Climate Change as the Ultimate Test for the Framework Convention Approach

1/4 Before there was “sustainability” as such, the commonest approach to widespread human pressure on the environment was to speak in terms of potential “overconsumption” of exhaustible natural resources, often linked with population increases, to which some form of intergenerational equity test might be applied. Sustainability made its first general appearance in the 1987 Brundtland Report “Our Common Future,” and soon thereafter the discussion shifted more in the direction of what would be called in current climate change terminology “mitigation” versus “adaptation.” The “climate change” GHG language took hold so that it was officially in the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change signed at the Rio Conference, although GHG concerns were widely recognized at least five years earlier by the time of the 1987 Montreal Protocol and the 1987 Brundtland Report (having been recognized in the atmospheric chemistry community already in the late 1970s-early 1980s in conjunction with ozone depletion, if not in governments or the general public). Mitigation was understood as taking specific current steps to avoid future environmental damage (for example, limiting GHG emissions currently in order to limit temperature increase beyond a specific threshold 5-10 years in the future). So by the late 1970s-early 1980s, and subject to any number of scientific uncertainties, climate change as natural science exercise intellectually became a “pay me (less) now, or pay me (more) later” exercise on the basis that prevention was cheaper than remediation, although both might be possible as a scientific matter.

2/4 But the language of “pay me now, versus pay me later” has now shifted effectively as we increasingly move from thinking about mitigation in favor of adaptation as successive maximum temperature increase targets have been exceeded as we marched through the series of the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Ozone Depleting Substances (itself furthering the 1985 Vienna Convention as framework exercise), the 1992 UNCCC, its 1997 Kyoto Protocol effective 2005, and the related 2015 Paris Agreement. The US either rejected or withdrew from the last two, severely undercutting them. Meanwhile, discussions of mitigation and adaptation invariably invoke the concept that mitigation strategies will be incorporated into adaptation to slow down the climate change process.

3/4 Nonetheless, when you consider building surge barriers in Charleston or raising sea walls in response to rising sea levels and heftier hurricanes, you are doing adaptation rather than mitigation planning in anticipation of sea level rise over a longer period, etc. It is probably the case that mitigation as such was still a general intellectual consideration when the Kyoto Protocol was under serious discussion in the early 2000s, but mitigation was already rapidly receding in the rearview mirror no later than abandonment by the US of the 2015 Paris Agreement, and now the majority of climate scientists are seemingly of the opinion that steps contemplated in the Paris Agreement will no longer be effective in mitigation terms to limit temperature increases to 1.5 degrees centigrade. There are still technologically enabled scenarios like carbon sequestration, or geo-engineering (placing giant mirrors in space, giant algae blooms in the ocean, etc.) that theoretically could permit reversals or at least freezing of on-going temperature increases, but as we shift more towards adaptation mode bad things happening generally become more likely, and as a result the distributive justice questions become more pressing as we consider various choices. So theoretically, “pay me now, versus pay me later” is still available if technological options are pursued, except they are considered somewhat risky (mostly an unknown side effects issue) and certainly expensive. At the very least, the “pay me [more] later” option seems to be rising steadily in price.

4/4 As to where we are now from a framework convention perspective, I would suggest you spend some time on the best available climate science, namely by reading the summary for policymakers in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (2014) on the international side, and on the domestic side Chapter 19 in the second volume of the US 4th National Climate Assessment (Volume II, 2018). Chapter 19 addresses issues in the Southeastern U.S., including a case study of Charleston’s sea-level rise issues, which analysis is easily transferable to a lot of coastal cities on a worldwide basis, except most of them are less affluent and so may lack the resources for purposes of similar adaptation and remediation.