In fairness to current generations: lost voices in the climate debate

Sagar, Ambuj; Banuri, Tariq

doi:10.1016/s0301-4215(99)00036-1

Cited by 16 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…However, with few exceptions the tensions between Northern and Southern scholars working in the climate context have not been widely discussed (cf. Sagar and Banuri, 1999).…”

Section: Practices Of Solidaritymentioning

confidence: 99%

Open Climate Equity and Justice Scholarship Needs Feminism

Klinsky

2018

Feminist Review

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“…However, with few exceptions the tensions between Northern and Southern scholars working in the climate context have not been widely discussed (cf. Sagar and Banuri, 1999).…”

Section: Practices Of Solidaritymentioning

confidence: 99%

Open Climate Equity and Justice Scholarship Needs Feminism

Klinsky

2018

Feminist Review

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“…56,57 Most ethical analyses start with an assumption that the science is sufficiently settled to detect the phenomenon's central ethical implications, namely the uneven distribution of both historic responsibility for anthropogenic climate change as well as its adverse impacts on human welfare, economic wealth and power. 58 Past and current generations in the Global North achieved industrialization and economic growth based on their access to inexpensive energy from fossil fuels, a major source of GHG emissions. In contrast, adverse impacts from climate change are expected to disproportionally harm (1) poor people in the Global South, who are also particularly vulnerable to a changing climate, 59 and (2) future generations, who have no voice in today's decision-making.…”

Section: Climate Change Ethicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The epistemic, ethical, and political dimensions of uncertainty in integrated assessment modeling

Beck

Krueger

2016

WIREs Climate Change

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Integrated assessment models (IAMs) of global climate change that combine representations of the economic and the climate system have become important tools to support policymakers in their responses to climate change. Yet, IAMs are built in the face of pervasive uncertainty, both scientific and ethical, which requires modelers to make numerous choices in model development. These modeling choices have epistemic, ethical, and political dimensions. First, modeling choices determine how well our current (lack of ) knowledge about the elements and processes of the modeled system is represented. Second, modeling choices have ethical implications, for example, the choice of a social discount rate, which is well documented. For other modeling choices, the ethical assumptions and implications are more subtle. Third, climate-economic models are not produced and used in a political vacuum; they shape and are shaped by the social relations they are embedded in. We review findings from various literatures to unpack the complex intersection of science, ethics, and politics that IAMs are developed and used in. This leads us to suggest theoretical frameworks that may enable an integrated epistemic-ethical-political understanding of IAMs and increase transparency about all three dimensions of model uncertainties. © 2016 The Authors. WIREs Climate Change published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. How to cite this article:WIREs Clim Change 2016Change , 7:627-645. doi: 10.1002 INTRODUCTION U ncertainty is omnipresent in all policy decisions regarding whether, when, and how to respond to climate change. A common distinction is between scientific uncertainty and ethical uncertainty. Scientific uncertainty exists because our knowledge about the causes, processes, and consequences of climate change is incomplete. Ethical uncertainty exists because it is not clear what frameworks we should apply to address the ethical questions raised by climate change, including questions of historic responsibility, distribution of adaptation and mitigation costs, and of future emission allowances. Scientists broadly agree that there is a divergence between (1) the distribution of the historic responsibility for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which mainly lies with past and present generations in industrialized countries in the Global North, and (2) the anticipated exposure and vulnerability to its effects, which is expected to be most severe for future generations in developing countries with low income in the Global South. Integrated assessment models (IAMs) of global climate change that combine representations of the economic and the climate system have become important tools to support policymakers in their responses to climate change (See Box 1). Yet, the existence of scientific and ethical uncertainty requires modelers to make numerous choices in model development: choices about model scope, equations, parameter values, and output presentation. These modeling decisions have epistemic, ethical, and political dimensions. First, modeling choices determ...

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“…The assessment reports of the IPCC have included chapters or subchapters that explicitly address equity since at least the Second Assessment Report (Banuri et al 1996, Arrow et al 1996, and those reports have an increasingly large and diverse literature to survey (e.g., Tóth 1999, Adger et al 2006. The most common themes in this literature have been intergenerational equity, largely but not exclusively focused on controversies about discount rates in cost-benefit analysis of climate change and climate policy (e.g., Portney and Weyant 1999), and international equity, focusing both on the fair allocation between countries of obligations to reduce emissions (e.g., Shue 1999), and the asymmetry between the highest emitters and the most vulnerable (Shukla 1999, Sagar andBanuri 1999). Procedural equity in the climate negotiations and broader policy domain has been a lesser but also noticeable concern (Shukla 1999).…”

Section: On Equity and Climate Changementioning

confidence: 99%

Equity in climate–economy scenarios: the importance of subnational income distribution

Baer¹

2009

Environ. Res. Lett.

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It is widely accepted that climate change raises equity considerations, and this has been addressed in various explicit and implicit ways in scenario-based climate and climate-policy research. In this paper I look in particular at the IPCC's well-known 'Special Report on Emissions Scenarios', in which equity is primarily quantified as the distribution of income between countries, and highlight the need for more explicit treatment of equity both within and across national borders. I apply an existing method for modeling subnational income distributions and show that this affects the results of welfare calculations of the type used in economic analyses of climate policy. Additionally, I suggest ways in which this kind of equity analysis could be applied to questions that address broader considerations of climate policy and development, such as burden sharing in the allocation of obligations, and conclude with remarks that frame the scenario development process in the context of what I call 'the contested storyline of the present'.

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In fairness to current generations: lost voices in the climate debate

Cited by 16 publications

References 0 publications

Open Climate Equity and Justice Scholarship Needs Feminism

Open Climate Equity and Justice Scholarship Needs Feminism

The epistemic, ethical, and political dimensions of uncertainty in integrated assessment modeling

Equity in climate–economy scenarios: the importance of subnational income distribution

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