Climate Justice
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Copyright © 2012 SAGE Publications. Not for sale, reproduction, or distribution. Climate Justice 287 global warming theories in favor of his belief that coupled, atmosphere-ocean models (the other an ice age was imminent; he reversed his posi- two are HadCM2 and HadCM3). HadRM2 and tion after Britain’s record-breaking heatwave in HadRM3 are high-resolution atmospheric models the summer of 1976. Despite this early hiccup, of Europe that provided the underpinning for the CRU was instrumental in establishing evidence British government’s most recent scientific report for global warming in the early days of climate on climate change scenarios for the UK. Data is change research, and has been partially funded by stored and accessible to registered LINK users in the U.S. Department of Energy as well as several a proprietary PP-format; the BADC provides util- charitable foundations and corporate sponsors. ities for decoding, converting, and otherwise han- However, handling the amount of data needed by dling PP-format files. The BADC also operates an LINK proved beyond CRU’s capacity. It contin- online community for LINK users, regardless of ued to handle ancillary data until 2006, but pri- affiliation, to discuss the project’s data and other mary data was sublet to the British Atmospheric information. Data Center (BADC). Established in 1994, the BADC reports to the Bill Kte’pi UK’s National Environment Research Council Independent Scholar and is the chief data center for atmospheric sci- ences. Today, it continues to oversee the data col- See Also: Climap Project; Climate Action Network; lection at LINK, but has subcontracted the work Climate Change Knowledge Network; Climate out to the Met Office Hadley Center for Climate Models; Hadley, George. Prediction and Research. Founded in 1990, the Hadley Center is named for 18th-century English Further Readings meteorologist George Hadley. It is operated by Floyd–Wilson, M., ed. Environment and Embodiment and based at the Exeter headquarters of the Met in Early Modern England. New York: Palgrave Office, the UK’s national weather service, and is Macmillan, 2007. tasked with focusing the office’s scientific efforts United Kingdom Environment Agency. The State of related to climate change. While CRU includes a the Environment of England and Wales: Coasts. staff of about 30, the Hadley Center has over 200. London: Stationery Office Books, 1999. The LINK data is used by ClimatePrediction. United Kingdom Environment Agency. The State of net (CPDN), a distributed computing project run the Environment of England and Wales: Fresh by the UK’s Oxford University with the intent of Waters. London: Stationery Office Books, 1998. reducing uncertainty in climate modeling. Hun- dreds of thousands of climate models are run with LINK’s data, using the volunteer computing model that utilizes home-based participants who donate their computers’ idle time through soft- Climate Justice ware that receives tasks from the server to be run client-side on personal computers. About 32,000 Climate justice relates to the distribution of ben- volunteers actively participate in CPDN, making efits and burdens as the climate changes. The it one of the largest projects of its kind. theoretical discussion over climate justice stems The LINK data is also used in Providing primarily from the literature in environmental Regional Climates for Impacts Studies (PRECIS), justice, which began in earnest during the 1980s, a regional climate modeling system that can be as political theorists and environmental activists run on Linux. PRECIS was designed to allow grew concerned enough to widen the focus of researchers in developing countries to create high- environmental ethics. resolution climate change scenarios. As with most justice issues, there are forward- LINK produces several climate models; the looking distributional questions: How are benefits current generation is called the HadGEM suite. and burdens to be distributed? What parties ought The suite includes HadGEM1, which has the to shoulder this burden? What parties ought to be highest spatial resolution of the three global- the primary beneficiaries of climate policy? There Copyright © 2012 SAGE Publications. Not for sale, reproduction, or distribution. 288 Climate Justice are also backward-looking questions: Who has for centuries, making climate change perhaps a benefitted from early emissions and/or resource paradigm case of intergenerational justice. Theo- consumption? Who has been marginalized and/ ries of climate justice must therefore consider the or disadvantaged? Who is responsible for having distribution of burdens and benefits on not only created current distributional inequities? To what existing populations but also populations that do extent can they be held accountable? not yet exist—or, more vexingly, that might have, Both sets of questions inform wider policy but may never exist. This latter consideration and governance prescriptions: What do respon- comprises the heart of the “nonidentity” problem. sible parties owe to aggrieved parties? Should early (and presumably unaware) emitters be held Strategies and Solutions accountable to the same degree that contemporary Within this general constellation of questions, (and presumably informed) emitters ought to be? there are many proposed responses, each of which It would be too narrow, however, to limit the can be addressed using two central approaches: climate-justice debate to distributional questions historical and ahistorical. Historical theories pur- alone. There are other important considerations port to answer the question of justice by appeal- as well, related to the procedural fairness of cli- ing to the backward-looking questions—not sim- mate policy, participation of parties in the devel- ply how to attribute blame and/or liability, but opment of climate policy, recognition of diverse also to integrate considerations related to needs, communities by the broader international com- rights, freedoms, disenfranchisement, and previ- munity, and development of capacities for dealing ously discharged obligation into a determination with climate impacts. of whether the current state of affairs is just; and/ or what a more just state of affairs might look Challenges like. In contrast, ahistorical theories (or “time Climate change poses at least three unique chal- slice” theories) tend to avoid appealing to history, lenges to traditional theories of justice, which and instead seek the just distribution by simply tend to operate within a discrete community of appealing to optimal distributional arrangements. subjects. Insofar as traditional theories of jus- Both historical and ahistorical strategies can be tice have tended to address justice claims within used to support any of the following responses. states, where moral standing is established by Just as there are multiple and varied strategies membership in a well-defined community, the to address these questions, there are also multiple global reach of climate change raises interna- and varied responses, each saddled with further tional questions related to legitimate jurisdiction, problems. For instance, the simplest distributional governance, development, population, and birth- arrangement, strict egalitarianism, evenly distrib- right. How, for instance, can justice (or injustice) utes the benefits or burdens of climate change be established without an international contract, among all parties and/or persons. Strict egalitar- a suitably empowered governing body, or a com- ian approaches have the merit of being straight- munity of recognized citizens? forward, but they suffer from concerns of over- Perhaps even more problematically for tradi- indexing—essentially, that benefits and costs must tional theories of justice, climate change will affect be identified, measured, bundled, and allocated in not only an international community of human accordance with some consistent principle—and subjects—typically the subjects of justice—but concerns about measurement over specific time- also a wider spectrum of parties, including ani- frames. In the case of climate change, these con- mals and nature. These interspecies justice impli- cerns relate specifically to considerations about cations raise questions about the moral status of whether the world is to be returned to an initial affected parties, the moral considerability of non- baseline state, or whether a mere compensation- animal nature, and even the standing of abstract and-restitution regime will resolve injustice, as natural phenomena like marine ecosystems and well as how to account for future generations and boreal forests. nonhuman nature. To complicate matters further, the distributional Almost all justice positions are caught up in impacts of climate change are projected to linger the debate over equality, sufficiency, or priority. Copyright © 2012 SAGE Publications. Not for sale, reproduction, or distribution. Climate Justice Now! 289 That is, whether benefits and burdens should be Treaty.” Ethics, Place and Environment, v.12/3 distributed equally (egalitarianism), whether they (2009). should be distributed so as to provide enough Caney, Simon. “Cosmopolitan Justice, Responsibility, and as good for affected parties (sufficientarian- and Global Climate Change.” Leiden Journal of ism), or whether the worse off should be given International Law, v.18 (2005). priority or extra weight (prioritarianism). More Gardiner, Stephen M. “A Perfect Moral Storm: problematically, there is no agreement among Climate