem of our
  time

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Americans and Climate Change

• mismatches between the global, cross-sectoral
  scope of the climate change issue and the
  jurisdiction, focus, and capacity of exiting
  institutions
• a set of hard-wired incentives, career and
  otherwise, that inhibit focused attention and
  action on the issue.

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Urgency and Hope

• Intergenerational Justice
• Golden Rule and the Moral Insight
• Place Prosperity and Individual Wealth Prosperity
  
• Alternative Futures
• The Date of Technological Transition

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Important facts, figures and dates

• Industrial revolution start date, 1750
• The concentrations of CO2 has increased by 31
  since 1750
• 75 comes from the combustion of fossil fuels
• The current increase in CO2 is the greatest in at
  least the last 20,000 years
• By 2100 the concentrations of CO2 will be 90-250
  percent of preindustrial levels

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Important facts, figures and dates

• Estimated temperature increase 1.4-5.8 degrees
  Celsius
• Climate surprises such as the collapse of the
  West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which would raise
  global sea levels 4-6 meters.
• An increase of 2 Celsius from 1990 levels over
  the next 100 years places the world at greater
  risk for catastrophic surprises (2002 article
  in Science by ONeil and Oppenheimer)

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Goal

• To achieve a fair and effective global response
  to climate change.

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What constitutes a fair response?
What constitutes a fair response?
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What constitutes an effective response?
What constitutes an effective response?
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• General alternative approaches
• Adaptation
• Mitigation
• Adaptation-Mitigation

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Questions of Justice

• The core ethical issue concerning global
  warming is that of how to allocate the costs and
  benefits of greenhouse gas emissions and
  abatement . (Stephen Gardiner, 578-579)
• What about harms?

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Varieties of Justice and Climate Global Change

• Distributive Justice
• Mitigation
• Adaptation
• Procedural Justice
• Intergenerational Justice
• Environmental Justice

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Intergenerational Justice (Fairness)

• How and to what extent can the present
  generation harm future generations?
• In what ways should the interests of subsequent
  generations guide present decisions?

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Intergenerational Justice (Fairness)

• Given our limited knowledge of people who will
  live in the future, how should we relate to them
  under conditions of risk and uncertainty?
• What motivations should we have for fulfilling
  our duties to future people, given that we know
  neither their individual identities nor their
  particular preferences?

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The Golden Rule

• So in everything, do to others what you would
  have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and
  the Prophets. Matt. 712

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The Moral Insight

• Treat others as you would treat your future
  self.
• But simply try to know the truth. The truth is
  that all the world of life about thee is as real
  as thou art. Pain is pain joy is joy, everywhere
  even as it is in thee. The result of thy insight
  will be inevitable.
• Moments of insight, with their accompanying
  resolutions, long stretches of delusion and
  selfishness that is our life.

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Despite grim warming outlook, scientists say
there is still hope -- Missoulian

• I am not about to give up, Hansen wrote. He has
  hope, he says, because he has grandchildren.
• quoting James Hansen, NASA

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The Vision Problem Imagining Alternative Futures

• I have a dream!
• versus
• I have a nightmare!

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Place prosperity vs Individual wealth
prosperity

• One way children help create our moral world is
  by keeping us from becoming too self-absorbed. A
  key point in moral development is learning to
  think of the needs of others.

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The Date of Technological Transition

• Climate change policy is energy policy
• The date of technological transition is the year
  in human history in which the accumulated totals
  of GHGs ceases to grow. Achieving technological
  transition will require utilizing current
  sustainable systems, phasing out fossil fuel
  systems, retro-fitting and investing in
  alternative technologies wherever possible.
• Henry Shue, Responsibility to Future
  Generations and the Technological Transition

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The Date of Technological Transition
Date of Technological Transition for Society B
Difference in Quantity of GHGs from A B
Quantity GHGs
Date of Technological Transition for Society A
Time
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Physical Dimensions

• Consuming what remains of fossil fuels could
  well lead to a four- to eight-fold increase in
  CO2.
• At some future point in time it may be impossible
  to take mitigating efforts.
• There may be harms that will occur only if we
  do nothing because only if we do nothing will
  climate change become severe enough to cause
  those harms (Shue).

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http//www.geo.arizona.edu/dgesl/index.html
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Ethics and Risk

• The really vital issue does not concern the
  presence of scientific uncertainty, but rather
  how we decide what to do under such circumstances
  (Gardiner).
• Decisions under conditions of uncertainty (know
  unknowns (plausible scenarios) and unknowns
  (surprises)

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Climate Change and Intergenerational Justice

• The current generation has a moral
  responsibility to future generations not to let
  GHG concentrations exceed critical limits.
• The research and development required for
  technological transition is a time consuming
  process. Delays in starting the process may not
  leave enough time for future generation to
  accomplish the task and avoid severe
  consequences.

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A Fair Response is an Effective Response

• There is a general consensus among scientists
  that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is on
  pace to exceed 450 ppm, a level that could result
  in unpredictable catastrophic events. Therefore,
  an effective global climate strategy must aim to
  limit CO2 emissions to a level 450 ppm or less
  (Athanasiou and Baer).

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The Date of Technological Transition
Date of Technological Transition for Society B
Difference in Quantity of GHGs from A B
Quantity GHGs
Date of Technological Transition for Society A
Time
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• The moral judgment of future generation on the
  present generation may be harsh
• They were not for the most part evil people
  but they were simply preoccupied with their own
  comfort and convenience, not very imaginative
  about human history over the long run, and not
  particularly sensitive to the plight of strangers
  distant in time (Shue, 279).

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Steven Gardiners summary of the ethical issues

• Many of the predicted outcomes from climate
  change seem severe, and some are catastrophic
• For gradual change, either the probabilities of
  significant danger from climate change are high
  or we do not know the probabilities and for
  abrupt change the probabilities are unknown.
• There is widespread endorsement of the view that
  stabilizing emission would impose a cost of
  only 2 percent of world production
• Stephen Gardiner, Ethics and Climate Change
  Ethics 114 (April 2004) 555-600

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• It is people who are now children and people
  who are not yet born who will reap most of the
  benefits of any project that mitigates the
  effects of global warming.
• John Broome, 1992, Counting the Costs of Global
  Warming