Fergus Green

China's “Exported Carbon” Peak: Patterns, Drivers, and Implications

Over the past decade, China has entered a “new normal” phase in economic development, with its role in global trade flows changing significantly. This study estimates the driving forces of Chinese export‐embodied carbon emissions in the new normal phase, based on environmentally extended multiregional input‐output modeling and structural decomposition analysis. We find that Chinese export‐embodied CO2 emissions peaked in 2008 at a level of 1,657 million tones. The subsequent decline in CO2 emissions was mainly due to the changing structure of Chinese production. The peak in Chinese export‐embodied emissions is encouraging from the perspective of global climate change mitigation, as it implies downward pressure on global CO2 emissions. However, more attention should focus on ensuring that countries that may partly replace China as major production bases increase their exports using low‐carbon inputs.

The 1.5°C target and coal sector transition: at the limits of societal feasibility

ABSTRACT National and global mitigation scenarios consistent with 1.5°C require an early phase-out of coal in major coal-dependent countries, compared to standard technical and economic lifetimes. This appears particularly apparent in the light of recent massive investments in coal power capacity, the significant pipeline of coal power capacity coming online, as well as upstream supporting infrastructure. This article analyses the existing and planned capital stock in the coal power sector in the light of scenarios consistent with 1.5°C. The article analyses the political economy and labour aspects of this abrupt and significant transition, in the light of domestic equity and development objectives. Firstly, the article examines employment issues and reviews the existing literature and practice with support schemes for regional and sectoral structural adjustment for the reduction of coal sector activity. Secondly, the paper surveys the domestic political economy of coal sector transition in major coal using countries, namely Australia, South Africa, China and India. A final section provides conclusions and policy recommendations. Key policy insights Achieving mitigation pathways in line with limiting warming to 1.5°C, or even well-below 2°C, would require the early retirement of coal sector assets in production and consumption. Historically, coal sector transition has often been associated with prolonged socio-economic dislocation in affected regions. Policies to accompany affected regions are thus a crucial part of policy mixes to limit warming to 1.5°C and even 2°C. Such policies should be anticipatory and long-term, as opposed to reactive policies focused on short-term measures to smooth the transition. A survey of major coal using countries shows that each is a long way from putting in place a long-term framework to transition the coal sector.

Anti-fossil fuel norms

Historically, climate governance initiatives and associated scholarship have all but ignored the potential for “global moral norms” to bring about changes in the political conditions for global climate mitigation. This is surprising, since global moral norms are widely employed—as both a mode of governance and an analytical framework—in other domains of global governance, from international security to human rights. However, recent national-level fossil fuel divestments, moratoria on new coal mines and bans on gas fracking, among other developments, suggest the promise of global moral norms prohibiting fossil fuel-related activities, which this article terms “anti-fossil fuel norms” (AFFNs). The article interprets recent examples of such activities in the light of international relations theory on moral norms to provide a general framework for understanding how AFFNs originate, spread and affect states. Specifically, the article argues that there are: (i) influential agents that are originating, and likely to continue to originate, AFFNs; and (ii) international and domestic mechanisms by which AFFNs are likely to spread widely among states and have a significant causal effect on the identity-related considerations or rational calculations of states in the direction of limiting or reducing the production or consumption of fossil fuels. The article also shows that, because they spread and affect state behaviour through mechanisms of “international socialization” and domestic “political mobilization”, AFFNs cohere with and build upon the new paradigm of global climate governance crystallized in the Paris Agreement. AFFNs, the article concludes, represent a promising new frontier in climate governance.

The normative foundations of climate legislation

Chapter 5 discusses the ethical, political-philosophical and international-legal foundations of climate change legislation. Both climate change impacts and the mitigation of climate change affect human well-being in diverse and significant ways. Two political-philosophical frameworks – the liberal-egalitarian-inspired ‘climate justice’ framework and the utilitarian-inspired ‘economic efficiency’ framework – have dominated philosophical theorizing about how to trade-off these diverse well-being impacts in the context of climate change. International climate law borrows from both political-philosophical frameworks but ultimately constitutes a free-standing normative foundation. The chapter provides an overview and critical analysis of these various normative foundations and discusses their (limited) impact on domestic climate change legislation. It also highlights three nascent ‘movements’ at the cutting edge of climate politics and policy – anti-fossil-fuel movements, visions of green transformation, and transitional fairness/‘just transition’ claims – and discusses the alternative normative foundations on which these movements implicitly rest.

The logic of fossil fuel bans

Until recently, national bans on fossil fuel-related activities were a taboo subject, but they are now becoming increasingly common. The logic of appropriateness that underpins such bans is key to understanding their normative appeal, and to explaining and predicting their proliferation.

Legitimate Expectations, Legal Transitions, and Wide Reflective Equilibrium

Abstract Recent scholarly attention to ‘legitimate expectations’ and their role in legal transitions has yielded widely varying principles for distinguishing between legitimate and non-legitimate expectations. This article suggests that methodological reflection may facilitate substantive progress in the debate. Specifically, it proposes and defends the use of a wide reflective equilibrium methodology for constructing, justifying and critiquing theories of legitimate expectations and other kinds of normative theories about legal transitions. The methodology involves three levels of analysis — normative principles, their theoretical antecedents, and considered judgements about their implications in specific cases — and iteration between these three levels in an effort to ensure coherence. The payoffs from applying this methodology to the legitimate expectations debate are illustrated through a discussion of examples from the existing literature. Some proposed innovations to the methodology, including the incorporation of insights from the ideal/non-ideal theory debate, are likely to be of wider interest to political theorists.