I do think in addition to this, we need people to make the ethical and arguments in publicly visible ways that people can understand them. There is considerable social science analysis that concludes that social change happens (although often too slowly for climate change) by people making moral arguments to their tribe that their behavior is socially unacceptable. Social change will happen only if ethically defensible moral arguments are made. This is likely to be insufficient by itself but still indispensable to creating the kind of social change that we need.

As you know, I have long been encouraging to write about the urgency of the AGW problem. In this blog, you have written what I believe not is your best blog but one of the best, if not the best, written about AGW. It absolutely excellent.

A couple of comments/questions, although none meant to be critical:

1. I understand why the 2C degrees temperature rise is used. However, as you know, most science is now telling us that a so–called ‘safe’ level for temperature rise is about 1.5C degrees, which computes to about 350 ppm carbon dioxide eq. instead of 450 ppm eq. This, of course, makes your article all that much more scary.

2. My primary question now, given this exemplary article of yours, is following your arguments about the urgency of the problem, what does this imply for considerations of ethics to resolve the problem. Surely, if the problem is as urgent as you describe, which I and many other scientists believe, urgency itself must allow the use of different ethics or modes of conduct to resolve the problem. Any thoughts about this? (Hint: I think this should be your next blog topic)

Don, thanks so much for writing this very excellent piece.

John Lemons

Thank you for your valuable comments on Agenda 21. I have a couple of minor comments.

1. It is not only lawyers who need a basic understanding of Agenda 21, but rather lawyers, scientists, economists, public policy makers, philosophers, government officials, and just about everyone.

2. One can see how interdisciplinary Agenda 21 is either by reading the document or perusing the following analysis: Lemons, J., Brown, D.A. (eds). 1995. Sustainable Development: Science, Ethics, and Public Policy. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands.

3. As an aside, I was invited to work in a few (mostly developing) countries on Agenda 21 issues after the document was released. There was considerable interest in and knowledge about Agenda 21 by local, regional, and national governments and also by faculty and students in universities. The level of knowledge was much greater than in the US, where, as you state, the document has never been well known. Really, the gap in knowledge was quite pathetic. I am hoping that the current discussion by Beck and his kind is simply a diversionary tactic from climate change issues.

Thanks again for your blog comments.

On the issues of methane leakage, the longer paper deals with this and more importantly, in my view, deals with a potentially bigger issue entailed by the rush to embrace natural gas produced from fracking, namely, that even if methane leakage rates prove to be toward the lower end of the leakage rates being speculated about in the science, there is simply no way of getting the emissions reductions that are needed to match acceptable emissions reduction rates needed to prevent dangerous climate change without moving quickly to non-fossil fuels. The natural gas industry is selling natural gas as a bridge fuel while fighting efforts to ramp up non-fossil energy, a very troubling development. I will write about this very soon.

Once again you have produced an enlightening and thoughtful report. I do have a couple of questions/concerns:

1. As you know, the emissions reductions of 80 percent by 2050 compared to 2000 levels come from AR4. But these were not meant to deal with equity, only to promote a level that protected us from “dangerous.”

2. The longer we wait to make reduction, the more costly this becomes. I think you mentioned this in the longer full report.

3. But addressing the equity issues become complicated because we are imposed with a nearer time frame than the initial AR4 level (stated above).

4. For example, den Elzen and Roelfsema (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bbr.2011.03.031) note that to have a medium chance of achieving 2C Annex I countries have to reduce emissions about 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, and, non–Annex I countries would have to reduce emissions 22–34 percent below BAU levels. Other researchers have come to similar conclusions. In other words, the remaining emissions space hardly gives non–Annex I countries time to meet legitimate develop needs or alleviation of poverty.

5. More problematic is that different emission sectors have to be taken into account. How does Pennsylvania account for deforestation? Anderson and Bows (2008) show that deforestation needs to peak by 2015 and fall to half its current level by 2040 and close to zero by 2050. Levels of methane and nitrous oxide from agriculture need to peak about 2020 (12.2 billion tonnes) and reach a stabilization value of 7.5 billion tonnes) by 2050. These kinds of figures are not abstract global figures, but need to be taken into account if states are to be serious about equity issues. And, of course, they are complicated by UN projections of a world population of 9 billion or more by 2050. Further, to simply account for equity between developed and developing nations, global emissions of GHGs from the energy and industrial sectors of developed nations would have to fall from a peak no later than 2020 at the rate of about 7–9 percent per year. States, of course, would somehow have to factor their contributions into these figures (WGBU 2009).

6. Finally, the longer an emissions target deadline is the more time developed nations have to use up the emissions space which otherwise could be allocated to developing nations for developmental needs and alleviation of poverty. Already, even before emissions targets are reached, developing nations likely (on paper, at least) will be having to make cuts in emissions before development and poverty needs are met.

7. Oh, and don’t forget to include the methane leakage rates from fracking in PA once someone figures out what they are.

Again, thanks for a thorough report. I hope people in other states take a hard look at this.

Cheers
John Lemons

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