Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: climate change and ethics
- 1 Energy, ethics, and the transformation of nature
- 2 Is no one responsible for global environmental tragedy? Climate change as a challenge to our ethical concepts
- 3 Greenhouse gas emission and the domination of posterity
- 4 Climate change, energy rights, and equality
- 5 Common atmospheric ownership and equal emissions entitlements
- 6 A Lockean defense of grandfathering emission rights
- 7 Parenting the planet
- 8 Living ethically in a greenhouse
- 9 Beyond business as usual: alternative wedges to avoid catastrophic climate change and create sustainable societies
- 10 Addressing competitiveness in US climate policy
- 11 Reconciling justice and efficiency: integrating environmental justice into domestic cap-and-trade programs for controlling greenhouse gases
- 12 Ethical dimensions of adapting to climate change-imposed risks
- 13 Does nature matter? The place of the nonhuman in the ethics of climate change
- 14 Human rights, climate change, and the trillionth ton
- Select bibliography
- Index
- References
4 - Climate change, energy rights, and equality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2011
By
Edited by
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: climate change and ethics
- 1 Energy, ethics, and the transformation of nature
- 2 Is no one responsible for global environmental tragedy? Climate change as a challenge to our ethical concepts
- 3 Greenhouse gas emission and the domination of posterity
- 4 Climate change, energy rights, and equality
- 5 Common atmospheric ownership and equal emissions entitlements
- 6 A Lockean defense of grandfathering emission rights
- 7 Parenting the planet
- 8 Living ethically in a greenhouse
- 9 Beyond business as usual: alternative wedges to avoid catastrophic climate change and create sustainable societies
- 10 Addressing competitiveness in US climate policy
- 11 Reconciling justice and efficiency: integrating environmental justice into domestic cap-and-trade programs for controlling greenhouse gases
- 12 Ethical dimensions of adapting to climate change-imposed risks
- 13 Does nature matter? The place of the nonhuman in the ethics of climate change
- 14 Human rights, climate change, and the trillionth ton
- Select bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
It is now widely recognized that the Earth's atmosphere is undergoing profound changes. The most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that temperatures have increased in the last hundred years. It writes, for example, that “[t]he total temperature increase from 1850–1899 to 2001–2005 is 0.76°C ± 0.19°C,” adding ominously that “[t]he 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.” In addition to this, temperatures are projected to increase in the future. All of the six scenarios considered by the IPCC found that temperatures will rise by 2090–2099 as compared to the temperatures between 1980 and 1999. According to the best estimate of the B1 scenario, temperatures will increase by 1.8°C. If on the other hand we turn to the A1F1 scenario, its best estimate is that temperatures will increase by 4.0°C. And if we examine the “likely range,” then the lower limit is 1.1°C and the higher limit is 6.4°C.
Sea levels, too, are projected to increase. According to one scenario (the B1 scenario), sea levels are projected to rise by 0.18–0.38 meters and according to another (the A1FI scenario), the increase is projected to be 0.26–0.59 meters. These projections, it is important to add, do not include “future rapid dynamical changes in ice flow.” They omit, that is, the massive sea-level rises that might occur because of the melting of ice sheets.
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- The Ethics of Global Climate Change , pp. 77 - 103Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011
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