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Climate Change Climate Change: Global Warming The evidence for global warming is growing.1 Glaciers are rapidly melting, and sea ice in the Arctic and Antarctic is shrinking.2 Species are migrating when they can, as their environment changes, or dying out.3 The climate is becoming more erratic—increasing rain in some regions, severe drought elsewhere, more violent tropical storms forming over a warmer ocean, and more frequent tornadoes in the United States.4 What is causing climate change? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988 to answer this question. The IPCC coordinates the voluntary participation of thousands of scientists in analyzing climate data and has the support of 195 countries. It was honored in 2007 with the Nobel Peace Prize for its fourth assessment, published that year.5 At the end of 2011 the IPCC confirmed its previous assessment that: “At least some of the weather extremes being seen around the world are consequences of human-induced climate change and can be expected to worsen in coming decades.”6 This research is the basis for the following conclusions by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): Scientists know with virtual certainty that: • Human activities are changing the composition of Earth’s atmosphere. Increasing levels of greenhouse gases (GHGs) like carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere since preindustrial times are well-documented and understood. • The atmospheric buildup of CO2 and other GHGs is largely the result of human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels. • An “unequivocal” warming trend of about 1.0 to 1.7°F occurred from 1906 to 2005 in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, and over the oceans. (IPCC, 2007) • The major GHGs emitted by human activities remain in the atmosphere for periods ranging from decades to centuries. It is therefore virtually certain that atmospheric concentrations of GHGs will continue to rise over the next few decades. • Increasing GHG concentrations tend to warm the planet.7 In these assertions “virtual certainty” (or “virtually certain”) means a “greater than 99 percent chance that a result is true.”8 The EPA acknowledges that “[i]mportant scientific questions remain about how much warming will occur, how fast it will occur, and how the warming will affect the rest of the climate system including precipitation patterns and storms.”9 It asserts as very likely, however, that increasing levels of GHGs in the atmosphere are causing higher global temperatures and rising sea levels.10 1 Text from Chapter 15 of Doing Environmental Ethics by Robert Traer (Westview Press, 2013). To consider the ethical as well as environmental and economic issues raised by climate change and global warming, we have to understand the earth’s carbon cycle and how it has been distorted by industrial development. The Carbon Cycle Carbon on Earth is stored in rocks, fossil fuels, the oceans, and the soil. In the carbon cycle, plants take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to make carbohydrates, and organisms consume carbohydrates, releasing carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is also absorbed by the oceans, as well as utilized by ocean plants and stored on the ocean floor as sediment. Soil, too, absorbs CO2, but also releases it when the soil is cultivated or exposed by erosion. The earth’s carbon cycle maintained a level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of about 280 parts per million until the Industrial Revolution. Burning fossil fuels throughout the twentieth century has greatly increased the flow of CO2 into the atmosphere, and now this flow is four times as great as the absorption rate of the oceans.11 At the beginning of 2012 12 the level of CO2 in the atmosphere was 393 parts per million and is increasing by more than six gigatons per year, largely because of the following: • Fossil fuel emissions. About five gigatons of carbon are being emitted into the atmosphere each year from the burning of oil, coal, and natural gas. • Soil organic carbon destruction. Due to excessive tillage (cultivation) and soil erosion, carbon in the soil is being oxidized and is entering the atmosphere. • Deforestation. As forests are burned to clear land or for other reasons, a significant amount of carbon is released into the atmosphere. To stop global warming, we have to correct these distortions of the carbon cycle by reducing carbon emissions and removing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. As the oceans warm they absorb less carbon dioxide.13 In a warming environment, however, plants absorb more CO2. Therefore, we should give priority to reforestation, change agricultural practices to make them more sustainable, and reclaim marginal land. This strategy will require adaptive management of forests and also a shift from industrial farming to agroecology. Sustainable forestry involves cutting mature trees and removing dead wood, which maximizes the net carbon absorption of a forest. As plant life decays, part of its carbon is converted by microorganisms into organic matter, and this is oxidized and returned to the atmosphere. Unlike industrial agriculture, agroecology increases the organic carbon held in the soil. Thus the answer to global warming requires (1) reducing CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels, (2) ending deforestation and instituting sustainable forestry,14 and (3) replacing industrial agriculture with sustainable farming. 2 Text from Chapter 15 of Doing Environmental Ethics by Robert Traer (Westview Press, 2013). Carbon dioxide is not the only GHG. Carbon monoxide, fluorocarbons, hydrofluorocarbons, and nitrous oxide are also GHGs, as is methane, which has twenty times the effect of carbon dioxide on the earth’s temperature. To date, methane in the atmosphere is largely the result of feeding cattle corn, which they have trouble digesting. Chapters 9 and 12 present arguments for eating less beef, which would reduce the number of cattle raised for beef and thus lower methane emissions. Only stopping global warming, however, will prevent massive releases of methane from thawing permafrost in the Northern Hemisphere, which contains twice as much carbon as is now in the earth’s atmosphere.15 Water vapor, like GHGs, reflects heat rays back to the earth, and there is now evidence that its level in the atmosphere is increasing over some continents.16 The main cause of increasing water vapor, however, is the warming of the earth (and especially the oceans) due to GHGs. There is no way to stop the increase of water vapor without reducing the rising level of GHGs in the atmosphere—which means decreasing our use of fossil fuels. Responsibility To address our environmental crisis, we have constructed ethical presumptions to: • Do our duty to restore and maintain the integrity of the earth’s ecosystems. • Reduce our ecological footprint by living with greater frugality and gratitude. • Care for nature and other species by farming, eating, and living sustainably. • Respect human rights to sustainable development and a healthy environment. Now we apply these presumptions to global warming and then test these convictions by considering the likely consequences of acting on them. Duty From 1960 to 1990 “the richest 20 percent of the world’s population increased its share of world income from thirty times greater than the poorest 20 percent to sixty times greater.”17 In this same period, the United States, with 5 percent of the world’s people, was responsible for about 30 percent of the world’s carbon emissions.18 These facts support the equity argument in chapters 4, 7, and 10, which asserts that industrial societies should pay more of the costs required to reduce fossil fuel emissions than less affluent societies. The Kyoto Protocol was the first international attempt to reduce GHG emissions. It was adopted in 1997 as an amendment to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) and came into force with sufficient ratifications in 2005. The Kyoto Protocol accepts the moral argument that developed countries have a greater duty than developing countries to reduce their GHG emissions, and it requires the industrial nations that have ratified the Protocol to reduce these emissions by at least 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.19 3 Text from Chapter 15 of Doing Environmental Ethics by Robert Traer (Westview Press, 2013). As of November 2011, the Kyoto Protocol had been ratified by 192 countries. President Clinton signed the Kyoto Protocol and pledged that the United States would reduce its GHG emissions by 7 percent before 2012. President George W. Bush, however, opposed ratification of the treaty by the Senate, arguing that the Kyoto Protocol unfairly “exempts 80 percent of the world, including major population centers such as China and India, from compliance, and would cause serious harm to the US economy.”20 In support of his position, President Bush claimed that the Senate’s 95–0 vote against ratification “shows that there is a clear consensus that the Kyoto Protocol is an unfair and ineffective means of addressing global climate change concerns.”21 This 1997 Senate resolution opposes any international agreement requiring the United States to make reductions in GHG emissions, unless it also includes mandatory limitations on developing countries. The resolution also rejected any agreement that “would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States.”22 Other objections to the Kyoto Protocol include claims that the scientific evidence for global warming is uncertain, the targets for reducing GHG emissions are unrealistic, and an effective strategy to lower carbon emissions would require “replacing the command-and- control regulatory scheme with flexible results-oriented policies, and providing incentives to install state-of-the-art technologies.”23 European nations and Japan, however, have accepted the equity argument and also the mandatory regulations of the Kyoto Protocol.24 Under the Protocol, a cap-and-trade program in carbon emissions began in 200525 and after 2007 was required for all members of the European Union (EU).
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