Climate change and ethics
Tim Hayward
What does it matter if the climate changes? This kind of question does not admit of a scientific answer. Natural science can tell us what some of its biophysical effects are likely to be; social scientists can estimate what consequences such effects could have for human lives and livelihoods. But how should we respond? The question is, at root, about how we think we should live—and different people have myriad different ideas about this. The distinctive task of ethics is to bring some clarity and order to these ideas.
Climate change is a matter of concern because, according to various prognoses offered by scientists, its effects are likely to be detrimental to human—and not only human—life on this planet: “human beings are transforming Earth in ways that are devastating for other forms of life, future human beings, and many of our human contemporaries”1. Given that premise, the central role of ethics is to organize thought about what humans ought to do in response to the threats they face, and to some extent are creating.
People engage practically in ethics whenever they make or assess particular proposals about what should be done; but academics particularly focus on clarifying the structure of moral considerations that are brought to bear on a problem, along with elucidating the assumptions being borne upon. In practice and in theory, then, ethics reflects on the human goods that climate change can undermine, and examines questions such as what actions are right or wrong in relation to climate change, who has what duties, and how these relate to others’ rights, for example, to be protected against effects of climate change. The relevant range of problems has come into focus only relatively recently, with most literature appearing during the past 20 years or so, but with considerable acceleration since the time of Gardiner’s seminal review in 20042, and as witnessed by two noteworthy collections of influential articles appearing in the past two years3,4.
In what follows, I show first how the greater part of debate about the ethics of climate change focuses on questions about who has what responsibility to bear the burdens of mitigating it or adapting to it. These questions are frequently in practice inflected in the language of rights, and the various connections between human rights and climate change are examined next. If some questions concern justice in the present, others regard our responsibilities to the future, as examined in the third section. The fourth main area of inquiry concerns the relation between individual and collective responsibilities.
Responsibilities
If humankind were a unitary agent, it could pursue clear objectives for reducing or capturing carbon emissions, where necessary also implementing measures for assisting those of the body of humanity having to adapt to consequences of climate change. But humankind is not a unitary agent. So a prominent debate in climate ethics concerns who has a responsibility to do what. The ‘what’ is usually discussed under two headings: mitigation and adaptation. Ethical evaluation can apply both to the decisions that cause climate change and to its effects. Some philosophers emphasize the distinction between the two kinds of responsibility5, and there are those who focus attention primarily on mitigation6 or adaptation7; but there are also reasons to think an integrated theory appropriate8.
Where debate has been more intense is on the question of the ‘who’—who has a responsibility to shoulder the burdens. Regarding the range of potential bearers of responsibility, which could be individuals, corporations or states, for instance, the allocation of responsibilities has so far focused in practice at the level of nation-states, and there has been international agreement to the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities among them9. It has generally been assumed, as Grubb noted in 1995, that the main question is justice of allocation of emissions as between states10. This assumption is not without its critics11, but the relevance of focusing on states is that they still have main political decision-making powers in the world today.
Most attention has focused on the criteria for differentiation of responsibilities. Because responsibilities imply costs or burdens to be borne, and because people have a general preference to shift these whenever possible onto others, there is the most argument here (see Table 1). The issues involved have been brought into particular focus in connection with debate around international climate change agreements. The Kyoto Protocol adopted the ‘grandfathering principle’: the developed (Annex-I) countries were required to reduce emissions by an average of 5% compared with 1990 levels. Hence those already heavily polluting in 1990 could continue emitting more GHGs than lower-emitting countries. In post-Kyoto negotiations, which envisage developing countries also being included in the emissions reduction programme, the richer countries continue to press for application of the principle12. Philosophers assessing the principle’s rationale, however, have generally regarded it as a pragmatic accommodation rather than a moral argument13: if it is the only politically feasible way to get major polluters to accept emissions reductions, it is better than forgoing agreement altogether14. Recent attempts to tease out what more, morally, might be said for it have not claimed to defeat the main ethical objections15. These include concerns that the ‘grandfathering’ of emissions rights will entrench existing inequalities by preventing those who are worse off from having the same opportunities and life chances enjoyed by affluent citizens of more heavily polluting countries16; and it would effectively prevent less economically developed countries from tackling energy poverty, thereby locking them into a state of underdevelopment17.
A stronger ethical argument can be made for the principle, found intuitively persuasive by many, that those who have been causally responsible for overburdening the atmosphere have moral responsibility for dealing with the consequences. Nevertheless, there are considerations of both justice and practicability that tell against the principle that moral responsibility should track causal responsibility. One such consideration regards applying it to present or future actions as opposed to applying it retrospectively. Retrospective application of the principle can be challenged on the general grounds that this is presumptively illegitimate for any principle18. More particularly, the ‘polluter pays’ principle—which is a specific application of causal responsibility (and sometimes misleadingly conflated with it)—is normally not deployed as a principle of historical accountability but as a practical device for ‘internalizing’ the externalized environmental ‘costs’ of economic activities19. So understood, it is a future-orientated principle that allows rational decision-making about the acceptability of costs in advance of incurring them. The imputation of obligations and costs retrospectively, which is anyway questionable ethically and legally, is the more so if the emitters of previous generations were ignorant of the detrimental consequences of their actions20. Furthermore, there is the evident practicality that principles of liability cannot apply to members of deceased generations themselves. Thus some people argue that the causal responsibility principle can be amended so that if we inherit assets from our grandparents, then we should also be prepared to accept any liabilities that are attendant on those assets. Simon Caney suggests that to adopt this stance is not to amend but to abandon the causal responsibility principle21; it is certainly to take a distinct position.
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