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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 30/8/2018, SPi
Climate Justice
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Climate Justice
Integrating Economics
and Philosophy
Edited by
Ravi Kanbur and Henry Shue
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3
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Chapter 2 © The World Bank 2019
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in 2019
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Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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Contents
Contents
Index 251
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List of Figures
2.1. Chosen indicators for poverty and inequalities for four countries 28
2.2. Summary of climate change impacts on the number of people living
below the extreme poverty threshold, by source 34
2.3. Increase in poverty rate due to climate change in the worst case
climate change scenario considered 36
2.4. Income losses for the poorest 40 percent in each country and in our
four scenarios (y-axis) against average income losses 37
3.1. Revenues from carbon pricing under a 450 ppm scenario with full
technological availability 48
3.2. Current sources of tax revenues as well as potential of land taxes and
distributional effects 52
3.3. Total share of resource rents needed to simultaneously achieve
universal access to (a) water, (b) sanitation, (c) electricity, and (d)
telecommunication 54
3.4. Projected changes in economic rents accruing to fossil energy carriers
and carbon in mitigation scenarios, relative to baseline, over the
twenty-first century (in US$ trillion) 56
4.1. Lorenz curve in relation to population (countries ordered by per capita
COP21 emission allowances in ascending order) 67
4.2. Lorenz curve in relation to per capita GDP (countries ordered by
per capita GDP in descending order) 68
4.3. Marginal cost curves of GHG mitigation for California, EU, and
China in 2030 74
4.4. Macroeconomic marginal cost curves for China, EU, and California in 2030 78
4.5. Marginal cost curves of GHG mitigation for California, EU, and
China in 2030 (including fuel economy standards in California’s MAC) 80
4.6. Marginal cost curves of GHG mitigation for California, EU, China,
and India in 2030 84
5.1. Case 7 105
5.2. Inequality maps comparing countries and generations 107
5.3. Case 10 109
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List of Tables
List of Contributors
Antonio Bento is a Professor at the Sol Price School of Public Policy and the
Department of Economics of the University of Southern California. He is also a
research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a research fellow
of the Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy. Professor Bento is an
applied microeconomist with a research program in the areas of environmental,
energy, urban, and public economics. His work has been published in leading journals
including the American Economic Review, the Journal of Environmental Economics and
Management, the Journal of Urban Economics, and the Energy Journal. Professor Bento
contributed to the New York State Climate Change Action Plan, the New York State
Biofuels Roadmap, the UN Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment,
served as a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Fifth Assessment Report, and was recently appointed as a lead author to the Inter-
national Panel on Social Progress.
Simon Caney is Professor in Political Theory at the University of Warwick. He works on
issues in contemporary political philosophy, and focuses in particular on issues of
environmental, global, and intergenerational justice. He is completing two books—
Global Justice and Climate Change (with Derek Bell) and On Cosmopolitanism—both of
which are under contract with Oxford University Press. He is the author of Justice
Beyond Borders (Oxford University Press, 2005). He co-edited Climate Ethics: Essential
Readings (Oxford University Press, 2010) with Stephen Gardiner, Dale Jamieson, and
Henry Shue. His publications have appeared in journals such as Philosophy & Public
Affairs, Journal of Political Philosophy, and Politics, Economics and Philosophy. He has also
written reports for public bodies, including a background paper on ‘Ethics and Climate
Change’ for the World Bank, and a report on ‘Climate Change, Equity and Stranded
Fossil Fuel Assets’ for Oxfam USA.
Ottmar Edenhofer is Designated Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact
Research and Professor for the Economics of Climate Change at the Technical Univer-
sity Berlin. Moreover, he is founding director of the Mercator Research Institute on
Global Commons and Climate Change as well as adviser to the World Bank regarding
issues of economic growth and climate protection. He is a member of the German
National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina) and of the National Academy of Science
and Engineering (acatech). He has published numerous articles in leading peer-
reviewed journals and high-ranking disciplinary journals and authored various books.
From 2008 to 2015 he served as Co-Chair of Working Group III of the Nobel Laureate
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, shaping the Fifth Assessment Report on
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such topics as the ethics of nuclear deterrence, whether there is a “separate peace”
among democracies, and collective security. He has a long-standing interest in Russian
foreign policy, particularly during the period of the Concert of Europe (1815–54). More
recently he has also been writing about intergenerational justice, climate change, and
other topics in moral philosophy and political theory.
Adam Rose is a Research Professor in the University of Southern California (USC)
Sol Price School of Public Policy, and a Fellow of the Schwarzenegger Institute for
State and Global Policy. Professor Rose’s primary research interest is the economics of
disasters. He has spearheaded the development of a comprehensive economic conse-
quence analysis framework and has done pioneering research on resilience. His other
major research area is the economics of energy and climate change policy, where he has
focused on the aggregate and distributional impacts of climate mitigation policy,
including advancing methodologies in both computable general equilibrium, and
macroeconometric modeling. Professor Rose is the author of several books and 250
professional papers, including most recently Defining and Measuring Economic Resilience
from a Societal, Environmental and Security Perspective (Springer), Economic Consequence
Analysis Tool (Springer), and The Economics of Climate Change Policy (Edward Elgar). He
was recently elected President of the International Society for Integrated Risk Manage-
ment and a Fellow of the Regional Science Association International.
Julie Rozenberg is an Economist with the World Bank Sustainable Development
Group. Her work includes green growth, climate change mitigation strategies, climate
change adaptation, and disaster risk management. She is an author of “Decarbonizing
Development: Three Steps to a Zero Carbon Future” and “Shockwaves: Managing the
Impacts of Climate Change on Poverty.” She focuses on helping World Bank teams and
clients take climate change constraints and other long-term uncertainties into account
in the preparation of projects and strategies, in order to build resilience in World Bank
client countries. She holds an engineering degree from the École Nationale Supérieure
de Techniques Avancées and a PhD in economics from the École des Hautes Études en
Sciences Sociales in Paris.
Henry Shue was the co-founder of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the
University of Maryland (1976–87), the inaugural Hutchinson Professor of Ethics and
Public Life at Cornell University (1987–2002), and Professor of International Relations,
University of Oxford (2002–7). Best known for Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and
U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton, 1980; 2nd edition, 1996), he published his first two
decades of writings on climate change as Climate Justice: Vulnerability and Protection
(Oxford University Press, 2014). His articles on the morality of violence appeared as
Fighting Hurt: Rule and Exception in Torture and War (Oxford University Press, 2016). He
is currently writing a series of articles on the urgency of action on climate change in
light of duties of justice to future generations.
Dan Wei is a Research Associate Professor in the Sol Price School of Public Policy of
USC. Her research focuses on economic modeling of energy and climate change policies
and economic consequence of natural or man-made disasters. She performed macro-
economic impact analyses of state climate action plans for several major states in the
US. She contributed to the capacity building on macroeconomic impact modeling of
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List of Contributors
climate action plans in Guangdong, China and Baja California, Mexico. In the area of
economics of disasters, she made significant contributions in economic impact studies
of major disaster scenarios for the United States Geological Survey. She was a key
investigator in an National Science Foundation study to analyze dynamic economic
resilience of businesses to disasters and a Federal Emergency Management Agency
study to develop a disaster deductible/credit formula for post-disaster public assistance.
She recently led a study to develop and apply an economic framework to evaluate
resilience in recovering from major port disruptions.
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1.1. Introduction
Climate justice requires sharing the burdens and benefits of climate change
and its resolution equitably and fairly. It brings together justice between
generations and justice within generations. In particular it requires that
attempts to address justice between generations through various interven-
tions designed to curb greenhouse emissions today do not end up creating
injustice in our time by hurting the currently poor and vulnerable. More
generally, issues of distribution and justice are of paramount importance in any
discourse on climate change. The United Nations Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs) summit in September 2015, and the Conference of Parties (COP)
to the Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris in December 2015,
brought climate change and its development impact, including climate jus-
tice, center stage in global discussions.
In the run-up to Paris, Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and
the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Climate Change, instituted the
Climate Justice Dialogue.1 The objectives of the Climate Justice Dialogue were
“to mobilise political will and creative thinking to shape an ambitious and just
international climate agreement in 2015.” As part of this project, the global
High Level Advisory Committee to the Climate Justice Dialogue was formed in
2013. The Committee included former presidents and other leaders from the
fields of politics, science, business, civil society, and academia, and publicly
advocated for climate justice through their own work and via platforms
1
<http://www.mrfcj.org/our-work/climate-justice-dialogue/>.
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Climate Justice
One way to frame how different disciplines can engage with climate justice
and the impact of alternative policies on climate justice, is to start with a
distinction between the positive and the normative. A first step in evaluating
any policy, which includes the policy of doing nothing, or continuing with
the “business-as-usual” scenario of the current policy, is to lay out all the
implications of that policy from now into the future. A second step is to
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which is simply the sum of discounted per capita utilities of each generation
multiplied by the number of people in that generation. This is clearly a
utilitarian social welfare function, but Kelleher further characterizes the
Ramsey approach, which is basically the economist approach as exemplified
by Stern (2007), as being one where
the betterness ordering . . . is ipso facto a rightness ordering, where a rightness order-
ing ranks feasible paths in terms of everything that matters to policy choice. . . .
Many philosophers will be comfortable with (and all philosophers will be familiar
with) the idea . . . that value considerations cannot by themselves fully determine
proper choice from among feasible policy options. Climate economists, in my
experience, find this a harder idea to make sense of. (Kelleher, Chapter 12)
One example of concern with broader considerations than just the valuation
of time paths would be a focus on the injustice of harm done to humans who
will be killed, even in the very distant future, as a result of choices about
climate change made now. This thesis is developed by Nolt (Chapter 13).
Thus the overlaps and interactions between economic and philosophical
perspectives are manifold. On the spectrum from positive to normative
analysis of policy options, economics dominates at the positive end while
philosophical contributions are primarily at the normative end, especially in
highlighting the thinking through of a range of principles for climate justice.
Economics relies on these, as seen in the assessment of the equity of the Paris
Agreement. But economists appear to be most comfortable with a utilitarian
framework of analysis, while philosophers push further and harder for con-
sideration of non-consequentialist frames of evaluation. Further routes to
integration will be discussed in Section 1.4, but we now turn to a more detailed
account of the chapters in the volume.
With the narrative framework of Section 1.2, this section provides a brief
account of each of the chapters. The volume begins with a chapter that
in its very title evokes a concern with the distributional impact of climate
change, going against the standard characterization of economists as being
concerned only with gross domestic product (GDP) and not with its distri-
bution. Chapter 2, “Poor People on the Front Line: The Impacts of Climate
Change on Poverty in 2030” by Julie Rozenberg and Stéphane Hallegatte,
develops alternative scenarios with no climate change as the baseline. The
drivers of poverty are modeled and applied to data for ninety-two countries.
These drivers include demography, sectoral shifts in production, productivity,
and economic growth, as well as distributional policy. In the framework
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for the poor of today. Jakob et al. then illustrate the close overlap between
economics and philosophy as they take the reader through the basic prin-
ciples which could guide such revenue recycling. They point out that there is
considerable debate not only on revenue distribution within a state but
redistribution across states: “In contemporary global justice debates, there is
deep disagreement about the extent of such redistributive claims. On the one
hand, cosmopolitans argue that robust principles of distributive justice ought
to apply globally, while minimalists argue that stronger principles apply with-
in states.” They go on to discuss the political feasibility and implementation
issues of the taxation of climate and natural resource rents.
Chapter 4, by Adam Rose, Dan Wei, and Antonio Bento, is in a similar spirit
to Chapter 3 by Jakob et al. but is more closely related to the Paris Agreement.
“Equity Implications of the COP21 Intended Nationally Determined Contri-
butions to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions” looks in detail at the specific
proposals in Paris for allocating emission reductions across countries. They
first look at the country-specific reduction pledges and compare these to a
range of equity principles. Second, they allow trading of emissions allowances
across countries. Using a model of trading equilibrium they calculate the price
of the emissions allowance and the actual amount of sales and purchases that
would occur if trading were allowed. This permits them to once again assess
the equity implications of the initial allocation.
After reviewing a range of equity principles, Rose, Wei, and Bento focus on
(i) the egalitarian principle and (ii) the ability to pay principle. They interpret
the first as saying that emission allowances should be allocated in proportion
to population. On the other hand, they interpret the second as saying that
emissions reductions should increase with per capita GDP. These, and other
more detailed questions, are addressed using the COP21 Intended Nationally
Determined Contributions (INDCs) to reduce emissions. These were agreed
to by 195 countries, but translation into precise quantitative magnitudes
was possible for only a subset of the countries. They then conduct a series
of exercises such as comparing the Lorenz curve of the actual INDCs with
the implied Lorenz curve of the egalitarian principle and the ability to
pay principle. They find that the actual INDCs represent significant depar-
tures from these principles as measured by a number of inequality indices.
For emissions trading, the model is boiled down to a representation of
trading between regions—specifically, data are used for China, the EU, and
California. Once again the authors find that equity principles are violated
by the Paris INDCs. Indeed, although emissions trading is well understood
to reduce global costs of emissions reduction and is thus an efficient policy
to pursue, their calculations show that “wealthier countries stand to gain
a much higher proportion of the savings, thereby further worsening the
equity outcome.”
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Climate Justice
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truth to her argument,” she poses the following questions: “Is her assertion
about national, and human, behavior true? Is economic self-interest truly the
most powerful motivator? Is it really the best thing to rely on, in our search for a
sane and equitable solution to the climate change crisis?” Nelson’s answers to
these questions pose a challenge to the analytic basis of the economic method.
When an agreement leads to aggregate gains overall but there are gainers
and losers under that aggregate, what keeps the losers in the agreement?
Economists argue that “side payments” from the winners to the losers would
keep the agreement, but as economists who work on “mechanism design”
know, even with this there will be incentives to cheat after the agreement is
signed. Nelson quotes a well-known book by Posner and Weisbach (2010,
p. 170), who are ultimately forced to call on ethics as deus ex machina, outside
their “incentive compatibility” framework: “But the obligation to achieve a
broad, deep, and enforceable treaty imposes a serious ethical duty on rich and
poor nations alike—the obligation to cooperate. In our view, it is unethical for
a nation to refuse to join a climate treaty in order to free-ride off of others.”
Nelson goes on to elaborate on the accumulating evidence in psychology
and in behavioral economics, that human beings do indeed have strong
ethical motivations. Nelson refers to Sen’s (1977, p. 326) famous distinction
between “sympathy” and “commitment” as an early warning that all was not
well with economic orthodoxy: “If the knowledge of torture of others makes
you sick, it is a case of sympathy; if it does not make you feel personally worse
off, but you think it is wrong and you are ready to do something to stop it, it is
a case of commitment.”
Her critique is directed at economists who “seem to be belatedly ‘discovering’
the social nature of human beings.” The award of a Nobel prize in economics
to Richard Thaler (2017) holds out the hope that these perspectives may
become mainstreamed in economics, including in the economic analysis of
climate change. But in many ways Nelson’s critique is also hopeful for climate
agreements. She concludes by quoting Christiana Figueres to show that her
own motivations were not from self-interest, but from deep ethical roots.
The moral basis for action is also the focus of the next two chapters in the
volume. In Chapter 7, “Noncompliers’ Duties,” Anja Karnein explores the
possibility that those who have failed to fulfill their basic responsibilities
toward climate change, which includes scores of governments and large
numbers of individuals, ought to fulfill some specific other responsibilities as
a consequence of their noncompliance. Since so many are noncompliers, this
is a highly significant issue that is virtually untouched so far by either philo-
sophers or economists. It is, however, especially difficult to make sense of
particular duties for noncompliers when the option of compliance with the
original duty still remains open. Why wouldn’t the whole duty of a noncom-
plier simply be to become a complier?
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Climate Justice
Karnein considers several conceptual avenues, including what she labels the
complementarity view. The original duty, for example, to reduce emissions a
specific amount, should be understood as complemented from the beginning
by a duty to, say, show respect for potential victims of climate change by
whatever one does. If one complies with the original responsibility, one ought
to do so in a respectful manner. And if one chooses not to comply fully with
the original duty to reduce emissions to a particular degree, the complemen-
tary duty to respect potential victims remains. And then fulfillment of the
complementary duty takes on an even more significant signaling role as a
means of showing that one’s decision not to fulfill the original responsibility is
not meant to indicate disregard for those who will be negatively affected
by one’s failure. If one complies with neither the original duty to reduce
emissions nor the complementary duty to show respect for potential victims
whatever else one does, one can reasonably be seen as displaying disregard for
anyone other than oneself.
In Chapter 8, “Divest–Invest: A Moral Case for Fossil Fuel Divestment,” Alex
Lenferna emphasizes both the variety of arguments in favor of divestment and
the extent to which they complement or overlap with each other. He builds
from an influential but philosophically inadequate argument in the activist
literature, refining and deepening it, while also mobilizing other types of
moral considerations. His fundamental argument is that a moral case can be
made for divestment from consequentialist as well as non-consequentialist
foundations:
With regard to the objection that divestment is unlikely to have much effect,
Lenferna argues both that one can have a responsibility to act even when
the direct effects are imperceptible, and also that major institutions like
prominent churches, universities, and pension funds are in a position to
exert highly visible leadership that may inspire broader collective action. But
he also highlights the argument that divesting may be not only the right thing
to do for institutions, but also the smart thing to do since non-fossil forms of
energy are an essential part of a prosperous low-carbon future.
In all of the expositions so far, the issue of future generations has been
present, but it has not been considered in detail and in depth. For example,
whether and, if so, how to discount the future, has been in the background in
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Climate Justice
future generations worse off, Rendall notes that Martin Weitzman’s defense
explicitly assumes that the real interest rate remains the same across gener-
ations. But one cannot assume that the real interest rate will remain the same
when a catastrophe caused by climate change could cause long-term growth to
stall. And because climate change depends on stocks as well as flows, one also
cannot assume that one can switch it off once catastrophe appears likely. This
inattention to possible disaster is one reason why “discounting as usually
practiced, then, does not maximize long-run expected utility.” Put positively,
Rendall’s thesis is that “it is far more important to minimize the risk of such
catastrophes than to increase consumption.” This leads him to endorse a
constraint similar to Hans Jonas’s imperative of responsibility, “which forbids
us from making ‘the existence or the essence of man as a whole . . . a stake in
the hazards of action’.”
Like Rendall, Eugen Pissarskoi argues for focusing climate policy on the
avoidance of catastrophe. In Chapter 11, “The Controllability Precautionary
Principle: Justification of a Climate Policy Goal Under Uncertainty,” he
presents challenges to the arguments of both many economists and many
philosophers. Pissarskoi puts aside the subjective probabilities regularly
employed by economists and takes seriously the fact that the objective prob-
ability for any specific value for climate sensitivity (the extent to which
climate will respond to increases in forcing by accumulated greenhouse
gases) is unknown, leaving open the possibility that climate sensitivity is
much higher than conventionally assumed. And while he is sympathetic to
the possibilistic approach using a precautionary principle invoked by a num-
ber of philosophers, he shows that their versions of the precautionary prin-
ciple fail to justify choosing to allow the atmospheric concentration of CO2 to
stabilize at as high a level as 550 ppm because, if climate sensitivity is actually
higher than usually assumed, a concentration of 550 ppm risks catastrophe
just as higher (and some lower) concentrations do.
In response Pissarskoi formulates a new precautionary principle that intro-
duces conditions on the process by which a policy allows catastrophe to be
risked. Policies that allow higher concentrations of CO2 allow the risk of
catastrophe as the result of uncontrollable natural climate responses. Policies
that drive concentrations of CO2 lower by means of negative emissions risk
catastrophe through disruption of social and economic processes that humans
may nevertheless be able to control. He suggests that the latter risks of catas-
trophe from potentially controllable social processes may be less dangerous
than the risks of catastrophe from uncontrollable natural processes.
J. Paul Kelleher uses the concept of social cost of carbon, and the associated
issue of discounting the well-being of future generations, to open up the
question of the difference between choice and valuation, the latter being
much broader than simply a discounted sum of per capita consumptions of
12
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Archery, skipping, horse exercise, croquet, the hand-swing, the fly-
pole, skating, and dancing are among the best. Archery expands the
chest, throws back the shoulders, thus improving the figure, and
develops the muscles. Skipping is exceedingly good exercise for a
girl, every part of the body being put into action by it. Horse exercise
is splendid for a girl; it improves the figure amazingly—it is most
exhilarating and amusing; moreover, it gives her courage and makes
her self-reliant. Croquet develops and improves the muscles of the
arms, beautifies the complexion, strengthens the back, and throws
out the chest. Croquet is for girls and women what cricket is for boys
and men—a glorious game. Croquet has improved both the health
and the happiness of womankind more than any game ever before
invented. Croquet, in the bright sunshine, with the winds of heaven
blowing about the players, is not like a ball in a stifling hot ball-
room, with gas-lights poisoning the air. Croquet is a more sensible
amusement than dancing; it brings the intellect as well as the
muscles into play. The man who invented croquet has deserved
greater glory, and has done more good to his species, than many
philosophers whose names are emblazoned in story. Hand-swing is a
capital exercise for a girl; the whole of the body is thrown into action
by it, and the spine, the shoulders, and the shoulder-blades are
especially benefited. The fly-pole, too, is good exercise for the whole
of the muscles of the body, especially of the legs and the arms.
Skating is as exhilarating as a glass of champagne, but will do her far
more good! Skating exhilarates the spirits, improves the figure, and
makes a girl balance and carry herself well; it is a most becoming
exercise for her, and is much in every way to be commended.
Moreover, skating gives a girl courage and self-reliance Dancing,
followed as a rational amusement, causes a free circulation of the
blood, and, provided it does not induce her to sit up late at night, is
most beneficial.
339. If dancing be so beneficial, why are balls such fruitful
sources of coughs, of colds, and consumptions?
On many accounts. They induce young ladies to sit up late at night;
they cause them to dress more lightly than they are accustomed to
do; and thus thinly clad, they leave their homes while the weather is
perhaps piercing cold, to plunge into a suffocating, hot ball-room,
made doubly injurious by the immense number of lights, which
consume the oxygen intended for the due performance of the healthy
function of the lungs. Their partners, the brilliancy of the scene, and
the music excite their nerves to undue, and thus to unnatural action,
and what is the consequence? Fatigue, weakness, hysterics, and
extreme depression follow. They leave the heated ball-room, when
the morning has far advanced, to breathe the bitterly cold and
frequently damp air of a winter’s night, and what is the result?
Hundreds die of consumption who might otherwise have lived.
Ought there not, then, to be a distinction between a ball at midnight
and a dance in the evening?
340. But still, would you have a girl brought up to forego the
pleasures of a ball?
If a parent prefer her so-called pleasures to her health, certainly
not; to such a mother I do not address myself.
341. Have you any remarks to make on singing, or on reading
aloud?
Before a mother allows her daughter to take lessons in singing, she
should ascertain that there be no actual disease of the lungs, for if
there be, it will probably excite it into action; but if no disease exist,
singing or reading aloud is very conducive to health. Public singers
are seldom known to die of consumption. Singing expands the chest,
improves the pronunciation, enriches the voice for conversation,
strengthens the lungs, and wards off many of their diseases.
EDUCATION.
348. Have you any remarks to make on the sleep of boys and
girls?
Sleeping-rooms are, generally, the smallest in the house, whereas,
for health’s sake, they ought to be the largest. If it be impossible to
have a large bedroom, I should advise a parent to have a dozen or
twenty holes (each about the size of a florin) bored with a center-bit
in the upper part of the chamber-door, and the same number of
holes in the lower part of the door, so as constantly to admit a free
current of air from the passages. If this cannot readily be done, then
let the bedroom door be left ajar all night, a door-chain being on the
door to prevent intrusion; and, in the summer time, during the night,
let the window-sash, to the extent of about two or three inches, be
left open.
If there be a dressing-room next to the bedroom, it will be well to
have the dressing-room window, instead of the bedroom window,
open at night. The dressing-room door will regulate the quantity of
air to be admitted into the bedroom, opening it either little or much,
as the weather might be cold or otherwise.
Fresh air during sleep is indispensable to health.—If a bedroom be
close, the sleep, instead of being calm and refreshing, is broken and
disturbed; and the boy, when he awakes in the morning, feels more
fatigued than when he retired to rest.
If sleep is to be refreshing, the air, then, must be pure, and free
from carbonic acid gas, which is constantly being evolved from the
lungs. If sleep is to be health-giving, the lungs ought to have their
proper food, oxygen,—and not be cheated by giving them instead a
poison, carbonic acid gas.
It would be well for each boy to have a separate room to himself,
and each girl a separate room to herself. If two boys are obliged, from
the smallness of the house, to sleep in one room, and if two girls,
from the same cause, are compelled to occupy the same chamber, by
all means let each one have a separate bed to himself and to herself,
as it is so much more healthy and expedient for both boys and girls to
sleep alone.
The roof of the bed should be left open—that is to say, the top of
the bedstead ought not be covered with bed furniture, but should be
open to the ceiling, in order to encourage a free ventilation of air. A
bed-curtain may be allowed on the side of the bed where there are
windy currents of air; otherwise bed-curtains and valances ought on
no account to be allowed. They prevent a free circulation of the air. A
youth should sleep on a horse-hair mattress. Such mattresses greatly
improve the figure and strengthen the frame. During the daytime,
provided it does not rain, the windows must be thrown wide open,
and, directly after he has risen from bed, the clothes ought to be
thrown entirely back, in order that they may become, before the bed
be made, well ventilated and purified by the air:
“Do you wish to be healthy?—
Then keep the house sweet;
As soon as you’re up
Shake each blanket and sheet.
350. What are the best means of keeping the teeth and the gums
in a healthy state?
I would recommend the teeth and the gums to be well brushed
with warm salt and water, in the proportion of one large teaspoonful
of salt to a tumbler of water. I was induced to try the above plan by
the recommendation of an intelligent American writer.[294]
The salt and water should be used every night at bedtime.
The following is an excellent tooth-powder:
Take of finely-powdered Peruvian Bark;
„ Prepared Coral;
„ Prepared Chalk;
„ Myrrh, of each half an ounce;
„ Orris root, a quarter of an ounce:
Mix them well together in a mortar, and preserve the powder in a wide-mouth
stoppered bottle.
The teeth ought to be well brushed with the above tooth-powder
every morning.
If the teeth be much decayed, and if, in consequence, the breath be
offensive, two ounces of finely-powdered charcoal, well mixed with
the above ingredients, will be found a valuable addition.
Some persons clean their teeth every morning with soap; if soap be
used it ought to be Castile soap, and if the teeth be not white and
clear, Castile soap is an excellent cleanser of the teeth, and may be
used in lieu of the tooth-powder as before recommended.
There are few persons who brush the teeth properly. I will tell you
the right way. First of all procure a tooth-brush of the best make, and
of rather hard bristles, to enable it to penetrate into all the nooks and
corners of the teeth; then, having put a small quantity of warm water
into your mouth, letting the principal of it escape into the basin, dip
your brush in warm water, and if you are about using Castile soap,
rub the brush on a cake of the soap, and then well brush your teeth,
first upward and then downward, then from side to side—from right
to left and from left to right—then the backs of the teeth, then apply
the brush to the tops of the crowns of the teeth both of the upper and
of the lower jaw,—so that every part of each tooth, including the
gums, may in turn be well cleansed, and be well brushed. Be not
afraid of using the brush: a good brushing and dressing will do the
teeth and the gums an immensity of good; it will make the breath
sweet, and will preserve the teeth sound and good. After using the
brush the mouth must, of course, be well rinsed out with warm
water.
The finest set of teeth I ever saw in my life belonged to a middle-
aged gentleman; the teeth had neither spot nor blemish—they were
like beautiful pearls. He never had toothache in his life, and did not
know what toothache meant! He brushed his teeth, every morning,
with soap and water, in the manner I have previously recommended.
I can only say to you—go and do likewise!
Camphor ought never to be used as an ingredient of tooth-powder,
it makes the teeth brittle. Camphor certainly has the effect of making
the teeth, for a time, look very white; but it is an evanescent beauty.
Tartar is apt to accumulate between and around the teeth; it is
better in such a case not to remove it by scaling instruments, but to
adopt the plan recommended by Dr. Richardson, namely, to well
brush the teeth with pure vinegar and water.