Climate change and the future: Discounting for time, wealth, and risk

Journal of Social Philosophy

Volumn 40, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 163-186

  Caney, Simon ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 72949101557     PISSN: 00472786     EISSN: 14679833     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9833.2009.01445.x     Document Type: Article

References (82)

1. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985 [1739-40]), bk. III, pt. II, sec. VII, p. 590.
2. Susan Solomon, Dahe Qin, and Martin Manning, "Technical Summary", in Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ed. Susan Solomon et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 70. It is important to bear in mind that the sea-level projections exclude "future rapid dynamical changes in ice flow."
3. See Simon Caney, "Human Rights, Responsibilities and Climate Change", in Global Basic Rights, ed. Charles Beitz and Robert Goodin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 227-47;
4. and Simon Caney, "Climate Change, Human Rights and Moral Thresholds", in Human Rights and Climate Change, ed. Stephen Humphrey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2009).
5. See also Tim Hayward, Constitutional Environmental Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) for a defense of a "human right to an adequate environment" (especially chapter 1).
6. Sir John Houghton, Global Warming: The Complete Briefing, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 30-31.
7. See Bjørn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 322-24;
8. and also the views of the panel of experts reported in Bjørn Lomborg, ed., Global Crises, Global Solutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 605-44.
9. The social discount rate has been widely ignored by philosophers. For a rare example, see the illuminating discussion of discounting by Derek Parfit in Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 480-86.
10. See Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics, 8th ed. (London: Macmillan, 1961 [1920]), bk. III, chap. V, sec. 3-4, pp. 119-23;
11. A. C. Pigou, The Economics of Welfare, 4th ed. (London: Macmillan, 1946), 24-30;
12. Frank Ramsey, "A Mathematical Theory of Saving", Economic Journal 38, no. 152(1928):543-59;
13. and Sir Nicholas Stern, The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), esp. 35-37 and 50-60.
14. Stern, The Economics of Climate Change, 239.
15. Eric Neumayer, "A Missed Opportunity: The Stern Review on Climate Change Fails to Tackle the Issue of Non-substitutable Loss of Natural Capital", Global Environmental Change 17, nos. 3-4(2007):300.
16. Pigou, The Economics of Welfare, 24-30;
17. Ramsey, "A Mathematical Theory of Saving", 543;
18. R. F. Harrod, "The Supply of Saving", in Towards a Dynamic Economics: Some Recent Developments of Economic Theory and Their Application to Policy (London: Macmillan, 1949), 40.
19. Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed. (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1981 [1907]), bk. IV, chap. 1, sec. 2, p. 414.
20. I here follow Frank Knight's seminal discussion in Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1921), esp. 19-20 and 197-232.
21. see Martin Parry, Osvaldo Canziani, Jean Palutikof, Paul van der Linden, and Clair Hanson, eds., Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007);
22. and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Wolfgang Cramer, Nebojsa Nakicenovic, Tom Wigley, and Gary Yohe, eds., Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
23. see Caney, "Human Rights, Responsibilities and Climate Change", sec. I.
24. see Caney, "Climate Change, Human Rights and Moral Thresholds." My account is indebted to Raz's articulation of the interest theory of rights.
25. See Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), chap. 7 in general and p. 166 in particular. 21 Note there are other different kinds of Scope Restricted View.
26. See, for example, that defended by Avner de-Shalit, Why Posterity Matters: Environmental Policies and Future Generations (London: Routledge, 1995), 13-14, 54-55, and 62-65.
27. William Stanley Jevons, The Theory of Political Economy, 2nd ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970 [1879]), chap. III, p. 124.
28. Rawls, "The Independence of Moral Theory", Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 48(1974-75):17.
29. The point is also made in "Reply to Alexander and Musgrave", Quarterly Journal of Economics 88, no. 4(1974):645.
30. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 414.
31. Simon Caney, "Climate Change, Human Rights and Discounting", Environmental Politics 17, no. 4(2008):548-50.
32. see Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist, 314;
33. William Nordhaus, "Discounting in Economics and Climate Change", Climatic Change 37, no. 2(1997):317;
34. William Nordhaus, "The Question of Global Warming: An Exchange", New York Review of Books 55, no. 14(September 25, 2008):93.
35. See Robert M. Solow, "The Economics of Resources or the Resources of Economics", American Economic Review 64, no. 2(1974):9.
36. Nordhaus, "Discounting in Economics and Climate Change", 317.
37. See, for example, Harrod, "The Supply of Saving", 38ff.
38. see Thomas Schelling, "Intergenerational Discounting", Energy Policy 23, nos. 4/5(1995):398-400;
39. and Thomas Schelling, "Intergenerational and International Discounting", Risk Analysis 20, no. 6(2000):835-36.
40. see Dan Moller, "Should We Let People Starve-For Now?" Analysis 66, no. 291(2006):240-47. His argument is not concerned with climate change but with the case for poverty relief but does have a similar (but nonidentical) structure.
41. see Simon Caney, "Climate Change, Justice and the Duties of the Advantaged", Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 12, no. 2 (forthcoming 2009);
42. and Caney, "Human Rights, Responsibilities and Climate Change." I argue there that Ability to Pay considerations should play a subsidiary role.
43. See David Frame and Myles R. Allen, "Climate Change and Global Risk", in Global Catastrophic Risk, ed. Nick Bostrom and Milan M. Ćirković (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 273-75.
44. John Houghton also discusses positive and negative feedbacks in Global Warming: The Complete Briefing, 35, 39-40, 90-95, and 186. Edward A. G. Schuur and his coauthors have also argued that the melting of permafrost will result in the release of billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere:
45. see Edward A. G. Schuur et al., "Vulnerability of Permafrost Carbon to Climate Change: Implications for the Global Carbon Cycle", Bioscience 58, no. 8(2008):701-14.
46. see Andrew Dobson's discussion of different conceptions of sustainability in Justice and the Environment: Conceptions of Environmental Sustainability and Dimensions of Social Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
47. This point has been persuasively made by Henry Shue, "Bequeathing Hazards: Security Rights and Property Rights of Future Humans", in Global Environmental Economics: Equity and the Limits to Markets, ed. Mohammed H. I. Dore and Timothy D. Mount (Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999), 40-42;
48. and by Clive Spash, Greenhouse Economics: Value and Ethics (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), chap. 9, esp. pp. 231-36. Shue grounds his argument on the assumption that the rights in question are inalienable. In contrast to this, I hold that (1) it is not necessary to appeal to inalienable rights to ground this conclusion; and (2) the rights Shue posits (like the right to physical security) are not in fact inalienable (people may consent to others inflicting physical pain on them).
49. see Robert E. Goodin, Green Political Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992), 57-61;
50. Eric Neumayer, Weak versus Strong Sustainability: Exploring the Limits of Two Opposing Paradigms, 2nd ed. (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2003);
51. and Neumayer, "A Missed Opportunity", 299-301.
52. There are many different versions of the precautionary principle. For some influential formulations of the precautionary principle, see Principle 15 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (http://www.un.org/ documents/ga/conf151/aconf15126-1annex1.htm)
53. and Article 3.3 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/conveng.pdf).
54. For an instructive analysis, see Jonathan B. Weiner, " Precaution", in The Oxford Handbook of International Environmental Law, ed. Daniel Bodansky, Jutta Brunnée, and Ellen Hey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 597-612.
55. This point is emphasized by Stephen Gardiner, "Ethics and Global Climate Change", Ethics 114, no. 3(2004):571-72.
56. See also Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974), 33.
57. Martin Parry, Osvaldo Canziani, and Jean Palutikof, "Technical Summary", in Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ed. Martin Parry, Osvaldo Canziani, Jean Palutikof, Paul van der Linden, and Clair Hanson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 27.
58. Solomon et al., "Technical Summary", 52.
59. Parry et al., "Technical Summary", 27.
60. Ulisses Confalonieri and Bettina Menne, "Human Health", in Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ed. Martin Parry, Osvaldo Canziani, Jean Palutikof, Paul van der Linden, and Clair Hanson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 393.
61. Jason A. Lowe, Jonathan M. Gregory, Jeff Ridley, Philippe Huybrechts, Robert J. Nicholls, and Matthew Collins, "The Role of Sea-Level Rise and the Greenland Ice Sheet in Dangerous Climate Change: Implications for the Stabilisation of Climate", in Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, ed. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Wolfgang Cramer, Nebojsa Nakicenovic, Tom Wigley, and Gary Yohe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 30.
62. Michael Oppenheimer and R. B. Alley, "The West Antarctic Ice Sheet and Long Term Climate Policy", Climatic Change 64, nos. 1-2(2004):2. For discussion of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet
63. see also Chris Rapley, "The Antarctic Ice Sheet and Sea Level Rise", in Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, ed. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Wolfgang Cramer, Nebojsa Nakicenovic, Tom Wigley, and Gary Yohe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 25-27.
64. For discussion of the Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation, see Michael Vellinga and Richard A. Wood, "Global Climatic Impacts of a Collapse of the Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation", Climatic Change 54, no. 3(2002):251-67.
65. See also Michael E. Schlesinger, Jianjun Yin, Gary Yohe, Natalia G. Andronova, Sergey Malyshev, and Bin Li, "Assessing the Risk of a Collapse of the Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation", in Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, ed. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Wolfgang Cramer, Nebojsa Nakicenovic, Tom Wigley, and Gary Yohe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 37-47;
66. and Richard Wood, Matthew Collins, Jonathan Gregory, Glen Harris, and Michael Vellinga, "Towards a Risk Assessment for Shutdown of the Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation", in Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, ed. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Wolfgang Cramer, Nebojsa Nakicenovic, Tom Wigley, and Gary Yohe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 49-54.
67. Vellinga and Wood, "Global Climatic Impacts", 255.
68. For further pertinent discussion see Michael Oppenheimer and R. B. Alley, "Ice Sheets, Global Warming, and Article 2 of the UNFCCC", Climatic Change 68, no. 3(2005):257-67;
69. Stefan Rahmstorf and Kirsten Zickfeld, "Thermohaline Circulation Changes: A Question of Risk Assessment", Climatic Change 68, nos. 1-2(2005):241-47;
70. Stephen H. Schneider, "Abrupt Non-linear Climate Change, Irreversibility and Surprise", Global Environmental Change 14, no. 3(2004):245-58;
71. and the report of the Committee on Abrupt Climate Change-Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises (Washington DC: National Academy Press, 2002).
72. This is a point stressed by Cass Sunstein in Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 26-34.
73. My invocation of R1 and R2 in support of a precautionary policy is broadly in line with Stephen Gardiner's analysis of the precautionary principle and his application of it to global climate change in Gardiner, "Ethics and Global Climate Change", 577-78.
74. See also his excellent treatment in "A Core Precautionary Principle", Journal of Political Philosophy 14, no. 1(2006):33-60.
75. Gardiner draws on Rawls's maximin principle to construct what he terms the "Rawlsian Core Precautionary Principle" (p. 48).
76. (see "Ethics and Global Climate Change", 577). My account is closer to this second account, though, by contrast with Gardiner's account, the concept of rights plays a crucial role in my argument.
77. and Michel Boko, Isabelle Niang, Anthony Nyong, and Coleen Vogel, "Africa", in Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ed. Martin Parry, Osvaldo Canziani, Jean Palutikof, Paul van der Linden, and Clair Hanson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), esp. p. 435.
78. For an excellent discussion see Sven Ove Hansson, "Ethical Criteria of Risk Acceptance", Erkenntnis 59, no. 3(2003):291-309, esp. 305. The example of driving comes from p. 298. I disagree with Hansson's proposal but will not pursue that here.
79. On this point, I am in full agreement with Henry Shue's analysis in "Deadly Delays, Saving Opportunities: Creating a More Dangerous World?" in Energy and Responsibility, ed. Denis Arnold (forthcoming), 16.
80. (see "Deadly Delays", 12-13).
81. See Henry Shue, "Subsistence Emissions and Luxury Emissions", Law and Policy 15, no. 1(1993):o39-59.
82. see J. L. Austin, "A Plea for Excuses", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 57(1956-1957):1-30.