HENRY SHUE - Author of “The Pivotal Generation” - Snr. Research Fellow, Centre for International Studies, Oxford

“Well, it's because of the situation we face. We can tell from the science that we have to reach zero carbon emissions by 2050. And common sense tells you that bringing them down for the second 50% is going to be harder than the first 50%. So we have to take care of the first 50% by about 2030, and it's 2023 already. We literally must - if we're going to keep climate change from becoming even more dangerous than it is - is to do a very great deal in the next seven or eight years. And a huge amount between now and 2050. So it's not that this problem is the most important of all possible problems. There are other problems like preventing nuclear war, but this is a problem that either we get a grip on it now, or there's a real possibility that it will escape from our control. 

So, we need to be hardheaded about this and look very hard at what people are actually doing. Carbon credits could be a good thing, but they would need to be carefully regulated, and we would need institutions to police them and be sure people are actually doing what they say they're doing. And meanwhile, we should concentrate on reducing emissions because in theory, the carbon credits would get you to the same place but only if what they promised is actually delivered. And it very often isn't. There's a very recent study saying that something like 90% of promised carbon offsets are not actually being implemented. I don't know if it's that bad, but there's a lot of hanky-panky going on.”

Henry Shue is Professor Emeritus of Politics and International Relations at University of Oxford’s Merton College. He's the author of Basic Rights, as well as The Pivotal Generation: Why We Have a Moral Responsibility to Slow Climate Change Right Now, among many other publications. In 1976, he co-founded the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of Maryland. He was a supporter of the successful campaign by Virginia's Augusta County Alliance to stop the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, and now works primarily on explanations for the urgency of far more ambitious policies to eliminate fossil fuels in order to avoid irreversible damage for future generations.

www.merton.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-henry-shue
https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691202280/basic-rights
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691226248/the-pivotal-generation

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