Further uses for the luxury/subsistence distinction: Impacts,ceilings,and adaptation

Introduction

First, I want to note a deep appreciation for Henry Shue’s contributions, both the broad contributions to the climate justice literature, his particular proposal to differentiate – normatively and in policy – between subsistence and luxury emissions, and on his specific reflections on that earlier idea in this Breakthrough symposium. I also want to note and appreciate the acknowledgement at the start of this piece of how his own work built on that of Agarwal, Narain, and others’ insistence on the ‘right to live’ (e.g. Agarwal and Narain, 1991). The difference between the emissions of those seeking basic needs versus those spewing carbon pollution from gas-guzzling cars of the comparatively rich was initially raised in the context of the concerns of developing nations in climate negotiations. These contributions to the basic idea that we should value different kinds of emissions in different ways have helped to clarify questions of justice, rights, and climate policy over the last quarter-century. Importantly, they have also made it easier to critique universalising, or difference-denying, concepts such as the ‘anthropocene’ which can be read to blame all of humanity equally for environmental damages, no matter their station. The nature, quality, and reasoning behind differential contributions to ecological harm by individuals, states, and corporations are now regularly part of theoretical and pragmatic discussions in the climate justice literature. We owe Shue appreciation for his part in setting this norm.

In the current Breakthrough article, Shue (2019) reflects on the development of the differentiation between luxury/subsistence emissions, and on various applications of the idea since its original publication. He then turns to a discussion of the new era the framework finds itself in, and new issues where it might be applied. It is exactly this new era that I want to focus on – an era more than 25 years after the development of Shue’s original essays, and one where the inequity of the reality, experience, and impacts of climate change are real and ongoing. We are no longer in a speculative era where climate change was a potential future if emissions action was inadequate. In the current time period, the climate has clearly changed, and all of those historical emissions, and all of the current emissions, are right now changing, and will continue to change, the very nature of our planetary systems. Such systems interruptions will endure, and they will threaten ways of human and nonhuman life that have developed over millennia in the much more stable climate system of the Holocene. The only world we have to look forward to is one that is, and will continue to be radically changed, impacted, and disturbed.

This new context is crucial to rethinking Shue’s contribution, and to how we might use the reality of differential emissions for the material and experienced problems that come with the real and ongoing harm to our planetary systems. In this climate-changed and climate-challenged world, I want to argue that there are two further uses of, or extensions of, the distinction between subsistence and luxury. Shue (2019: 7) notes importantly that ‘One way in which normative theory can guarantee being irrelevant is to keep discussing the same formulations of the issues while the world moves on’. And one key way we have done that is to remain focused on emissions rather than the very real impacts of climate change now, as well as strategies and policies for adaptation to these new world conditions.

If we are to ‘show solidarity by creating social institutions to protect the most vulnerable’ and ‘create institutions to protect basic rights against violation by the powerful’ (Shue, 2019) then we need to shift our focus to this new reality – to the harmful impacts of luxury emissions on subsistence, and the development of just adaptation and resilience. The question is how the subsistence/luxury distinction can continue to be used for both emissions measures, and adaptive ethics, structures, and institutions that are attentive to the protection of basic needs, rather than luxuries, in the face of climate change.

Impacts, harms, and the limits of emissions

The normative rationale for action that I suggest – one based on harms – does not differ from Shue’s (2011), and actually follows from some of his more recent work, as well as Caney’s (2009) attention to the violation of the basic rights of subsistence and life. We can use real and current threats and harm to subsistence now, not simply imagined impacts to future generations, to extend the value and utility of the luxury/subsistence differentiation.

In his Breakthrough article, Shue notes that one of the best avenues to the stability of both climate and subsistence is the development of affordable, renewable energy. That ‘good news’ may indeed slow emissions and lower the carbon impact of both luxury and subsistence living. It is, finally, a glimmer of hope that we can realistically envision the end of the carbon economy, that we can imagine the end of the burning of fossil fuels and their carbon emissions in this century, in the lifetimes of our children, and the end to that particular and distinctive abuse of power. One potential hope is that the faster we move to eliminate such emissions, the less radical the changes and impacts current and future generations will face. And yet, such an emphasis on emissions technology remains focused on CO₂, rather than the reality and experience of actual climate impacts, and the inequalities inevitably tied to that experience. Unfortunately, the impacts of historical and ongoing carbon burning are literally baked into the atmosphere; we and our children may soon be able to live carbon-free lives, but we will do so in an overheated, flooded, tempestuous landscape, subject to a wholly new climatic system. Luxury may be disconnected from carbon emissions through technology, but the threats to subsistence will continue, and the distinction will still matter.

On one hand, Shue’s shift in this essay from emissions flows to emission stocks in response to developments in science and political inaction is important, especially given historical emissions, the remaining carbon ‘budget’, and the real issues around the implementation of the Paris Accord. Yes, now more than in 1992 ‘what matters is the carbon stock’ (Shue, 2019: 8), but we also have to connect concerns about climate justice not only to emissions, but to the current changes in earth systems and their impacts on everyday experience. The science of climate change has increasingly expanded to focus on the growing and material impacts of climate change on the ground; we have a growing and sophisticated knowledge about the specific risks and impacts, downscaled to place. In addition, much of the social science literature has examined how we can understand differential vulnerability to those risks (see for example Lindley et al., 2011; Roberts and Parks, 2007). The normative frame must move to address the reality of the actual and ongoing everyday experience of climate change, not just the emissions causing it. As Shue (2014: 309) himself has noted, ‘[if] we do not act vigorously now, we will inflict avoidable harm on people who live in our polluted wake’.

The reality is that subsistence is under constant climate threat. Activists and statements out of the climate justice movement have long pointed out these threats to everyday life (Schlosberg and Collins, 2014). Indigenous loss, in particular, has been one of earliest and most resilient motivators of climate justice action (Figueroa, 2011). The very ability to live life in place – to maintain the health and well-being of individuals, communities, and attached ecosystems – is increasingly a challenge.

It is crucial to note what this loss entails, and how we might measure and understand it (Barnett et al., 2016). A loss of subsistence is tied to a wider concern with how what is being lost makes certain ways of life less viable. The losses involved include loss of places and attachments, loss of cultural expression and local knowledge, and loss of the ability to maintain an identity and tradition (Birch, 2016). The issue is about how a right to subsistence and life is tied to specific loss of ways of life and culture. A traditional medicinal plant no longer grows where it has for centuries. Fish species move away from where they have been caught for generations. Crops no longer grow, snow no longer comes, and ice does not form. These changes also threaten to interrupt a community’s ability to apply local knowledge to climate-related problem solving to maintain subsistence in a changing environment. A changing climate means less knowledge of developing conditions, and a growing separation from knowledge of the local landscape/environment. In other words, the changes being experienced will exceed the knowledge repertoire of communities, undermining both subsistence and adaptive capacity – undermining the basic right to life.

The changes we have witnessed over these last two to three decades, now experienced daily and which will inevitably increase, illustrate the harms that impact and affect the least well-off across the globe. The point is not to go through the litany of those harms, but rather to bring attention to the relationship between luxury emissions and actual harm done to subsistence. While, importantly, focused on a basic allowance of subsistence emissions, the original distinction between subsistence and luxury did not address the very direct way that luxury emissions of some ultimately undermine the basic needs of many poor, as the environmental conditions that support life are harmed. Beyond the difference between luxury and subsistence emissions, and support for the basic need of the latter, we need to take into account how luxury actually harms and undermines the right to subsistence.

Subsistence, luxuries, penalties, and ceilings

Shue notes that one of the new issues in the current era is a revamped focus on emissions, including the Climate Equity Reference Framework (CERF) to evaluate voluntary targets in the Paris Agreement; this particular approach, an extension of EcoEquity’s Greenhouse Development Rights methodology, combines indicators of both responsibility and capacity. Such a model protects subsistence, by limiting demand on those with little capacity, and is one way to evaluate policies with reference to the luxury/subsistence distinction. But we can extend the idea of responsibility from responsibility for cumulative emissions, to responsibility for undermining subsistence – beyond the creation of the problem of climate change, to the harm done to others. And we can use such a shift not only to protect subsistence, but also to penalise responsibility for harm and eliminate luxury emissions. A CERF might insist that obligations based in responsibility and capacity include financial transfers for the development of low-carbon energy choices to provide subsistence needs (Shue, 2019: 14). The need actually to eliminate ongoing irresponsible luxury emissions clearly demands more ambitious targets, as Shue’s (2018) other recent work makes clear.

The second new focus Shue notes is on threats to subsistence from various schemes for negative emissions technologies (NETs) or carbon dioxide removal (CDR) (p. 15). Such action is all crucial, but the larger immediate threat to subsistence is the real, immediate, ongoing impact of climate change that is baked into our changing systems. Subsistence remains important because systems of subsistence will be undermined by past, current, and future emissions. As Shue (2011: 305) has argued elsewhere, ‘one of the most compelling principles for the assignment of responsibility is the principle that the persons inflecting a harm must stop – first, do no harm’. The question is how we implement such a harm principle in practice.

One of my own hesitations in the application of the subsistence versus luxury emissions framework has been its lack of bite on luxury emissions. While very helpful for theoretically justifying ongoing development out of poverty, and for a focus on the emissions of the rich nations in global policy, one key potential use of the framework has been underdeveloped.

We need to combine the ethical distinction between subsistence and luxury emissions with attention to the very real harm now being done by the latter to practices of subsistence and basic needs. Simply put, if luxury emissions are causing real harm now, those emissions should be penalised and limited. One way to do this has been a focus on the threshold for subsistence emissions – allowing development out of poverty before emissions requirements are set. Another should be an absolute limit to luxury-based emissions, no matter where they originate. Any luxury emissions that directly add to the undermining of basic capabilities, including harms to subsistence, should be penalised and limited.

Similar to Shue’s comment about pawning the jewellery before the blankets, Martha Nussbaum (2006: 403) has also noted targeting support for luxury items as something to be trimmed, for example, before we cut anyone’s health care. We may have a basic capability of mobility, for example, but that does not require governmental support for high-emission sport utility vehicles (SUVs) that may actually add to a climate that destroys basic public transportation systems of others (through flooding or infrastructure damage of storms, for example). Rather, states have a responsibility to limit the damage of such harmful practices. This kind of approach focuses attention on the impacts on subsistence and basic needs and capabilities from the abuse of luxury, and provides a step beyond the important distinguishing of the two kinds of emissions, and the protection of subsistence, to a justification for the limitations of unnecessary and harm-producing luxury emissions.

As Breena Holland (2008, 2015) has proposed, the point is not just the establishment of a ‘floor’ for subsistence, but also an absolute ‘ceiling’ or limit to damaging luxury emissions. Holland (2015: 146) has insisted that a capabilities approach to justice – one which addresses not only subsistence but a range of basic needs – must ‘establish capability ceilings that limit the protection of capabilities that can cause harm to others’. The focus should not only be on the establishment of minimum thresholds, but must also incorporate the potential and real harm to others, where ‘harm is defined as what results from an action that pushes another person’s capability below the threshold level of capability provision and protection that is required as a matter of justice’ (Holland, 2015: 143). Public policy, then, should limit the protection of capabilities above a minimum threshold, especially when those do harm.

Holland’s approach is based on an understanding that capabilities can be in conflict – for example when your luxury infringes another’s subsistence. It is a response to the reality of the infringement of basic needs of some through an abuse of emissions freedoms that harm others. A basic harm principle requires establishing a ceiling of protection for emissions. The approach, argues Holland, provides a theoretical basis for justifying both whose and what capabilities should be limited, and why. For Holland (2015: 151), ‘when combined with capability thresholds, capability ceilings can define the extent to which a society ought to limit the harmful effects of capability protections’ (italics in original). Crucially, Holland notes the specific ecological reasoning for such ceilings – they are to be defined, she argues:

in relation to an ecological limit. The most basic reason for defining capability ceilings in relation to certain ecological limits is because there is not an unlimited amount of individual opportunity or freedom that earth’s ecological systems can sustain over time. (Holland, 2015: 160)

A critic of such an approach might argue that adding something like a luxury tax on an item may inadvertently do harm to the capabilities of most vulnerable – for example, if a luxury item was produced in a place where the jobs were important and helped the local economy develop out of poverty, and a tax reduced demand. It is a good theoretical point, but most policy applications of emissions ceilings are primarily energy-based, not necessarily tied to the production of a particular product. In this case, limiting oil or coal consumption, for example, would actually improve the conditions of those living near the polluting drilling, mining, and refining of fossil fuels, in addition to limiting harms stemming from their emissions.

One example of an implemented policy was the short-lived Australian price on carbon. In order to lower the harm to the least well-off, the price was combined with a thorough rise in welfare and pension payments for those on government assistance, so that the expected price rises were actually more than compensated for. Here, the added cost on excessive emissions was returned to the least well off, making them better off in terms of both immediate economic capabilities and longer term climate risks. The policy led to a large drop in emissions during the 2 years it was in place, which reversed when it was dropped by the conservative coalition government when they regained power.

Subsistence and adaptation

Given the reality that harm has already been inflicted, and subsistence and ways of life are in the process of being undermined, we should move beyond emissions policy to adaptation. Here, the differentiation of luxury and subsistence can be applied as an important part of a normative framework for adaptation planning. One of the real-world changes since the early days of philosophical work on climate emissions is that many ethicists avoided talk of adaptation for fear of a moral hazard – that such discussions of fair adaptation would undermine arguments for just emissions policies. Unfortunately, that moral hazard is now moot; the battle to lower emissions before climate change became baked into the ecological system has been lost.

That means that adaptation to new climate regimes is now a necessity, and may entail ethical inputs to its planning, policies, and practices. The way we frame subsistence arguments shift as we miss all previous emissions targets, and ways of life are threatened and harmed by actual, ongoing, and growing climate impacts. Here, the differentiation between subsistence and luxury practices might be used as a way to focus on the protection of, or provision of, basic needs, capabilities, and subsistence as the first moral task of adaptation. An ethical adaptation policy should focus on the protection of life and the provision of subsistence and basic capabilities (Schlosberg, 2012).

One key way to take both harm to subsistence seriously, and to move to justice as a normative framework for adaptation planning, is to move from a ‘risk-management’ approach to one that combines such risk with a vulnerability-based understanding of adaptation policy. In the former, the focus has primarily been on risks to infrastructure, property values, and basic utilities and amenities. As such, many adaptation plans are focused primarily on things and structures rather than people and their experiences of vulnerability. Our recent study of public engagement in adaptation planning found this distinction, with a random selection of residents of Sydney less interested in the broad risk of heat waves, and more interested in where and how that heat would impact the most vulnerable (Schlosberg et al., 2017). A focus on protecting provision of basic needs – food security, for example, for vulnerable populations – was much more popular with the public than adaptation planning that addresses more well-off parts of the community that have the resources to protect their own subsistence (such as the impacts of heat on more well-off neighbourhoods). Such an interest in protecting processes of subsistence means shifting adaptation planning away from a sole focus on risk and infrastructure and more towards the protection of the basic capabilities necessary for well-being.

A ‘just adaptation’ approach has been framed by activists as a way to bridge environmental justice, climate justice, and social justice for those made more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change more generally. In particular, environmental and climate justice activists have made the role and preservation of culture, including its ties to the functioning of ecological systems and the provision of basic needs, central to responses to climate-changed environments. Indigenous arguments for climate justice, in particular, note the importance of ‘caring for country’ or ‘living well’ in adapting to climate change; adaptation is understood as a response to a settler colonialism that undermines both subsistence living and the ‘adaptive systems of Indigenous peoples’ (Whyte, 2017: 91). In Cochabamba, a distinct declaration was developed by indigenous groups, insisting on ‘principles and mechanisms that assure the respect, harmony, and balance between people and nature’ (Indigenous Peoples Working Group to the World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, 2010). Strengthening ties to the land, for example, through linking adaptation and land sovereignty, is seen as a way to contribute to adaptation solutions. A link is often made between restoring cultural connections to the land, adaptation to climate change, and one of the basic needs of subsistence – the health of disadvantaged indigenous people. A study on Aboriginal communities, for example, concluded that caring for country has a dual benefit in adaptation, as it results in climate change adaptation and better health for indigenous people (National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF), 2013).

A capabilities approach may offer a way to encompass the full range of concerns and concepts of climate justice in a more pluralistic or holistic conception that is aimed at the protection of subsistence and the right to life. An approach that links adaptation with the provision of the sustainable development goals, for example, fits this framework (see Rodriguez et al., 2018). In a range of discussions of vulnerability to climate change and just adaptation strategies, there is a concern for adaptive conditions and practices that provide for the full range of human capabilities. From post Sandy New York to Sydney, we can see a range of basic needs and capabilities – health, housing, food security, culture, and social cohesion – form part of the public demand. Drastic changes in ecological conditions, from super storms to droughts to increased risk of fire, have influenced the linkage of basic human needs with adaptation policy.

Conclusion

It is, as Shue and others insist, absolutely crucial to continue the focus on reducing emissions, while simultaneously protecting subsistence practices and development out of poverty. Clearly, a mechanism to measure the impact of current mitigation policies on subsistence and the right to development is the key, and the effort should be on those with both responsibility and capacity. In his Breakthrough essay, Shue also illustrates some future considerations, for example, the concern for the impacts of more technologically advanced processes for mitigation, such as negative emissions or CDR processes, on subsistence.

The premise here is that even if with an ideal distribution or elimination of emissions, the reality of climate change will be real and ongoing, with the burden most keenly experienced by those whose rights to life and subsistence will increasingly be violated. In this scenario, I have suggested two additional ways the important distinction between luxury and subsistence can be used. On one hand, in order to drive emissions lower, more quickly, we can focus on strong limitations of luxury emissions, or emissions ceilings, in addition to addressing the basic right to subsistence and development out of poverty. On the other, the distinction is a useful way to reorient adaptation policies towards the ongoing protection of these basic rights, rather than on the infrastructure needs of the most well-off. The vulnerability of subsistence rights, and their necessary protection, will be key as we continue to live with a changing and increasingly unstable global climatic system that is already beginning to undermine the basic needs and lives of human (and nonhuman) individuals and communities.