We live inside Earth’s climate system. Not understanding it precisely is costly and unwise, and could lead to major legal liability.
The International Court of Justice has found that climate protection is a human right inherent in other human rights and that all nations have a legal responsibility to act to reduce dangerous climate change. This duty is rooted in climate-related treaties, but also in customary international law, and in fundamental human rights.
The ICJ advisory opinion on the climate responsibility of nation state governments is significant for many reasons. An important nuance that will give it wider applicability and utility is the recognition that while global heating emissions may constitute an “international legally wrongful act”, that is contingent on the nation in question doing too little to prevent dangerous climate change.
The opinion not only cites a duty to act, but also a duty to cooperate, since no nation can prevent dangerous global climate disruption on its own. This means rogue states will face compliance challenges not only from peers, or from courts within their borders, but also from organized multilateral groups of states. And, it means eliminating climate-related information in one place only makes climate information from elsewhere more valuable and more salient.
If a country wants to demonstrate it has succeeded in not only setting rules and reducing emissions, but that its efforts are sufficient to constitute a “fair share” of the overall global climate crisis response, it needs data. The efforts by polluting industries and their allies to undermine climate science, or even to defund or eliminate whole agencies working on climate-related attribution science, will lead to higher costs overall, reduced flexibility in supply chains, and the potential denial of insurance and other services.
Nations are required to combat dangerous climate change, including by regulating private industry. Those that do better at this will be rewarded, financially, economically, and in trade negotiations. Their businesses and banks will face reduced liability and risk compared to those from underperforming countries.
Some in the U.S. argue they will be able to produce evidence of leadership through private-sector reporting mechanisms and data platforms. They argue this will be sufficient to demonstrate climate leadership. The problem is they will be competing in a global economy in which leaders can demonstrate climate leadership with hard data, not just unverified claims. They will be competing with businesses that benefit from incentives to reduce pollution, and may struggle if they cannot leverage such benefits, based on real, independent, and verifiable data.
This was already evident before the ICJ opinion. In the U.S. Congress, the only way lawmakers could conceive of competing with clean E.U. businesses, boosted by incentives and a fair-play carbon border adjustment, was to study the possibility of using data that demonstrates clean innovation leadership to justify a solid negotiating position and similar policies to level the playing field with trading partners who neither incentivize clean innovation nor actively decarbonize.
The answer to the climate performance challenge is data. The more robust and precise your data platforms, the more widely applicable across the economy, the more effectively and transparently they provide clarity about who is performing well on climate goals and who is not, the better positioned your national economy will be in a global climate value economy.
We know the climate value economy is coming, because climate disruption is getting worse and costing more, far more. Public budgets are already strained, and disaster costs are rising fast, even as public institutions go further into debt. At some point, and we are likely not far from it, the only way to avoid wasting money will be to make sure as little money as possible is funding climate-disrupting activities.
For countries that are dependent on fossil fuels for energy, for revenues, or for the profits of key companies or institutional investors, the worst thing they could do would be to reduce the amount of climate data in their economy. Even those who are most responsible for climate pollution can deliver some big wins for decarbonization, by moving fast to eliminate leakage, dirty development, and high-emitting practices.
Earth science data can also provide entirely new ways of investing to create financial value. Maintream banks have a major role to play in centering climate value in the everyday economy. Industrial and tech companies can support nature restoration, soil ecology, watershed resilience, and marine protection, all of which help to slow global heating and build resilience.
Cooperative financial instruments are emerging to allow this kind of value-adding activity to become part of the portfolio for every business or financial actor. It will be impossible to take advantage of those new opportunities without the right kind of data, which will have to be multifaceted, linked to major climate science platforms, and have a steady, reliable track record.
For those who haven’t thought about the usefulness of climate data for improving their future returns on investment, even those with high-polluting value-chains, it’s time to start.
FEATURED IMAGE
Razorbills are coastal birds, closely related to the puffin, which hunt below water. They can dive up to 300 feet and “fly underwater”. The razorbill is a great symbol for our need to understand and navigate the whole climate system, including atmospheric and ocean conditions. They are also a reminder that what we do to nature, we do to ourselves.
