How to cite this article:WIREs Clim Change 2012, 3:131–143. doi: 10.1002/wcc.158
CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBALJUSTICE
Anthropogenic climate change is widely recognizedas a global problem affecting the lives and
well being of millions of people, the stability ofecosystems, and the existence of many natural species.My assumption in this article is that justice involvesmoral considerations regarding relationships betweenpeople or between people mediated by institutions andpolicies, and that therefore this is the case with globaljustice as well. There are important moral questionsregarding the effects of climate change on ecosystems,biodiversity, and species.a But I shall not discuss theseas matters of global justice.
My goal here is to review the most importantissues concerning climate change and global justice.b
This is by no means, however, an exhaustive survey ofthis growing and important literature. I cannot hopeto provide that here. In summarizing and commentingon the various issues, my aim is twofold: the first isto introduce the issues to readers who are unfamiliarwith them; the second is to stimulate both readerswho are already familiar with some of these debatesas well as those who are just becoming familiar withthem to further critical reflection.
Department of Philosophy, San Diego State University, San Diego,CA, USA
The section on Global Justice summarizes someof the recent work in global justice that is relevanthere. The section on The UNFCCC Treaty discussesfeatures of the international treaty context in whichclimate change negotiations are occurring. After thatthe section on Climate Change and Human Rightsdiscusses the relationship between climate change andhuman rights. The section on Responsibility for His-toric Emissions discusses responsibility for historicalemissions and the polluter-pays-principle. The sectionon Ability to Pay discusses the ability-to-pay prin-ciple. The section on Grandfathering discusses theidea of grandfathering, namely that a state’s entitle-ment to emit CO2 should be based on its historiclevels of emissions. The section on Equal EmissionsEntitlements discusses the claim that each person hasan equal entitlement to emit greenhouse gases withinthe limits established by the aims of mitigation ingeneral. The section on The Right to SustainableDevelopment summarizes an account of the right tosustainable development. And, the section on Adap-tation is devoted to a discussion of global justice andadaptation policy.
GLOBAL JUSTICE
Efforts to develop and criticize theories of global jus-tice have recently developed into major research pro-grams for several political philosophers and theorists.c
It is impossible adequately to summarize all of the
important details in the debates that have been occur-ring, but I shall point to a few areas where thosedebates are important to the concerns of justice andclimate change.
The kind of justice in philosophical debatesabout global justice that is relevant to our theme isbest thought of as social justice. Several closely relatedquestions taken up in these debates seem directlyrelevant to climate change policy. These include thefollowing: Do robust duties of justice exist betweenpeople that do not live in the same country? In virtueof what (if anything) are there such duties? And whichprinciples best characterize those duties?
Cosmopolitans argue that robust duties of justiceexist between noncompatriots.1–9 Noncosmopolitansof various stripes either deny the existence of suchduties of justice or assert that they are substantially lessrobust than those between compatriots.10–16,d Thereare a variety of reasons for the noncosmopolitan posi-tion but four have attracted the most attention. Oneis the claim that duties of egalitarian distributive jus-tice exist between people only if they are subject to acommon coercive legal structure,10,14,16 and currentlystates are the only structures of this sort. Another isthat the content of duties of egalitarian distributivejustice can be provided only by a cultural understand-ing of goods, which understanding only nations arecapable of providing.11 A third is that egalitariandistributive justice would conflict with national self-determination.11 And the fourth is that state policyremains the most important factor in the well-being ofpersons.15 These are not mutually exclusive positions.And noncosmopolitans sometimes affirm more thanone of these.
There are also a variety of cosmopolitan posi-tions, providing different resources for responding tothe noncosmopolitan positions. Some cosmopolitanshold that duties of social justice are owed by eachperson to all other persons, in which case the limits ofstate coercion and common national cultures establishno principled limit to duties, although the latter mightaffect their content somewhat.3,8,9 A variant of thisview focuses primarily on human rights, which propo-nents take to be universal and to include rights to sub-sistence, which are violated by international practicesthat recognize the legitimacy of corrupt governments.7
Other cosmopolitans accept that duties of social jus-tice are not owed to everyone, but that the set ofpeople bound by duties of justice is larger than merelythose who are subject to the same framework of legalcoercion; it includes also those who are members of acommon economic association, which exists globally.5
Some noncosmopolitans believe that duties ofdistributive justice exist between noncompatriots but
that they are either less strong12 or less demanding.10
The content of the latter position is similar to oneoffered by some cosmopolitans, who defend onlyduties to meet minimum needs.2 Many cosmopoli-tan positions take duties of distributive justice torequire significantly more than that. One family ofsuch positions holds that natural resources are right-fully commonly owned by all the Earth’s inhabitants,not merely some of those who were lucky enough to beborn near or on top of them; and that therefore someor all of the revenues collected from resource extrac-tion should be shared globally.1,6,17 Other positionsinclude a version of equality of opportunity appliedglobally.3,5 Still others maintain that the differenceprinciple, which John Rawls famously defends fordomestic justice, and which requires that inequalitiesin wealth and income maximize benefits to the leastadvantage people, applies globally.1,4,6
Millions of people are already at risk of extremeweather and flooding. Currently around 344 millionpeople are exposed to tropical cyclones, 521 millionto floods, 130 million to droughts, and 2.3 million tolandslides.18 Climate change is expected to increasethese numbers very significantly. About 10% of theworld’s population lives at an elevation of 10 m orless above sea-level.19 Hundreds of millions of peopleare at risk of inundation from tropical storms andrising sea levels. But the poor living in the mega deltasof North Africa and Asia are particularly vulnerable.‘People living in the Ganges Delta and lower Man-hattan share flood risks associated with rising seaslevels. They do not share the same vulnerabilities. Thereason: the Ganges Delta is marked by high levels ofpoverty and low levels of infrastructural protection’.19
The devastation caused by drought and flooding couldresult in long term setbacks to human development inmany poor societies.18
Climate change related threats are not simplyacts of God, but the result of energy use and mul-tiple uncoordinated energy policies in countries andprovinces throughout the world. Historically, how-ever, greenhouse gas emissions have been highest inthe industrialized world. ‘When people in an Americancity turn on the airconditioning or people in Europedrive their cars, their actions have consequences.Those consequences link them to rural communities inBangladesh, farmers in Ethiopia, and slum dwellers inHaiti’.18 Energy use brings tremendous benefits, butwhen fossil fuels are used it also brings significant cli-mate change related costs. The privilege of using fossilfuels has mostly fallen to the relatively rich of theworld, while the burdens of climate change are fallingmore heavily on the poor. The question of who isresponsible for the costs of climate change, including
WIREs Climate Change Climate change and global justice
the costs of adapting to it, would appear then to be asignificant concern of global justice.
Any effective international treaty for climatechange mitigation will have to lower global CO2 emis-sions very dramatically. Emissions must be 50–85%below 2000 levels by 2050 in order to secure a reason-able chance of keeping planetary warming to 2 ◦C.20
(Whether this warming limit is a morally appropriateone is a question of how much climate change weshould avoid and ultimately a question of intergener-ational justice and beyond the scope of this article.e)To do this the cost of fossil fuels relative to renew-ables will have to increase. But human developmentis very energy intensive. Electrification makes possiblehospitals and schools with modern equipment. Man-ufacturing uses energy but also provides better payingjobs than can usually be had in rural areas. Transportof manufactured goods consumes massive amountsof energy. A second important concern of global jus-tice then is how an international treaty will assignmitigation costs, and in particular whether costs willbe assigned in a way that constrains poverty eradi-cating economic growth in the developing and leastdeveloped countries.
THE UNITED NATIONS FRAMEWORKCONVENTION ON CLIMATE CHANGETREATY
The United Nations Framework Convention onClimate Change (UNFCCC), formed by internationaltreaty in 1992, is the international institution inwhich, to date, all significant attempts to come to aninternational agreement dealing with climate changehave occurred. Both the treaty and the institution thatdeveloped as a result of the treaty are called ‘TheUnited Nations Framework Convention on ClimateChange’. To distinguish these, I refer to the former as‘the Convention’ and the latter as ‘the UNFCCC’.
The UNFCCC provides the institutional settingfor international negotiations and the Convention pro-vides a deliberative framework in a set of guidingnorms. Article 3 sets out several principles to guide theachievement of the Convention’s objective. Paragraph1 stipulates that efforts should be distributed differen-tially. It affirms assigning burdens to parties ‘on thebasis of equity and in accordance with their commonbut differentiated responsibilities and respective capa-bilities’. Paragraph 1 also states that, ‘the developedcountry Parties should take the lead in combatingclimate change and the adverse effects thereof’.21
Paragraph 2 requires full attention to ‘The specificneeds and special circumstances of developing Parties,especially those that are particularly vulnerable to
the adverse effects of climate change’.21 Paragraph 4opens by invoking ‘a right to. . . sustainable develop-ment’ and closes by requiring international policy totake ‘into account that economic development is essen-tial for adopting measures to address climate change’.
These principles guide the course of subsequentdeliberation with the net effect that acceptableadditional treaties under the auspices of theUNFCCC must lay heavier burdens on developedcountry parities and be especially solicitous of thedevelopment needs of developing parties. This is fullyconsistent with accounts of global just that requireeither eradicating severe poverty or reducing globalinequalities. A group of developed country parties iscompiled in Annex I of the Convention. This groupincludes 40 states and the European Union, includingthe western European states, the USA, Canada, Japan,Australia, and New Zealand. This same set of statesis listed in Annex B of the Kyoto Protocol. Onlythe states in Annex B are assigned binding emissionreductions under the Protocol.
Cosmopolitans are likely to favor distinguishingthe burdens of responding to climate change in away that provides allowances to developing countries.The Convention applies to a world characterizedby extreme poverty and global inequality. Economicdevelopment can eradicate poverty but it is energyintensive. Given current technology and energymarkets, the cheapest sources of energy are usuallyfossil fuels, coal in particular. A climate changetreaty that raises energy prices in the developingworld threatens to slow, or prevent, the process bywhich billions of people may be raised out of extremepoverty. Fundamentally, the Convention’s principlesdistinguishing burdens of the developed and thedeveloping states is not about resource redistribution,then, although it has been maligned as such.22 Rathersuch principles serve to ensure that neither climatechange nor a climate change treaty worsen theprospects for development for poor countries.
The list drawn up in 1992 at the time of writ-ing of the Convention, however, does not include allof the states that are now among the group of mosthighly developed. But any commitment to humandevelopment needs in developing and least developedcountries will necessarily place very heavy burdenson developed states. Energy supply, industry, andtransport comprise over 50% of all greenhouse gasemissions. While forestry practices, including defor-estation, and agriculture comprise over 30%.20 Emis-sions in all of these categories are affected by economicdevelopment and rising populations in the developingworld. In the absence of adopting additional miti-gation strategies, emissions are projected to increase
Two thirds to three quarters of the increase is expectedto come from developing countries, where both eco-nomic and population growth are highest.23 Evenif global justice requires laying heavier burdens ondeveloped countries, an international treaty that ade-quately mitigates climate change will eventually haveto constrain the emissions of non-Annex I countries.
CLIMATE CHANGE AND HUMANRIGHTS
In the absence of mitigation, climate change is pro-jected to have profound, often devastating effects,on hundred of millions of people by the end of thiscentury. Human health is expected to suffer signifi-cantly. According to the Intergovernmental Panel onClimate Change (IPCC), ‘The health status of mil-lions of people is projected to be affected through, forexample, increases in malnutrition; increased deaths,diseases and injury due to extreme weather events;increased burden of diarrheal disease; increased fre-quency of cardio-respiratory diseases. . .and the alteredspatial distribution of some infectious diseases’.20 Forhundreds of millions of people access to water andfood will become more difficult. By 2020 from 75 to250 million Africans are expected to suffer increasedwater stress; and yields on rain fed farms may bereduced by up to 50%20 (p. 50). According to a UnitedNations Human Development Programme (UNDP)review of climate change projections, ‘Overall, cli-mate change will lower the incomes and reduce theopportunities of vulnerable populations. By 2080,the number of people at risk of hunger could reach600 million—twice the number of people living inpoverty in sub-Saharan Africa today’.18
The calamities caused by climate change arepertinent to protections offered by internationalhuman rights documents. For example, Article 25,paragraph 1, of the Universal Declaration of HumanRights states that,
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequatefor the health and well-being of himself and of hisfamily, including food, clothing, housing and medicalcare and necessary social services, and the right tosecurity in the event of unemployment, sickness,disability, widowhood, old age or other lack oflivelihood in circumstances beyond his control.24
Article 11 of International Covenant onEconomic, Social and Cultural Rights holds that,
The States Parties to the present Covenant recognizethe right of everyone to an adequate standard of
living for himself and his family, including adequatefood, clothing and housing, and to the continuousimprovement of living conditions.25
Simon Caney argues that a central andfundamental wrong of climate change is that itwill cause significant human rights violations.26,g
Caney make this argument in relation to three keyrights: The right not to be arbitrarily deprived ofone’s life, the right not to have others cause seriousthreats to one’s health, and the right not to haveothers deprive one of the means of subsistence.These are broadly accepted rights, less demandingand less controversial than the rights enumeratedin the paragraphs of the human rights documentscited above. Hence, Caney’s point is on the face of itplausible.
Human rights have figured prominently in therecent literature on global justice. Many cosmopoli-tans have defended the importance of human rightsin contrast to claims of states to sovereign controlover the affairs within their borders.4 Others, asnoted above, have argued that human rights formthe basis of duties to reform the international statesystem to eradicate desperate poverty. So an accountof the moral problems of climate change in terms ofthe threats that it poses to human rights is consis-tent with a broadly cosmopolitan approach to globaljustice.
There are, however, features of the employ-ment of human rights in the context of climatechange that bear special scrutiny. As invoked byCaney, and several others, human rights are meantto account as much for our duties to future genera-tions as to people currently living in other countries.That is to say, human rights are said to account forour duties of intergenerational justice. There severalimportant questions about whether human rights arethe best way to account for our duties of intergen-erational justice, but they elude the scope of thisarticle.h
RESPONSIBILITY FOR HISTORICEMISSIONS
Both considerations of global justice and theConvention’s language of ‘common but differentiatedresponsibilities’ have led some people to concludethat a morally acceptable international treaty shoulddistribute various responsibilities of states accordingto their historic contribution of greenhouse gasses,especially CO2 (because of its long atmosphericresidence time), to the atmosphere.i This view invokesa principle from other aspects of environmental policy
WIREs Climate Change Climate change and global justice
and ethics, known as the polluter-pays-principle.The idea is simple: Those who pollute should payin proportion to their contribution to the overallpollution problem.
The polluter-pays-principle might be defendedon either fault or no-fault grounds.j Fault conceptionsof responsibility are most at home in the law of torts,which seeks to assign responsibility for accidents,against a stable background of property entitlements.In order for an agent to be at fault typically at leastthree conditions must be satisfied: (1) Causation—theagent must have brought about the circumstance (forwhich responsibility is assigned) as a consequence ofher actions; (2) voluntariness—the agent must havedone so voluntarily; and (3) knowledge—she musthave known (or—sometimes less demanding—a rea-sonable person would have known) the consequencesof her action. Fault conceptions of responsibility are insome ways analogous to retributive accounts of pun-ishment. Both require causation and a certain mentalstate in the agent in order to apply legal sanction. Onekind of defense of a fault conception of responsibilitystresses the importance of liberty. In the absence ofcausation and the requisite mental states any sanctionof an agent is a violation of her liberty. A differentkind of defense invokes forward looking considera-tions. By assigning responsibility only to those whovoluntarily and knowingly create problems, we estab-lish a system of incentives that reduces the incidenceof such misdoing and we lower the incidence of exter-nalities, the costs of misdeeds being passed along toothers.
Recent philosophical discussions of fault in thecontext of climate change have pointed to severalproblems with using it to assign responsibility.27
Consider two of these. First, because of the longlife of CO2 molecules in the atmosphere, much ofthe damage-causing stock of atmospheric CO2 wasproduced by people who are now long dead, and fromthem no costs can be recouped. Second, among thestill-living, many fail to meet the knowledge conditionfor some of their early emissions. General knowledgethat climate change is produced by greenhouse gases isrelatively recent. In 1988 the United Nations GeneralAssembly adopted Resolution 43/53, ‘Noting withconcern that the emerging evidence indicates thatcontinued growth in atmospheric concentrations of‘greenhouse’ gases could produce global warming withan eventual rise in seal levels, the effects of whichcould be disastrous for mankind if timely steps are nottaken at all levels. . .’28 That same year the IPCC wasfounded by the World Meteorological Association andthe United Nations Environmental Programme. Thefirst assessment of report of the IPCC was not issued
until 1990. At most a fault account of responsibilitywould seem to be limited to the emissions of thosepeople currently living and only since the late 1980sor early 1990s.This leaves responsibility for earlieremissions unassigned.
It might be thought that responsibility for earlieremissions can be folded into a fault account if thebearers of fault are not individual people, now longdead, but states.k Assigning fault to states has twoapparent virtues. It would be consistent with thestate-centered language of the Convention; and, atleast with respect to those states which have enduredfrom the dawn of the industrial revolution till now,there would be no worry about recouping costs fromnonexistent debtors.
Assigning fault to states, however, faces at leasttwo problems. The first is that it may not increasethe net of responsibility for historic emissions broadlyenough to cover most historic emissions. Most stateswill fail to meet the knowledge condition before thelate 1980s and early 1990s; and the many new states,which were born in the 20th century, cannot anymore be faulted for emissions before their coming intoexistence than individual people can for emissionsbefore their birth. The second problem is that there aregreat practical barriers to assigning responsibility tostates without preventing the costs from devolving tothe citizens of the states since state revenues are raisedby taxing citizens. In effect, then the responsibilitydevolves with the costs. So, were an internationalinstitutional arrangement to lay fault on a state for allits emissions since, say, 1988 it would for practicalpurposes assign costs to the citizens of that state,an increasingly large proportion of which who wereborn after that date. The embarrassment of such afault account of responsibility is that many peoplewill be assigned costs for emissions that they cannotbe personally at fault for.
Given the problems noted above, a no-faultaccount of historical responsibility might seem moreplausible. No-fault conceptions of responsibilitysimply deny the necessity of at least one of the threeconditions for assigning responsibility on the basisof fault. One such an account could be developedon the basis of a conception of strict liability, whichholds agents responsible if they caused the problem,regardless of whether they acted with knowledge.29
Given the problems with the knowledge condition inthe case of climate change, strict liability might seemto be a better basis for the polluter-pays-principle.
Strict liability is sometimes criticized on groundsthat it is unfair to hold persons responsible for thecosts of their actions when they are not at fault. Inthe law strict liability is typically applied only with
respect to activities that are especially dangerous orimportant to human health, in which a high standardof care is warranted, and when agents can be put onnotice beforehand that they will be held responsiblefor the negative effects of their actions even if theyare not at fault. The charge of unfairness is somewhatmitigated by the response that persons engaging insuch activity are knowingly assuming the risks ofbeing held responsible. This defense does not workwell in the case of emissions prior to knowledge oftheir danger since persons could not reasonably bethought to have been put on notice that they wouldbe held responsible given the general ignorance of theeffects of CO2 emissions. The lack of such notice raisesdoubts about whether it is fair to assign responsibilitymerely on the basis of causation.
Beneficiary responsibility is a second no-faultconception of responsibility that maintains a connec-tion with historical emissions. Beneficiary responsi-bility jettisons the requirement of causation but stillmaintains a connection to the action through therequirement that those responsible must have bene-fitted from the particular action.30 Perhaps personsliving in industrialized countries can be held respon-sible because they benefit from the high standards ofliving produced by past emissions. Such accounts areburdened with providing compelling reasons to believethat a connection with a past action as tenuous as thatone has benefitted from it should be the groundsfor assigning one responsibility for it, especially sincebenefitting is something that persons do not alwayshave much say in. In the case of the costs of historicemissions, most persons now living in industrializedcountries were born there and had no say in thatmatter.
Each of these three bases for assigning respon-sibility for historic emissions contains problems thata fully adequate account would have to overcome.l
But, regardless of which conception of responsibilityis used to support it, the polluter-pays-principle is sub-ject to a general problem. The principle can direct theassignment of the burdens of reducing CO2 emissions(or financing adaptation) but it is silent on permis-sion to emit CO2 in order to fuel poverty eradicatingeconomic growth.31 Various conceptions of globaljustice that aim either to eradicate severe poverty or toreduce inequalities between people around the worldsupport laying responsibility for emissions reductionsmore heavily on industrialized countries in order toallow developing and least developed countries theleeway to pursue macro-economic policies that pro-mote economic growth and poverty eradication. Thepolluter-pays-principle appears insensitive to this con-cern of global justice.
ABILITY TO PAY
Two no-fault principles for the assignment of respon-sibility, strict liability, and beneficiary pays have beenmentioned. A third principle supports a differentapproach. The ability-to-pay-principle assigns respon-sibility in proportion to an agent’s capacity—variouslymeasured. Ability-to-pay and closely related no-faultconceptions of responsibility are often used in theassignment of burdens for financing state activitiessuch as defense against various threats and the pro-vision of certain aspects of the well-being of citizens.Generally, in financing programs directed to meetthese aims, states do not look for citizens who areat fault for the wealth that they possess. Progressiveincome taxation to raise public revenue for the pro-vision of goods and services is typically defended ongrounds that the wealthier have a greater ability topay.
Two reasons seem to count in favor of an ability-to-pay-principle for climate change. First, theories ofglobal justice that condemn either severe poverty ordeep inequalities between people around the worldmight be enlisted to support the fairness of an ability-to-pay-principle.m When we are engaged in forming anew international institutional order that will establishentitlements to emit greenhouse gases, considerationsof distributive justice seem particularly relevant (per-haps more relevant than tort considerations, whichusually assume a pre-existing background of entitle-ments). Second, there is a basis for such a principlein the Convention’s norms. The Convention, as wehave seen, recognizes of the ‘respective capabilities’ ofvarious parties and asserts ‘the right to. . . sustainabledevelopment’. The first suggests something like anability-to-pay conception of responsibility for mitiga-tion and the financing of adaption to climate change.The second seems to require that such institutions beconsistent with macro-economic policies in develop-ing and least developed countries that seek povertyeradicating growth.
There is still the issue of whether responsibilityon the basis of the ability to pay should be assigned tostates or to individuals. Here there are some competingconsiderations of morality and practicality. Insofar aswe prize the well-being or dignity of individuals, wefind the moral ideals of equality amongst individualsand poverty eradication for persons attractive.However, an international climate change regulatoryregime will be the product of treaty negotiationbetween states that are likely to jealously guard theirtraditional sovereign powers. Consider, for example,China’s reticence to allow international monitoring ofits commitments to reduce CO2 emissions. Moreover,it might be difficult to work out the international
WIREs Climate Change Climate change and global justice
institutions for holding individuals responsible, evenif states were willing. This makes it doubtful thatthe assignment of responsibility for the costs ofclimate change through international negotiation caneffectively lay burdens directly on individuals.
The consideration mentioned above is notmerely a concession to realism at the expense of justice.The problems that need solving are practical. And tosome extent then a conception of responsibility alsohas to be workable. The moral merits of a conceptionof responsibility would be diminished by its lack ofpracticality. Additionally, the state-centric language ofthe Convention concerning the respective capabilitiesof states and the right to sustainable developmentseems to provide protections for the well-being ofthe populations of states; and to the extent that suchlanguage forms the basis of an assignment of basicresponsibility to states, the assignment is sensitive toindividuals even if not directly laid on individuals.
One objection to the assignment of responsibilityto states rather than to individuals is, as we have seen,the charge that responsibility would unfairly devolveon to individuals. But the force of the objection isless strong when applied to no-fault conceptions ofresponsibility. One worry about fairness is that aconsequence of assigning responsibility to states isthat wealthy people in poor states will carry a lessheavy burden simply because they live in a poorstate.n But if the conception of responsibility includesthe idea that developed states are to carry a heavierburden so that other states may pursue development,then this worry is mitigated since the idea is notthat the wealthy people should relieve the burdens ofthe poor, but that a society should not unreasonablyhindered in the pursuit of development, a processthat seems to require significant social stratificationin any case.o Another worry about fairness is thata burden may devolve to poor people in developedstates. Whether or not this occurs depends on statepolicy, and international negotiations will be limitedproviding guarantees against it. This may be a moralcost of the assigning responsibility to states on thebasis of the ability to pay.
GRANDFATHERING
The assignment of duties to reduce CO2 emissions canbe made either as percent reductions from a baseline ofemissions at a certain point in history or according tosome other set of considerations consistent with somemoral ideal, such as equal per capita emissions orpermitting sustainable development. When reductionsare assigned against a baseline year the percent of thebaseline emissions that remains after the reduction
is the grandfathered emissions that are allowed.For example, if some set of states are required toreduce their emissions by 85%, the remaining 15% ofemissions at the index year are grandfathered into thestate’s entitlement to emit.
Grandfathering was employed to assign emis-sions reductions in the Kyoto Protocol. The obliga-tions of parties are expressed as percent reductions (onaverage five percent) below the baseline year of 1990.And the voluntary reductions recorded in Appendix 1of Copenhagen Accord are measured against a numberof baseline years. The EU’s baseline is 1990; Kaza-khstan’s is 1992; Australia’s is 2000; and Canada’sand the USA’s are 2005.32 In each case, the after-reduction emissions of states at that baseline yearare grandfathered to the limit for permissible futureemissions.
One reason that grandfathering matters morallyis that in the context of rising emissions the baselineyear determines the total reduction commitment. Thelater the index year—the closer it is to the present—theless the state will be required to reduce from presentlevels. To clearly compare the percentages that variousstates are required to reduce one must control forthe baseline. For example, the 17% reduction below2005 levels that the USA pledged in Copenhagenamounts to only a 3.75% reduction below 1990 levels.This compares unfavorably to the 20–30% reductionbelow 1990 levels that EU pledged.
A more fundamental moral issue with thepractice of grandfathering is that in effect it gives statesan entitlement to some of their historic emissions. Theprevalence of grandfathering is probably due to asense of entitlement that states bring to internationalnegotiations. This might suggest that the practiceof grandfathering has a certain pragmatic value inmaking an agreement possible.
The justice of assigning CO2 emissionsentitlements to states on the basis of historic emissionsis however questionable since the practice rewardshigh-emitters. Although a state may not be at fault foremissions before, say, 1990, it far from clear that theyshould be rewarded for them. The resultant inequalityalso compounds the privileges of states that havedeveloped through high emissions. Considerations ofegalitarian global justice cast suspicion on policies thatheap entitlements on the already advantaged.
Are there any moral considerations that mightcount in favor of grandfathering? One possibility isthat states have a property right in their past emissionsentitlements. If the atmosphere, or its capacity torecycle CO2, is a good owned in common by allhumanity, then perhaps past appropriation of thatgood establishes an entitlement for continued use on
the basis of something like the doctrine of adversepossession in property law.p If one party puts a fenceup that encloses some of the land of another, and ifwith knowledge of the fence and after a certain amountof time the second party has not objected, she mightbe interpreted as having consented to transferringthe enclosed land to the first party. Perhaps the restof the world has simply consented to the USA’sappropriation of the otherwise collectively ownedatmosphere by allowing its high emissions. This wouldestablish the USA’s historic entitlement to emit.
The requirement that the appropriation beknown and not objected to is, however, problematic inthe case of emissions. Before the relationship betweengreenhouse gasses and climate change was widelyunderstood, the emission of CO2 into the atmospherewould not have been thought of as an appropriation.After the relationship was well-understood, theemissions of high-emitting states were identifiedas a problem. The Convention—with its languageof ‘common but differentiated responsibilities andrespective capabilities’ and its division of states intoAnnex 1 and non-Annex 1—was written in 1992 justfour years after United Nations General Assemblyadopted Resolution 43/53 and two years after the firstIPCC report. The Convention put the high-emitterson notice that their unequal appropriation of theatmospheric commons is not consented to by theother states.
Even if, as seems implausible given the argumentof the previous paragraph, a property right toemissions on the basis of past practice did exist,there is no reason to think that it necessarily trumpsother important public aims. Most states allow thepractice of public takings of private property, withinin specified constraints and in pursuit of importantpublic objectives (for example highway construction).Establishing an international emissions reductionregime that also permits sustainable development is avery important public objective, affecting the lives andwell being of hundreds of million people. Accordingto some accounts of global justice it might even be arequirement of justice. Even if there were a propertyright in past emissions, the importance of the emissionsreduction objective may give license to disregardingthe right where doing so is necessary.
EQUAL EMISSIONS ENTITLEMENTS
In 2008 global per capita CO2 emissions were 4.54metric tons (mt). But there was considerable variabilitybetween countries. China, the highest total emitter,had per capita emissions of 5.16 mt, just slightlyabove average. The USA, the second highest total
emitter, had per capita emissions of 19.16 mt, amongthe highest. And India’s per capita emissions, at 1.28mt, were considerably below the global average.
A view that has garnered some support bothfrom international NGOs and some moral andpolitical philosophers holds that each person has anequal entitlement to emit CO2 and that an emissionsreduction regime can honor that by distributing theoverall allowed emissions on an equal per capitabasis.q A standard basis for the claimed equalentitlement to emit is in thesis that the Earth’satmosphere, including its capacity to absorb CO2,is collectively owned by all humanity.r Assuming this,the idea is that the morally appropriate distribution ofthe common property is on an equal per capita basis.If one person emits more CO2 than the allotmentassigned equally to each, then she is appropriating theproperty of another.
Although the equal emissions entitlement viewmight seem to incorporate a morally compellingrespect for basic human equality, it does not followfrom the general premise of human equality.33
Moreover, it has been roundly criticized, and notonly by those who reject egalitarianism. Caney rejectsthe view on three grounds34: First as an account ofjustice it focuses exclusively on the distribution ofresource. But in doing so, it fetishizes the resourcedistributed; those who care about human equality donot care ultimately about equal resources. Second,it is insensitive different human needs that mightrequire differential emissions to satisfy.s And third,it is implausibly indifferent to past emissions. Thosewho have either had a greater share in creating theproblem or enjoyed more benefits from past emissionsmay not be entitled to emit as much as those who havenot. Each of these objections poses serious challengesto the equal emissions entitlement view. Perhapsfurther argumentation would produce defensesagainst these objections, but at the very least theluster of equal emissions entitlements as instantiatingan attractive ideal of human equality has beentarnished.
There is another weakness of the equal emissionsentitlement view. This is based on the constraints thatequal emissions entitlements put on the ambitions ofdeveloping and least developed countries to pursuehuman development.35 Two main factors conspire toreduce the equal per capita emissions entitlement toa level below that which is probably necessary forstates to mount an effective economic developmentpolicy. One is the extent of global emissions reductionsrequired to satisfy a plausible understanding of thedemands of intergenerational justice; the other isglobal population growth.
WIREs Climate Change Climate change and global justice
According to IPCC limiting mean globalwarming to 2 ◦C requires that global emissions in2050 be 50–85% below 2000 levels.20 To get a get anunderstanding of how this would affect a per capitaemissions entitlement consider that global per capitaCO2 emissions in 2000 were 3.92 mt for a populationthat was just over six billion.t If we assume thatpopulation growth yields a global population of ninebillion in 2050, the per capita emission entitlementof 50–85% reductions from 2000 levels would be inthe range of 0.4–1.33 mt CO2. We probably cannotsay exactly how much CO2 must be emitted in orderto achieve high human development but there is verygood reason to believe that it is much higher thanthe 0.4–1.33 mt per capita range. Consider the percapita emissions of the countries in the category ofvery high human development in the UNDP’s 2009Human Development Index (HDI). In this categorythe country with the lowest per capita emissions isPortugal, whose emissions in 2008 were 5.4 mt CO2.u
Of the 91 countries in the top half of the HDI onlytwo—Albania and Peru—have per capita emissionswithin the 0.4 to 1.33 mt CO2 range. Utilizingexisting energy technology and given current energyprices, achieving very high human development indeveloping countries seems very unlikely if per capitaemission must be kept within the 0.4–1.33 mt CO2range.
An international emissions entitlement tradingarrangement could provide some relief from theconstraints on human development imposed by theequal per capita requirement. Through the purchaseof additional emissions entitlements states, or theirpopulations, could increase their volume of allowedemissions. But this would raise the cost of energyconsumption, resulting in delayed or forestalledhuman development. It is unlikely then to solve theunderlying tension between equal per capita emissionsand human development.
THE RIGHT TO SUSTAINABLEDEVELOPMENT
The problem noted with the equal per capita approachsuggests that an appropriate alternative should bebased on a commitment to permit sustainabledevelopment.v This would be consistent with theoriesof global justice that require eradicating povertyor decreasing inequalities. It would also be in linewith the Convention’s commitment to sustainabledevelopment.
The Convention has a robust conception ofdevelopment. In the Preamble it pledges to be,
taking into full account the legitimate priority needs ofdeveloping countries for the achievement of sustainedeconomic growth and the eradication of poverty;’ andit recognizes ‘that all countries, especially developingcountries, need access to resources required to achievesustainable social and economic development andthat, in order for developing countries to progresstowards that goal, their energy consumption will needto grow (Ref 21, preamble).
The goal of development is to eradicate poverty;this requires economic growth; that requires growthin energy consumption; and, when cheap fossil fuelsare used, a by-product of energy consumption is CO2emissions.
In order for poverty eradicating developmentto occur in a sustainable context, developed stateswill have either to make especially deep cuts intheir emissions to allow emissions growth in thedeveloping world or to transfer resources, technologyand intellectual property so that economic growth canbe achieve without growth in emissions. The moralidea behind the right to sustainable developmentis well expressed by Henry Shue: ‘[T]hose livingin desperate poverty ought not to be required torestrain their emissions, thereby remaining in poverty,in order that those living in luxury should not have torestrain their emissions’.36 Presumably there are manyinstitutional ways of ensuring this.w
ADAPTATION
The previous three sections were concerned withglobal justice in climate change mitigation. But noaccount of global justice and climate change wouldbe complete without a discussion of adaptation toclimate change.x One reason for this is that whenthe planet finishes warming from just the currentstore of greenhouse gases, after the oceans reach theirequilibrium point, it will be well over 1 ◦C warmer,probably close to 1.5◦. This will have significantclimatic effects. At even less than 1◦ warming theIPCC expects increases in water stress, malnutrition,diarrhea, and cardiorespiratory ailments on a vastscale.20 Moreover, the odds of limiting warming to2◦ are long. To have decent chance of hitting thatmark, the IPCC predicts that global emissions wouldhave to peak by 2015 and then rapidly decline.20 Oneoutcome of the 2011 Conference of the Parties to theUNFCCC meeting in Durban is that no significantglobal emissions are likely to occur before 2020. Theprospects of a treaty that would effect significantreductions in the time frame required to maintain thewarming limit are not good. And failure to invest
adequately in climate change mitigation will increaseadaptation costs.
How should adaptation costs be borne? Shueargues against the view that each state should beresponsible for the damages within its borders.36 Twoconsiderations militate against that. One is that itassumes that the background distribution of globalwealth and resources is just; and with billions of peopleconsigned to desperate poverty while millions livevery well that assumption is controversial. Anotheris that it fails to account for the global source ofthe problem, that the effects realized within onecountry are caused by sources of emissions aroundthe world. This latter consideration need not makea fault conception of responsibility for adaptationnecessary, but it constrains plausible no-faultconceptions. A plausible conception of responsibilityfor climate change adaptation must be global inscope.
The Copenhagen Accord, which emergedout the 2009 Conference of the Parties to theUNFCCC, pledged that developed states wouldprovide $100 billion beginning in 2020 to fundthe climate change adaptation in developing andleast developed countries. This pledge was given aninstitutional home at the 2010 Conference of theParties in Cancun. The document agreed upon at thatmeeting promised a Green Climate Fund under thetrusteeship of the World Bank. But funding sourcesand mechanisms still remain vague. The $100 billionsum may be based on a realistic assessment of thecosts of adaptation. The economist Nicholas Sternendorses the United Nations Human DevelopmentProgramme’s estimates that adaptation to climate willcosts about $86 billion annually, if climate changemitigation policies manage to keep warming below2–3 ◦C.37
The agreement in Cancun also included theCancun Adaptation Framework for the provision oftechnical support and the sharing of informationas well as a mechanism to encourage technologydevelopment and transfer to developing countries,and a commitment to capacity building in thesecountries. The commitments made in Cancun makecertain questions of responsibility for climate changeadaptation more pressing: Who should provide thefunds and technical support? And who should be thebeneficiaries?
Some people favor a version of the polluter-pays-principle that would seek funding from partiesin proportion to their contribution to the problem anddeliver the funding with the aim making those affectedwhole. Paul Baer has developed a detailed state-centricproposal for a fault conception of responsibility for
adaptation, a proposal which takes the responsibilityof a particular state to be the result of subtractinga state’s claims for damages from its share in theproduction of total damages.38 If the latter is greaterthan the former the state is a net debtor, and mustprovide to the fund for restitution. But if the damagesexceed the contribution to the problem, then the stateis a net creditor, and has a claim on the fund forrestitution. The basic strength of fault conceptions ofresponsibility for climate change adaptation is thatthey conform to the thoughts that it is wrong to harmpeople avoidably and that climate change is doing justthat. But such conceptions also falter in the way thatfault conceptions of responsibility for climate changein general falter. They cannot account for all historicemissions because much of it is produced by peoplewho are now dead or who where once excusablyignorant of their action.
The virtues of the-ability-to-pay-principle inthis context are the same ones that it possesses forclimate change in general: The principle is especiallyplausible with respect establishing backgroundinstitutions that establish entitlements against whichfault for noncompliance can be attributed; theConvention contains language that is well-interpretedas supporting ability-to-pay; and there are credibleaccounts of global justice that provide supportfor it.
The right to sustainable development could alsoserve to organize some of the aspects of responsibilityfor climate change adaptation. In this context the rightmight be taken as establishing claims of distributivejustice between states. Developed states have theresponsibility to ensure that the costs of adaptingto climate change in developing and least developedstates do not undermine their development objectives.There is no prior condition to aim at in order tomake the affected states whole as is the intuition ofrestitution to the harmed in fault-based conceptions.So, there is room for reasonable disagreement aboutwhat would count as sufficient subsidies not toensure that development is not undermined. But itis manifestly clear that many poor states have verylittle coping power for the climate-related disastersthat are likely to befall them, and this conception ofresponsibility orients action toward ensuring that theyare helped.
A criticism of this conception of responsibilitycan be found in the arguments of Eric Posner andDavid Weisbach. They argue that, even if globaljustice requires eradicating poverty, climate changepolicy should deal with climate change not distributiveinjustices.22 This criticism fails to appreciate whatis required to deal with climate change. A morally
WIREs Climate Change Climate change and global justice
basic reason to be concerned about climate change isbecause we are concerned about human development.When climate change is likely to throw people intodesperate poverty and set back human developmentin some states that are making progress, a treaty thatseeks to prevent these evils is not addressing matters ofdistributive justice that are external to concerns aboutclimate change. On the contrary, such a treaty is deal-ing with climate change. Moreover, it is doubtful thata treaty that did not address these matters wouldever be acceptable to the developing world. And sinceemissions growth over the next several decades willcome mostly from the quickly developing countries,an effective climate change treaty must address theirconcerns.
CONCLUSION
In this article, I have sought to review the mostimportant issues concerning climate change and globaljustice. I hope to have introduced the uninitiated to theimportance and complexities of the issues as well asto have stimulated even those readers already familiarwith many of the debates to further critical normativereflection on the issues. There is a growing litera-ture on these issues, written by ethicists, politicalphilosophers, and political theorists. This literaturewill continue to fuel the debates and, perhaps, playa role in informing policy-making. Whether the lat-ter occurs or not depends in part on how seriously itsreaders take the debates and disseminate the ideas. Myhope is that this article will play a role in encouragingreaders to do that.
NOTESaRecently philosophers have begun to take up someof these issue see, for example, Refs 39–41.bFor a good review of related material see Ref 42.cThere are several good surveys that serve as introduc-tions to global justice. See, for example, Refs 43,44.dThe distinction drawn in this paragraph is less starkthan it might seem. For there are theories that holdthat in the absence of significant injustice noncompa-triots do owe one another robust duties social justice,but given extensive historical and ongoing injusticethey do. See Ref 13.
eFor discussions of these two matters see Refs 45,46.f For a claim that the Convention’s norms are mis-guided efforts at redistribution see Ref 22.gThe human rights approach has been endorsed byseveral other writers as well. See Refs 47–50.hSome of the challenges are presented in Refs 51,52.For a partial to response to these see Ref 47.iA thorough defense of this view can be found in Ref53.jFor more on the application of the distinction betweenfault and no-fault accounts in climate change see Ref36.kFor a defense of a fault conception of collectiveresponsibility see Ref 54.lI have discussed these as three distinct approaches,but combinations may be possible. For an interestingcombination of strict liability and beneficiary pays seeRef 55.mFor one such account see Ref 27.nObjections to statism in climate change policy basedupon fairness to individuals are pressed in Ref 56.oA casual survey of recently rapidly developing statessuggests this. But for a more sophisticate defense ofthe claim see Ref 57.pFor a property rights defense of grandfathering seeRef 58.qThe Centre for Science and the Environment (seewww.cseindia.org/) and the Global Commons Insti-tute (see www.gci.org.uk/) have spearheaded supportfor the idea that each person should have an equal enti-tlement to emit greenhouse gases. The view is defendedin Refs 59,60. For some philosophical defenses of theidea see Ref 61. See also Refs 8,54.rThis is not the only moral basis, however. Singerseems to defend equal per capita emissions on utilitar-ian grounds. See Ref 8.sThis criticism is also made by Gardiner.62
tFor emissions data see Ref 63.uFor the 2009 Human Development Index see Ref 64.vArguments in this section are based on Ref 65.wOne example of this is the GreenhouseDevelopment.66
xA much more thorough review of the recent work onmoral responsibility and adaptation can be found inRef 67.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I would like to thank two anonymous referees for this journal for their many helpful comments on an earlierversion of this paper.
4. Moellendorf D. Cosmopolitan Justice. Boulder: West-view; 2002, 240.
5. Moellendorf D. Global Inequality Matters. Bas-ingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan; 2009, 256.
6. Pogge T. Realizing Rawls. Ithaca: Cornell UniversityPress; 1989, 296.
7. Pogge T. World Poverty and Human Rights. 2nd ed.London: Polity Press; 2008, 364.
8. Singer P. One World: The Ethics of Globalization. NewHaven: Yale University Press; 2004, 272.
9. Tan KC. Justice Without Borders: Cosmopolitanism.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2004, 236.
10. Blake M. Distributive justice, state coercion, and auton-omy. Phil Public Aff 2001, 30:257–296.
11. Miller D. National Responsibility and Global Justice.New York: Oxford University Press; 2007, 264.
12. Miller RW. Cosmopolitan respect and patriotic con-cern. Phil Public Aff 1998, 27:202–224.
13. Miller RW. Globalizing Justice: The Ethics of Povertyand Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2010,288.
14. Nagel T. The problem of global justice. Phil Public Aff2005, 33:113–147.
15. Rawls J. The Law of Peoples 1999. Cambridge MA:Harvard University Press; 208.
16. Sangiovanni A. Global justice, reciprocity, and the state.Phil Public Aff 2007, 35:3–39.
17. Steiner H. Territorial justice and global redistribution.In: Brighouse H, Brock G, eds. The Political Philosophyof Cosmopolitanism. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress; 2004, 28–38.
18. United Nations Human Development Programme.Human Development Report 2007–2008, 2007, Pal-grave Macmillan: Basingstoke. Available at: http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR_20072008_EN_Complete.pdf.
19. McGranahan G, Balk D, Anderson B. The rising tide:assessing the risks of climate change and human set-tlements in low elevation coastal zone. Environ Urban2007, 19:17–37.
20. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cli-mate Change 2007: Synthesis Report, Available at:http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr.pdf.
21. The United Nations Framework Convention on Cli-mate Change. Available at: http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/conveng.pdf.
22. Posner EA, Weisbach D. Climate Change Justice.Princeton: Princeton University Press; 2010, 240.
23. IPCC Climate Change 2007, Mitigation. Contributionof Working Group III to the Fourth Assessment Reportof the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.Available at: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg3/ar4-wg3-spm.pdf.
24. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Art. 25, para.1. Available at: http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml.
25. International Covenant on Economic, Social andCultural Rights, Article 11, para. 1. Available at:http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/cescr.htm.
26. Caney S. Climate change, human rights, and moralthresholds. In: Humphreys S, ed. Human Rights andClimate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress; 2010, 69–90.
27. Caney S. Cosmopolitan justice, responsibility, andglobal climate change. J Int Law 2005, 18:747–775.
28. United Nations General Assembly, resolution 43/53,1988, Available at: http://www.un.org/Depts/dhl/res/resa43.htm.
29. Weisbach D. Negligence, Strict Liability, and Respon-sibility for Climate Change The Harvard Projecton International Climate Agreements, DiscussionPaper 1-39 2010, Available at: http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/WeisbachDP39.pdf.
30. Neumayer E. Defence of historical accountability forgreenhouse emissions. Ecol Econ 2000, 33:185–192.
31. Moellendorf D. Treaty norms and climate change miti-gation. Ethics Int Aff 2009, 23:247–265. Available at:http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/resources/journal/23_3/features/001.
32. United Nations Framework Convention on ClimateChange, Appendix I - Quantified economy-wide emis-sions targets for 2020. Available at: http://unfccc.int/meetings/cop_15/copenhagen_accord/items/5264.php.
33. Shue H. Environmental change and the varieties of jus-tice. In: Hampson FO, Reppy J, eds. Earthly Goods:Environmental Change and Social Justice. Ithaca: Cor-nell University Press; 1996, 9–29.
34. Caney S. Climate change, energy rights, and equal-ity. In: Arnold D, ed. The Ethics of Global ClimateChange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2011,77–103.
35. Moellendorf D. Common atmospheric ownership andequal emissions entitlements. In: Arnorld D, ed. TheEthics of Global Climate Change. Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press; 2011, 104–123.
36. Shue H. Subsistence emissions and luxury emissions.Law Policy 1993, 15:39–59.
37. Stern N. The Global Deal 2009. New York: PublicAffairs; 2009, 256.
WIREs Climate Change Climate change and global justice
38. Baer P. Adaptation: who pays whom? In: Adger W,Paavola J, Huq S, Mace MJ, eds. Fairness in Adap-tation to Climate Change. Cambridge, MA: The MITPress; 2006, 131–156.
40. Nolt J. Non-anthropocentric climate ethics. WIREs2011, 2:701–711.
41. Palmer C. Does nature matter? The place of non-humans in the ethics of climate change. In: Arnold D,ed. The Ethics of Global Climate Change. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press; 2011, 272–292.
42. Okereke C. Climate justice and the internationalregime. WIREs 2010, 1:462–474.
43. Pogge T, Moellendorf D. Global Justice: SeminalEssays. St. Paul: Paragon House; 2008, 736.
44. Brooks T. The Global Justice Reader. London: Wiley-Blackwell; 2008, 768.
45. Moellendorf D. A normative account of dangerous cli-mate change. Clim Change 2011, 108:57–72.
46. Moellendorf D. Justice and the intergenerational assign-ment of the costs of climate change. J Social Phil 2009,40:204–224.
47. Bell D. Does anthropogenic climate change violatehuman rights? Crit Rev Int Social Polit Phil 2011,14:99–124.
48. Hayward T. Human rights versus emissions rights: cli-mate justice and the equitable distribution of ecologicalspace. Ethics Int Aff 2007, 21:431–450.
49. Miller D, Global justice and climate change: howshould responsibilities be distributed? The Tanner Lec-tures on Human Values. Tsinghua University: Beijing;2008, 24–25. Available at: http://www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/documents/Miller_08.pdf. (AccessedJanuary 26, 2012).
50. Shue H. Bequeathing hazards: security rights and prop-erty rights of future generations. In: Dore M, Mount T,eds. Global Environmental Economics: Equity and theLimits to Markets. Oxford: Blackwell; 1999, 38–53.
51. Beckerman W, Pasek J. Justice, Posterity, and the Envi-ronment. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2001.
52. Parfit D. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Oxford Univer-sity Press; 1987.
53. Gardiner SM. Ethics and climate change: an introduc-tion. WIREs 2010, 1:54–66.
54. Vanderheiden S. Atmospheric Justice: A Political The-ory of Climate Change. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress; 2008.
55. Bell D. Global climate justice, historic emissions, andexcusable ignorance. The Monist 2011, 94:391–411.
56. Harris P. World Ethics and Climate Change: FromInternational Justice to Global Justice. Edinburgh: Uni-versity of Edinburgh Press; 2010.
57. Cohen GA. Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A DefenceExpanded. Princeton: Princeton University Press; 2000,430.
58. Bovens LA. Lockean defense of grandfathering emissionrights. In: Arnold D, ed. The Ethics of Global ClimateChange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2011,124–144.
59. Agarwal A, Narain S. Global Warming in an UnequalWorld: The Case for Environmental Colonialism. NewDelhi: Centre for Science and the Environment; 1991.
60. Athanasiou T, Baer P. Dead Heat: Global Justice andGlobal Warming. New York: Seven Stories Press; 2002.
61. Jamieson D. Climate Change and Global Environmen-tal Justice. In: Miller CA, Edwards PN, eds. Changingthe Atmosphere: Expert Knowledge and Environmen-tal Governance. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press; 2001,287–307.
62. Gardiner SM. Ethics and global climate change. Ethics2004, 114:555–600.
63. United States Energy Information Administration.Available at: www.eia.doe.gov/. (Accessed January29, 2009).
64. United Nations Human Development Programme,Human Development 2009, Overcoming Barriers:Human Mobility and Development. Available at: http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR_2009_EN_Complete.pdf.(Accessed January 26, 2012).
65. D, A Right to Sustainable Development. Monist 2011,94:433–452.
66. Baer P, Athanasiou T, Kemp-Benedict E. GreenhouseDevelopment Rights Framework: The Right to Devel-opment in a Climate Constrained World, Christian Aid.Berlin: Heinrich Boll Foundation, EcoEquity and theStockholm Environment Institute; 2008.
67. Hartzell-Nicholls L. Responsibility for meeting the costsof adaptation. WIREs 2011, 2:687–700.
