Resolving the climate crisis depends on achieving a mutually acceptable understanding of ‘what is fair’ between developed and developing countries.Governments are negotiating their part in the solution on what they perceive to be fair. It is critical that the people who elect these Governments have an understanding of these basic issues. “Two Degrees” will play an important role in raising the awareness of audiences of the need for climate justice.  Without it, no solution to the climate crisis is possible.

The issue of climate justice lies at the heart of the climate crisis, and its lack of resolution is one of the reasons that climate negotiations have gone on for years without producing any substantial results.  The wealth of developed countries was generated by following a high carbon emitting development pathway.  It is the developed world’s responsibility to provide the funding and technology transfer to enable the developing world to develop in a low carbon climate friendly manner that does not repeat the mistakes made in the developed countries.  The over-consumption of the developed world will also need to be addressed if the climate crisis is to be avoided.

To a naive observer, resolving the crisis of global climate change should be a matter of rational measurement of the atmosphere, giving equal shares of its capacity for absorbing greenhouse gases to all humans and assigning responsibility to individual countries based on what they have put into it. It is, after all, a basic rule of civil justice, and even kindergarten ethics, that those who created a mess should be responsible for cleaning up their share of the mess. Yet internationally, this simple question of who is to blame for the problem leads to a hornet’s nest of contentious issues.

In many cases, countries hold genuinely different perceptions of fairness because of their highly disparate positions on the development ladder. Some poor nations, for example, believe that they are unjustly suffering the consequences of the North’s profligate consumption. Others believe that they are entitled to pursue ‘cheap’ economic growth using fossil fuels and other natural resources at hand, since now-wealthy countries did the same at their early stages of development.

Some rich nations have suggested that if they continue to bear the weight of sustaining global economic growth and international financial stability, it would be both unfair and unrealistic to expect them to make sharp and immediate reductions in their carbon emissions. Making matters more complicated, oil exporters argue that in the absence of legal text that provides for their compensation and diversification into less carbon-intensive sectors, they cannot reasonably be expected to participate in any agreement.

Small island states take an entirely different view; they believe that a ‘fair agreement’ would immediately stabilize the climate, forestall the complete destruction of island nations and cultures, and address their basic economic needs and extraordinary vulnerability to climate-related stress and sea level rise. Nations in cold locations, with higher heating bills, and countries with large land areas have also argued that their special ‘national circumstances’—which predispose them towards higher emission levels from transportation of goods and people—must be taken into consideration in crafting a fair deal for all nations. Still others argue that a distinction must be drawn between ‘survival’ and ‘luxury’ emissions.

We live in a world that is very unequal, with wide differences in ways of thinking and notions of fairness. If the inequalities between developed and developing countries are not addressed then a global climate agreement is unlikely to work. It also means including related development issues such as trade, investment, debt, and intellectual property rights agreements.

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