Haga Initiative has interviewed Dr Fergus Green, lecturer in Political Theory & Public Policy in the Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy at University College London.

How would you define climate injustice, and what are some recent examples of it?

– Climate injustice, at its core, concerns the disproportionate impacts of climate change on the poorest and most vulnerable people. This injustice is compounded by the fact that they typically contribute the least to, and benefit the least from, the carbon-intensive systems of production and consumption that produce those harms, and have the least power over climate mitigation and adaptation decisions.

– While it is understandable to focus accounts of injustice on greenhouse gas emissions, I find it more helpful to think about climate injustice in structural terms: it is a product of systems of consumption and production that create vast opportunities for some while constricting the opportunities of (many more) others. Climate change intersects with and typically reinforces pre-existing injustices that often share common structural roots in undemocratic, elite-controlled institutions, organisations and networks.

How does inequality fuel climate change, and vice versa, and what are some of the social, economic, and political factors that contribute to this relationship?

-We’ve long understood how climate change worsens inequality: in short, poorer people are more exposed and more vulnerable to its effects than wealthier people. Less well understood is how inequality worsens climate change. In recent published research, I’ve argued that inequality fuels climate change through multiple channels. Economic inequality creates power imbalances that enable corporations and business elites to expand carbon-intensive production and obstruct climate policy, and it empowers the wealthy to live unsustainably carbon-intensive lifestyles that set standards of consumption to which those on lower incomes aspire. At the other end of the income distribution, poverty, un(der)employment, and financial insecurity leave people fearful of ambitious climate policies that threaten to erode their purchasing power or deprive them of decent work.

-These economic effects are often geographically clustered and layered onto existing spatial inequalities, fuelling political backlash against climate policies. Finally, social and economic inequalities undermine the social bonds of trust necessary for transformative collective climate action.

How do climate policies and actions, such as carbon-centric policies, contribute to existing patterns of inequality and injustice?

– “Carbon-centric” climate policies—those that are concerned only with reducing greenhouse gas emissions—can worsen inequality and injustice in multiple ways. The classic “carbon-centric” policy instrument is a carbon price, tax or emissions trading scheme. Assuming no accompanying redistribution, carbon pricing tends to be regressive in high-income countries because it raises consumer prices for carbon-intensive necessities, which comprise a disproportionately high share of low-income households’ expenditure.

– This problem may be exacerbated by the fact that low-income households in such countries tend to live in less energy-efficient dwellings and lack the incentives, because they tend to rent, or financial means to invest in energy efficiency improvements. In poorer countries, pricing carbon or removing fossil fuel subsidies can be progressive, in the sense of costing lower-income groups relatively less as a proportion of their income than higher-income groups, but nonetheless have an inflationary effect in absolute terms that harms poor consumers, which is unjust.

How can businesses and policymakers take climate action while proactively addressing injustice and inequality?

– Policymakers ought to incorporate climate action into a wider set of egalitarian and democratic reforms, effectively tackling climate change alongside inequality. This is, essentially, the goal of Green New Deal (GND) programmes. I’ve argued that such policy programmes would be more effective at mitigating adapting to climate change in the long run, and are also likely to be more politically popular among lower and middle-income voters.

– As for businesses, the goal should be to make zero-carbon goods and services cheaper than carbon-intensive substitutes, rather than simply to develop niche “eco” products and sell them at a premium to wealthy, eco-conscious consumers, though the latter can sometimes be a step towards mass diffusion.

How do we ensure a long-term just climate transition during economic downturns and the pressures they create for short-term economic policies?

– The need for transformative climate action is so compelling that policymakers must find ways to integrate it into the core economic policymaking, such as fiscal, monetary and industrial policy. There will always be options for accelerating climate mitigation and adaptation that can be pursued under different economic conditions.

– When the economy is weak due to a shortfall in demand, that is the time for governments to invest in “green stimulus”, such as the deployment of renewable energy infrastructure, energy efficiency retrofits of buildings, zero-carbon social housing construction, public transport, etc. Such investments can be designed to benefit the poorest and reach into the middle class, and should be financed through progressive taxation, or borrowing, especially if interest rates are low.

– Moreover, under weak demand conditions, fossil fuel prices tend to be lower, providing opportunities to end wasteful fossil fuel subsidies, wind down fossil fuel production, and legislate carbon taxes, alongside the redistributive policies discussed above. If the economy is weak due to supply-side pressures such as those experienced following Russia’s war on Ukraine, then short-term policies should focus on increasing energy efficiency and switching to non-fossil energy sources.