From Climate Science to Climate Justice: Climate Change a Symptom of Man's Inhumanity to Man

G-8 leaders agreed yesterday to the "'aspirational' goal of preventing global temperatures from rising more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit," according to the New York Times.

Which reinforces the fact that we persist in speaking about climate change as if it were just a technical problem related to CO2 emissions and temperature rises.

Not only is that dry, it's true only to a point.

The salient and problematic underlying political reality is that climate change is the culmination of longstanding processes of colonization and realpolitik.

Over a period of centuries, these often-cruel processes, which involved systematic violations of human rights, absorbed all of the world's economies into the Western economic model of globalization, instilling and fueling a market-driven psychology of fear and greed among investors and citizens in nearly every geographic region of the planet.

Globalization, touted as a model of economic inclusiveness, has paradoxically accelerated the loss of cultural identity and linguistic diversity, sped the pace of environmental degradation and global warming, and increased the gap between rich and poor.

Global inclusiveness through globalization? Not.

Global suffering and inequity through globalization? You betcha.

Unfortunately, with ecological and climate crises in full swing -- and the global economy on life support -- time is running out to influence the momentum of powerful climatic, economic, environmental, and social forces that are about to alter the face of human civilization.

Today, for example, the economic and climate crises are together decreasing capital flows and reducing agricultural output in key parts of the world. If these trends persist (and, barring miracles, they will), competition for money, food, and water would compound already difficult conditions, leading to civil unrest and prompting rights violations.

A conference in Seattle, Washington, explored whether a human-rights angle on the climate crisis could influence policy makers to take dramatic action to mitigate carbon emissions growth so as to avoid the worst rights impacts of climate change, including universal rights to education, food, health, and security.

The conference, "Three Degrees: The Law of Climate Change and Human Rights," assembled climate scientists, policy makers, academics, human rights lawyers, and law students.

Mary Robinson, president of the Republic of Ireland between 1990 and 1997, was a keynote speaker.

A pioneering human rights lawyer and distinguished professor of law, Robinson followed seven years as Irish president with five years as high commissioner of the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights (UNHCHR).

After leaving the UN in 2002, Robinson founded Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative, which aims to "put human rights standards at the heart of global governance and policy-making and to ensure that the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable are addressed on the global stage."

In a brief interview, I spoke to Robinson about "climate justice," a term highlighting that climate change is a human rights issue for which the West is largely responsible.

Sea level rise and other disastrous effects of climate change are going to affect impoverished nations in Africa, Asia, South and Southeast Asia, the South Pacific, and more, unfairly and disproportionately -- that is, much sooner, with greater force, and with profound long-term human rights impacts.

(Here I might add, however, that the U.S. mainland, especially the Southeast, could be among the earliest regions hit, so policymakers stateside should not feel emboldened to use the disproportionate impacts argument as a delaying tactic.)

Seven years have passed since Robinson left the UNHCHR.

She observed, "We still don't have a shared vision for human rights."

Robinson referred to the scale of the climate challenge as new and remarked "we are not showing the intelligent capability of leadership to deal with it."

Given the predicted impacts of climate change, she said, "More justice is needed, not more wealth."

"The values of human rights and dignity are important to move forward," she emphasized. "We need a broader view of human rights that re-frames the issue with the notion of climate justice."

Robinson believes that the climate justice paradigm appeals to those who "see the human costs and the unfairness" of disproportionate climate impacts.

In Africa, for example, climate change is having disproportionate impacts around rights to food and water. "Farmers in Rwanda don't know when to sow now."

On a policy level, Robinson noted, "Governments have a common but differentiated responsibility to develop national action plans for climate change."

Furthermore, she argued the West needs to support developing countries with billions of dollars for climate adaptation and mitigation because of a "justice and equity element," not simply out of charity, an attitude that has been in evidence in the past.

She also advocated the rapid transfer of green technologies to developing countries so that water distillation, solar-powered cooking, electricity generation, and many other sustainable development needs can be adequately and equitably addressed.

In terms of climate activism, Robinson said, "We need to simplify the science into what can be understood and we need to do this without overwhelming people with a sense of despair."

She pointed to tcktcktck.org as a popular campaign that provides a robust vehicle for addressing environmental and humanitarian aspects of climate change.

My conversation with Robinson has led me to conclude that the real reason we may need to re-frame climate change as a human rights issue is so that more people pay attention to the fact that the climate crisis we are facing today reflects the sum total of man's inhumanity to man.

In these uncertain times, when disruptive climatic, economic, and environmental change threaten to severely limit human agency, even someone with Robinson's distinguished intellect, moral vision, and political acumen would encounter resistance in pressing for massive shifts in public action and policy-making on climate change.

Nonetheless, advocating a new vision for climate justice--and taking bold humanitarian steps now to address the suffering climate change will cause--would, in a vast understatement, appear to be the least we can do.

Follow Sanjay Khanna on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sanjay1

Comments

[Sanjay Khanna - Huffpost Blogger]

Thanks, Jeff, for the link re: your blog post on time scales of humanity in the context of the climate crisis we find ourselves in.

Also, "fhbushor" commented below on the role (or non-role) of a human-rights approach on addressing water rights, for example. Yes, agreed, there's a problem there especially since corporations have rights to person-hood, and typically have far greater resources than individuals to obtain enforcement of those rights. Let's look at water: From a wider perspective, we need water to survive and, in the absence of better water-sharing regimes and enforcement, only commonly held attitudes of fairness and sharing could possibly secure access to that need should social conditions deteriorate. When people start competing for resources using violence, our human rights are often moot. In spite of this, however, the question of rights is important insofar as it raises awareness of humans' simplest and most fundamental needs and, by extension, helps people become more ecologically just or, in layman's terms, better at "sharing finite resources."

[rshrink]

If all countries made an agreement to start cleaning up the planet and becoming more ecologically minded, then sharing resources would be an easier next step. I am just apparently dreaming however.

[Jeff Goldstein - Huffpost Blogger]

This might be useful - Understanding Human-Induced Climate Change, with foreward by NASA's Jim Hansen. http://bit.ly/2uhzdO

[fhbushor]

I have a somewhat unpopular suspicion about the value of human rights in that they exist as legal mechanisms, not entirely different from the concept of ownership, which in itself supplies the conceptual groundwork for capitalism.
To suggest that I have the "right" to water (as many progressives are now suggesting) implies that should I not have it, some institution (public and/or more and more likely private) should act on my behalf to get it for me, or I should be able to go anywhere I want to find "my" water. Adding in the idea that corporations are enabled of rights many citizens have and have access to far greater reserves of money to pursue legal claims and you begin to see inherent problems when talking about human rights.

Addressing ecological issues from a human rights perspective looks good at first glance, but I'm not so sure...

[fumes]

it's why we stick our nose in the middle east..

we're looking for ''our oil''

[rshrink]

Leave it to people to try to confuse the issue. It isn't about rights or progressives or anything to do with politics and ideology. It is about preventing widespread disaster, death and destruction of huge numbers of species which could even include the human species. When looked at in the proper perspective, your issues raised cease to have relevance. You have lost your way, my friend. (A quote from John McCain)

[fhbushor]

I'm sorry my suspicions of "human rights" as a conceptual framework for "saving" anything leaves you confused.
I'll restate.

Human rights as we denote them are derived from laws. Laws, among other things, are the means by which a society organizes itself and the process by which disputes in that society are resolved. Of central concern is that laws require their instigating organization (typically a state) to have the ability to enforce those laws. There's no such thing as a law that has no utility (Goldman-Sachs permanent exclusion notwithstanding...) and the state can and does enforce them.

What we're saying if we travel this route of universal human rights is that all states laws must adhere to a single standard. A particularly excellent political structure for this might be called totalitarianism, which, oddly enough, is rarely considered as an ideal for the flourishing of human rights.

If progessives insist that human rights are the de facto standard for saving the planet, they are, for all intents and purposes, usurping the role of sovereign states - which seems a lot like what multinationals do when they work out trade agreements - getting around local laws.
Have you noticed how swell that's been working out?

And one final thing... if human rights is simply a "branding exercise", it runs a very serious risk of being discarded the minute the public smells bullshit. And the general public just might end up throwing out the baby with the bath water at that point...

[research]

Rooftop Solar is the cheapest electricity source at 3 cents per KWH!
Waste BioChar is the cheapest fuel source and fertilizer system.
http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/company list of BioChar companies.
Even the poorest people can do BioChar.
see my profile for more links and proof.

[RomeoMD25]

The average person has been misled and is confused about what the current Global Warming debate is about, greenhouse gases. None of which has anything to do
with air pollution. People are confusing Smog, Carbon Monoxide (CO) and the pollutants in
car exhaust with the life supporting, essential trace gas in our atmosphere, Carbon Dioxide (CO2).

[rshrink]

I think you are the one who is confused.

[rshrink]

Strange that at this point, there are no other comments. That goes along with my thought that denial is at work. If the earth suddenly was under attack by aliens from another world, denial wouldn't be an issue. Everyone would have to stop their wars, their fierce competition, fair and unfair, would have to give up their patriotism and narcissism and join forces with other earthlings to try to defeat the aliens. Well, to an extraordinary extent, that is the boat that we are in. We are under attack by the forces set loose by mostly industrial pollution and misguided consumption of products and energy. The problem is denial. To continue to win at the competition game, there are many who will not see this threat to existence. It is probably useless to try to win over the deniers. I suppose the only hope is for those of us who accept the science, to not allow apathy to set in, but rather to take every action that we can to demonstrate that things can be done differently and hope we can make enough change to generate a new direction, one that respects nature and sees how it is essential that we live within the rules of the natural world or the result is disease, destruction and death.

[RomeoMD25]

Enron recognized the profiteering potential wheeling and dealing in Climate Management.
The groundwork had been laid well, not least by entering into relationships with scientists who,
Enron expected, would further its cause (James Hansen, the scientist who? more than any other is responsible for bringing the
possibility of climate-change catastrophe to the public, was among the scientists Enron commissioned)Enron saw the importance
in silencing the scientists who didnt accept the alarmism

Enron executives believed that a cap-and-trade program would put them in a position to dominate the U.S. energy market. Electric utilities,
required to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, would be forced to switch from coal? to natural gas as the only practical alternative
to electricity production. As a leading trader of natural gas, Enron would be the recipient of a huge financial windfall.

[rshrink]

For the propaganda, thanks, but no thanks.