ASPIRing to Mitigate Climate Change: Superordinate Identity in Global Climate Negotiations

The issues surrounding rising levels of atmospheric CO₂ and climate change have become part of the collective conscious and the vernacular of world leaders, media, and the public alike. Despite the widespread concern and attention, attempts to achieve a global commitment to mitigate climate change are failing. In this article, we suggest that the Actualizing Social and Personal Identity Resources model (ASPIRe; Haslam, Eggins, & Reynolds, 2003 ), developed to help organizations become more sustainable and productive, can promote more efficient negotiations in matters of global environmental concern. Using this model as a framework, the dynamics of the United Nations (UN) meeting in Copenhagen are scrutinized along with suggestions for how to structure future negotiations. Building on an understanding of existing UN‐type committee structures, it is argued that as the interests of individual nations and those of like‐minded other nations (subgroup interests) become the real basis for decision making on the issue of climate change the more likely it is that a higher‐order superordinate identity will emerge, which promotes aligned action. To date, the psychological aspects of social and behavioral change have been neglected, which could be a factor in explaining the lack of coordinated action on climate change.     

Climate Change,Responsibility, and Justice

In this paper I make the following claims. In order to see anthropogenic climate change as clearly involving moral wrongs and global injustices, we will have to revise some central concepts in these domains. Moreover, climate change threatens another value (“respect for nature”) that cannot easily be taken up by concerns of global justice or moral responsibility.     

Scientists' Uncertainty and Disagreement about Global Climate Change: A Psychological Perspective

Since there are major gaps in scientific knowledge about the greenhouse effect, policy makers are forced to rely on scientists' judgments about the rate of climate change and its effects. It now appears that significant policy decisions will have to be made despite continuing uncertainty and disagreement among scientists. The best that policy makers can do is look for guidance in the best available expert judgment. But when the best experts express great uncertainty and disagree, as seems to be the case with the greenhouse effect, policy makers are unsure about how to proceed. Despite its importance, scientific judgment about the greenhouse effect has not been systematically studied. Psychological research on expert judgment and decision making provides theory, methods, and empirical results that can be used to study judgments based on uncertain and incomplete data and can help to explain the sources of expert uncertainty and disagreement regarding the greenhouse effect. Possible explanations are discussed.     

Community Psychology and Global Climate Change: Introduction to the Special Section

Global climate change is not just a distant environmental or future problem but a crisis that has a clear human face already causing the suffering of millions around the globe. It is an issue of high relevance for community psychologists and the communities we work with but has received little attention within the field of community psychology. This special section is intended to promote more thinking and dialogue on this important topic. Six articles are presented that feature both theoretical consideration and empirical research related to global climate change and related environmental issues.     

A Just Global Economy: In Defense of Rawls

In The Law of Peoples, John Rawls does not discuss justice and the global economy at great length or in great detail. What he does say has not been well-received. The prevailing view seems to be that what Rawls says in The Law of Peoples regarding global economic justice is both inconsistent with and a betrayal of his own liberal egalitarian commitments, an unexpected and unacceptable defense of the status quo. This view is, I think, mistaken. Rawls’s position on global or international economic justice is richer, more nuanced, and generally more compelling than his critics have been willing to acknowledge. My aim in this essay is to sympathetically set out, and then defend against two common families of objection to, Rawls’s position on global or international economic justice. Objections of the first sort reject Rawls’s position as inadequately attentive to the material and economic interests of individual persons worldwide. Objections of the second sort reject it as inadequately attentive to the material and economic interests of well-ordered peoples. Throughout the paper I develop several arguments implicit in The Law of Peoples but not well-developed there as well as offer some additional arguments of my own consistent with the spirit of The Law of Peoples and Rawls’s work more generally. I conclude with some brief remarks expressing two worries I have about Rawls’s position – one concerning global public goods, the other concerning the formation of a morally adequate and effective political will within the international context under contemporary conditions. I wish to thank Alyssa Bernstein, Allen Buchanan, Samuel Freeman, John Hardwig, John Mandle, Rex Martin, Jim Nickel, Walter Riker, Kok-Chor Tan, and Leif Wenar for helpful comments or instructive conversation regarding earlier drafts of this paper.     

Settler Colonialism,Decolonization, and Climate Change

The article proposes that climate change makes enduring colonial injustices and structures visible. It focuses on the imposition and dominance of colonial concepts of land and self-determination on Indigenous peoples in settler states. It argues that if the dominance of these colonial frameworks remains unaddressed, the progressing climate change will worsen other colonial injustices, too. Specifically, Indigenous self-determination capabilities will be increasingly undermined, and Indigenous peoples will experience the loss of what they understand as relevant land from within their own ontologies of land. The article holds that even if settler states strive to repair colonial injustices, these efforts will be unsuccessful if climate change occurs and decolonization is pursued within the framework of a settler colonial ontology of land. Therefore, the article suggests, decolonization of the ontologies of land and concepts of self-determination is a precondition for a just response to climate change.     

Libertarianism,Climate Change,and Individual Responsibility

Much has been written about climate change from an ethical view in general, but less has been written about it from a libertarian point of view in particular. In this paper, I apply the libertarian moral theory to the problem of climate change. I focus on libertarianism’s implications for our individual emissions. I argue that (i) even if our individual emissions cause no harm to others, these emissions cross other people’s boundaries, (ii) although the boundary-crossings that are due to our ‘subsistence emissions’ are implicitly consented to by others, there is no such consent to our ‘non-subsistence emissions’, and (iii) there is no independent justification for these emissions. Although offsetting would provide such a justification, most emitters do not offset their non-subsistence emissions. Therefore, these emissions violate people’s rights, which means that they are impermissible according to libertarianism’s non-aggression principle.

     

African Religion,Climate Change,and Knowledge Systems

This article argues that as humanity is now changing the composition of the atmosphere at a rate that is very exceptional on the geological time scale, resulting in global warming, humans must deal with climate change holistically, including the often overlooked religion factor. Human‐caused climate change has resulted primarily from changes in the amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but also from changes in small particles (aerosols), as well as from changes in land use. In Africa, the entire relationship between humans and nature, including activities such as land use, has deep religious and spiritual underpinnings. In general, religion is central to many of the decisions people make about their own communities’ development. Hence, this contribution examines religion as a factor that can be tapped into to mitigate negative effects of climate change, discussing climate change and religion in the context of development practice. It argues that some of the difficulties encountered in development, including efforts to reverse global warming in Africa, directly speak to the relegation of African cosmovision and conversely of the need to adopt new epistemologies, concepts, and models that take religion into consideration.     

African Children's Literature,Spirituality, and Climate Change

African children's literature is well placed to make an effective contribution to discussions on climate change. However, this literature is often marginalized within literary studies in particular and in society in general. This article examines the relevance of African children's literature in contributing to the response to climate change. Through an analysis of two selected texts, the article argues that African children's literature can equip children and adults to adopt practices that promote environmental sustainability and mitigate the impact of climate change. The first section gives the background, while the second concentrates on climate change and its impact on Africa. The third section is devoted to African traditional folklore and children's literature, considering how the two are deployed by society to teach children to respect the environment. The subsequent parts of the article examine the role played by spirituality in folktales, religion, and climate change, while the final section concludes the article.     

Data Trimming, Nuclear Emissions, and Climate Change

Ethics requires good science. Many scientists, government leaders, and industry representatives support tripling of global-nuclear-energy capacity on the grounds that nuclear fission is “carbon free” and “releases no greenhouse gases.” However, such claims are scientifically questionable (and thus likely to lead to ethically questionable energy choices) for at least 3 reasons. (i) They rely on trimming the data on nuclear greenhouse-gas emissions (GHGE), perhaps in part because flawed Kyoto Protocol conventions require no full nuclear-fuel-cycle assessment of carbon content. (ii) They underestimate nuclear-fuel-cycle releases by erroneously assuming that mostly high-grade uranium ore, with much lower emissions, is used. (iii) They inconsistently compare nuclear-related GHGE only to those from fossil fuels, rather than to those from the best GHG-avoiding energy technologies. Once scientists take account of (i)–(iii), it is possible to show that although the nuclear fuel cycle releases (per kWh) much fewer GHG than coal and oil, nevertheless it releases far more GHG than wind and solar-photovoltaic. Although there may be other, ethical, reasons to support nuclear tripling, reducing or avoiding GHG does not appear to be one of them.