Paul G. Harris. "China's Road to Destruction: Following the West on Global Warming." Global Asia, vol. 3, no. 4 (Winter 2008): 88-95.
Since China's opening to the world three decades ago, it has become intimately connected to the world, and Chinese society has been transformed. While this has resulted in many benefits for China and its people, not least because millions of them have escaped dire poverty, there has been a price to pay for the country's rise. Coinciding with China's economic rise, the country has rapidly become the world's epicenter of environmental destruction, with most of its waterways polluted, its cities choking in smog, and its people suffering the effects of severe ecological destruction of all kinds. It would be bad enough if the environmental effects of China's rise were restricted to its own borders. Alas, this is not the case. Increasingly, Asia and the wider world are feeling the effects of China's rapid economic growth as an expanding proportion of its population joins the global consumer culture. Indeed, China has surpassed the United States in its impact on the health of the Earth as its economy and changing lifestyles draw in huge quantities of raw materials and commodities and consequently release pollution in prodigious quantities. The most profound environmental consequence of these developments is China's contribution to climate change.
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Paul G. Harris. "The Glacial Politics of Climate Change." Cambridge Review of International Affairs, vol. 21, no. 4 (December 2008): 455-464.
Climate change is now a mainstream part of the international political agenda. Indeed, for anyone interested in, and concerned about, international affairs, few issues are more important. Climate change is not solely a technical issue to be resolved by scientists, but a political issue with political implications at all levels of global governance. Consequently, climate change has been the subject of three decades of diplomacy, and it is now a major concern of governments, international organizations, businesses and non-governmental organizations, as well as increasing numbers of people around the world. But as the problem has grown in prominence, so have predictions of its adverse impacts, many of which are being felt today. Political responses have dramatically failed to keep up with the accelerating pace of climate change. Given the need to act very aggressively to limit and cope with climate change and its effects, a question arises: Why has more not been done? The purpose of this collection of essays is to help answer that question by revealing and applying some of the latest thinking about climate change in international affairs, and to explore how various proposals for tackling it will affect interstate relations in coming years. In this introduction I set the stage for the essays to follow by (1) recounting recent assessments of how climate change affects the world and (2) summarizing the history of interstate responses to those assessments.
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Paul G. Harris. "Constructing the Climate Regime." Cambridge Review of International Affairs, vol. 21, no. 4 (December 2008): 671-672.
What is it about climate change that has caused governments to react so slowly? One answer is found in ideas about climate change and their effect on politics. The notion that ideas matter in international affairs is not new, as reflected in the constructivist literature cited in preceding essays. In the case of climate change, problems lie in the multiple identities it evokes. For example, some officials view climate change as a minor issue, less important than other concerns. Alternatively, some people and governments recognize that in the medium and long-term climate change will have profoundly adverse consequences. For them, it is a priority. For other officials, climate change is about environmental stewardship or even morality, and many nongovernmental actors—alongside developing world governments—view it as a matter of fairness. In short, the spectrum of views on climate change is very wide. What is more, some people see climate change from many perspectives: it may be simultaneously perceived as a short-term economic concern for one’s own state, a question of international distributive justice in the medium term, and a vital matter of national and global security in the long term.
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Paul G. Harris. "Bringing the In-Between Back In: Foreign Policy in Global Environmental Politics." Politics & Policy, vol. 36, no. 6 (December 2008): 914-943.
Many environmental problems are transnational in their causes, consequences, and/or solutions. The increasing pace of global environmental destruction suggests that research on policies to address these problems has proved to be inadequate to the task. One possible way to enhance our understanding of global environmental politics and policy is to look more carefully at what goes on between and across the international and domestic aspects of it: to look at environmental foreign policy. This article describes foreign policy in the context of global environmental politics and discusses the potential utility of foreign policy analysis to help scholars and policy makers to better explore, comprehend, and possibly mitigate the human impact on the environment. Examples are drawn from the cases of China, Japan, and the United States.
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Paul G. Harris. "Climate Change and Global Citizenship." Law & Policy, vol. 30, no. 4 (October 2008): 481-501.
The international climate change regime has failed. Even the most optimistic assessment of action to limit greenhouse pollution in the coming few decades will not prevent calamitous changes in Earth's climate. Arguments for international—that is, interstate—justice that have permeated international negotiations on climate change have been insufficient in fostering robust action by states. Indeed, by diverting all responsibility to states, focusing on international justice has not addressed consumption and pollution by hundreds of millions of affluent people around the world, including many millions living within developing states that have no treaty obligations to limit nationwide pollution. Increasingly, however, it is these individuals that matter: more and more of them who are not now subject to any climate-related legal obligations are able to afford lifestyles that lead to greenhouse gas emissions and more climate change. This is especially true given the very rapid increase in the numbers of affluent people in the developing world. Bearing this in mind, this essay goes beyond the still important questions of international climate justice to explore cosmopolitan or global climate justice. Global justice demands that affluent individuals in both affluent and poor states do much more to limit their pollution of the atmosphere. By being good global citizens, capable persons can help states start the world on a path to reducing the severity of climate change.
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Paul G. Harris. "Green or Brown? Environmental Attitudes and Governance in Greater China." Nature & Culture, vol. 3, no. 2 (Autumn 2008): 151-182.
China is experiencing profound adverse environmental changes, many of them driven – and all exacerbated – by rapid economic growth. Attitudes toward the environment in China are ambiguous. Nevertheless, these attitudes are indicators of how the Chinese view the natural environment and how they are likely to behave toward it and respond to efforts to protect it. They are also important precursors to actions by the Chinese government to address environmental problems that affect the rest of the world. Environmental awareness and attitudes are associated with individuals' educational level, socio-economic status, living environment and exposure to media. By understanding the Chinese view of the environment and the degree to which the Chinese prioritize it (or not) relative to other important issues, Chinese and international policymakers and stakeholders can enhance their capacity to perhaps start shifting these attitudes, values and behaviours toward those that might do less harm to the environment of the Chinese and the world. This essay reviews findings on environmental awareness, attitudes and behaviours, and makes some observations on their implications for environmental governance in China. Information is drawn from Chinese survey data, secondary Chinese-language sources and related tertiary literature.
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Paul G. Harris. "Implementing Climate Justice." Journal of Global Ethics, vol. 4, no. 2 (August 2008): 121-140.
For over two decades, international environmental equity – the fair and just sharing of the burdens associated with environmental changes – has been the subject of much debate by philosophers, activists and diplomats concerned about climate change. It has been manifested in many international environmental agreements, notably the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol. The question arises as to whether it is being put into practice in this context. Are the requirements of international environmental equity merely words and principles in international instruments, or are they having a practical effect on the policies of state governments? This article aims to start answering these questions. It examines whether the European Union (EU) and its member states are sharing the burdens of climate change. The article introduces equity in the context of the climate change agreements and looks at some normative and practical considerations. It suggests that Europe has been a leader on international equity in the climate change negotiations over the last decade, and it points to what European states and the EU have done to take on some of the burdens of climate change. Europe's actions are briefly assessed from practical and normative perspectives. Europe is doing more than any other part of the world to address climate change and to share the burdens associated with it. Nevertheless, Europe is not doing as much to address this problem as it can and should do. Both practical and normative imperatives demand more urgent action by Europe to implement climate equity.
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Paul G. Harris. "Climate Change and the Impotence of International Environmental Law: Seeking a Cosmopolitan Cure." Penn State Environmental Law Review, vol. 16, no. 2 (Winter 2008): 323-368.
The latest scientific findings confirm that the international treaties designed to prevent dangerous changes to the Earth's climate are failing. Efforts by diplomats to incorporate interstate social and distributive justice into these treaties and the broader climate change regime have been terribly insufficient in addressing the growing menace of global warming. While serious consideration of interstate justice has been a practical and ethical prerequisite for garnering broader participation in the climate change regime, doing so has diverted all responsibility to states, thus failing to discourage consumption and pollution by capable people. This includes the tens of millions of people in the developing world whose governments have no obligation to limit nationwide pollution. The bulk of literature on justice and climate change, and all related treaties, speak of obligations of states to act (or not) to limit their emissions of greenhouse gases, or to act in ways to mitigate the effects of these emissions, and to assist poorer states to help them develop in less polluting ways. There is almost no discussion of the obligations of individuals. Increasingly, however, individuals matter: more and more of them, who are not now subject to any legally binding climate-related obligations, are able to afford lifestyles that lead to unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions and more climate change. This is especially true given the rapid increase in the numbers of affluent people in the developing world. Given this poor fit between existing international environmental law on climate change and the problem it is intended to address, this article assesses whether individuals should be brought into the equation. It goes around the still important question of interstate climate justice to explore what could be viewed as a possible cure for the impotence of extant international law: cosmopolitan climate justice. Cosmopolitan justice can locate more obligation to act on climate change, and to aid those people who will suffer from it, in capable individuals in both affluent and poor states.
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