What I heard about Climate Ethiconomics - A View From the Long Grass

Ethiconomics. A neologism? Apparently not![1]

For the last few days, since returning from Lerwick and Peterhead, I’ve been scrabbling across this boulder field of ethics, (morality) and economics. Raking through the rattle bag of econophysics, climate ethics and moral frameworks, the term might do some business.

The conversations to-date in this tour have surfaced a fankle of issues around justice, right-action and conventional ‘wisdom’. Which, with the background reading, inspire a range of reflections and ideas.

It seems clear that climate action – right action – presents us with a layered and yet very immediate crisis. The physics of the process are (I think) clear even if the precise timing and spatial impacts are subject to uncertainties.

For those of us who believe we live in the Last of Days or that all sensory existence is samsara perspectives may differ but I accept the current paradigm: that stuff is stuff and that our current comprehension of the nature of stuff indicates that ‘we’ are about to destabilise the period of climate stability in which our current lifeways developed: the period we typically labelled ‘the Holocene’ until a few years ago.

We, in the actual and imaginary North, struggle with:

Our addiction to fossil fuel
Rethinking our most basic presumptions about who we are and how stuff works
Balancing immediate personal comfort with the comfort of other species and future generations (of whatever species)

As a member of the 10%…perhaps 5%…formerly perhaps 1%… the ‘pleasure’ of fossil-affluence is a drug (inter alia) that I find very hard to kick. And one that, of course, as a former oil & gas ‘executive’ I am deeply complicit in the supply of. Yes: high on my own supply and everyone agrees that is bad business.

What has emerged, for me, from the recent conversations in Aberdeen, Lerwick and Peterhead is that:

We are being misled by systemic measures such as GDP and growth
That justice in and for ‘the North’ is not JUSTICE
That we (in the North) are being systematically Greenwashed by interests with no systemic or incarnate interest in longer term survival
That we must rediscover community in reference to economy if we are to disrupt an otherwise inevitable unravelling.

The juxtaposition of fankle and unravelling is striking.

With that in mind, I embarked on another odyssey of enquiry and reading. And what I heard about climate justice on that journey over the last week are noted below.

I heard that insured losses arising from catastrophic events rose from $74,000,000,000 per annum between 2008 and 2018 to $123,000,000,000 per annum in the last five years. [2]

I heard that the IEA’s “preliminary estimates for 2022 point to global subsidies doubling from the previous year to an all-time high of USD 1 trillion. In 2021, rebounding fossil fuel prices and energy had already lifted fossil fuel consumption subsidies to USD 532 billion, around 20% above 2019’s pre-pandemic levels.”[14]

I heard that “in February, BP announced it was now aiming for a 20% to 30% cut [in its emissions reduction targets] so it could produce more oil and gas and extend the life of existing fossil fuel projects.”[11]

I heard that only 14% of losses associated with catastrophe arise from earthquakes, volcanoes or terrorism. The other 86% relates to atmospheric processes being supercharged by greenhouse gas emissions.[2]

I heard that 200,000,000 people have been forced to leave their homes since 2008 due to fire and flood associated with climate change.

I heard that 350,000,000 people living in megacities will suffer from severe heat stress by 2050.

I heard that disease, rising seas, reduced crop yields, and other harms driven by climate change will likely have a major deleterious impact on the economy by 2050 unless the world sharply reduces greenhouse gas emissions in the near term, according to a number of studies, including a study by the Carbon Disclosure Project and a study by insurance giant Swiss Re. The Swiss Re assessment found that annual output by the world economy will be reduced by $23 trillion annually, unless greenhouse gas emissions are adequately mitigated.[3]

I heard that Middle Income countries (MICs) are home to 75% of the world population (6,000,000,000 of us) and 62% of the poor. Climate justice for MICs is vital to successful Climate Change mitigation. [4]

I heard that uninsured losses, to infrastructure, uninsured property and loss of economic productivity are far greater than insured losses – by a factor of 3:1. These uninsured losses are borne by governments, communities and individuals not corporations. The global losses EVERY YEAR arising from catastrophes is valued as $370,000,000,000.[2]

I heard that physics imposes hard limits on the efficiency of processes. There is no current limit on the sufficiency of demand (or desire). Unlimited growth is incompatible with a circular economy.[9]

I heard that since 2008, publications, especially from practitioners and consultancies, have revised the 4Rs of the circular economy (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Recover) to 1R (Recycle). Reduce has become increasingly unfashionable. [12] This is greenwash.

I heard that material use (and emergy) must flatline and pollution fall to zero to achieve sustainability (even at our currently degraded state).[9]

I heard the question posed: “If Electric Vehicles are the answer, what was the question?”[7]

I heard that that the impact of overshoot on ecosystems is rapid in onset but far slower in recovery.[15]

I heard that the forest opposite my friends’ home in Ardroe were burned to ashes in a single night. “It was the loveliest wood, full of boulders upholstered by mosses and I would never have believed they could burn like this. Some trees may survive, I hope, but so much of the rest of the ecosystem is toast – mosses, lichens, ferns, flowers, all the animals. It is eerily quiet with no birdsong.”

I heard that one 2018 study found that potential global economic gains if countries implement mitigation strategies to comply with the 2 °C target set at the Paris Agreement are in the vicinity of US$17 trillion per year up to 2100 compared to a very high emission scenario.[3]

I heard that individuals who lack the personal capacity to make a change have an ethical responsibility to affiliate with larger bodies such as unions, pressure groups, religions etc to achieve efficacy.[8]

I heard that glass & metal can be recycled without degradation (provided suitable energy inputs). Plastic and paper degrade rapidly through recycles.[9]

I heard that temporal discounting is based on a presumption that future generations will be better off than present generations and therefore can afford the hit. This is based on the presumption of continuing growth. [3] This is bullshit!

I heard that the UK government believes “trying to unpick our history is not the right way forward” with respect to slavery reparations to the countries of the Caribbean.[10]

I heard that “five pension funds – Nest, the Universities Pension Scheme, LGPS Central, Brunel Pension Partnership and Border to Coast – are concerned that the new [emissions] targets put BP financially at risk because the company’s fossil fuel projects are likely to lose value as the world moves towards net zero emissions.”[11]

I heard that over 90% of BP shareholders supported BP’s current strategy. [The dissenting pension funds only constitute 1% of BP’s stock.] [11]

I heard that the WEIRD countries –Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic- -– will be directly affected by the success or failure of Middle Income Countries to mitigate and adapt.[4]

I heard that levels of insurance vary from continent to continent, culture to culture, and that most of those most vulnerable to climate catastrophes are uninsured.[2]

I heard that democracies are conditioned to short-termism which is maladapted for dealing with processes and impacts on a decadal timescale such as climate change.

I heard that “[t]he Kaya identity is a mathematical identity stating that the total emission level of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide can be expressed as the product of four factors: human population, GDP per capita, energy intensity (per unit of GDP), and carbon intensity (emissions per unit of energy consumed).”[15]

I heard that extreme poverty is defined as $1.90/ day.

I heard that “The health benefits of meeting climate goals substantially outweigh the costs of action. According to Andrew Haines at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine the health benefits of phasing out fossil fuels measured in money (estimated by economists using the value of life for each country) are substantially more than the cost of achieving the 2 degree C goal of the Paris Agreement. [15]

I heard that there will be ‘winners and losers’ during this century in terms of Climate Change. [5] In fact, there will only be losers.

I heard that a barrel of oil is equivalent to approximately 11 years of human labour.[6]

I heard that “Courteney Keatinge, senior director for ESG research at Glass Lewis, said [her] company does not see BP’s actions to reduce its climate targets as a financial risk because the world will continue to use oil and gas past 2050. We are not operating under a net zero 2050 scenario, the demand is going to be there [in 2050], people will be flying planes and heating their homes.” [11]

I heard that, based on human labour rates of $20/hr, a barrel of oil should be worth $200,000.[6] Of course, at $1.90 a day, it’s only worth about $3000.

I heard that that there are greater disparities in wealth than in income.[7]

I heard that the intuitive moral foundations of human beings are based on a 5 dimensions : Harm/Care; Fairness/Reciprocity; Authority/Respect; Ingroup/Loyalty; and Purity/Divinity. To this, libertarians subsequently proposed a 6th: Freedom/Oppression. [11]

I heard that in a process or randomised exchange of an abstract token – like money – statistical dynamics will generate inequality characterised by a Gibb distribution for the 90% but switches to a pareto distribution for the 10%: this means that the upper decile has a ‘thicker tail’ than expected..[7]

I heard that it might take terrestrial biomes 60 years after peak emissions to recover. And that marine biomes will take even longer. This does not take in account extinctions or irreversible tipping points. [15]

I heard that return on equity is indexed to productivity: and productivity will degrade in response to climate shocks. But that impacts on 30 year equity returns will be uneven.[5]

I heard that “there is a hard limit on the efficiency of photovoltaic cells of about 35 percent because of the physical properties of the semiconductors that constitute them; in practice few exceed 20 percent for economic and pragmatic reasons. The power generation of large wind farms is limited to about one watt per square meter as a simple yet utterly unavoidable physical consequence of wake effects. The awesome exponential increase in computing power of the past five decades will end by about 2025 since it is physically impossible to make the transistors on the computer chip, already roughly 5 percent of the size of the coronavirus, much smaller.” [9]

I heard that the impact of a major cyclone on an economy is around a 3% loss of GDP 20 years later and the impact of repeated ‘extreme events’ will result in economies that cannot recover.[13]

I heard that, since markets are not perfectly competitive, do not have complete information and experience delays in response, capitalist markets are intrinsically unstable.[7]

I heard that EON – a major energy producer – are promoting a meditation app to mitigate the ‘negativity’ folk feel when thinking about climate change.

I heard that the ‘average’ US citizen consumes 61 barrels of oil equivalent per annum – equivalent to the work of 450 fossil ‘slaves; [6]

I heard that “Wiedmann et al., 2015 did a careful accounting of the material footprint, including those embedded in international trade, for several nations. In the 1990–2008 period covered by the study, no country achieved a planned, deliberate economy-wide decoupling for a sustained length of time. Claims by the Global North to the contrary conceal the substantial offshoring of its production, and the associated ecological devastation, to the Global South.”[9]

I heard that “It is estimated that on average a 1% increase in inequality lowers GDP by 0.6% to 1.1%[1]. As in the company context, a just transition is not just a fair and equitable approach to climate goals, it is also the right way to ensure that transition is rewarding for the companies and countries going on that journey.” [5]

I heard that “The consequences of overshooting 2°C for the survival of species have been neglected by policymakers. […] Analysis indicates that it cannot be assumed that life will simply recover once temperatures fall below 2°C again. […] 3,953 species will have their entire population exposed to temperatures outside the range they evolved in for more than 60 consecutive years[14]