Religion & Eco-Theology: Problems of Climate Change

In this blog, I explore the intersection of religion and eco-theology in addressing climate change’s ethical and spiritual dimensions. As environmental degradation intensifies, religious traditions and theological frameworks increasingly engage with ecological issues, offering diverse stewardship, sustainability, and justice perspectives. I analyze the contributions of major world religions—Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Indigenous traditions—toward fostering ecological consciousness and moral responsibility. It also examines eco-theological movements that challenge anthropocentrism and promote an ethic of care for creation. The blog argues that religious worldviews can significantly shape responses to the climate crisis, providing moral imperatives for environmental advocacy while facing challenges in mobilizing global action across diverse belief systems. By integrating ecological concerns with theological principles, eco-theology presents a critical approach to addressing climate change’s urgent moral and existential challenges. The ideas are crystalized in these 57 Points.

Problems of Climate Change Climate change has been fairly described as a “super wicked problem” because of its even further exacerbating features:

 

 

(1) These features include the fact that time is not costless, so the longer it takes to address the problem, the harder it will be.

(2) As greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase exponentially larger and potentially more economically disruptive, emissions reductions will be necessary in the future to bring atmospheric concentrations down to desired levels.

(3) Future technological advances would likewise have to achieve exponentially more significant reductions to compensate for lost time. The climate change that happens in the interim may cause sufficient economic disruption, for instance, by slowing growth rates, to make it much harder to accomplish the necessary technological innovation. Another area for climate change improvement is that those in the best position to address the problem are those who caused it and those with the most minor immediate incentive to act within that necessary shorter timeframe.

(4) The significant sources of greenhouse gas emissions include many of the world’s most powerful nations, such as the United States, which are not only reluctant to embrace restrictions on their economies but are least susceptible to demands by other nations that they do so. In addition, by a perverse irony, they are also the nations least likely to suffer the most from climate change that will unavoidably happen in the nearer term

(5) A third feature is the need for an existing institutional framework of government that can develop, implement, and maintain the laws necessary to address the problem of climate change’s tremendous spatial and temporal scope.

(6)  Climate change is ultimately a global problem. However, there is an absence of any global lawmaking institution with a jurisdictional reach and legal authority that matches the scope of the problem.

 (7) Each of these features relates to the science of climate change, human nature, and the nature of lawmaking institutions. They present significant obstacles to the enactment of climate change legislation in the first instance and its successful implementation over time. Only the Science of Climate Change will be discussed in detail here. The science of climate change has several distinct features, including the physics and chemistry underlying climate change and the resulting impacts of such change on humankind and the global ecosystem. The Greenhouse Effect Although ultimately riddled with complexities, the basic science of climate change is pretty straightforward. As the concentration of certain chemicals in the atmosphere increases, the amount of heat from sunlight in the form of infrared radiation that would otherwise reflect off the Earth’s surface and radiate back into space is captured within the atmosphere. This process works like a “greenhouse,” which is why it is popularly referred to as a “greenhouse effect” and also why those chemicals that capture higher concentrations of heat are known as “greenhouse gases.”

(8) Carbon dioxide (CO2) is one of several significant greenhouse gases, and a CO2 molecule’s potential to capture heat is far less than others, such as methane, by several orders of magnitude.

(9) The reason CO2 is nonetheless the subject of so much attention is because the natural concentrations in the atmosphere are relatively small compared to the volume of CO2 emissions now being added by human activities.

(10) Although the largest source of CO2 emissions historically was volcanic activity, fossil-fuel burning alone adds fifteen times that volcanoes supplied yearly, and that ratio is rapidly increasing.

(11) The now-famous “hockey-stick” graphs depicting the dramatic and accelerating rise in CO2 atmospheric concentrations during the last one hundred years and the corresponding rise in global temperatures illustrate the essential relationship between CO2 and global warming as a matter of scientific cause and effect.

(12)  Exacerbating the additions of CO2 to the atmosphere from classic sources of pollution, especially power plants and motor vehicles, are other human activities that dramatically eliminate nature’s ability to take CO2 out of the atmosphere. Several natural “sinks” can decrease greenhouse gas concentrations by taking those gases out of the atmosphere.

(13) If those sinks increased in capacity while the sources increased their emissions, there would be no net greenhouse effect. But the opposite is happening: the number and capacity of those natural sinks are decreasing.

(14)  For instance, plants are a significant sink of CO2.

(15) Plants absorb CO2 and release oxygen in a biochemical process (photosynthesis) necessary to produce energy: the fascinating converse of the process by which animals breathe in oxygen and release CO2. Plant absorption of CO2 has historically served as a significant means of keeping CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere in check.

(16) Because development activities throughout the globe have cleared massive landscapes of vegetation, including some of the densest tropical rainforests, the ecosystem’s ability to reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations has dramatically decreased at the very moment it is most needed. Even worse, those same development activities emit huge volumes of CO2 gas into the atmosphere by burning the vegetation, which releases the CO2 otherwise absorbed within the vegetation’s chemical makeup.

(17) Finally, the greenhouse effect is a global phenomenon, not one that occurs in some parts of the world and not others. Atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are uniform throughout the atmosphere;

(18) They do not differ across distinct parts of the globe. Accordingly, a molecule of carbon dioxide added by a source in New Zealand has the same effect on CO2 concentrations as a molecule added by a source in Kansas, Brazil, or Sweden.

(19) What are the related lawmaking challenges? The first is that both sources of greenhouse gases and potential sinks of greenhouse gases are relevant. Laws concerned with addressing the greenhouse effect need to consider the possibility of reducing sources while also increasing the capacity of sinks—the second. The lawmaking challenge is that any effective climate change legislation must include domestic controls, but no domestic legislation is enough standing alone. Even if one or many nations decrease their emissions rates or their destruction of carbon sinks, those efforts are susceptible to being overtaken by activities occurring within another nation’s borders.

(20) Of particular significance in the United States, a third lawmaking challenge relates to the need for land use controls. Land use controls are federal environmental law’s “third rail” because of the related specter of federal interference with state and local land use planning. The prospect of such federal disruption of state and local governmental prerogatives to determine land use development patterns has derailed several efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over the years to address air and water pollution caused by particular land uses.

(21)  One of the distinctive features of the science of climate change is the stock/flow nature of the physical and chemical processes underlying it. A stock/flow relationship is counterintuitive because it does not operate like the simple, short-term, more linear relationship between cause and effect that most people (and lawmakers) assume is at work when they contemplate pollution and the options for its regulation. Unfortunately, climate change now cannot be avoided simply by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, much the same way that one could stop a teakettle from boiling by just turning down the stove. The relevant atmospheric controls for temperature are not so straightforward.

(22) The kind of stock/flow relationship that prompts climate change is, instead, very different—climate change results from the buildup of greenhouse gases over time and centuries. Unlike the pollutants in most ecological contexts, once added to the atmosphere, greenhouse gases remain there for a very long time—not just decades or even centuries, but thousands of years. The pollutants do not naturally dissipate in significant amounts. And so long as the amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere is greater than the amount that naturally falls out yearly, greenhouse gas concentrations increase over time. Of course, that is precisely what has been happening, and at an accelerating rate.

(23) The most accessible description of the stock/flow relationship that I have encountered is to contemplate the atmosphere as the equivalent of a bathtub that has been filling with water over time because the pipe adding water into the tub is much larger than the drain coming out of the tub.

(24) In the “tub” of the atmosphere, while the symbolic emissions pipe coming in has become much more significant, the drain has become much smaller for two reasons. As discussed earlier, the first is the destruction of vegetation that would otherwise have absorbed some CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. The second is the ocean, which also provides a natural sink where some greenhouse gases like CO2 can dissolve. However, as the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have increased, the ocean’s capacity to dissolve additional greenhouse gases is diminishing because it is filling up beyond its chemical capacity to dissolve more gases.

The practical implications of such a stock/flow relationship are significant, particularly temporally. First, because the high concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere result from decades of buildup and natural drainage is very slow, those high concentrations cannot be reduced easily or quickly. It will require a decrease in the rate of emissions increases and the absolute amount each year. Even if annual emissions are reduced considerably, atmospheric concentrations will continue to increase until those increases are less than the annual drainage.

 (25) The bathtub may fill up more slowly, but the water will still rise. Finally, even if one achieves annual emissions lower than the annual drainage, it will likely take many decades to lower the atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. And until those concentrations are substantially lower, climate change will continue. For example, for every kilogram of CO2 added to the atmosphere today, one-quarter of that amount will remain there for five hundred to one thousand years, and approximately 7 percent will persist for hundreds of thousands of years.

(26) That’s a long time. However, even the stock/flow characteristic of atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gas is only half of the time lag, making redressing climate change problematic. A comparable stock/flow relationship exists in the atmosphere for the buildup of radiative heat. Just as greenhouse gas concentrations build up over lengthy periods, radiative heat does so too.

(27) For that reason, there is, in effect, not just one bathtub in the atmosphere, but two: one for greenhouse gases and one for radiative heat, with the former adding heat to the latter. And here, too, the heat builds up in the second bathtub so long as the amount of heat added is greater than the heat draining out.

(28) The practical implication of adding one more stock/flow relationship to the global warming equation is stark. It means that even once one achieves an absolute reduction of greenhouse gases, after decades of effort, one will not see any resulting decrease in heat. The decrease will occur only after the amount of heat is added, resulting from greenhouse gas concentrations getting so low that it is less than the drained heat.

(29) A reduction in additional heat will otherwise only decrease the rate of global warming increases but not result in a temperature decrease. What are the related lawmaking challenges? Here again, there are several. The first challenge is that significant reductions will be necessary. It will not be enough to slow the rate of increase or even to decrease absolute annual emissions. As just described, only if emissions are lower than drainage will greenhouse gas concentrations decrease, and even then, reduction in atmospheric heat will not occur until the net radiative heat being added by greenhouse gases is less than the amount draining out. The second challenge is that there will necessarily be a considerable lag between the time reductions in greenhouse gas emissions occur and any mitigating effect on climate change.

The time lag is, at the very least, longer than the lifetime of any adult. The upshot is that no one asked to curtail activities to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations will likely live long enough to enjoy the benefits of that curtailment. The related lawmaking implication is that many measures that can make a significant difference in current lives are adaptation rather than mitigation measures designed to reduce emissions. Much of the climate change that will occur in our lifetimes is unavoidable. We can still reduce greenhouse gas emissions to avoid accelerating even worse effects. Still, all that can do about that now-unavoidable change is address the needs of those who will be most adversely affected and develop ways to adapt to climate change that will minimize its adverse effects and perhaps take advantage of some new opportunities it presents.

A third significant challenge is that the enormous temporal dimensions of climate change, potentially crossing multiple generations, resist the easy application of the kind of cost-benefit analysis many policymakers favor for setting environmental protection standards. The proper role of cost-benefit analysis has long been debated in environmental law, with many commentators firmly in favor and others sharply critical of its efficacy and fairness.

(30) But, ignoring the tendency of climate change to raise the kinds of value conflicts that detractors of cost-benefit analysis claim it is ill-suited to measure,

(31) The temporal dimension alone renders heavy reliance on cost-benefit analysis problematic, at the very least. Proffering a discount rate for valuing costs and benefits that will be realized or avoided only centuries in the future and under completely uncertain societal conditions is heroic, foolish, or a mixture of both.

(32) However, it must provide a substantial basis for making confident policy choices today.

(33)  A final lawmaking challenge that derives from climate change’s stock/flow nature is that lawmaking delays are costly. The longer one waits, the more dramatic the necessary reductions in emissions. The reason is simple. With every year of delay, greenhouse gas concentrations and radiative heat levels increase, and no less importantly, the economic interests in maintaining increasingly high emissions rates get ever more deeply entrenched. Power plants, for instance, have long life spans. It is much harder to change direction after massive investments have been made in their construction and operation. This problem is present with many other parts of our nation’s energy infrastructure that currently depend on the emission of vast volumes of greenhouse gases.

(34) Spatial Dimension of Climate Change: Global Cause vs. Global Effect Although atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gas concentrations are uniform around the globe, the impacts of those concentrations are not similarly uniform. Hence, although the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other scientific bodies routinely refer to increases in average global temperature, that does not mean that every part of the globe will experience the same temperature increase. That “average” instead masks substantial differences in temperature increases. For some parts of the world, the increase in temperature will be much more significant than for others.

(35) Even more critical, when considered in isolation, temperature increases mask the more significant differences that result in worldwide impacts. The impacts of any increase in temperature on public health, welfare, and the environment are highly dependent on geographic location.

(36) What is a potentially beneficial increase in one part of the world could have a devastating effect elsewhere.

(37) For instance, the impact of a given temperature increase turns on factors such as how the wind blows, water flows and the Earth spins in its orbit around the sun.

(38) For those parts of the globe where water may already be scarce, an increase in temperature can quickly result in severe droughts and famines, leading to mass migrations of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people.

(39)  For those parts of the world where people live close to the ocean in low-lying elevations vulnerable to flooding, rising sea levels could wipe out entire island nations and coastal cities. And for those parts of the world where, because of preexisting higher temperatures, many of the world’s diseases originate, even higher temperatures could promote the development of new diseases and increase their ability to spread further around the globe.

(40) In other parts of the world, increased temperatures may yield some benefits, at least in the short term.

(41) In higher latitudes, an increase in temperature might lengthen the growing season and thereby offer a potential boost in agricultural productivity. (

42) Some scholars have made just that claim concerning wine production.

(43) Similarly, although higher temperatures in the Arctic may sound the death knell for certain species, such as the polar bear, and for certain native villages, melting ice could open up new passageways for marine transportation and access to energy resources.

(44) There is also a reason why the problem is defined not as “global warming” per se but as global climate change. Temperature changes are simply the first in a chain reaction of ecosystem changes.

(45) Climate changes that result from temperature changes are highly dependent on location.

(46) Some places may get more rain; other places may get less. Some places may get more damaging weather patterns; others may not. If, as some scientists suggest, changing temperatures can shift the ocean currents, such as the Gulf Stream, and melt polar ice, the variation in global impacts will be even more pronounced.

(47) To be sure, if some of the most catastrophic consequences—including dramatic sea level rises and global spread of infectious diseases—occur over the longer term, there will be significant absolute costs everywhere.

(48) But, the consequences of climate change from uniform atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases will not be the same everywhere, certainly in the near term and not in the distant future, which is another defining feature of the science of climate change.

(49) What are the related lawmaking challenges? Again, there are several, and all of them are pretty formidable. The most significant challenge is that although all parts of the world can influence global climate change, not all will suffer equally if such change occurs. Indeed, some parts of the world will suffer potentially catastrophic effects, even with a rise of just a few degrees. In contrast, other parts of the world will suffer relatively minor and may even believe they are enjoying some short-term economic benefits. Such distributional differences will make it much harder to achieve the international cooperation and coordination necessary to address the problem. 2007). But what makes addressing the problem seemingly impossible is that the parts of the world that are most directly threatened are entirely different from those that are the primary sources of greenhouse gases now in the atmosphere. Those parts of the globe that are most threatened, especially areas near the equator and of high elevation, are also some of the world’s poorest and have the least-developed governments.

(50) Populations in these areas, such as parts of Africa and Asia, often lack basic shelter, health care facilities, a diversified economy, and a government able to deliver essential social services in times of stress. Their ability to adapt to climate change is consequently minimal.

(51) In tragic contrast, the most highly industrialized nations that have emitted the vast majority of greenhouse gases over the past one hundred years—including the United States, Russia, and much of Western Europe—are located almost exclusively in the higher latitudes in the northern hemisphere.

(52) These are, somewhat perversely, the areas that are likely to suffer the least in the short term, and economic interests in these areas may even believe that they will enjoy some short-term benefits.

(53) Such nations are the most responsible for the current problems and invariably some of the most politically and economically powerful nations globally. They are consequently not readily susceptible to less powerful nations’ efforts to compel them to reduce their emissions. Because of their relative wealth, they are also more easily able to adopt adaptation measures and consequently suffer fewer immediate hardships. As a result, it will prove extremely difficult in the short run to persuade the powerful nations responsible for climate change to undertake the necessary dramatic action.

They will not perceive the benefits of doing so, in part because they will not be the ones suffering the most significant and most immediate harm. And by the time longer-term climate change begins to affect even the more powerful nations adversely—because of political destabilization caused by massive migrations, the spread of infectious diseases, dramatic changes caused by shifts in the Gulf Stream, or melting glaciers— it will be too late to take action to avoid such more significant effects. As described above, the stock/flow nature of the atmosphere precludes the everyday luxury of awaiting serious and immediate adversity before taking action.

(54) There is no scientific reason why such a geographic mismatch between cause and effect has to exist. But it does. It results from an unwittingly perverse combination of the laws of physics and chemistry with patterns of economic industrialization around the globe. No matter how unwitting, the resulting obstacle to lawmaking is enormous. Finally, there is yet one more distributional twist that makes meaningful lawmaking that much harder. Although it is the long-industrialized nations, such as the United States, Russia, and those in Western Europe, that have contributed disproportionately to greenhouse gas concentrations now in the atmosphere, there is a new set of developing nations with exploding economies that has or at least soon will surpass the developed nations in annual emissions.

(55) China has become the single largest producer of greenhouse gases, beating projections of when it would overtake the United States.

(56) India and Brazil similarly increase their emissions at accelerating rates.

(57) The related lawmaking problem is obvious. The developed nations, like the United States, are hard-pressed to dictate to countries like China and India that they should not expand their economies by increasing greenhouse gas emissions. After all, why should China and India agree to do so when the United States is primarily responsible for existing greenhouse gas concentrations and has already enjoyed decades of economic prosperity and military superiority as a result of greenhouse gas–producing industries that still produce far greater per capita emissions than sources in either China or India? At the same time, developed nations like the United States are less likely to take unilateral action to reduce their emissions if they believe that if they do, the rapidly developing nations will surpass them in economic strength and simply replace U.S. greenhouse gas emissions with their own, thereby not reducing climate change at all.

 Notes:

(1). See Kelly Levin et al., Playing It Forward: Path Dependency, Progressive Incrementalism, and the “Super Wicked” Problem of Global Climate Change 8–10 (July 7, 2007) (unpublished manuscript, on file with author), available at http://environment.yale.edu/ uploads/publications/2007levinbernsteincashoreauldWicked-Problems.pdf (“Although the challenges of climate change and many other complex environmental and social problems are captured by the above characteristics, climate poses three additional features that render it a ‘super wicked problem.'”).

(2). See id., at 8–9.

(3). See infra notes 39–42 and accompanying text. R

 (4). See Levin et al., supra note 10, at 9. R

(5). See infra text accompanying notes 59–66. R

(6). See Levin et al., supra note 10, at 9; infra text accompanying note 42.

(7). See William W. Buzbee, Recognizing the Regulatory Commons: A Theory of Regulatory Gaps, 89 IOWA L. REV. 1, 13 (2003) (“Global warming also confronts no matching or commensurate political or legal regime that . . . is logically situated to take the lead and address global warming’s causes and anticipated harms.”).

(8). See INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE, Historical Overview of Climate Change Science, in CLIMATE CHANGE 2007: THE PHYSICAL SCIENCE BASIS 93, 103, 105–06, 115 (Susan Solomon et al. eds., 2007) [hereinafter IPCC Historical Overview], available at http:/ /www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter1.pdf (providing a historical overview of scientists’ understanding of the greenhouse effect); INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE, Technical Summary, in CLIMATE CHANGE 2007: THE PHYSICAL SCIENCE BASIS 19, 23–28 (Susan Solomon et al. eds., 2007) [hereinafter IPCC Technical Summary], available at http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-ts.pdf (providing a technical summary of greenhouse gases); see also R.T. Pierrehumbert, Climate Change: A Catastrophe in Slow Motion, 6 CHI. J. INT’L L. 573, 573–74 (2006) (discussing human-induced emissions).

(9). See Jennifer Woodward, Turning Down the Heat: What United States Laws Can Do to Help Ease Global Warming, 39 AM. U. L. REV. 203, 210 (1989) (“In amounts comparable 25 Soboyejo, Josephine Olatomi, Ph.D. to carbon dioxide, other gases also add to the greenhouse effect. Although scientists have identified at least a dozen trace greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the most significant gases are chlorofluorocarbons, methane, nitrous oxide, and tropospheric ozone.”) (citations omitted).

(10). See Pierrehumbert, supra note 17, at 574–75 (“It is because there is relatively little R carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that human economic activity has the prospect of doubling its concentration within the twenty-first century, with greater increases in sight after that.”); see also IPCC Historical Overview, supra note 17, at 108 (concluding that “emissions R resulting from human activities are substantially increasing the atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gases: CO2, CH4, CFCs, N2O”); IPCC Technical Summary, supra note 17, at 23–27 (providing technical summary of increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, R methane and nitrous oxide); National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, Global Warming: Frequently Asked Questions (Aug. 20, 2008), http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html#Q2 (“The global concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere today far exceeds the natural range over the last 650,000 years of 180 to 300 ppmv. According to the IPCC Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES), by the end of the 21st century, we could expect to see carbon dioxide concentrations of anywhere from 490 to 1260 ppm (75–350% above the pre-industrial concentration”).).

(11). Pierrehumbert, supra note 17, at 576.

(12)..  See INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE, Changes in Atmospheric Constituents and Radioactive Forcing, in CLIMATE CHANGE 2007: THE PHYSICAL SCIENCE BASIS 99, 134 fig.2.2 (Susan Solomon et al. eds., 2007); see also David R. Hodas, State Law Responses to Global Warming: Is It Constitutional to Think Globally and Act Locally?,   PACE ENVTL. L. REV. 53, 61 (2003) (detailing the human connection to the rise in carbon dioxide levels since 1900).

(13). See Karen N. Scott, The Day After Tomorrow: Ocean CO2 Sequestration and the Future of Climate Change, 18 GEO. INT’L ENVTL. L. REV. 57, 58–59 (2005) (discussing the ocean as “both a natural sink and a reservoir for CO2”).

(14). See, e.g., id. at 59 (“[T]he response of the ocean carbon cycle to changes in atmospheric CO2 levels is slow, being limited by both chemical and physical factors.”).

(15). See id. at 58 (stating that terrestrial vegetation is a natural mechanism that removes CO2 from the atmosphere); Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, Roles of Forests in Climate Change (Feb. 4, 2009), http://www.fao.org/forestry/53459/ en/.

(16). See INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE, Couplings Between Changes in the Climate System and Biogeochemistry, in CLIMATE CHANGE 2007: THE PHYSICAL SCIENCE BASIS 514 (Susan Solomon et al. eds., 2007) (discussing plants’ role in stabilizing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations).

(17). See Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, supra note see R also INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE, LAND USE, LAND-USE CHANGE, AND FORESTRY 207–08 (Robert T. Watson et al. eds., 2000) (“Burning . . . represents a shortterm transfer of carbon from grassland ecosystems to the atmosphere . . . . Increasing fire frequency over time tends to reduce grass biomass production . . . result[ing] 26 Soboyejo, Josephine Olatomi, Ph.D. in declines in soil carbon pools . . . .”); INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE, Changes in Atmospheric Constituents and in Radiative Forcing, in CLIMATE CHANGE 2007: THE PHYSICAL SCIENCE BASIS 135 (Susan Solomon et al. eds., 2007) [hereinafter IPCC Changes]; IPCC Technical Summary, supra note 17, at 26; Yadvinder Malhi et al., Climate Change, Deforestation, R and the Fate of the Amazon, 319 SCIENCE 169, 170–71 (2008) (discussing the effect of forest burning in the Amazon); Marcio Santilli et al., ‘Tropical Deforestation and the Kyoto Protocol, 71 CLIMATIC CHANGE 267, 269 (2005); Tom Knudson, ‘Green’ Storage in Forests May Be Going Up in Smoke; Study: Wildfires Emit More Global Warming Gases than Thought, SACRAMENTO BEE, Mar. 12, 2008, at A3 (discussing the implications of the greenhouse gases emitted from California wildfires on the state’s efforts to reduce emissions from human activity).

(18). The impact of CO2 emissions on climate change turns on atmospheric concentrations of CO2 in the troposphere, which become uniform around the globe. See IPCC Changes, supra note 26, at 137–40; A. Denny Ellerman, Tradable Permits for Greenhouse Gas R Emissions: A Primer with Particular Reference to Europe, 69 MIT JOINT PROGRAM ON SCI. & POL’Y GLOBAL CHANGE 2 (2000), available at http://web.mit.edu/globalchange/www/ MITJPSPGC_Rpt69.pdf (“A ton of CO2 emitted or abated in Bombay will have the same effect on climate as a ton emitted or abated in Buenos Aires, Chicago, Kiev, or Stockholm.”); see also PETER FOLGER, THE CARBON CYCLE: IMPLICATIONS FOR CLIMATE CHANGE AND CONGRESS 2 (Congressional Research Service Report, Mar. 13, 2008), available at http:// http://www.usembassy.at/en/download/pdf/carbon_cycle.pdf (“[W]here fossil fuels are burned makes relatively little difference to the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere; emissions in any one region affect the concentration of CO2 everywhere else in the atmosphere.”)

(19). See sources cited supra note 27.

(20). China has recently passed the United States as the single largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions, and India and Brazil are also accelerating their emissions rates. See infra notes 65–66 and accompanying text.

(21). ROBERT V. PERCIVAL ET AL., ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATION: LAW, SCIENCE, AND POLICY 716–18 (5th ed. 2006).

(22). See John D. Sterman & Linda Booth Sweeney, Understanding Public Complacency About Climate Change: Adults’ Mental Models of Climate Change Violate Conservation of Matter, 80 CLIMATIC CHANGE 213, 214–15, 222–28 (2007).

(23). See Pierrehumbert, supra note 17, at 576–77.

(24). Sterman & Sweeney, supra note 31, at 235.

(25). Id. at 215–16. 3

(26). Pierrehumbert, supra note 17, at 577.

(27). See IPCC Summary for Policymakers, PHYSICAL SCIENCE, supra note 7, at 13.  27 Soboyejo, Josephine Olatomi, Ph.D.

(28). Sterman & Sweeney, supra note 31, at 215; see also IPCC Summary for Policymakers, R PHYSICAL SCIENCE, supra note 7, at 13 (referring to model experiments showing that even if R all radiative forcing agents remained constant at the 2000 levels, further warming would take place primarily as a result of slow ocean response).

(29). See Sterman & Sweeney, supra note 31, at 215 (noting that warming would continue R until both greenhouse gas concentrations fell and the global mean temperature rose enough to restore net radiative balance). \\server05\productn\C\CRN\94-5\CRN503.txt unknown Seq: 15 7-JUL-09

(30). See generally MATTHEW D. ADLER & ERIC A. POSNER, COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS: LEGAL, ECONOMIC, AND PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES (2001) (reproducing a series of articles offering contrasting perspectives on the efficacy of cost-benefit analysis). (31). See, e.g., RICHARD L. REVESZ & MICHAEL A. LIVERMORE, RETAKING RATIONALITY: HOW COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS CAN BETTER PROTECT THE ENVIRONMENT AND OUR HEALTH 55–147 (2008) (detailing the “fallacies” of cost-benefit analysis); Frank Ackerman & Lisa Heinzerling, Pricing the Priceless: Cost-Benefit Analysis of Environmental Protection, 150 U. PA. L. REV. 1553, 1562–81 (2002) (showing that the attempt of cost-benefit analysis to put prices on priceless values and to discount harms makes it a poor way to evaluate environmental protection regulation); David M. Driesen, Distributing the Costs of Environmental, Health, and Safety Protection: The Feasibility Principle, Cost-Benefit Analysis, and Regulatory Reform, 32 B.C. ENVTL. AFF. L. REV. 1, 64–94 (2005) (arguing that the principle requiring maximum feasible emissions reductions is a more appropriate method for considering costs in the context of most technology-based standards)

(32). For a discussion of the challenges of discounting in the context of climate change, see ERIC A. POSNER, CASS SUNSTEIN & DAVID WEISBACH, CLIMATE CHANGE JUSTICE (forthcoming 2008) (manuscript at 127–45, on file with author).

(33). See Regulating Greenhouse Gas Emissions Under the Clean Air Act, 73 Fed. Reg. 44,354, 44,414–16 (proposed July 30, 2008) (describing the host of limitations of economic analysis, especially cost-benefit analysis, as applied to a problem with enormous spatial and temporal dimensions like climate change).

(34). Kelly Sims Gallagher, Acting in Time on Climate Change 9–10 (Sept. 18–19, 2008) (unpublished conference paper, presented at Acting in Time on Energy Policy Conference at Harvard University), available at http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/actingintimeonenergy/papers/gallagher-climate.pdf (describing long lifetimes of investments in energy infrastructure and impact on timing and cost of climate change policy).

(35). See IPCC Summary for Policymakers, PHYSICAL SCIENCE, supra note 7, at 9.

(36). See IPCC Summary for Policymakers, IMPACTS, supra note 7, at 11–18.

(37). See id. at 10 fig.1 (presenting a chart showing that increased temperatures will cause increased water availability in moist tropics but decreased water availability in mild, and 28 Soboyejo, Josephine Olatomi, Ph.D. some low, latitudes); INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE, Summary for Policymakers, in CLIMATE CHANGE 2007: SYNTHESIS REPORT 8–13 (The Core Writing Team et al. eds., 2007) [hereinafter IPCC Summary for Policymakers, SYNTHESIS], available at http://www. ipcc.ch/pdf/assessmentreport/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf (listing and discussing different regional impacts); Anthony J. McMichael et al., Global Climate Change, in 1 COMPARATIVE QUANTIFICATION OF HEALTH RISKS: GLOBAL AND REGIONAL BURDEN OF DISEASE ATTRIBUTABLE TO SELECTED MAJOR RISK FACTORS 1543 (Majid Ezzati et al. eds, 2004)

(38). See INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE, Frequently Asked Questions, in CLIMATE CHANGE 2007: THE PHYSICAL SCIENCE BASIS 94–97 (Susan Solomon et al. eds., 2007).

(39). See IPCC Summary for Policymakers, IMPACTS, supra note 7, at 12; IPCC Summary for R Policymakers, SYNTHESIS, supra note 46, at 8–13; McMichael et al., supra note 46.

(40). IPCC Summary for Policymakers, SYNTHESIS, supra note 46, at 8–13; see Pierrehumbert, R supra note 17, at 578–79 (describing non-uniform impacts).

(41). See INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE, Food, Fibre and Forest Products, in CLIMATE CHANGE 2007: IMPACTS, ADAPTATION AND VULNERABILITY 273, 284 (Martin Parry et al. eds., 2007), available at http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg2/ar4- wg2-chapter5.pdf; INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE, Industry, Settlement and Society, in CLIMATE CHANGE 2007: IMPACTS, ADAPTATION AND VULNERABILITY 357, 365 (Martin Parry et al. eds., 2007) [hereinafter IPCC Industry], available at http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ assessment-report/ar4/wg2/ar4-wg2-chapter7.pdf; IPCC Summary for Policymakers, IMPACTS, supra note 7, at 12.

(42). INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE, Human Health, in CLIMATE CHANGE 2007: IMPACTS, ADAPTATION AND VULNERABILITY 391, 411 (Martin Parry et al. eds., 2007), available at http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg2/ar4-wg2-chapter8. Pdf.

(43). See, e.g., A. B. Tate, Global Warming’s Impact on Wine, 12 J. OF WINE RES. 95, 9697 (2001) (suggesting potential short-term beneficial effects of higher temperatures on wine production).

(44). IPCC Summary for Policymakers, IMPACTS, supra note 7, at 15; McMichael et al., supra R note 46.

(45). See IPCC Summary for Policymakers, IMPACTS, supra note 7, at 17. (

46). See id. at 13–15. 56 See id. at 17; Pierrehumbert, supra note 17, at 578–79 (describing non-uniform R impacts).

 (47). See IPCC Summary for Policymakers, IMPACTS, supra note 7, at 11–12,17–20. (48). See supra notes 44–46 and accompanying text. 29 Soboyejo, Josephine Olatomi, Ph.D.

(49). See, e.g., IPCC Industry, supra note 50, at 365–66; INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE, Perspectives on Climate Change and Sustainability, in CLIMATE CHANGE 2007: IMPACTS, ADAPTATION AND VULNERABILITY 821 (Martin Parry et al. eds., 2007), available at http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessmentreport/ar4/wg2/ar4-wg2-chapter20.pdf; IPCC Summary for Policymakers, IMPACTS, supra note 7, at 13; see also Kathryn S. Brown, Taking Global R Warming to the People, SCIENCE MAG., Mar. 5, 1999, at 1440–41; Michael Grubb, Seeking Fair Weather: Ethics and the International Debate on Climate Change, 71 INT’L AFF. 463, 467 (1995); Paul Reiter, Climate Change and Mosquito-Borne Disease, 109 ENVTL. HEALTH PERSP. 141, 142 (2001).

 (50). See IPCC Summary for Policymakers, IMPACTS, supra note 7, at 12–13; Brown, supra R note 59, at 1441.

(51). World Resources Institute, Contributions to Global Warming; Historic Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Fossil Fuel Combustion, 1900–1999, http://earthtrends.wri.org/ maps_spatial/maps_detail_static.php?map_select=488&theme=3 (last visited Apr. 5, 2009).

(52). See INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE, Asia, in CLIMATE CHANGE 2007: IMPACTS, ADAPTATION AND VULNERABILITY 469, 482 (Martin Parry et al. eds., 2007), available at http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessmentreport/ar4/wg2/ar4-wg2-chapter10.pdf; INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE, Assessing Key Vulnerabilities and the Risk from Climate Change, in CLIMATE CHANGE 2007: IMPACTS, ADAPTATION AND VULNERABILITY 779, 796 (Martin Parry et al. eds., 2007), available at http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessmentreport/ar4/wg2/ar4wg2-chapter19.pdf; INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE, Europe, in CLIMATE CHANGE 2007: IMPACTS, ADAPTATION AND VULNERABILITY 541, 554, 556 (Martin Parry et al. eds., 2007), available at http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessmentreport/ ar4/wg2/ar4-wg2-chapter12.pdf; INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE, Global Climate Projections, in CLIMATE CHANGE 2007: THE PHYSICAL SCIENCE BASIS 747, 782 (Susan Solomon et al. eds., 2007), available at http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/ wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter10.pdf (stating that precipitation would increase in northern Europe); INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE, North America, in CLIMATE CHANGE 2007: IMPACTS, ADAPTATION AND VULNERABILITY 617, 623 (Martin Parry et al. eds., 2007), available at http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg2/ar4-wg2-chapter14.pdf; see also Herman Shugart et al., Forests and Global Climate Change: Potential Impacts on U.S. Forest Resources, at ii, iv–v, 43 (Pew Center on Global Climate Change, Arlington, Va., Feb. 2003), available at http://www.pewclimate.org/docUploads/forestry.pdf (stating that the United States will receive short-term positive benefits from climate change in the sector of forest resources).

 (53). See supra Part I.A.2.

(54). See Energy Information Administration, Emissions of Greenhouse Gases Report, http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/index.html#developments (last visited Apr. 5, 2009)

(55). Joseph Kahn & Mark Landler, China Grabs West’s Smoke-Spewing Factories, N.Y. TIMES, Dec. 21, 2007, at A1; Andy Scott & Lucy Brady, China, Top Producer of Greenhouse Gases, Looks to Tap Potential Resource, CHINA BRIEFING NEWS, Nov. 2, 30 Soboyejo, Josephine Olatomi, Ph.D. 2007, available at http://www.chinabriefing.com/news/2007/11/02/china-top-producer-ofgreenhouse-gases-looks-to-tap-potential-resource.html; see also China Surpasses U.S. Emissions, INT’L HERALD TRIB., June 21, 2007, LexisNexis Academic.

(56). See U.S. GEN. ACCOUNTING OFFICE, CLIMATE CHANGE: TRENDS IN GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS AND EMISSIONS INTENSITY IN THE UNITED STATES AND OTHER HIGH EMITTING NATIONS, GAO-04-146R, at 4 (2003); Energy Information Administration, Table H.1co2: World Carbon Dioxide Emissions from the Consumption and Flaring of Fossil Fuels, 1980–2006, http://www.eia.doe.gov/environment.html (follow “Total Emissions” hyperlink) (last visited Apr. 5, 2009); see also Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Bush Proposes Goal to Reduce Greenhouse Gas: Long-Term World Target, N.Y. TIMES, June 1, 2007, at A1 (listing China and India as other “top producers” of greenhouse gas emissions).

(57). See, e.g., Paul Slovic et al., Cognitive Processes and Societal Risk Taking, in COGNITION AND SOCIAL BEHAVIOR, 165, 168–74 (John S. Carroll & John W. Payne eds., 1976); Amos Tversky & Daniel Kahneman, Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, in JUDGMENT UNDER UNCERTAINTY: HEURISTICS AND BIASES 3, 34, 18–20 (Daniel Kahneman et al. eds., 1982); Jeffrey J. Rachlinski & Cynthia R. Farina, Cognitive Psychology and Optimal Government Design, 87 CORNELL L. REV. 549, 55558 (2002).