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7 - Human rights, climate change, and discounting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2011

By
Simon Caney
Edited by
Karen O'Brien ,
Asunción Lera St. Clair  and
Berit Kristoffersen
Simon Caney
Affiliation:
University of Oxford, UK
Karen O'Brien
Affiliation:
Universitetet i Oslo
Asunción Lera St. Clair
Affiliation:
Universitetet i Bergen, Norway
Berit Kristoffersen
Affiliation:
Universitetet i Tromsø, Norway
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Summary

In its Fourth Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) has provided further confirmation that climate change will have serious impacts on human life. It reports that:

The global average surface temperature has increased, especially since about 1950. The updated 100-year trend (1906–2005) of 0.74°C ± 0.18°C is larger than the 100-year warming trend at the time of the TAR (1901–2000) of 0.6°C ± 0.2°C due to additional warm years. The total temperature increase from 1850–1899 to 2001–2005 is 0.76°C ± 0.19°C. The rate of warming averaged over the last 50 years (0.13°C ± 0.03°C per decade) is nearly twice that for the last 100 years.

(Solomon et al., 2007: 36)

In addition to this, the IPCC projects that temperatures will continue to rise. It employed six different Special Report of Emission Scenarios (SRES) and these all found that temperatures will rise by 2090–2099 as compared to the temperatures between 1980 and 1999. In some scenarios temperatures will increase by 1.8°C (the best estimate of the B1 scenario). In others temperatures will increase by 4.0°C (the best estimate of the A1FI scenario). If we examine the ‘likely range,’ then the lower limit is 1.1°C and the higher limit is 6.4°C (Solomon et al., 2007: 70). Climate change will also involve a rise of sea levels. Again the IPCC employs six different SRES scenarios. In some, sea levels are projected to rise by 0.18–0.38 metres (B1 scenario) and on others the increase is projected to be 0.26–0.59 metres (A1FI scenario).

Type
Chapter
Information
Climate Change, Ethics and Human Security , pp. 113 - 130
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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