THE ETHICS AND ECONOMICS OF CLIMATE CHANGE
Why treat ethics and economics as a single topic? Because - though some practitioners of the dismal science may pretend otherwise - economics is an inherently normative discipline, ridden with value judgements at every turn (something which Lord Nicholas Stern, author of the UK government's landmark Stern Review on the economic impacts of climate change, openly and admirably acknowledges). In climate diplomacy, 'cost-benefit analysis' is often used to mask substantive moral questions - often obscuring significant moral hazard. In this section we link to a few useful resources for understanding some of the key questions in the ethics and economics of climate change.
Costs and benefits of climate (in)action
Responding to climate change will require a radical transition to more sustainable economic models involving wide-ranging reforms to energy, transport, agriculture, and industrial systems. Failing to respond threatens our economic order in a different way, through natural disasters, demographic redistribution, and political, social, and resource insecurity on a massive scale. Moreover, costs and benefits of action or inaction will be distributed spatially across the world and temporally through decades and even centuries to come, the specific distributions being highly path-dependent. Thus economic estimates of the costs of mitigation of climate change - or of business as usual should we fail to act - are highly sensitive to a range of physical, economic, and moral assumptions.
Oxford economist and philosopher John Broome provides an excellent overview of the normative questions underpinning the ethics of climate change in this Scientific American article, aspects of which are explored in more detail in his recent book Climate Matters: Ethics in a warming world. As for the economics, while estimates vary - and the methods by which economists derive their estimates are fairly unsuitable for the task - it's widely agreed that the costs of mitigation are orders of magnitude less than the eventual costs of inaction. The most recent Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates a very modest impact on global growth of mitigation sufficient to keep temperature rises below 2C, slowing global growth by 0.06% relative to a business-as-usual where no ill effects are experienced from climate change. However - and crucially for those who care about climate change and health - the IPCC estimate does not factor in the economic effect of cobenefits of mitigation action. These are potentially huge, especially from reductions in air pollution - estimates of the economic costs of the health burden of air pollution in China put them as high as 9.7-13.2% of China's GDP. These hidden costs also go some way to explain why fossil fuels appear to be cheaper than renewables at present - representing part of a massive $10m-a-minute worldwide subsidy given to the fossil fuel industry that exceeds total global spending on healthcare.
For more on the economics of climate change - including the ins and outs of different policy responses - the LSE's Grantham Institute website offers an excellent starting point, and the annual New Climate Economy reports offer in-depth reviews of the economic case for climate action.
Oxford economist and philosopher John Broome provides an excellent overview of the normative questions underpinning the ethics of climate change in this Scientific American article, aspects of which are explored in more detail in his recent book Climate Matters: Ethics in a warming world. As for the economics, while estimates vary - and the methods by which economists derive their estimates are fairly unsuitable for the task - it's widely agreed that the costs of mitigation are orders of magnitude less than the eventual costs of inaction. The most recent Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates a very modest impact on global growth of mitigation sufficient to keep temperature rises below 2C, slowing global growth by 0.06% relative to a business-as-usual where no ill effects are experienced from climate change. However - and crucially for those who care about climate change and health - the IPCC estimate does not factor in the economic effect of cobenefits of mitigation action. These are potentially huge, especially from reductions in air pollution - estimates of the economic costs of the health burden of air pollution in China put them as high as 9.7-13.2% of China's GDP. These hidden costs also go some way to explain why fossil fuels appear to be cheaper than renewables at present - representing part of a massive $10m-a-minute worldwide subsidy given to the fossil fuel industry that exceeds total global spending on healthcare.
For more on the economics of climate change - including the ins and outs of different policy responses - the LSE's Grantham Institute website offers an excellent starting point, and the annual New Climate Economy reports offer in-depth reviews of the economic case for climate action.
Distributing responsibility for climate change mitigation and adaptation
The common-sense moralities prevalent at least in most highly-industrialised nations of the global North are of very little use for understanding the harms caused by and responsibilities attendant upon climate change. Anthropogenic environmental destruction creates a 'perfect moral storm': dispersion of causes and effects (we can't easily link the individual actions contributing to climate change, to the resulting harms); fragmentation of agency (a fundamentally collective phenomenon, it's our cumulative acts together that result in anthropogenic changes to the climate); and institutional inadequacy (our legal and political frameworks are designed around localised, individualisable harms and crimes, not processes in which our entire economy and society is complicit). Moral philosophers and legal and political theorists have made many attempts to distribute responsibilities for action amongst both states and individuals.
For distributing responsibilities amongst states for climate change mitigation and adaptation, there are two major questions: how much can each state burn? And who should pay for the costs of cutting emissions - or making the adaptations necessary for a changing climate? Answers to these questions are complicated by: the historical emissions of industrialised nations being vastly larger than many rapidly industrialising nations - but the latter now dominating present emissions in many cases; the connection between rising emissions and economic development in low- and middle-income countries; the different kinds of emissions-generating activities (those necessary for survival against those supporting the resource-intensive lifestyles of consumers in the global North). Some attempts to resolve these issues include:
For distributing responsibilities amongst states for climate change mitigation and adaptation, there are two major questions: how much can each state burn? And who should pay for the costs of cutting emissions - or making the adaptations necessary for a changing climate? Answers to these questions are complicated by: the historical emissions of industrialised nations being vastly larger than many rapidly industrialising nations - but the latter now dominating present emissions in many cases; the connection between rising emissions and economic development in low- and middle-income countries; the different kinds of emissions-generating activities (those necessary for survival against those supporting the resource-intensive lifestyles of consumers in the global North). Some attempts to resolve these issues include:
- The 'Polluter Pays Principle' - making those historically and presently responsible for harms also responsible for its amelioration
- Henry Shue's distinction between 'subsistence emissions' and 'luxury emissions'
- The Greenhouse Development Rights framework, an attempt to limit emissions growth without impeding LMICs' rights to economic development
Climate and environmental justice
Community activist groups, particularly those from Indigenous and other socially-marginalised communities, have been crucial in shaping the discourse of climate justice. The Bali Principles of Climate Justice - inspired by the 1991 People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit's Principles of Environmental Justice - provide a rich expression of what climate justice means. The affirmation combines procedural justice - equal access to participation in the processes by which political decisions around land, energy, and climate are made - distributive justice - ensuring the benefits and burdens of climate change and the processes driving it are shared equitably - and social justice - ensuring that all individuals and communities are afforded the living and working conditions to enjoy a flourishing existence. This rich, substantive vision of fair and flourishing communities has been influential in increasing the application of the capabilities approach to international development in international climate policy negotiations.
Climate change and human rights
Not initially a major feature of international climate negotiations, international human rights law is increasingly being invoked in the context of climate change with growing awareness of the threat to many rights guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including rights to life and health. The unique normative properties of rights claims - in particular their universality and lexical priority (meaning they are inviolable and cannot be traded off against other benefits) - are viewed as a protective in particular for politically-marginalised and climate-vulnerable communities who otherwise might risk being sacrificed for purported aggregate economic benefits enjoyed in larger, more powerful states - hence the first widely-recognised invocation of human rights as a driver for climate action is found in the Petition of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference to the US Government, and one of the most widely-cited statements is found in the Association of Small Island States' 2007 Male Declaration. This introductory article by Oxford political philosopher Simon Caney illustrates some of the history of climate rights, the normative function of rights discourse in climate change negotiations, and its relation to other moral frameworks.
Interested in the ethics of climate change?
We're working with the Sustainable Healthcare Education Network to establish a working group looking at the importance of sustainability, environmental ethics and climate change to the professional ethics of health workers, and incorporating these issues into undergraduate medical curriculums. If you'd like to be involved, get in touch!