Climate change, energy rights, and equality

Abstract

It is now widely recognized that the Earth's atmosphere is undergoing profound changes. The most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that temperatures have increased in the last hundred years. It writes, for example, that “[t]he total temperature increase from 1850–1899 to 2001–2005 is 0.76°C ± 0.19°C,” adding ominously that “[t]he rate of warming averaged over the last 50 years (0.13°C ± 0.03°C per decade) is nearly twice that for the last 100 years.” In addition to this, temperatures are projected to increase in the future. All of the six scenarios considered by the IPCC found that temperatures will rise by 2090–2099 as compared to the temperatures between 1980 and 1999. According to the best estimate of the B1 scenario, temperatures will increase by 1.8°C. If on the other hand we turn to the A1F1 scenario, its best estimate is that temperatures will increase by 4.0°C. And if we examine the “likely range,” then the lower limit is 1.1°C and the higher limit is 6.4°C. Sea levels, too, are projected to increase. According to one scenario (the B1 scenario), sea levels are projected to rise by 0.18–0.38 meters and according to another (the A1FI scenario), the increase is projected to be 0.26–0.59 meters. These projections, it is important to add, do not include “future rapid dynamical changes in ice flow.” They omit, that is, the massive sea-level rises that might occur because of the melting of ice sheets.

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