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Shows how climate injustice is a pervasive feature of current climate change problems
Introduction
The nature of the current anthropogenic climate change problem is intrinsically unjust:1 in a world of deeply unequal patterns of consumption and use of resources, the consequences of excessive levels of CO2 emissions will affect mostly those individuals who contributed very little to the problem.2 In general lines, we could say that whereas rich countries (with 15 percent of the world population) are currently responsible for 45 percent of CO2 emissions, it will be poor individuals in poor countries (with 33 percent of the world population), responsible for 7 percent of emissions, who will suffer the most brutal consequences of climate change. It is important to note that these cost-benefit asymmetries will add 'insult' to the 'injury' of a world already characterized by multiple forms of economic and social inequality. There is something deeply unjust about this situation, not simply because of these 'resource-related' asymmetries, but mainly because of the cumulative impact that climate change will have on the erosion of individuals' substantive freedoms and their ability to pursue adaptation strategies.
The predictions of the impact of climate change on human development are not encouraging (see IPCC (2007) for a physical science-based analysis). Even considering that they are conditional on future reactions and adaptive capacity, the list of likely long-term consequences includes rising intensity of storms, floods, droughts and other natural hazards, reduction in agricultural productivity, global increase in water stress and insecurity, collapse of many ecosystems, rise in sea levels and increase in health risks, among others. Climate change will not 'cause' these phenomena, but will provide fostering and enabling conditions for exacerbating the intensity of these events. A serious reversal of Millennium Development Goals' targets and compromise to human development strategies seem almost unavoidable.
The most important climate injustice, given the cumulative and irreversible impact of CO2 emissions, concerns the loss of substantive freedom (or capabilities) that the current generation is imposing on (in particular, poor) individuals living today and on all (rich and poor) individuals who will have to cope with the impacts of climate change in the future. In other words, it could be said that intra- and intergenerational forms of...