Climate Change, Justice and Policy

from Xenia Miklin

Outline

• Ecological Crises
• Economy and the Environment
• Climate Action: COP1-18
• Social Justice and Environment
• Provisioning Systems

Climate Change

Definition

• doing something that affects anyone else in any way
  • neither pays nor receives any compensation
• negative vs positive externality
• externalities often not taken into account when making economic decisions
  • social cost / social benefit

Link to original

Humans

• global CO2 concentration has risen drastically due to human development
  • troughs because of ice-times
  • spikes during warmer times #wontfix get graph from slides
• Annual CO2 emmissions by world region
• Temperatures have been rising very quickly

Planetary boundaries

wontfix get graph from slides

• essential for sustainable human development
• 6 out of 9 boundaries crossed
• multiple interconnected ecological crises

Environment and Economics?

What if we define ‘the economy’ as ‘the way we take care of one another’? since that’s what it ultimately is.

& David Graeber 2020

• Environmental Economics

  • thinking in trade-offs
  • 3 pillars
    • environment
    • society
    • economy
  • each pillar is sovereign

• Ecological Economics

  • thinking in priorities
  • 3 layers
    • environment
    • society
    • economy
  • each layer cannot exist without the previous one
    • everything in economy needs to be good for society
    • everything in society has to be good for environment

• Scarce, but regenerating, resources can be rotted out

  • example: overfishing
  • previous limiting factor: human capital
    • human capital: boats
  • current limiting factor: natural capital
    • natural capital: fish in the ocean

Social Justice and Environment

The winners decide who has committed war crimes

& How war crimes work

• The ones in power will always be more wealthy because they can bend the rules to fit their personal matters

• Politics shape social justice

• potential vicious circle

  • Inequality inequality hinder environmental protection
  • environmental policies and cause inequality

• inequality across borders

  • national lens inadequate
  • multinational corporations need to be controlled

• rich countries need to lead by example

Inequalities

• exposure and access inequalities

  • distribution of env quality

• policy effect inequalities

  • income effec

• impact inequalities

  • rich vs poor

• policy-making inequality

  • wontfix slides

• Carbon inequality as pointed out in this paper. Top 10% of income pollute 50%

• total per capita emissions

  • wontfix get from slides

Social Thresholds

• Doughnut economics

  • wontfix get from slides

• diminishing returns between resource use and social performance

  • aim should be for sufficiency
  • more is not always better

• Sufficiency in practice

  • Human Need Theory

• linking resource use to social outcomes

• science of social provisioningwontfix grab source from slides

Provisioning

• goods need to be produced, distributed, utilized
• physical elements
  • infrastructure
  • tech
  • land use
• social elements
  • instituations (markets, states)
• wontfix continue from slides 41

Universal Basic Services

• example: free public transport
• aims
  • equity
  • efficiency
  • solidarity
  • sustainability

Takeaways

• inequality crises as ecological crises
• responsibility for change lies within the ones in power (politics and government)
• inequality is an environmental problem
• human needs theory instead of value (market based) theory
• social justice just as important as environmental solutions
• social justice and sustainability are 2 faces of same coin