10—Environmental and Climate Justice Flashcards
Tell me about the PFOS Belgian scandal unveiled in 2021
Near the Flemish village Zwijndrecht, 3M, an American industry known for sticky notes and post-it, landfilled PFOS generated during the production process. PFOS is labelled as “forever chemical”, as it is indestructible and can accumulate over time in nature. While constructing a new highway, a company discovered thousands of cubic meters of soil polluted with PFOS. Due to chemical pollution residents of Zwijndrecht and all citizens living within a 15km radius are no longer not allowed to eat eggs or vegetables from their gardens. The total danger zone is almost 707 square kilometres and affects more than 1 million people. Further, fish in the river near the site has accumulated 6 times more PFOS in their bodies than fish in uncontaminated sites
Which types of environmental justice does this case entangle? What is the competent jurisdiction?
3M could be sued by the Belgium government, not having respected the terms of the agreement or individuals and NGOs could bring to the court the Belgium government through tort law. In any case, both compensatory and intergenerational justice could be raised
What is a moral hazard? How is science implicated?
A moral hazard is a promise of future (mostly scientifical) solutions to current problems (e.g. making fossil fuels carbon neutral, cooling the Earth through geoengineering). While not certain of the possible implementations of such measures, the BUA scenario is incentivised
How long should climate justice look back to?
Theoretically, hundreds of years, since GHGs are very persistent in the atmosphere (at least a hundred years)
What is the objection to such counting?
Some western countries claim that emissions produced before knowing their effect on the Earth should not be accounted for.
Why is the notion of climate justice so contested?
Because developing countries’ emissions are increasing, while Europe and the US have already peaked. Therefore, the former claim their right to emit as much as Europe and US did, while the latter demand fewer emissions on a global scale.
What is the “contraction and convergence” principle?
- The “contraction and convergence” principle, first conceived in 1989 and promoted by the Global Commons Institute in the UK, is divided into two phases:
- Contraction: global emissions should be reduced to a level (one trillion tons of accumulated CO2) that prevents dangerous interference with the climate system.
- Convergence: the contraction should follow a reduction of the state’s CO2 emissions to an equal per capita level. Therefore, low-emitting countries could initially increase their emissions, benefitting from high-emitters reductions.
What is the problem with the model?
The way of calculating states’ share of accumulated CO2 is contested:
- The German Advisory Council on Global Climate Change suggested in 2009 to calculate the share starting from 1990. Some countries (US, Denmark, Finland) would already have exceeded their quotas.
- Others suggested considering the role of trade as a way to make consumption rather than production the basis of emissions reduction. This way the burden of reductions would be shifted even more toward old industrialised countries
- Recent suggestions propose to adjust emissions quotas on states’ level of green technology, which would shift the burden in the other direction
What does inertia mean in the climate change context? How is it related to intergenerational responsibility?
- Inertia means that it takes a long time to see the effect of emissions reduction. Even if GHGs emissions were stopped immediately, the impact of the accumulated gases would be experienced for centuries. Thus, it is necessary to implement intergenerational policies, although long time frames are generally difficult to handle for democracies
Why are climate change negotiations unjust?
Because of the intrinsic injustice of using money to assess damages and losses incurred by climate change: poor people’s assets are always worth less on the market than rich people’s.
- Hurricane Nargis hit Burma in May 2008, causing at least 140.000 deaths and the destruction of millions of houses. Its economic costs have been estimated at 10 billion USD.
- Superstorm Sandy hit the US in 2012, causing 81 deaths and electricity loss to millions of houses for several days. Total damages were estimated at 65 billion USD
How is justice defined according to John Rawls?
In Rawls’ theory, justice relates to the idea of fairness and is solely conceived in distributional terms
What other aspects of environmental justice have recently been uncovered?
—inequalities in decision-making
—the need for fair compensation to the affected
—access to environmental benefits for every group, rather than counter negative effects of environmental problems on groups. Rejecting Rawls’ theories, justice is not only distributional. Justice is reached when every person can live a life that considers worthwhile according to his/her perception
—Equal distribution of the costs to remedy the environmental issues
What is climate justice about?
Climate justice denounces unequal distribution on three fronts:
1. Climate change does not affect everyone equally (vulnerability)
2. The most affected by climate change are the ones who contributed the least to the climate crisis (responsibility)
3. the burdens to adapt to the climate change impacts are unequally high for the most vulnerable people and countries (mitigation)
Why are the countries that contributed the least to the climate crisis the most affected?
- Because of the Nort-South divide:
- different levels of development
- different geographical collocations. The global south is more exposed to phenomena such as deteriorating land, water, and air quality
What are the arguments supporting the historical responsibility position?
Between 1990 and 2015:
—the wealthiest 5% alone contributed to 37% of the emissions growth.
—1% polluter elite has produced twice as many carbon emissions than the poorest 50%
—emissions from poor countries are only emitted to survive and should therefore be treated differently from emissions originating from industrialised countries (subsistence vs luxury emissions)
