Global justice and climate change

Abstract

Our knowledge of human impact on the global environment has accelerated rapidly in the last few decades. In the 1970s, for instance, better understanding of the dangers of pesticide pollution or of ‘acid rain’ inspired governments to act in order to minimise risks to human health and natural ecosystems. While these represented something of a wake-up call to governments not used to taking environmental issues seriously, in recent years we have faced many further problems. One of the key features of many of these problems will be their transnational character: sulphur-bearing coal, for example, might be burned in one country but eventually lead to acidified rainfall in another country, damaging fish stocks and forests and causing illness in human beings. Another key feature of such problems is that their effects are often extended over time . A given generation might decide to burn fossil fuels or cut down its trees, but the environmental costs might be paid not by that generation itself but by generations to come. Both these features make thinking about environmental problems both important and challenging. In this chapter we shall concentrate on the problem of climate change, which is both a politically salient issue and one where we can confidently say that the impacts will be felt across the world and also for many years to come. It is known that the concentration of carbon dioxide and other ‘greenhouse gases’ in the upper atmosphere is increasing (see the case study (box 7.1) for more details). It is also thought both that this is in large part the result of human action and that it will have – or may already be having – a serious impact on people across the globe. In some cases the people affected by climate change will have their very existences threatened, and be left unable to meet their basic needs. This is most obviously the case for inhabitants of some coastal areas or small island states which will be very vulnerable to the rising sea levels attendant on climate change. But other people may be affected in a whole variety of ways – by extreme weather conditions, by desertification or by the acidification of the oceans.