Vinit Khosla, Simon Fraser University

download this essay: The Ethics and Politics of Climate Change

Climate change is a global phenomenon in at least two senses.  First, it manifests itself across the planet, affecting the air, the ocean, land surfaces and all of life.  Second, it is global in human terms: people everywhere are involved in its production, and they collectively suffer its consequences.  The natural and human aspects of climate change are inseparable, and the issue of how we deal with changes to the climate inevitably becomes entwined with how we deal with one another.

The human drama arising from the unfolding drama of climate change was on display at the 2007 U.N. Climate Change Conference in Bali, and I use this event as a starting point for my discussions.  The purpose of the conference was to set out a roadmap for a successor to the Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012.   Like the Kyoto protocol, its ultimate goal was to achieve stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. There were various alliances going into the conference.  The EU was seeking binding commitments by the industrialized countries that went well beyond Kyoto: a 25-40% reduction from 1990 levels by 2020.  Its proposal would allow developing countries’ emissions to rise for 10-15 years and subsequently decline to half of their 2000 levels by the middle of the century.  The EU was also keen to extend the cap and trade system, in which it is already actively engaged.  For their part, developing countries were objecting to binding emission targets for themselves.  China and India, for example, claimed they had the right to catch up with the West and lift themselves out of poverty before subjecting themselves to the same level of austerity.  Countries such as Indonesia, especially threatened by climate change, expected financial assistance.  Developing countries also demanded that richer nations invest in and share green technologies.  Finally, the U.S., at times backed by Canada, Japan and Australia, was opposed to committing to targets because they did not include the developing world, and because they posed an unacceptable level of risk to economic growth.

The negotiations centred on the questions of who would pay the bill for cleaner technology, and how to share the burden of emission cuts between rich and poor nations.  But was nature itself being ignored in this wrangling?

This was Al Gore’s message to conference delegates. Echoing James Lovelock [1], he compared the living planet of Earth to the dead planet Venus.  The earth was alive, he said, because of the ability of plant life to pull CO2 from the atmosphere and store it underground; humans are engaged in the reverse process.  He also described the threat to all of us from our collective actions as not a political or a diplomatic issue, but a moral issue that should unite us. The talks threatened to collapse because of a US proposal calling for “national domestic mitigation actions and reduction objectives….taking into account national circumstances.”[2]

This proposal would have run counter to the very principle underlying the Kyoto protocol, under which industrialized countries are legally obliged through an international treaty to reduce GHG emissions.  Under pressure from the EU and other groups, the US withdrew its language, but it succeeded in relegating emission targets for developed countries to document footnotes, where they would be non-binding.

The final day of the conference was filled with tension.  UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon told the conference that the failure of talks would amount to “a betrayal of our planet.”[3]   Already miffed by the refusal of industrialized countries to commit to reduction targets, developing countries demanded assurances for the sharing of green technologies.   The EU, which had previously resisted these demands, agreed, but the United States delegation held out.  Minutes later, after being booed and being told by the Papua New Guinea delegate to “get out if it didn’t want to lead the fight against climate change”[4], it reversed its position.  Consensus was achieved to the sound of great applause.  It seemed that we were finally united in our efforts to do something about climate change. A more skeptical interpretation of the Bali compromise is that it is vague and insubstantial, little more than an agreement to keep talking while the world burns. George Monbiot characterized the deal as worse than Kyoto [5].   Critics pointed out that  the conference generated GHG emissions equivalent to the annual output of Malawi [6].    And Angus Friday, Chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, said: “There was no need for 12, 000 people to gather here in Bali to have a watered down text.  We could have done that by email.” [7]

Nevertheless, I believe the events and controversies of the conference raised pragmatic and ethical questions that cannot be ignored.  One of these is how we assume and allocate responsibility for tackling climate change.  Another general issue is how – or even if – we can reconcile economic growth with environmental sustainability.  How do we deal with the desire of large developing countries to industrialize and modernize while simultaneously meeting overall emission targets?  Finally, is all this talk of costs, compensation and fairness demonstrative of the very human-centredness that has led us to this predicament?    Are we willing to continue fighting our internal battles at the risk of losing the world? In exploring these questions, I want to draw on ideas from several of the writers we have read in this course, as well as others, before arriving at any tentative conclusions.   At Bali, our ability to act decisively on climate at was marred by the rift between rich and poor nations.  Therefore, my focus throughout is on justice, both human and environmental justice.

Human Justice

The question of responsibility for the causes and consequences of climate change contains many others: Is it a global problem whose costs are to be shared equally by all groups and nations?   Do we take into account past human activity: should societies that have already contributed more to climate change be more accountable?  Is it fair that rich countries are able to avoid cutting at home by buying their cuts from poorer nations?

The Bali conference revealed a variety of perspectives on these questions.  The most prominent schism was that between industrialized countries and developing nations, the very groups whose differences had been acknowledged at Kyoto. In general, the governments of developing nations do not feel that they are mainly responsible for climate changes already in effect.  They might point to an International Energy Agency finding that from 1900 to 2005, more than half of the buildup of emissions came from Western Europe and the United States; China accounted for only 8% and India for 2%.  China may now have surpassed the United States as the world’s largest emitter, but its per capita emissions are one-fourth of those in the U.S., and will still be only one-half by 2030 [8].    Further, countries such as Bangladesh and those of the sub-Saharan region, subject to floods or drought, see themselves as primary victims of climate change brought about by industrialization elsewhere.  Perhaps the greatest impediment to accepting responsibility for climate change has to do with developing countries’ pressing desire for growth.

Globalization has spread the business models, market mechanisms and technologies required for modernization.   It has also constructed – and widely disseminated – a lifestyle to which billions aspire.  As Vandana Shiva writes in her book Earth Democracy, “globalization …. imposes a monoculture of greed and consumption on all societies.”[9]   As long as there is a huge gap in the standard of living between industrialized and developing countries, the latter can and will claim the need to grow before they reduce emissions.  The fact that 80% of existing CO2 in the atmosphere has been produced by countries of the West in their march to prosperity gives them extra ammunition.  It explains the Indian government’s current policy on GHG emissions, which is only not to exceed per capita emissions in the U.S. [10] Industrialized countries are not uniform in their approach to accountability.  The EU, for example, has been more willing than the U.S. or Canada to restrict emission cuts to industrialized nations.  But there is general concern in the West about the ramifications of policies like the Indian government’s, which do not acknowledge that the responsibility for climate change is expanding.  By 2030 China and India together will likely account for more than half of emission growth. [11]   The US position is that if climate change is inherently an international phenomenon, all nations must involve themselves in addressing it.  On the question of economic growth, Western governments share the environmentalists’ fear that the earth’s atmosphere cannot support billions more middle-class lifestyles: if developing countries follow the same path as the West, everybody stands to lose.  At the same time, Western governments and their populations in general do not want to undermine their own prosperity and relative dominance in the world.  Growth still trumps the environment, and the short-term the long-term, both in the West and the East.

Remoteness and Obligation

One way to understand why rich and poor nations have such divergent positions is through the concept of remoteness articulated in Val Plumwood’s Environmental Culture [12].

We often associate globalization with connectedness, but Plumwood argues that the inherent inequality of globalization produces a distancing effect: “Inequality, whether inside the nation or out of it, is a major sponsor of ecological irrationality and remoteness, especially where it creates systematic opportunities and motivation to shift ecological ills onto others rather than to prevent their generation in the first place”[13].  Some of the negative consequences of climate change, such as desertification, flooding and hurricanes, are felt first and worst in poorer countries, even though they are not primarily responsible for the change.  For instance, the storm surge that temporarily drowned 65% of Bangladesh in 1998 was attributed to rising sea levels; Bangladesh, meanwhile, has one of the lowest emissions per capita in the world [14].   Remoteness allows those of us in richer areas to remain ignorant of the ecoharm we do abroad.  Even when we see the harm, we may not assume responsibility for it.  We are appalled by pictures of smog-filled manufacturing cities in China, but do we connect those images with the many cheap Chinese products we consume daily?  Outsourcing the manufacture of these goods is not only cheaper; it is a way of separating us from the unpleasant byproducts of manufacturing.  Under globalization, the economic advantage is often simultaneously the environmental advantage.  Of course, remoteness also exists within many countries, including developing ones.  Indeed, worry about global warming often surfaces only when it appears to affect us locally. Dialogue is clearly necessary to reduce remoteness, and for this reason alone, even an inconclusive climate change conference serves a purpose.  Plumwood goes further, arguing that exchange should be based on “equivalent levels of remoteness”, so that privileged communities could not escape the adverse ecological consequences of their activity onto the underprivileged.  A horizontally-structured planetary organization would give everyone “an equal stake in benefits and an equal risk of adverse consequences.” [15]

In Citizenship and the Environment, Andrew Dobson expresses accountability in terms of the obligations of environmental citizens [16].  Like Plumwood, he sees the globalized world as unequal, allowing more powerful nations and groups to export ecological damage.  There is asymmetry in that “some of us become fully and truly ‘global’; some are fixed in their ‘locality’” [17].   For example, the global effects of North American emissions are experienced locally by the people of the submerging islands of Kiribati.  Again, altering the asymmetrical, one-way relationship requires more than dialogue; it demands justice in the form of obligations of globalizers to the globalized.  Thus Dobson believes “monies should be transferred as a matter of compensatory justice” [18] from wealthy countries to places like Kiribati.   Obligation is also expressed in the idea of an ecological footprint.  A footprint model for climate stability would set emission limits per capita, and thereby indicate the levels of cuts required to correct existing inequalities in the distribution of emissions, currently in favour of wealthy countries.  And as other countries grew, they too would assume obligations to adhere to limits. Reducing harm and meeting obligations are two ways, then, of achieving justice among humans in the matter of climate change.

My doubts about both approaches are twofold. The first has to do with determinability.  How do we establish what and how much ecoharm we do to each other?   Can we always draw a causal link between an unusually destructive weather event and climate change?   How much do Western consumers of Asian goods contribute to the emissions created by their manufacture?   It is difficult to determine “which citizens have ….duty of care” if we cannot calculate precisely “the quota of ecological space”[19].  Uncertainty about such issues allows them to be moved from the court of justice into the arena of politics.

Second, both remedies are directed primarily to ecological harm.  Although both writers acknowledge that economic inequality produces environmental damage that is experienced unequally, their focus is on equalizing the impact of and responsibility for environmental damage, rather than on the economic inequality itself.  Dobson suggests that we have a citizen’s obligation to the resident of Kiribati, but not to an African baby, because there is a material, causal relationship in the former case but not in the latter.  It could be argued that there is a causal, material relationship between third world poverty and Western prosperity, and therefore that economic justice per se should be a feature of ecological citizenship.  But the point I want to make now is that Dobson’s ‘ecological citizenship’ does not directly address what was a major sticking point at Bali, namely that developing countries aspire to economic equality with the West, an aspiration that informs their position regarding growth and climate change.

Environmental Justice

In The Natural Contract, Michel Serres describes history thus far as one of human wars conducted against the backdrop of nature, which is simultaneously ignored and degraded [20].

The Bali conference fits neatly into this description.  A meeting that was supposed to address the condition of our atmosphere and oceans descended into a squabble over who would pay for what.  It seemed that nature was excluded from the discussions.  Human justice, considered narrowly, does not extend to non-humans by definition.  Indeed, the stance of developing nations may be subject to Plumwood’s criticism that “the moral exclusion of the class defined as ‘resource’ is represented as nothing less than a mater of justice to less fortunate members of the ‘person’ class” [21].   Perhaps in doing justice to developing countries, we are implicitly condoning injustice to our climate.

‘Environmental justice’ means different things to different people.  Lovelock concurs with Sir Crispin Tickell that “we need an ethical system in which the natural world has value not just for human welfare but for and in itself” [22]. For Lovelock, our obligation to humankind is secondary to our obligation to the living Earth, which can extinguish the life of any species that threatens it.  Plumwood does not extend ‘rights’ to non-humans, but, like Lovelock, she asks us to situate ourselves as non-centric, non-hegemonic ecological beings.  Dobson is unapologetically anthropocentric; for him, environmental justice resides in the recognition – and concomitant obligations to other humans – of the impact that “humans make on the environment” [23].

These three different concepts of environmental justice do all, however, point to our dependence on nature: whether for our sake, or for the sake of nature, we are obliged to treat it with the respect it deserves, for “we cannot exist without Gaia” [24]. I am inclined to agree with Plumwood that recognition of dependence is both prudent and ethical, since it is “based on our own species welfare, but also gives the good of our planetary partners meaning and weight” [25].    Further, for Plumwood and Serres, dependence is not one-way; it is mutual.  We depend on nature for our existence, but nature depends on us to maintain it, thus creating a relationship of reciprocity: “However much nature gives to man, man must give that much back to nature” [26].   In relation to climate change, then, justice would mean establishing a proper equilibrium in the symbiotic relationship between human activity and atmospheric conditions, “an equality between the force of our global interventions and the globality of the world” [27].   It would mean creating an ecological footprint no larger than the atmosphere can comfortably accommodate in order to support life.  The reality, though, is that all nations are not meeting the emissions targets set by Kyoto, which in turn is deemed by many scientists not to have established a global, long-term  footprint of emissions that truly addresses climate change.  This is why writers like Lovelock conclude that “it would be unwise to rely on international agreement to save civilization from the consequences of global heating” [28].

Environmental justice, like human justice, is plagued by questions of determinability.  We are only beginning to understand how our climate is influenced by positive feedback and non-linearity, even as we observe the accelerating and unexpected changes arising from permafrost melt and the slowdown of the Gulf Stream.   And we can only hazard a guess about the extent of future warming–climate scientists’ predictions of global temperature increase range from only 1.4o C to as much as 11.5o Celsius [29]–and how it will change the planet.  The uncertainty of our knowledge of nature implies that our notions of justice towards nature will evolve.  It also suggests that, in order to allow for unforeseen consequences, we need to build extra precaution into measures designed to create equilibrium with and within nature. The compatibility of environmental justice and economic growth is controversial.  We can agree that unrestrained growth, with no regard for GHG emissions, is not tolerable, but what about sustainable development?   Can we continue to improve our standards of living in a way that does not have further adverse impacts on the environment?  Writers like Lovelock believe that the size of the human population necessitates sustainable retreat, not sustainable growth, and that further growth threatens the entire human species through climate change.  This is a powerful argument against the claim of developing nations that they need to grow, since it applies to developing and developed countries alike and is therefore less susceptible to accusations of hypocrisy.   It is also indirectly an argument against an economic order sustained by ever-increasing production and consumption.  Under capitalism, limitless growth is not just desirable as a way to satisfy our ever-growing needs but is also essential to absorbing surplus labour created by increased productivity.

The Chinese government, for instance, claims to require an annual growth rate of 8% simply to maintain social stability – but what will the emissions accompanying such growth do to the stability of the climate?  However, there is also an argument for growth in relation to environmental justice: poverty itself can be a cause of environmental degradation. For instance, the people of the sub-Saharan region strip the land of vegetation simply to survive, a practice that exacerbates warming.  Perhaps the way to halt this practice is by improving their standard of living through economic growth.

In her book Earth Democracy, Shiva writes: “Giving people rights and access to resources so that they can regain their security and generate sustainable livelihoods is the only solution to environmental destruction and the population growth that accompanies it”[30].   Resolving the tension between economic growth and environmental thresholds is central to addressing climate change, and I will return to this topic.

Linking Forms of Justice

It sometimes appears that human justice and environmental justice are necessarily in conflict.  I do not believe that to be the case.  Let me explain by returning to Plumwood’s concept of remoteness.  The inequality of globalization allows the powerful to redistribute adverse ecological consequences to the weak.  This makes for ecological irrationality, since the powerful are remote from ecological warning signals, and because they are not the primary victims of ecological impact.  In other words, inequality among humans leads to ecological irrationality, and human injustice to environmental injustice.  As Plumwood writes, there is a “transfer of inequalities and harms from the social to the ecological sphere and back again” [31].  I make two observations while applying a unified notion of justice to the climate change debate.

First, the adverse consequences of climate change are more ‘generalizable’ than other environmental hazards.  They are now being felt in wealthier nations too.  Nevertheless, it is true, as Plumwood says, that “we in the losing 4/5ths cannot pin our hopes on waiting until the abuse of the earth catches up with these ‘winners’ because ….they may well be the last to feel its effects” [32].

Second, we must include among the ‘powerful’ the expanding elites of developing countries.  By virtue of their activities, they incur human and environmental obligations to others, both nationally and internationally. Justice to nature is inextricably linked to human justice because humans are a part of nature, the part we are most familiar with.

The remarkable thing about climate change is how it has brought the issue of inequality into the spotlight, thus demonstrating the intimate relationship between the natural and human aspects of globalization.  At this point, the fate of the earth and our species does not override the differing concerns humans have; rather, it depends on resolving them.  I believe our ability to act on climate change necessarily involves dealing with the unequal distribution of power and wealth among nations.  Climate change is admittedly only one of many phenomena that evoke questions about inequality, but it may very well be the one that precipitates action.

Justice and Climate Change

Without attempting to be comprehensive, I want to make some observations about how we can be just to both humans and the atmosphere.  At the most general level, we need to develop a better understanding of how our activities affect the atmosphere and the oceans, and through them, all of life.  In Serres’ words, “those who govern must …. become physicists”[33] who can comprehend the ongoing exchange between humans and nature.  We need to live within our global limits, to occupy no larger an ecological niche than is safe for Earth.  At the same time, we need to rectify the distribution of ecological consequences of climate change and mitigate the factor that produces them, namely economic inequality.   Environmental justice implies change to the extent and nature of growth; human justice implies change to the distribution of growth and wealth. Moving up a level of specificity, we need global emissions limits that will reverse, or at least halt, the warming that is underway, and limits that are enforceable. (Over half of the signatories to the Kyoto Protocol will likely not meet their targets.[34])   These limits will far exceed anything agreed to date. If we are to stay below a 2oC increase, “widely recognized by climate scientists as the critical threshold,” emissions in rich countries would have to be cut by 90% by 2030, compared to the 5.2% cut, by 2012, agreed to at Kyoto [35].  But there must also be binding commitments from major emitters in the developing world to reductions over the longer term.  As Yves de Boer, the U.N.’s top climate official recently said, “If one part of the world acts and the other does not, that does not really generate a climate benefit”[36].

On the other hand, an equitable global rationing of carbon credits per capita would mean that the poorest nations could raise their emissions.  Monbiot observes that “Ethiopia, if its population remained stable, could emit five and a half times as much carbon [in 2030] as it does today”[37].  Monbiot defends the principle of “contraction and convergence” underlying a system of global rationing in this way:  “With an equal carbon allocation, countries will no longer be able to claim that they can’t act because others are not obliged to join in.  They might not like this proposal, but they cannot deny it is even-handed”[38].

Finally, we also need to identify – as well as we can – the countries that carry an unfair burden of the adverse consequences of climate change, and compensate them for ecoharm through financial and technical assistance. Environmental justice may require overall sustainable growth, no growth, or even sustainable retreat, but human justice requires that with current inequities we cannot grow or retreat equally: some countries must be allowed to grow even if others are not.

In his book The Upside of Down, Thomas Homer –Dixon writes: “For the 2.7 billion people living on less than $2 a day, growth is needed to satisfy the most basic requirements of human dignity.  And for the poorest billion people, growth can mean the difference between life and death” [39].  If poorer countries are to advance economically while working towards long-term emissions targets, growth there will have to shift to non-fossil fuel burning technologies.  Growth may also mean the production of public goods instead of private ones: mass-transit systems rather than the automobile sector, for example.  Wealthier nations will need these ‘efficiencies’ as well, but perhaps in the context of little or no growth.  Even with no growth, those of us in such nations may learn to redefine what the ‘good life’ means.  Still, I foresee a harsher future as we simultaneously confront the desire of the rest of the world to catch up, and the limits of our ecological niche.

Here is how Monbiot concludes his book Heat: For the campaign against climate change is an odd one.  Unlike almost all the public protests which have preceded it, it is a campaign not for abundance but for austerity.  It is a campaign not for more freedom but for less.  Strangest of all, it is a campaign not just against other people, but also against ourselves [40].

In a recent interview, Thomas Homer Dixon identified the relationship between the climate balance and the human imbalance – and therefore what he thinks needs to happen. Here’s the thing:  the Chinese and Indians by themselves can wreck the global climate.  If we’re going to stop them from doing that, we’re going to have to make a deal. And the deal is going to involve massive capital transfers to China and India to get them to convert their energy infrastructure to a less carbon-intensive form. This transfer of capital will mean, over the long-term, an equalization of standard of living. We will grow less fast, or maybe not grow at all, while they will grow faster in a non-carbon-intensive way. And that’s simply going to happen, once we get a global carbon regime in place. Money is going to flow toward the best investments in terms of reducing carbon production. And the best are going to be in India and China. If we have a $50- or a $100-a-ton price on carbon emissions, we can eliminate the most tons in places like China or India. People aren’t talking about this.

The carbon/climate-change problem is most fundamentally a problem of global equity [41]. The use of a carbon market to combat climate change and global inequity has its critics.  They point out that the difficulty of determining the emissions-reducing value of carbon credit projects makes it “easy to game the system”[42].   Critics cite the example of refrigerant-producing factories being built in China only so that they can be torn down and sold for carbon credits [43].  It seems that the profit motive can waylay the best of intentions.

What is also missing from an approach that relies solely on the marketplace is an environmental ethos.   Any plan to deal with climate change is more likely to work if it is based on the belief that it is the right thing to do, not that it is merely a new opportunity to make money.  Actual and significant emissions cuts in developed countries are more likely to create an ethos that encourages other countries to follow suit.  An environmental ethos would lead to the recognition by countries like China and India that they have become a part of the climate change problem.  Incidentally, in the context of ethos, it would be an oversimplification to view the issue of inequality as being the divide between developing and developed nations.  The asymmetricality of globalization is complex: the globalizers and the globalized exist within many nations.

In the example just cited, the main beneficiaries of the carbon trade are the Chinese entrepreneur who builds the refrigerant factory and the European investor who destroys it.   So while it is true, as Dobson points out, that “in connection with CO2 emissions at least , ecological space is unequally distributed…. in favour of wealthy countries and their wealthy inhabitants,” 44 it is also true that “ecological citizens increasingly work ‘beyond’ and ‘around’ as well as ‘in and against’ the state” [45].

Getting to Justice

I conclude by turning briefly to the question of what will impel or compel us towards justice.  It is hard for me to believe that people will readily lower their standards of living in wealthy nations, slow and modify their economic growth in developing ones, or make the hard adjustments required everywhere, unless they feel they have to.

Dobson distinguishes between charity, which ‘rests on nothing other than a sense of common humanity,”[46] and justice, which he sees as a more binding form of obligation.  I agree justice is more binding, but how are people bound to obligations that Dobson describes as non-contractual and non-reciprocal?  I argue that, just as the material production of daily life in an asymmetrical world creates obligations, material circumstances are also what push us toward meeting them.  We need citizenship virtue, certainly, but virtue arises, at least in part, from material necessity.  We find, once again, that ethics cannot be separated from prudence, that there is continuous interplay between the moral choices we make and the conditions to which we must adapt. We can already see signs of the material circumstances that are forcing change upon us.  The consequences of climate change are becoming less remote everywhere.  Wildfires, insect infestations, freakish weather patterns, flooding of low-lying regions, hurricanes, water shortages –these phenomena are not confined to poor or rural areas.  The natural threat to humans is being felt globally, even if we have not yet articulated our collective obligations to nature.

Meanwhile, there are multiple developments that are bringing issues of human justice to the fore.  Most important of these is that globalization is widening the gap between rich and poor, creating unrest.  Homer-Dixon writes: “According to the World Bank economist Branko Milanovic, over 77 per cent of the world’s people are now poor….while about 16% are rich, which leaves less than 7% in the middle….This is not a prescription for a stable world order”[47].  The social unrest and demand for economic improvement generated by the income gap are exacerbated by demographic imbalances (faster- growing poor nations) and the explosive growth of megacities in developing nations.  Paradoxically, globalization is also acting to equalize in a certain way, as economic power shifts from developed to developing nations, and as people in developed nations accommodate to developing nations’ rising productive capacity and increasing share of consumption of the world’s natural resources.  Such shifts suggest that, in a chaotic, messy way, adjustments are already underway to correct imbalances that have become too unwieldy.

Could it be that humanity, like Lovelock’s Gaia, exists in homeostasis? In The Upside of Down, Thomas Homer-Dixon describes how the accumulation of material ‘stresses’ leads to crisis, and thereby to the possibility of renewal.  For instance, two stresses that could lead to the carbon market he hopes for are the supply constraint of oil, and the material consequences of climate change on essential human activities such as food production.  Homer-Dixon does not believe our current approach to climate change –simply ‘managing’ stress by making current systems more complex– is adequate; we need to break down old systems in order to build new ones.  Crisis provides the opportunity to rebuild, he says, but we need to seize the moment of contingency in order to prevent complete collapse: “….while breakdown is essential to ….renewal. it must not be too severe.  In other words, breakdown must be constrained ….for catagenesis to happen”[48].

I find Homer-Dixon’s prescription realistic because it identifies the kinds of events – the crises – that will produce action on climate change.  It is also realistic to acknowledge, as he does, that crises and breakdowns of old systems models inevitably incur suffering and pain.  At the same time, his prescription contains hope. It does not cast humans as passive observers of crisis, but as beings that can use crisis to change direction positively.  A key question is, of course, how much breakdown or constraint is required.  I believe more will be needed to reverse climate change than simply the kind of ‘suppleness’ that redirects the market towards greener investments.  As Homer-Dixon says: “To survive, let alone prosper, in our new and dangerous world, however, we need to open our minds to the possibility of fundamental change in our lives”[49].

Indeed, we may need to outgrow the prevalent economic model.  We have been discrediting socialism for some time, but now our predicament forces us to scrutinize the claims of capitalism and to question the capacity of free markets and corporations to benefit society and nature.  Global capitalism continues to widen the gap between rich and poor.   And its requirement to endlessly grow and consume does not consider the natural economy and the natural limits to growth: “Global warming fundamentally challenges capitalism’s growth imperative”[50].  As we globalize, our challenge becomes to develop a consciousness that respects the needs of humans in distant places and respects the needs of the non-human world, including our climate system.   We need both forms of respect to break free from our present course.  The further challenge is to transcend the rigid distinction between the two forms of respect.   As Shiva says, “All beings have a natural right to sustenance”[51].

Setting aside the question of the extent of change required, we should see the current economic crisis as a chance to find ways to address inequality, both nationally and internationally, and to change our relationship to the atmosphere.  The fact that emissions are dropping during this global recession should prompt us to realize that lower emissions are possible.  It should encourage us to stimulate our economies in radically different ways, ways that shrink our ecological footprint and global inequalities.  The international community is beginning negotiations towards a new climate treaty to be signed in Copenhagen in December 2009.  It may be “unwise to rely on international agreement,” as Lovelock says, but surely it is unwise to abandon attempts to reach agreement on an issue that is truly international.  Time is running out.  We should seize this opportunity – and any others that present themselves – to make progress on the principles of human and environmental justice as they apply to climate change.

Notes

1.  James Lovelock, The Revenge of Gaia (London: Penguin, 2007).

2.  “Al Gore’s oratory electrifies Bali summit” India eNews, December 13, 2007.

3.  “U.S. & Developing Nations Compromise on Climate Talks” Bloomberg.com, December 15, 2007.

4.  “Chronology: U.S. U-turn brings Bali climate deal” Reuters, December 15, 2007.

5.  “We’ve been suckered again by the US. So far the Bali deal is worse than Kyoto” by George Monbiot, Guardian unlimited, December 17, 2007.

6.  “Answer to hot air was in fact a chilling blunder” Sydney Morning Herald, December 18, 2007.

7.  “High and low points of Bali climate talks” Reuters, December 15, 2007.

8.  “U.S. & Developing Nations Compromise on Climate Talks” Bloomberg.com, December 15, 2007.

9.  Vandana Shiva, Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace (Cambridge: South End Press, 2005), 84.

10. “Develop or Die” BBC World TV, March 3, 2009.

11. “U.S. & Developing Nations Compromise on Climate Talks” Bloomberg.com, December 15, 2007.

12. Val Plumwood, Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason (New York: Routledge, 2002).

13. ibid, 79.

14. George Monbiot,  Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning (Toronto: Anchor Canada, 2007), 21

15. Val Plumwood, 239.

16. Andrew Dobson, Citizenship and the Environment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

17. ibid, 17.

18. ibid, 31.

19. ibid, 115.

20. Michel Serres, The Natural Contract (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1995).

21.Val Plumwood, 145.

22. James Lovelock, The Revenge of Gaia, 191.

23. Andrew Dobson, 111.

24. James Lovelock, 172.

25.Val Plumwood, 124.

26. Michel Serres, 38.

27. ibid, 46.

28. James Lovelock, 16.

29. George Monbiot,  6.

30. Vandana Shiva,  61.

31. Val Plumwood, 74.

32. Val Plumwood, 237.

33. Michel Serres, 44.

34. “Obama’s Backing Raises Hopes for Climate Pact” New York Times, February 28, 2009.

35. George Monbiot,  15-16.

36. “Obama’s Backing Raises Hopes for Climate Pact” New York Times, February 28, 2009.

37. George Monbiot,  44.

38. George Monbiot, 49.

39. Thomas Homer-Dixon, The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization (Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2006), p.198.

40. George Monbiot, 215.

41. Interview with Homer-Dixon in “Canada in 2020- Markets: Connect the thoughts” http://canadianbusiness.com, October 27, 2007.

42. “Obama’s Backing Raises Hopes for Climate Pact” New York Times, February 28, 2009.

43. “Truth about Kyoto: huge profits, little carbon saved” by Nick Davies The Guardian, June 2, 2007.

44. Andrew Dobson, 102.

45. ibid, 97.

46. ibid, 28.

47. Thomas Homer-Dixon, 257.

48. ibid, 23.

49. ibid,219.

50. ibid, 264.

51. Vandana Shiva, 9.