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Subsistence Emissions and Luxury Emissions
Abstract
In order to decide whether a comprehensive treaty covering all greenhouse gases is the best next step after UNCED, one needs to distinguish among the four questions about the international justice of such international arrangements: (1) What is a fair allocation of the costs of preventing the global warming that is still avoidable?; (2) What is a fair allocation of the costs of coping with the social consequences of the global warming that will not in fact be avoided?; (3) What background allocation of wealth would allow international bargaining (about issues like 1 and 2) to be a fair process?; and (4) What is a fair allocation of emissions of greenhouse gases (over the long-term and during the transition to the long-term allocation)? In answering each question we must specify from whom any transfers should come and to whom any transfers should go. As the grounds for the answers we usually face a choice between fault-based principles and no-fault principles.
... As of today, we simply do not know. Shue (1993) distinguishes between subsistence and luxury emissions. Subsistence emissions are those caused to secure the livelihood of people (e.g., a family in a low-income nation burning wood or coal to cook). ...
... Luxury emissions, in contrast, are de ned as not being tied to the livelihood of people (e.g., driving around in a sports car for pleasure). Shue (1993) advises that luxury emissions are the ones that must be cut rst. Utilizing this distinction, at what point is the participation in sport and exercise an act of subsistence, and at what point one of luxury? ...
Background
Humanity faces dual existential crises of biodiversity loss and global warming. Acknowledging the environmental impact of sports, the United Nations calls for the sports sector to lead in fighting climate change and adopting climate-neutral practices. To this point, research on greenhouse gas emissions of amateur league play remains scarce.
Methods
Travel distances for the 2022/23 season of play for 339 football and handball amateur teams playing in different leagues in Bavaria were calculated. The program Gurobi was utilised to optimise how teams are placed in groups in order to allow for shorter travel distances.
Results
The study showed that playing in a higher amateur league resulted most often in longer travel distances in both sports for women’s and men’s leagues. Some amateur teams had to travel up to 2,958 kilometres for one season of play. Optimising in which groups teams play reduces overall travel distances by up to 19.7%.
Conclusions
Our findings indicate that travel distances in amateur football and handball, though smaller than those of professional teams, are still significant. Given the larger number of amateur teams and the imperative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it is crucial to explore ways of reducing travel in amateur sports. Optimising how teams are placed in groups could be an initial step towards a substantial reduction in travel emissions from amateur sports.
... As a solution to this problem, some theorists have suggested to differentiate between luxury and subsistence emissions. They argue that individuals should refrain from luxury emissions but that subsistence emissions are morally acceptable (Shue 1993). 9 However, this position also comes with problems. ...
... Let us now look at different categories of emissions and explore PECOR's recommendations for each category. At least five categories of emissions can be distinguished that go beyond Shue's (1993) traditional distinction between luxury and subsistence emissions: (i) unnecessary emissions, (ii) unnecessary emissions from activities that are strongly desired, (iii) emissions from important or valuable activities, (iv) necessary emissions, and (v) emissions resulting from other worthwhile commitments such as professional or family duties. 26 Category (i) has overlaps with Shue's luxury emissions. ...
Humans ought to do much more in order to remedy the severe harm caused by climate change. While there seems to be an overall consensus that governments and other national and international political agents need to resolve the problem, there is no agreement yet on the role and responsibility of individuals in this process. In this paper, I suggest an argument of integrity that offers strong pro tanto moral reasons for individuals to reduce their personal greenhouse gas emissions. Hourdequin (2010) has presented an argument of integrity to justify a corresponding obligation. In this paper, I argue that even though Hourdequin’s argument is appealing, it has important limitations. I advance the argument in light of the current literature so that it is not subject to these limitations and establishes an overall more comprehensive justification for why individuals ought to reduce their personal emissions.
... Therefore, the developing countries also have the responsibility to pursue sustainable developing path for environment with the goal to comply with the economy, social development and eliminate poverty. From the perspective of economic development, in order to maintain the privileged lifestyle of developing countries, it is unfair for poor countries to pay for the price, which may delay the development [13]. Providing permission for the poor countries to emit carbon dioxide during the development may be easier to accept. ...
The Industrial Revolution has unveiled the development of global capitalism. States, corporations and individuals are accumulating capital for desire. While consuming resource on earth, it is confirmed by IPCC in the 4th evaluation report that human activities are the main reason for global warming. In the past decades, global warming has become the main important issue in international society. It reflects that the globe is undertaking a revolution, which takes low-carbon development as the core under the challenge climate risk and the security of resource. The states are confronting the decision paradox of the state's individual interest and the global public interest. Despite the fact that the state plays the main role in international anarchy society, it is obstructed by the lack of supra-nation organization to force the states to obey international regime. Therefore, it is difficult to solve the problem of collective action problem, free rider problem and dilemma of common aversions…etc. Those things will influence the result of environmental regime. The state or non-state actor reaches good outcome with systematic collaboration or cooperation. However, the governance trend of international systematic collaboration has usually ignored or weakened the aspect of power. During the process of global environmental governance, power may represent in multiple or sequent operational ways, or jump out of the role, which take nation as the main and traditional role to exercise power. Because the regime has compulsory problem, deviation, privilege of regime and unfair confined actions, studying multiple aspects of power operation during governance could help us understand the paradox of international cooperation in order to explore the chance of international cooperation.
... To reduce levels of affluence, states can target "luxury emissions" (Shue, 1993), or "unnecessary carbon emissions" (Cafaro, 2011), through two political measures: taxation and prohibition. Through carbon price policies such as taxes on flights, vehicles, electricity consumption, and meat consumption, governments can incentivize consumers and producers to reduce their carbon footprint. ...
To avoid dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, drastic mitigation measures have become necessary. But who should do what and how much of it should they do to help the global effort to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions? This chapter addresses this question by specifying the identity of duty-bearers, the content of their mitigation duties, and how demanding these duties are. It identifies five families of agents and explains that each individual and collective agent has specific duties to contribute to mitigation measures: individual agents, nation-states, subnational jurisdictions, supranational formations, and economic corporations. For each family of agents, arguments for and against mitigation duties are scrutinized, with the objective of presenting a detailed account of burden-sharing climate justice. In addition to investigating the duties held by individual agents and nation-states, the two families of agents that have attracted most attention from climate justice scholars so far, this chapter also proposes to focus on three new agents in order to turn philosophical discussions on climate change in new directions: cities, the World Trade Organization, and carbon majors. The polycentric approach to climate change governance and the related normative framework of multiscalar justice seem particularly promising in terms of finding new ways to promote climate justice in a context of failure to bring climate change under political control at the national and international levels.
Access to the draft version of the chapter: https://ris.utwente.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/319757233/Mitigation_Duties.pdf
... It gives rise to ethical considerations of how states, corporations, social groups and individuals should share the burdens imposed by the climate crisis. Fairness, equity and burden-sharing have been key components of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) since work on the Convention began (Shue 1993). The 'common but differentiated responsibilities' (CBDR) principle, and the design of the Kyoto Protocol, under which only the developed countries (so-called Annex 1 countries under the Convention) had mandatory emission targets, and the current Paris Agreement (PA) indicate international agreements as to fairness. ...
China’s perceptions of climate justice have changed since 2007, affecting the country’s domestic climate policies and its actions internationally. This study takes 2007 as a starting point, as that was a milestone year in China: climate change was made a national priority issue. Examining China’s views as to what were perceived as ‘fair’ regarding climate actions around 2007, we compare these with more recent perceptions of what ‘climate justice’ entails for China’s climate responsibilities. We find that China’s perceptions have changed regarding what being a ‘responsible’ country entails. From seeing itself as a developing country that should focus on other pressing challenges, China now views itself as a leading developing country that must reduce carbon emissions as soon as possible, and also as a donor providing aid to less wealthy developing countries. With ongoing feedback between the international and domestic levels on climate change, the principle of unequal burden sharing has also been incorporated into how China now delegates its domestic climate and energy targets, demanding more of its developed provinces and areas.
... Opposingly, given the destructive impacts and prospects of worsening the conditions for meeting basic needs associated with climate change, emissions associated with activities not related to meeting human needs do not hold the same moral priority and should thus be limited or avoided. Giving priority to needs fulfillment resonates with eudaemonic notions of well-being (Lamb and Steinberger 2017) and can be related to the distinction between 'subsistence' and 'luxury' emissions (Shue 1993), the notion of 'decent living' emissions (Rao and Baer 2012), and sufficiency-oriented approaches to climate mitigation (Steinberger and Roberts 2010;Brand-Correa et al. 2020;Wiedmann et al. 2020). The need principle is also related to the 'right to development' enshrined in international law (Fleurbaey et al. 2014). ...
This paper contributes to academic and policy debates about climate leadership by illustrating an approach to examining national emission reduction targets focusing on Denmark. Widely recognized as a climate leader, Denmark is cherished for both its historical track record and its current climate targets. With a target of 70% emissions reduction by 2030 compared to 1990 stipulated in national law, central actors in Danish policymaking claim that domestic climate policy is aligned with the Paris temperature goals and present Denmark as a ‘green frontrunner.’ We examine the pledges and targets enshrined in the Danish Climate Act in reference to a 1.5 °C global greenhouse gas budget using five different approaches to burden sharing. For all five approaches, we find that the Danish climate target is inadequate given the 1.5 °C goal. Moreover, when only looking at equity approaches for distributive climate justice globally, the Danish target appears drastically insufficient. Denmark is, in this sense, not a green frontrunner but rather an indebted culprit, challenging the dominant narrative in Danish climate policy. Our results thus call into question the premise of the claim of Danish climate leadership, which works to legitimize existing policy and obscure the many dimensions of climate change.
This article outlines key developments in the philosophical literature on climate change. The allocation of the costs and benefits of greenhouse gas emissions between states and individual duties of climate justice are two major topics that climate ethics scholars have discussed by drawing on deontological theory, consequentialism, and virtue ethics. This article explores the connections between ethics and climate justice to present these two topics. In addition, it introduces three emerging sub-fields in climate ethics: the ethics of climate engineering, non-anthropocentric climate ethics, and the ethics of procreation. It concludes that as the remaining global carbon budget dwindles, radical lifestyle changes become more and more pressing and should move to the forefront of the debate.
Access to the draft of the chapter: https://ris.utwente.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/319757085/Climate_Ethics.pdf
Technologies shape who we are, how we organize our societies and how we relate to nature. For example, social media challenges democracy; artificial intelligence raises the question of what is unique to humans; and the possibility to create artificial wombs may affect notions of motherhood and birth. Some have suggested that we address global warming by engineering the climate, but how does this impact our responsibility to future generations and our relation to nature?
This book shows how technologies can be socially and conceptually disruptive and investigates how to come to terms with this disruptive potential.
Four technologies are studied: social media, social robots, climate engineering and artificial wombs. The authors highlight the disruptive potential of these technologies, and the new questions this raises. The book also discusses responses to conceptual disruption, like conceptual engineering, the deliberate revision of concepts.
Climate litigation is anticipated to continue expanding, especially related to the interface with the human rights of vulnerable populations and the adequacy of states’ efforts to adopt and implement climate laws. While the possibility of climate-related litigation is envisaged before the African Human Rights System (AHRS), there is no pioneering case on climate change at that level yet. Essential rights that may be relevant in climate change litigation in the AHRS are not yet tested and often have claw-back clauses that have limits imposed by national legislation. Also, climate change commitments that may link to human rights are under a regime outside the AHRS. These developments may generate conceptual divergences regarding a state’s sovereign right and climate justice in future climate litigation within the AHRS. This article explores the potential application of claw-back clauses and divergent views on states’ sovereign rights and climate justice in climate change instruments that may feature in individual communications at the AHRS.
Sufficientarians face a problem of arbitrariness: why place a sufficiency threshold at any particular point? One response is to seek universal goods to justify a threshold. However, this faces difficulties (despite sincere efforts) by either being too low, or failing to accommodate individuals with significant cognitive disabilities. Some sufficientarians have appealed to individuals’ subjective evaluations of their lives. I build on this idea, considering another individualised threshold: ‘tolerability’. I respond to some traditional challenges to individualistic approaches to justice: ‘expensive’ tastes, and adaptive preferences. Finally, I end by offering some suggestions about how this relates to policymaking.
This article, a reprint of a seminal 1991 paper, argues that developing countries like India were being burdened unfairly with the responsibility of addressing climate change. The authors discuss how allocating responsibility for climate change involved juggling with numbers. It argues for a fair allocation of natural sinks as an important part of any use of the global commons.
Book review of the intergovernmental panel on climate change report on global warming and the greenhouse effect. Covers the scientific basis for knowledge of the future climate. Presents chemistry of greenhouse gases and mathematical modelling of the climate system. The book is primarily for government policy makers.
The Framework Convention on Climate Change, opened for signature at the 1992 United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development (UNCED), formally begins a process for countries jointly to limit the long-term risk of climate change. The near-term effectiveness of the Framework Convention will be limited, due to ambiguities in language, uncertainties regarding the magnitude and location of sources and sinks, the difference between biological and industrial emissions, uncertainty about the relative importance of the various greenhouse gases and selection of a weighting system, and concerns about equity. Action in the near term will likely cover either CO2 alone or just those gases resulting from the use of fossil fuels in the industrialized world. Based on this limitation, it is projected that by 2036 the earth will be committed to a 2.2oC temperature increase. The effectiveness of the Convention need not be as limited as this analysis suggests; it is an evolving document, tailored to be flexible and to respond to the most recent scientific knowledge.
Top Environmental Official Welcomes Summit Aid Pledges from Developed Nations-China
- Bureau Of
- Affairs
Climate Change: Designing A Tradeable Permit System, by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (Oecd)
- Michael Grubb
- James K. Sebenius
The International Politics of the Environment: Actors, Interests, and Institutions
- Henry Shue