Climate justice, framing & other philosophical thought-knots

Headline clipping of a report in The Guardian (link)

“India criticised over coal at COP26 — but real villain was climate injustice”, reported The Guardian on November 14, 2021, right after the conclusion of the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) which culminated into what is now called the ‘Glasgow Climate Pact’.

FACTS: The COP26, was the 26th United Nations Climate Change conference, held at Glasgow, Scotland from 31 October to 13 November 2021. It was the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the 3rd meeting of the parties to the 2015 Paris Agreement (designated CMA3), and the 16th meeting of the parties to the Kyoto Protocol (designated CMP16).

What was the news?

Simply put, it was a dramatic 11th-hour decision in which changes were proposed to the wording of the final deal. After pressure exerted by India and China, the wording of the final deal was watered down to a pledge to “phase down” rather than “phase out” coal. This decision was portrayed by many (including by the president of the conference and a UK Cabinet Minister Alok Sharma) as a devastating blow to the success of COP26.

According to many climate experts though, India was not really the villain as it was being portrayed to be. Brandon Wu, for instance, the director of policy and campaigns at ActionAid, was criticised the vilification of India in this matter. Wu, like many other experts, pointed out that the agreement had only targeted coal while avoiding mention of other fossil fuels such as natural gas and oil, which are used in abundance by the US and European countries. The US move away from coal had matched almost one to one by an uptake in the use of natural gas (which is a cheap domestically available resource in the country). While natural gas is less polluting than coal, it is still a fossil fuel and is problematic for the climate. Wu described India’s (and China’s) intervention as a “reasonable response” and added: “By focusing only on coal and not including oil and gas, this text would disproportionately impact certain developing countries like China and India. India said in negotiations that all fossil fuels must be phased down, in an equitable manner.”

This criticism & vilification of India’s position highlights how the issues of ‘climate justice’ (or injustice, therein) are still ubiquitous, with emerging economies expected to meet the same commitments as the advanced ones.

Climate justice? What exactly is that?

Source

The ambition and effectiveness of climate policies are of course essential in determining GHG emissions and, in turn, the scale of global warming impacts. However, the socio-politico-technical processes that determine climate policy and emissions trajectories are treated as exogenous in almost all climate change modelling. According to a press release issued by the University of California Davis about a new study published in the journal Nature, public perceptions of climate change, the future cost and effectiveness of climate mitigation, and how political institutions respond are important determinants of the degree to which the climate will change over the 21st century. The study simulated 100,000 possible future policy and emissions trajectories to identify the variables that are relevant to the climate-social system that are likely to impact climate change through this century.

Climate change (or global warming) is inherently a social issue. And as with all social issues, issues of justice hold significant weight. Looking at climate change from the lens of social justice leads one into climate justice considerations. Climate justice examines concepts such as equality, human rights, collective rights of communities (especially the more vulnerable indigenous communities), and the historical responsibilities for climate change (or global warming). It addresses, in part, some ethical, legal & political dimensions of climate change (or global warming).

A ‘framing’ issue

American cognitive linguist and philosopher George Lakoff in his article “Why it Matters How We Frame the Environment” deals in detail with the concept of ‘frames’ or mental ‘schemas’ and how it plays out when we talk about climate change (or global warming). One of the major results in the cognitive and brain sciences is that we think in terms of typically unconscious structures called ‘frames’ (sometimes ‘schemas’). All of our knowledge, thinking and talking makes use of frames.

In the same article, Lakoff also talks about the concept of ‘hypocognition’ (‘environmental hypocognition’, to be specific). ‘Hypocognition’, he describes, is the “lack of ideas we need”, which in turn is a result of the lack of frames in our mind. “We are suffering from massive hypocognition in the case of the environment. The reason is that the environment is not just about the environment. It is intimately tied up with other issue areas: economics, energy, food, health, trade, and security. In these overlap areas, our citizens as well as our leaders, policymakers, and journalists simply lack frames that capture the reality of the situation”, Lakoff writes in the article.

What does Lakoff really mean? Close your eyes and think what comes before your eyes when you hear or think of the word “environment”. Birds? Animals? Blue skies? Forests? Does trade or health or security also become a part of your mental visual imagery? Most probably not. Even if it does, do you think that would be the case more generally? The answer is likely to be in the negative. This is because the Environment Frame sees the environment as separate from us and our myriad other issues. Yet, we are not separate from Nature. We are an inseparable part of Nature. Yet we separate self from other, and conceptualize Nature as other. Lakoff explains, “This separation is so deep in our conceptual system that we cannot simply wipe it from our brains. It is a terribly false frame that will not go away.”

‘Climate justice’ essentially is also just another framing issue with respect to global warming (or climate change). When we start seeing the connections and interlinkages that global warming has with human rights, indigenous community rights, women’s rights, trade, politics etc and when it becomes almost ingrained in our chain of thoughts, we could say that the frame of ‘climate justice’ has started taking shape in our minds. Until then, we need to keep challenging our existing frames to make them more comprehensive.

What more? Incomplete/narrow frames (mental schemas) are the reason behind our implicit/unconscious cognitive biases. These unconscious structures are physically realized in neural circuits in the brain.

What do the philosophers say?

The concept of frames (as described by Lakoff) is the result of research by cognitive/brain scientists. But, do philosophers also have something to say about it? As for all other things, they sure do!

According to the philosophers, there are two perspectives from which one might approach the issues of climate justice — isolationism and integrationism.

Isolationism & arguments behind it

From the perspective of an isolationist, it is best to treat the ethical issues posed by climate change in isolation from other issues (such as poverty, migration, trade and so forth). An isolationist seeks to “bracket” these other considerations and treat climate change on its own.

Two related reasons are given for this approach -

First, some argue that there is value in simplifying the issue, and since introducing these other concerns would complicate the question, it is worth bracketing them out.

Second, some make a related pragmatic argument about the implications of adopting an integrationist approach for reaching agreement in climate negotiations. They argue that insisting that climate justice be pursued in conjunction with other issues, would be a recipe for deadlock because there is often deep disagreement about what theory of justice is correct. For this reason, they propose bracketing out other phenomena and treating climate change in isolation. This bears some resemblance with Kantian and Husserlian concept of bracketing in phenomenological research.

Integrationism & arguments behind it

Integrationism, on the contrary, holds that it is best to treat the ethical issues posed by climate change in conjunction with other issues (such as poverty, development and so on).

Those favouring an integrationist approach offer the following considerations:

First, integrationists argue that the same distributive principles seem to be applicable for climate change as they are for other phenomena. For example, if one thinks that individuals have human rights to meet their socio-economic needs then this should surely also bear on questions of climate justice since it provides a reason to combat climate change and to distribute responsibilities so that they do not overburden the poor and vulnerable.

A second point that those who favour an integrationist approach quite rightly make is that climate change is causally intertwined with a wide variety of other phenomena — such as economic growth, poverty reduction, migration, health, trade, natural resource ownership, urban design, land use and cultural rights — such that it is artificial to treat it alone on its own. Climate change does not manifest as a discrete problem — rather it is part and parcel of a larger process. Furthermore, the effects of climatic change are often transferred through other factors such as poverty, existing infrastructures, and the responsiveness of political authorities. They interact with existing inequalities and vulnerabilities, producing what Leichenko and O’Brien term “double exposures” in their book ‘Environmental Change and Globalization (2008)’. So, from this point of view, it seems artificial, misguided and quixotic to cordon off climate change (or global warming) and apply principles of justice to it in isolation.

For all climate justice questions (some more than others), it matters a great deal whether one takes an isolationist or integrationist perspective. The integrationist perspective is something Lakoff alludes to in his article through the concept of ‘hypocognition’ — a lack of comprehensive frames.

What are some of the climate justice questions?

Following the integrationist approach, climate change presents itself as a social issue raising a number of questions of justice. These include, but are not limited to, the following —

1. How do we assess the impacts of global warming (or climate change)?
2. What climate-related responsibilities do current generations have towards the future generations?
3. How should geopolitical actors take into account the risks and uncertainties involved in the various climate-related projections?
4. Who has what responsibilities to address global warming (or climate change)?
5. How should the “GHG emissions budget” be distributed?
6. What constraints should regulate and shape our climate policies?

Who has what responsibilities to address global warming?

From the above questions, suppose we have identified (1) the kinds of interests that need to be taken into account for assessing the impacts of global warming, (2) what responsibilities we owe to future generations and (3) how to treat risk and uncertainty. These questions can guide us in determining what climate goals we need to aim for. The next question before us is — ‘who has what responsibilities to achieve these climate goals?’.

Let’s go back to where we had started — the report published in The Guardian. The issue in that news piece and the debate around it primarily (though not exclusively) corresponds to question #4 above — who has what responsibilities to address global warming (or climate change)? (That is not to say that all the questions above are independent of one another — of course not. Each of them have a bearing on the rest of them.)

The question is a pretty broad one. It might be helpful to break the question down further into more parts — discussing each of the sub-questions could then enable us to answer the full question.

Sub-question #1: Climate scientists and policymakers focus primarily on two kinds of policies — mitigation and adaptation. (The news piece in The Guardian deals with a mitigation policy.) The first sub-question then would be — who should engage (and to what extent) in mitigation and/or adaptation?

Mitigation is concerned with either reducing the emission of GHGs or creating GHG sinks or both. Adaptation involves making alterations to people’s contexts so that they can better cope with the climatically-changing world. But what if we fail to mitigate (at least by enough) and also do not adapt well?

Sub-question #2: Implementing these mitigation and adaptation policies quite obviously come with a cost. The second sub-question then would be — who should bear these costs?

Sub-question #3: To ask this question, let’s call the subjects of the first two sub-questions (above) as ‘first-order’ responsibilities. A responsibility of the ‘second-order’, in this context, is to ensure that actors/stakeholders discharge/comply with their respective responsibilities well. The third sub-question then would be — who has this responsibility of the ‘second-order’?

Consider the first two sub-questions above (#1 & #2). Very often these are treated like they were the same. But they are not necessarily the same. We may not necessarily assume that the actors / agents engaging in mitigation / adaptation are the also the ones bearing the costs for those. But why? The genesis of these two sub-questions itself is rooted in the integrationist perspective that we talked about earlier in this article.

Of course, even though the sub-questions #1 & #2 are distinct, this does not entail that they need to always be treated mutually exclusively. For example; let’s say our answer is that ‘A’ should mitigate but only if ‘B’ and ‘C’ bear the costs and that is sufficient financial support is not available then ‘A’ is not obligated. That turns us to sub-question #2 then — the elephant in the room really!

Bearing the costs — some ‘thought-knots’

Sub-question #2 (who bears the costs?) is often also referred to as the ‘burden-sharing question’ in literature. To help us answer this question, three principles have emerged in philosophical literature:

a) The ‘Polluter Pays’ principle

b) The ‘Beneficiary Pays’ principle

c) The ‘Ability to Pay’ principle

The ‘Polluter Pays’ principle

This principle holds that burden should be shared in proportion to how much someone/an agent has emitted. Although this is an intuitively plausible approach which holds agents responsible for their actions, there are certain ‘thought-knots’.

The first ‘thought-knot’: Some argue that it is unfair to hold agents responsible for the harms resulting from their GHG emissions if they were ‘excusably ignorant’ of the impact their actions could have had. There are several replies to this line of argument.

First, empirically speaking, at least for several decades now, claiming ‘excusable ignorance’ about the effects of GHG emissions, is quite frankly an untenable argument. That said, pointing out precisely from when one could no longer claim ‘excusable ignorance’ is complex & hard. A salient point here though, still is that there are temporal (and other) limits to the tenability of the claim of ‘excusable ignorance’.

Second, the argument goes that it may be fair to impute burden to those who were ‘excusably ignorant’ of the ill-effects of their emissions if they also benefited sufficiently from the emissions — in other words, their harmful activity also created benefits for them. Quite evidently, there are many ‘thought-knots’ in these arguments, and untying them would require considerable hard work.

A second ‘thought-knot’: It spotlights the fact that many emitters are no longer alive. Why should those alive now foot the bill for what the previous generations did? Argumentative retaliations have of course been forthcoming.

First, some adopt a collectivist approach — arguing that agents are collective bodies (in most cases), like states— and hence since country ‘Z’ emitted in the past, country ‘Z’ should pay now.

Second, some respond by insinuating the idea of ‘benefiting’. They hold that individuals alive today (and, also the future) reap benefits that are results of past emissions-generating activities, and hence should have a duty to pay some of the costs (at the least) incurred.

Third, some articulate using the idea of ‘systems’ — arguing that even if the individuals alive today did not cause the past emissions, they still function in the same exploitative systems from the past that caused these emissions. Quite evidently then, it follows that the systems need change. And that would, in many ways, mean that the current generations thriving on past systems will need to foot the bill by removing themselves away from those exploitative systems. Note how this argument, if accepted as correct, supports the integrationist perspective.

There is a third ‘thought-knot’. What if people somewhere just need to engage in activities which cause GHG emissions, in order to enjoy a minimum ‘standard of living’? Making extremely poor and vulnerable people pay the costs of emitting GHGs could push them to below even a minimum ‘standard of living’ — and that would be grossly unfair. Broadly speaking, if people are entitled to a certain ‘standard of living’ (which could be specified according to any criteria — sufficientarian, egalitarian, prioritarian or something else), then it would be wrong to make them pay the costs of harmful emissions, because in doing so, it would entail that they cannot enjoy the ‘standard of living’ that they are entitled to. This ‘though-knot’ stems from the integrationist perspective — proposing that considerations such as the rights, if any, that people have to enjoy a certain ‘standard of living’, should not be bracketed out.

These ‘thought-knots’ get even thicker. Some further argue that if we do conclude that the present ‘global poor’ should not be called for to pay the costs of their emissions, then should this not also be relevant for our evaluation of the rich countries’ past emissions? For if emerging economies today should not be financially penalised for the emissions that they incur when seeking to develop, then should not the same be said of the emissions incurred by the advanced economies of today when they were also poor?

In light of these complicated ‘thought-knots’, maybe the ‘Polluter Pays’ principle needs some supplementation from other principles.

The ‘Beneficiary Pays’ principle

This principle holds that if, and to the the extent that, one is benefited from the activities involving the GHG emissions, one should pay. With this argument, as expected, there are some ‘thought-knots’.

First ‘thought-knot’: This queries the grounds of applicability of this principle. Should this principle just cover only the instances that the ‘Polluter Pays’ principle cannot deal with (e.g., emissions of previous generations). Or does it also have wider applicability?

Second ‘thought-knot’, some ask whether benefiting is always sufficient to render someone liable to pay. What if someone benefits from emissions and yet remains very poor? If we think that the ‘Polluter Pays’ principle should not be applied to instances where it would push people to below a certain ‘standard of living’, then for the same reason, the ‘Beneficiary Pays’ principle also seems constrained, isn’t it?

This leads us to the third principle — the ‘Ability to Pay’ principle.

The ‘Ability to Pay’ principle

This principle holds that burden of costs incurred should be distributed according to the agents’ ability to pay — the greater an agent’s ability to pay, greater the proportion of the cost that they should be expected to pay.

This principle is criticised for it wholly divorces the question of who should pay from the questions about who caused the problem or who benefited from causing the problem. Furthermore, many argue that it relies on controversial moral assumptions of the Rawlsian concept of duty of assistance, implying that the wealthy have a positive duty of assistance. One’s stance on the ‘Ability to Pay’ principle will probably depend on their overall account of global distributive justice.

How do we untie these ‘thought-knots’?

It is time to conclude. This article began with considering the case of the most recent vilification that India had to face in multilateral climate diplomacy. This vilification was unjustified, unnecessary and unbecoming of one of the world’s most powerful climate diplomacy events — because vilification can neither be the answer to philosophical conflicts nor does it have any place even in climate realpolitik. The issue was a case of climate justice. We also talked about why climate change (or global warming) is a social issue and hence climate justice issues matter. We took a peak at some cognitive science research to see how climate justice is a ‘framing’ issue. In the latter half of the article, we tried to outline the contours of climate justice and dealt with one question in particular — the question of who bears the costs. This was precisely the climate justice question at play in the news piece with which we had begun the article. The final question in this article now is: how do we find answers to these labyrinthine climate justice questions?

But before we comment on that, it is imperative that we state a disclaimer that climate justice is not the only relevant issue to look at, when tackling the challenges of the Anthropocene. While justice undoubtedly holds a lot of weight, many also rightfully argue for the space for other kinds of moral considerations including an acknowledgement of the intrinsic value of the natural world — for climate ethics is more than just climate justice.

It is only with the help of science, history, politics, economics, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, psychology, technology and law that we can begin to address the multifaceted issues of a comprehensive climate change frame. Philosophical analysis of course had an indispensable part to play because without an understanding of climate justice we would lack a compass to guide us.

Questions of climate justice, as we saw in this article, are incredibly knotty (onomatopoeic pun intended)! One encounters several ‘thought-knots’ as one begins to find answers to them. These questions firmly underpin all of multilateral climate diplomacy and the geopolitics of climate change. Genuine clarity on such questions of climate justice philosophy is crucial to prevent the metamorphosis of climate diplomacy into full-fledged ‘Potemkin diplomacy’.

References:

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2. Caney, S. (2010). Climate change and the duties of the advantaged. In Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy (Vol. 13, Issue 1, pp. 203–228). https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230903326331
3. Eric A. Posner, Climate justice: vulnerability and protection. By Henry Shue, International Affairs, Volume 91, Issue 2, March 2015, Pages 422–423. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2346.12255
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