Atmospheric Ethics, Essay Example

Utilitarian assumptions to the climate regime

In Charlesworth and Okereke (2009), Policy responses to rapid climate change: an epistemological critique of dominant approaches query to assumptions within the development of policy responses in the international climate regime propose an ‘Earth-systems’ model of thinking about the capacity of the international carbon monitoring efforts, and the utilitarian economic principles constituting the ‘human’ and ‘market’ factor within earth based GHG emissions reductions strategies; and specifically carbon mitigation finance and the impact of scientific institutions on environmental health, and disaster and resource management. Insightful to the analysis is the formation of scientific concepts within earth or atmospheric science that promote calculation of ‘tipping points’ toward precision in determination of global uncertainties, and those threshold predictions says Charlesworth and Okereke, are the primary drivers to policy shifts as national allocations are set up to match requirements of technological systems with cost-benefit analyses. The foregoing discussion looks at Charlesworth and Okereke’s proposition of a democratization of policy, suggesting that the climate regime is already in the sphere of ‘soft law’ and that thinkers like Karl Popper (1966) were correct that an ‘open society’ is a scientific society in its very logic.

In the United States, substantive legislative policy is now directed at global issues such as air control, or mitigation of greenhouse gas carbon emissions. Upon review of the history of the climate change regime stretching back to the enactment of air quality laws under President Nixon  in the 1970s, to the nation’s participation in COP/15 in Copenhagen in 2010, distinct stages within the country’s environmental agenda have shifted according to utilitarian economics over time. Here, Charlesworth and Okereke’s interpretation of classic virtues within the policies on things like toxic clean-ups in Superfund omnibus legislation clarify the absolutism in prediction of the utility or welfare of the environment, despite far more weight given to commerce and industry as it relates to the governance question as ‘an economy of scale’ – or at least until recently with the reinterpretation of environmental interests into new market exigencies. Governmental administration in the U.S. is somewhat restricted, however, and as seen in the agenda of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) there is latent responsibility to problems like GHG emissions as the Agency in not in the position to track pollution at its earliest stage, and can only assess it as it occurs, monitor it, and ultimately disseminate information about mitigation or clean up. If policy is directed at realities, when it comes to the evolutionary ecology of scientific inquiry, it is still a field of dreams. Congressional decision on budgetary allocations, and changes to those fiscal terms may allow tax payers to discern how their small contribution might be spent, and when it comes to some of the creative strategies proposed by proponents of the climate change regime, those terms seem at times to be designed purely by the Mother of Invention.

Actual comprehensive calculation of what is called the Global Carbon Cycle (GCC) in climate science is deployed at national space agencies such as NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) where research is directed at: documentation and quantification of the Earth’s biomass, carbon fluxes, terrestrial and marine ecosystems, and land cover changes. Projection of ecological forecasts is a distinct mission to the OCO, as inputs for improved climate change predictions examine the processes surrounding absorption of carbon by atmospheric sinks – constituted of photosynthesis of plants and chemical precipitation. Of the approximately 330 billion tonnes of GCC gas produced annually, most of it is in fact absorbed by the sinks, yet the remaining small portion is contributory to the rise of CO2 concentration. According to NASA’s information on historical rise in atmospheric temperature since the turn of the century, global warming has intensified exponentially since calculation of early 20th century industrialization.

Perhaps the singular most important policy area in regard to the monitoring and researching the still untold impact of the release of the remaining carbon from atmospheric sinks are the partnerships developing between national satellite climate monitoring missions. For instance, at the international level, the climate change orbiting projects contribute greatly to policy intended to bridge the gap between the agendas of international disaster relief NGOs and the space community.

In December 2006, the U.N. General Assembly decided to establish the proposed Resolution 61/110, United Nations Platform for Space-based Information for Disaster Management and Emergency Response (UN-SPIDER) as a UN-Spider programme for the provision of “universal access to all countries and all relevant international and regional organizations to all types of space-based information and services relevant to disaster management to support the full disaster management cycle by being a gateway to space information for disaster management support.” Enactment of a range of resolutions dedicated to global disaster management, meteorological forecasting for climate modelling, satellite navigation and communications is contiguous with the COPOUS/UNOOSA Programme on Space Applications: “space-based solutions for solving environmental monitoring and natural resources management issues.”

The space agency missions provide foundation to scientific participation in the global climate change decision. In the United States, at the regional level, a sort of confederacy toward federal policy has emerged with a series of collective agreements between individual states in the union and Canada in the Western Climate Initiative (WCI). These actions have been most pronounced in the West, where Pacific Rim financial and security agreements do much to define regional priorities, and particularly in adherence to Kyoto Protocol related environmental policy and international regulatory compliance on trade agreements. It is the regional perspective that continues to impact the shape of formative legislative criteria, as member states, adhere to international trade and commerce policy rather than federal law in response to the declination of U.S. signatory to the Kyoto Accord. What the WCI has promoted is a radical reorientation of federal policy in adoption of international or “global” standards for GHG emissions reductions at the state level.

If utilitarian assumptions are correct, state-by-state efforts pushing the envelope on carbon mitigation legislation to meet forthcoming cap-and-trade protocol, then class action litigation against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) initiated by the State of California in 2007 and 2008, and subsequent actions by other states in joint complaint with California are at the core serious economic decisions with long-term market outcomes. Litigation activities assert preemption to iterative federalism in an unusual redefinition of priority in ‘regional;’ rather than national political interest in environmental justice as legal commons. Plaintiffs to district courts are also ‘doing business’ by way of litigation; as case law instantiates new precedent and private parties topple gross polluter defendants. For example, airports have sustained a fair number of suits in response to environmental health complaints (i.e. emissions pollution and noise nuisance). If measurement of the atmosphere is best left up to experts such as NASA and their global warming expertise, the assumptions of Charlesworth and Okereke’s arguments still ring true, as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) “end of the pipe or smokestack,” administration of low atmosphere air quality programs ultimately rests in the hands of citizens, with the court room a battleground for decision on the protections and responsibilities of business toward citizens as they rearticulate the commons (and commerce) that is the sky.

Works Cited

Charleswortha, M. and Okerekeb, C. (2010). Policy responses to rapid climate change: An epistemological critique of dominant approaches. Global Environmental Change 20 (1), 121-129. doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2009.09.001

NASA OCO (2010). Retrieved from: http://oco.jpl.nasa.gov/

United Nations Platform for Space Based Information for Disaster Management and Emergency Response (2010) United Nations, UN-Spider. Retrieved from: http://www.un-spider.org/

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (2010). Retrieved from: http://www.epa.gov/

Western Climate Initiative (2010). Retrieved from: http://www.westernclimateinitiative.org/