Science and Justice Demand Climate Reparations
SCIENCE AGENDA - OPINION AND ANALYSIS FROM SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN’S BOARD OF EDITORS
The U.S. got a powerful reminder last summer that pollution doesn’t care about borders. Smoke from wildfires blazing across Canada billowed hundreds of miles south, painting skies from New York City to Chicago and beyond a hazy orange and damaging air quality to the point that health officials were warning people not to go outside.
Greenhouse gas pollution is similar—not governed by borders, warming the planet indiscriminately and damaging the climate on an extremely broad scale. In this era of climate crisis, in which decades’ worth of carbon pollution from rich nations is magnifying natural disasters, poorer countries are paying some of the steepest costs.
It’s time to start compensating these countries. The United Nations recently decided to address this issue through its yearly climate gathering, the Conference of the Parties, or COP. At COP27 in November 2022, world leaders agreed to create a fund for loss and damages for climate disasters, and attendees at 2023’s COP28 planned to further the conversation. But climate diplomacy can be slow, and it will be tough to make these reparations a reality.
Nevertheless, the U.S. and its carbon-spewing counterparts must pursue climate reparations to right the wrongs of carbon pollution and help lower-income nations weather the climate emergency. Reparations, broadly understood, are payments offered to make up for loss or damage, and they can be a touchy subject for a range of legal and psychological reasons. They are just one of several funding mechanisms through which we can try to ease the unequal burden of climate change, including some that focus specifically on climate mitigation or adaptation. But whatever the term, the science is clear on the necessity of these payments.
Scientists estimate that worldwide, humans produced nearly 2.5 quadrillion kilograms of carbon dioxide between 1851 and 2021. Analysis after analysis has shown that over time the U.S. has produced by far the most heat-trapping gases—17 percent of the global total. This astronomical amount equals the combined emissions produced by more than 20 developed nations, including Germany, Japan and Australia. In comparison, climate emissions from 47 of the least developed countries add up to just 6 percent of the total. China ranks second among individual countries, at 12 percent of total emissions, but it began industrializing much later than the U.S. Because of China’s large population, the country’s per capita emissions are slightly more than half of those of Australia, Canada or the U.S.
Although industrial countries occasionally pledge to solve these problems, they still bicker about how much climate disruption they are willing to permit, and they haven’t put their money where their promises are. Wealthy nations have pledged to fund projects to mitigate climate change such as expanding clean energy, as well as adaptation projects such as building seawalls. They’ve promised $100 billion a year for these kinds of projects, but the funding hasn’t materialized. And because industrial countries have opposed decarbonization for so long, mitigation and adaptation are not enough.
People are already dying from the consequences of carbon pollution that developed nations generated while amassing their wealth. For example, last September a hurricanelike storm from the Mediterranean drenched Libya with one year’s worth of water in a single day. Two dams collapsed, and at least 4,000 people died, although the true toll might be closer to 10,000. Scientists have determined that such a disaster—a one-in-600-year flood—is 50 times more likely today than it was when the planet was 1.2 degrees Celsius cooler.
“By delaying the discussion, we have accepted that people can die and that enormous harm can happen at the global level,” says Joyeeta Gupta, a sustainability scientist at the University of Amsterdam.
Scientists are also clear on the role this pollution plays in exacerbating disasters, both in general and for individual cases. Hundreds of studies have sought to quantify the contribution of climate change to specific disasters. The majority of such studies on heat waves show that these events are becoming more likely or more severe as climate upheaval continues. Around half of the studies on heavy rainfall and flooding or on drought reach that same conclusion.
As the climate crisis worsens these kinds of events, their toll becomes ever steeper. In 2022 Earth experienced about 40 billion-dollar disasters, including Hurricane Ian in the southeastern U.S., devastating floods in Pakistan and drought in eastern Africa. The U.S. bears more of the responsibility for these crises and boasts more resources for responding to them, whereas countries across the developing world lack the wealth, insurance infrastructure and government programs needed to recover from disaster. Meanwhile the slower-moving calamity of sea-level rise is eating away the tiny homelands of small island nations, which might soon begin facing the steep costs of involuntary relocation.
We call on those who have become rich at the expense of a less livable world to prioritize the needs of developing countries and others bearing the brunt of the climate crisis. At home and abroad, there’s no time to wait. The science is clear: the industrial world is responsible. The least we can do is pay for the damage we’ve done.
FORUM – COMMENTARY ON SCIENCE IN THE NEWS FROM THE EXPERTS
It feels like the world is ending. Wildfires in Canada and Europe, floods in China, and a stream of record-breaking heat waves have garnered numerous headlines. Time is running out, and it’s easy to believe that society cannot fix big environmental problems—I have personally battled this feeling of helplessness for more than a decade.
But our past efforts tell us there is hope. In my role at Our World in Data, an online project that publishes research and data on the world’s biggest problems, I’ve spent years looking at how seemingly insurmountable challenges have evolved. I think it’s worth studying these issues to understand what went right and what can help us face today’s crises. An eye-opening example is acid rain; the way in which nations confronted this geopolitically divisive problem can teach us how we can tackle climate change today.
Acid rain was the leading environmental concern of the 1990s. At one point it was one of the most pressing bilateral diplomatic issues between the U.S. and Canada. It is caused mainly by sulfur dioxide (SO₂), a gas that is produced when we burn coal. It dissolved old sculptures, stripped forests of their leaves, leached nutrients from soil, and polluted rivers and lakes. Emissions from the U.K. would be carried by the wind to Sweden and Norway; emissions from the U.S. would disperse over Canada. Just like climate change, it crossed borders, and no country could fix it alone.
This is a classic game-theory problem: countries will act only if they know others are willing to do the same. With acid rain, they did act collectively. Government officials signed international agreements, placed emissions limits on power plants and started to reduce coal burning. In Europe, SO₂ emissions fell by 84 percent; in the U.S., 90 percent. Some countries reduced them by more than 98 percent.
We did something similar to restore Earth’s protective ozone layer. No single country was responsible for the world’s emissions of ozone-depleting substances, so there was little upside and some downside to individual countries taking the lead on their own. The only way to cut emissions substantially was for many countries to join in. Since the Montreal Protocol on reducing the hole in the ozone layer was opened for signatures in 1987, almost 200 countries have signed it, and emissions of ozone-depleting substances have fallen by more than 99 percent.
One thing we learned from confronting acid rain and the ozone hole is that the cost of technology really matters. The cost-benefit ratio of desulfurization technologies was key in eliminating acid rain. The cost of installing “scrubbers” to capture SO₂ from coal plant emissions was significant but not budget breaking. Had it been huge, countries wouldn’t have made the switch.
Similarly, cheap low-carbon technologies are essential in the fight against climate change. In the past decade the price of solar energy has fallen by more than 90 percent and that of wind energy by more than 70 percent. Battery costs have tumbled by 98 percent since 1990, bringing the price of electric cars down with them. Globally, one in every seven new cars sold is now electric.
At the same time, countries are waking up to the potential costs of not moving to clean energy, whether in the form of climate damages—at home or overseas—or unfavorable ties to volatile fossil-fuel markets.
Another important lesson is that climate agreements and targets take time to evolve. The ozone hole and acid rain were not fixed by the first international agreements to be put on the table. The initial targets were too modest to make a large-enough difference. But over time countries increased their ambitions, amended their agreements and reached for higher goals.
This is a basic principle of the Paris Climate Accords. Countries agreed to step up their commitments to keep global temperature rise below 1.5 or two degrees Celsius. This has been happening but not fast enough. The world is on track for an increase of around 2.6°C by 2100, which is bad. Still, it’s a degree lower than where we were headed in 2016. Governments have increased their target numbers, and just like with acid rain and the ozone hole, they must continue to aim higher. If every country fulfilled its pledge, the world would limit temperature rise to two degrees C. If they met their net-zero commitments on time, we could keep it even lower.
Finally, the stance of elected officials matters more than their party affiliation. Environmental issues do not have to be so politically divisive. Acid rain was a bipartisan issue in the U.S. during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. And it wasn’t a Democrat who finally took action; it was Reagan’s Republican successor, George H. W. Bush. Before taking office, Bush pledged to be the “environmental president,” something that would be a bold stance for many right-wing leaders today but that we need to see repeated if we are going to set and reach loftier goals. In the U.K., there is strong public support for net-zero emissions even among the political right. Margaret Thatcher—arguably one of the U.K.’s most right-wing prime ministers ever—was one of the earliest to take climate change seriously.
The climate crisis is not exactly like the environmental problems we’ve solved before. It will be even harder to address, and we should be honest about that. It means rebuilding the energy, transportation and food systems that underpin the modern world. It will involve every country and almost every sector. But positive change is happening. To accelerate it, we need to have the expectation that things can move faster. That’s where past lessons come in. They demonstrate that such expectations are not unrealistic. Change can happen—but not on its own. We need to drive it.
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