The Climatorial Imperative
Julia M Puaschunder*
Department of Economics, Columbia University, USA
Submission: May 16, 2017; Published: June 05, 2017
*Corresponding author:Julia M Puaschunder, Department of Economics, Columbia University, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 116th Street Broadway, New York, New York 10027, USA, Email: Julia.Puaschunder@columbia.edu
How to cite this article: ulia M P. The Climatorial Imperative. Agri Res & Tech: Open Access J. 2017; 7(4): 555719. DOI: 10.19080/ARTOAJ.2017.07.555719
The Climatorial Imperative
Climate change has become reality. Climate stability accounts for the most challenging global governance goal.ln the very many contemporary writings about global warming, the discussion has been centred around the negative impacts of climate change. The burden of climate change has been the matised and cost- sharing strategies heatedly debated. The need for fairness in sharing the burden of climate change has been argued to consider national economies, the world society but also balance in between generations.
In the current frustration over the neglect of interest in ratifying intergovernmental climate agreements, the question arises whether the incentive structure of burden sharing models is appropriate to move the very many we need for climate stabilization. Considering climate change only as problematic appears uni dimensional. Researchers are therefore advised to pursue a more creative approach to overcome the obstacle of climate change.
Future research could shed novel light on global warming from an almost unprecedentedly covered angle: The benefits of a warming earth! While the contemporary climate negotiations may be stuck in the one-sided grilling to share burden lowering participation motivation; unravelling the unprecedentedly described benefits arising from a warming earth may help build a more whole-rounded participatory incentive structure.
Innovatively differing from the contemporary climate change literature and discussions centred around the problem of a warming earth prospected losses from climate change risks demanding for a burden sharing strategy; investigatingthe benefits of climate change will allow to derive fair benefits transfer distribution mechanisms.
This innovative way to frame the prisoner's dilemma of a warming common climate as a benefits distribution conundrum proposes a completely new incentive structure, which will hopefully embrace a larger audience to be nudged through intriguing gains perspectives. As such this article advocates for opening up a black box of uni dimensional climate negotiations that are one-sidedly focused on problem solving through burden sharing.
More concretely, state-of-the-art welfare function measurements and economic productivity parameters could become the basis for conclusions about a fair spread of the gains and benefits from a warming earth. Contemporary Gross Domestic Product (GDP) measurements can serve as basis for estimations about the productivity of the agriculture, industry and service sectors in a changing global temperature. Based on the cardinal temperatures for the agriculture, industry and service sectors productivity; the average temperature per country around the world as well as climate projections of the year 2100 under the business as usual path, climate research could reveal climate change winners and losers around the world. Overall and simply seen from a narrowminded GDP perspective, the world will macro economically benefit more from climate change until 2100 than lose given the massive amount of arable land that will become available in Northern parts of the globe [1].
All these endeavors will naturally build the intellectual basis for the climatorial imperative-advocating for the need for fairness in the distribution of the global earth benefits among nations based on Kant's [2] imperative to only engage in actions one wants to experience themselves being done to oneself. Passive neglect of action on climate mitigation is argued as an active injustice to others. Countries passive or agnostic about global warming mitigation that reap benefits from a warming earth should therefore be obliged to finance international aid for those that are directly and negatively impacted by climate change-for instance, grant automatic asylum to climate refugees. In addition, building on common and international law, those countries that have better means of protection or conservation of the common climate should also face a greater responsibility to protect the earth [3].
While the method to measure the gains from climate change can certainly be refined in future studies, this article is meant as very first preliminary step to open a gate to legal codifications and policy work to settle for a right, just and fair distribution of benefits from our common warming mother earth.
The introduction of the gains from climate change is a novel approach that should solely be seen in connection to the imperative to distribute the gains in a fair manner among all world inhabitants. Focusing on gains may serve as means to hopefully draw attention to climate change of agnostic market actors or those who shy away from action given the overall negative connotation of climate change burden sharing and economic productivity loss aversion.
The novel argumentation point is targeted at helping to build a more whole-rounded participatory incentive structure as the basis for contemporary climate change negotiations. The provocative results therefore have to be seen with the caution of fairness in between society and the generations to come.
predicament that seems to pit today's generation against future world inhabitants in a trade-off of economic growth versus sustainability. Deriving respective policy recommendations and incentives to spread the prospective global warming gains for the wider climate change community around the globe and over time is aimed at ensuring that the shared benefits of climate change reach all contemporary and future world inhabitants around the globe in an economically efficient, legally sound and ethically equitable but also practically feasible way
Financial Support
Financial support of the Eugene Lang College of The New School, Fritz Thyssen Foundation, George Washington University, the Janeway Center Fellowship, New School for Social Research, Prize Fellowship, the Science and Technology Global Consortium, the University of Vienna, and Vernon Arts and Sciences is gratefully acknowledged. The author declares no conflict of interest. The author thanks the participants of the 2017 Science and Technology Global Consortium at the United States National Academy of Sciences and American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington D.C. in March 2017, the students of the New School Eugene Lang College Spring 2017 'Behavioral Economics' class and the participants of The New School Spring 2017 'Economics of Climate Change' class for most excellent feedback on the presented ideas and/or earlier versions of this paper. All omissions, errors and misunderstandings in this piece are solely the author's.
References
- Puaschunder JM (2017) Sunny side up! From climate change burden sharing to fair global warming benefits distribution: Groundwork on the metaphysics of the gains of global warming and the climatorial imperative. Proceedings of the 2nd Social and Sustainable Finance and Impact Investing Conference, University of Cambridge, September 25, 2017, Proceedings of 17th Annual Science and Technology Studies & Science and Technology Policy Conference at National Academy of Science, Washington DC, USA
- Kant I (1993) Grounding for the metaphysics of morals. Hackett, Cambridge, USA.
- Puaschunder JM (2016) Mapping Climate Justice. Proceedings of the 2016 Young Scientists Summer Program Conference, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria.