Causes of climate change

The justice concerns within the causes of climate change refer to the question ‘who has caused the problem’. As Adger (2004, 1712) sees it, “climate change is a fundamentally un-just burden, an externality from past and present polluters that use the global atmosphere as an open-access resource”. That is, certain countries, businesses and people have contributed to climate change historically as well as at present more than others. In addition, greenhouse gas emissions (at least carbon emissions) correlate closely with income levels (IPCC/WGIII 2001a, 87), and thus considerable emissions mean considerable economic benefits. Bluntly said, some countries and people have used excessively this limited global commons resource, the atmosphere, and benefited from it while depriving the same possibility from others that are living now or will live in the future. In addition, the number of biggest emitter countries is

relatively small, and in general they have large populations or high GDP, or both (Pittock 2005, 159). Internationally compared, in 2004 the Annex I countries of the UNFCCC ac-counted for 46% of global greenhouse gas emissions while their population acac-counted only for 20% of the world population (IPCC/WGIII 2007, 3). However, representing responsibility for climate change is not that simple but there are different ways to measure countries’ green-house gas emissions and thus consider their contribution to climate change; for instance, countries’ total amount of emissions is one way and per capita emissions another way. In ad-dition, do we look at current emissions only or include also past emissions? Or do we take into account all greenhouse gases or just some of them? In general, developing countries such as African countries and India have low per capita emissions of greenhouse gases while de-veloped countries, especially Australia and USA have high per capita rates of greenhouse gas emissions. China’s total greenhouse gas emissions are second high (in 2005), but it has a population which is four times that of the highest emitter in 2005, the USA, which emits about a third of total global emissions. (Pittock 2005, 255-277.) The current emissions of de-veloping countries are also defended as ‘survival emissions’, whereas the developed countries are said to produce ‘luxury emissions’ resulting from luxury items (Sachs et al. 1998, 72), al-though this kind of division seems quite black-and-white.

Figure 2. presents an example of the high diversity in countries’ per capita CO₂ emis-sions, the most significant greenhouse gas, in 2002 as well as including countries GDP. It should be noted that there is only a sample of countries and thus a wide range of countries is left outside the figure. Measuring responsibility with per capita emissions can be justified with the idea that everyone is equally entitled to an atmospheric global commons resource.

Sachs (2002, 27) has estimated that with a world population of 5.8 billion and the world’s ab-sorbing capacity in 2002 everyone could emit 2.3 tons of carbon dioxide without harmful consequences to the world. However, some countries use multifoldly their share of the emis-sions the world is capable of absorbing: an average US citizen produces 20 tons and an aver-age German citizen 12 tons of carbon dioxide (ibid. 2002, 27). In addition, the world’s ab-sorbing capacity can not manage without changes and consequent effects if the whole global population would like to attain this kind of level of emissions, or more like the commodities and standard of living the emissions are connected to.

FIGURE 2. Some countries’ per capita CO² emissions in 2002. Source: World Bank online database.

However, if measured with total CO2 emissions the countries’ contribution to climate change seems distinct. For example, in 2004 only 15 countries produced for about 70% of the global CO₂ emissions coming from fossil fuel burning. The main polluters in CO₂ emissions were USA (21%), China (17%), the Russian Federation (5%), India (5%) and Japan (4%). The ten other main emitters accounted for 17% (see Table 1.). These are the figures at the 21^st Century but a historical comparison looks again a bit different. The UNEP has estimated (in Sachs et al. 1998, 72) that between 1800 and 1988 the developed countries have produced over 80% of the global increase in the atmospheric carbon dioxide.

TABLE 1. Fifteen countries with the highest fossil fuel CO2 emissions in 2004.

Country 2004 Total CO2Emissions

(000 metric tons) % of Global Total

USA 1 650 020 20,86 %

CHINA 1 366 554 17,28 %

RUSSIAN FED. 415 951 5,26 %

INDIA 366 301 4,63 %

JAPAN 343 117 4,34 %

GERMANY 220 596 2,79 %

CANADA 174 401 2,20 %

UNITED KINGDOM 160 179 2,03 %

REPUBLIC OF KOREA 127 007 1,61 %

ITALY (inc. San Marino) 122 726 1,55 %

MEXICO 119 473 1,51 %

SOUTH AFRICA 119 203 1,51 %

IRAN 118 259 1,50 %

INDONESIA 103 170 1,30 %

FRANCE (inc. Monaco) 101 927 1,29 %

GLOBAL TOTAL 7 910 000

SOURCE: Marland, G., T.A. Boden, & R. J. Andres (2007): In Global, Regional, and National CO2 Emissions.

In: Trends: A Compendium of Data on Global Change. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, Tenn., U.S.A.

From the perspective of intra-generational justice countries and citizens have not contributed and are not contributing to climate change with same amounts of greenhouse gases. If the at-mosphere is considered as a global commons resource then everyone is equally entitled to it – this again raises questions of responsibility over historical emissions as well as over current emissions. There are a number of suggestions about how to allocate emission rights, and some of these are discussed in the chapter 3.4.1 about mitigation. The intergenerational perspective, on the other hand, makes one to consider the rights of future generations to a healthy atmos-phere and environment, but also to ask, whether the current generations can be held responsi-ble for the activities of the past generations. Gardiner (2004, 578-579), however, comments that philosophical writers are surprisingly unanimous on the distribution of responsibility al-though they justify it in different ways: they see that the developed countries should take the lead and bear the costs of climate change while the less developed countries should be able to increase their emissions.