1 Equitably Ending the Fossil Fuel Era: Climate Justice, Capital, & The

Equitably Ending the Fossil Fuel Era: Climate Justice, Capital, & the Carbon Budget Georges Alexandre Lenferna A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2019 Reading Committee: Stephen Gardiner, Chair Carina Fourie Aseem Prakash Michael Blake Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Department of Philosophy 1 ©Copyright 2019 Georges Alexandre Lenferna 2 University of Washington Abstract Equitably Ending the Fossil Fuel Era: Climate Justice, Capital, & the Carbon Budget Georges Alexandre Lenferna Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Stephen Gardiner Department of Philosophy This dissertation makes the moral case for equitably transitioning away from fossil fuels in line with keeping global warming as close as possible to the Paris Climate Agreement’s more stringent target of keeping global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. It argues that we should do so while relying as little as possible on risky and uncertain negative emissions and geoengineering technologies, as doing so might prolong the fossil fuel era and pose grave potential costs both to the present and future generations. The dissertation addresses a central objection to the moral imperative to transition away from fossil fuels, namely that it will detrimentally impact the poor and vulnerable. It argues in response that protecting the interests of the poor and vulnerable is best achieved through a rapid yet just transition away from fossil fuels. Based on the moral case to transition away from fossil fuels in line with 1.5°C the dissertation also explores what personal moral responsibility individuals have to take action to reduce fossil fuel usage and act on climate change. It does so by situating our moral responsibility in the context of what it argues is an emergency situation where need to rapidly and comprehensively move away from fossil fuels to avert catastrophic climate change and the immense harms associated with continued fossil fuel dependence. Based on the development of an Anti-Pollution Principle, it concludes that in the face of this emergency we have demanding moral responsibilities to reduce our personal emissions but which can be outweighed by the more important task of collectively pushing for deep, rapid, and comprehensive structural change away from fossil fuel dependency. 3 Equitably Ending the Fossil Fuel Era Climate Justice, Capital, & the Carbon Budget Contents Introduction: Ending the Fossil Fuel Era I. A Moral Case for Fossil Fuel Divestment: An Outline of the Dissertation Part A: A Moral Case for Ending the Fossil Fuel Era Chapter 1: A Fossil Free Imperative I. Recognizing the Limited Benefits of Fossil Fuels II. The Intergenerational Sacrifice Camp Chapter 2: An Awesome Moral Opportunity I. Climate Change Is Here and Getting Increasingly Catastrophic, Fast II. Greenhouse Gas Parochialism III. Contesting Conservative and Outdated Clean Energy Outlooks IV. A Not So Perfect Moral Storm Chapter 3: The Neoliberal Imaginary I. The Neoliberal Imaginary and the Tragedy of the Commons II. Fossil Fuel Welfare vs the Climate III. No Time for Socialism? Part B: Moral Responsibility in a Climate Emergency Chapter 4: The Fossil Free and Climate Emergency Imperative Chapter 5: The Insufficiency & Importance of Decreased Personal Consumption I. The Insufficiency Problem II. The Rapaciousness of the Rich III. The Anti-Pollution Principle 4 Chapter 6: From Individualistic Anarchy to Collective Transformation I. Balancing Personal Emissions Reductions and Collective Action II. Speed, Efficiency, and Structural Transformation Chapter 7: A Morally Demanding Climate Emergency I. Balancing Harm Avoidance and Burden Sharing Justice II. Virtuous Martyrs, Moral Exemplars, and Imperfect Aspirations Part C: Half a Degree of Climate Justice Chapter 8: Arguing Against the Poor on Behalf of the Poor I. Moellendorf’s Purportedly Pro Poor Prioritarianism Chapter 9: A Dangerous “Consensus” I. 1.5 To Stay Alive II. Degrees of Epistemic Injustice III. Willful Ignorance IV. Taking Responsibility for Epistemic Injustice V. A Worrying White and Wealthy ‘Consensus’ Chapter 10: Inaccurately Sacrificing ‘the Poor’ on the Altar of GDP I. Energy Poverty and the 1.5°C Target II. Sharing 1.5°C Fairly Chapter 11: Radical Realism, Negative Emissions, and Geoengineering I. Getting Lucky or Betting the Farm II. A Precautionary Approach to Geoengineering III. Radial Realism IV. Ending the Fossil Fuel Era – the Primary Pathway to Climate Justice Conclusion Hopeful Defiance Against Improbable Odds 5 Introducing the End of the Fossil Fuel Era Oil, gas, and coal have fundamentally reshaped human society. They have driven development, reshaped global geopolitics, and given those with access to them energy, power and freedoms, many previously unimaginable. Indeed, fossil fuels have produced incredible benefits for many across the globe. However, in this dissertation, I will make the case that, despite this, one of the world’s greatest moral imperatives, if not its greatest, is to rapidly and equitably transition away from fossil fuels as a source of energy. We must rapidly end the fossil fuel era, which I define as the era in which fossil fuels are a dominate energy source. As I will show in this dissertation, while fossil fuel energy has given us great benefits, the harms that burning fossil fuels brings about are immense and are accumulating at an alarming rate, such that they could, at the extreme end of the spectrum, drive the breakdown of global civilized society, and cause widespread poverty, conflict, and ecological collapse. Furthermore, many of the benefits of burning fossil fuels can increasingly be better delivered by alternative available solutions and technologies many of which are rapidly becoming more cost effective than fossil fuels in terms of energy costs alone and would additionally avoid a great amount of harm associated with continued overreliance on burning fossil fuels. Apart from averting increasingly catastrophic climate change, as I will highlight throughout this dissertation, the reasons for rapidly ending the fossil fuels are manifold, including health, community, economic, political, security, stability, environmental, poverty and development related reasons. I argue that given the state of our climate, the rate of greenhouse gas emissions, and the broader harms associated with fossil fuels, we are in state of relative moral emergency, which demands strong and demanding action of us to rapidly transition away from fossil fuel energy. However, for both moral and pragmatic reasons we need to push for an equitable transition away from fossil fuels which takes into account and attempts to offset the negative impacts that such a transition would have. My thesis aims to provide moral guidance on how to 6 navigate the tensions between equity in the transition away from fossil fuel energy, and the need to act rapidly and potentially disruptively to end the fossil fuel era in line with keeping global warming as close as possible to 1.5°C above pre-industrial level, in order to avert increasingly catastrophic climate change and the range of broader harms created by burning fossil fuels. Throughout this dissertation, I aim to both morally and empirically describe the scale and nature of the problem we face when it comes to the need to end the fossil fuel era. In doing so I will lean heavily on empirical descriptions of the challenge we face, which may not always seem like strictly philosophical work of the sort one might expect in a PhD thesis in philosophy. However, leaning heavily into the empirical side of this debate in an interdisciplinary arena like climate ethics is central for doing the philosophical work correctly. Many climate ethicists (or philosophers more broadly) develop their philosophical characterizations and responses to climate change based on empirical understandings. Often, in my estimation, they do so in ways that are not entirely accurate, and which can lead to moral, political and philosophical theories about climate change that tend to skew or misrepresent the nature of the problem we face. More maliciously, maligned corporate interests have spread misinformation which has deliberately attempted to skew the empirical and moral nature of the problem we face. Such misinformation and propaganda have successfully infiltrated philosophical, political and public discourse around climate change and fossil fuels. As such, to get the philosophy of climate change right and to resist misinformation, it is important to get the empirical picture straight. After all, climate ethics is very much an endeavor in applied ethics, and to apply ethics to the situation we face, our empirical understanding must preferably map onto reality. Another reason this may not read like a typical philosophical thesis is that my aim is not to develop a new moral theory or idea of justice in the realm of climate change, or to dive deeply into conceptual differences between different theories of justice or ethics. Instead I attempt to try and describe the nature of the problem we face by applying theories that mostly already exist. The aim is to arrive at the best understanding of the nature of the moral problem we 7 face, in large part by critiquing previous philosophical understandings of the problem which the author takes to be inaccurate or problematic. Building on that understanding, I draw on multiple moral theories and conceptions of justice to defend the thesis of this dissertation, which is that we need to equitably transition away from fossil fuels in line with 1.5°C and do so in way that as best as ethically possible does not rely on risky and unproven negative emissions and geoengineering technologies. In defending my thesis and related conclusions, I challenge a range of philosophers who I take to have misunderstood the nature of the problem we face, or who have put forward problematic moral arguments in response to it. It also attempts to point to how considerations of justice and morality can provide guidance on how best to solve to the complex fossil fuel problem we face.

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