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The dam promised electricity and modernity to the people of the region. Power to the people, of a sort. Independence, how- ever, would not come to Zambia for several more years. Surely a democratic idea, power to the people is also an ideal of human development. There is a well-established correlation between improvements in human development and the wide dissemina- tion of modern forms of energy, in particular electricity and clean cooking fuels. Massive hydroelectric projects that run roughshod over local people and ecology are hardly commendable, but electrification that puts an end to energy poverty is. Home electrification extends the time during which children can do homework, facilitates the use of computers and internet technology, allows clean cooking that reduces respiratory illness caused by indoor pollution. Streetlights provide a measure of safety for women and girls at night. And the grid powers schools, hospitals, and factories. In stressing the importance of electrification for advancing the Russian Revolution, V.I. Lenin once quipped, “Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.”1 Like Karl Marx, Lenin looked forward to a communist era characterized by such a high level of overall production that human prosperity would become generalized. Abundance would render obsolete the need to divide society into classes in order to discipline producers to work so that a minority would be free to enjoy the social surplus. Whatever one thinks of the possibility, or even the desirability, of such a classless society, countries making developmental progress in the twentieth century have repeatedly demonstrated the impor- tance of electrification. Significant human development gains are reliably accompanied by dramatic increases in per capita energy consumption. Introduction 3 A recent United Nations policy brief declares that “reducing the global disparity in energy is key to reducing income inequalities, gender inequalities and inequalities in other dimensions such as rural/urban income disparities. A lack of adequate, reliable and affordable supplies of modern energy disproportionally impacts women and children. It is also more severe in rural communities and it limits their productive opportunities, enterprise growth and employment, exacerbating income inequality and persistent pov- erty.”2 Extreme poverty is horrifically brutal. The anthropologist and medical doctor Paul Farmer relates a typical story of poverty and medical neglect in rural Haiti. It is of a woman with metastatic breast cancer who had been to fourteen different clinics, finding none willing to operate because she could not pay the $700 fee. “A young woman takes my arm in a common enough gesture in rural Haiti. ‘Look at this, doctor.’ She lifts a left breast mass. The tumor is not at all like the ones I was taught to search for during my med- ical training in Boston. This lesion started as an occult lump, per- haps, but by this September day has almost completely replaced the normal breast. It is a ‘fungating mass,’ in medical jargon, and clear yellow fluid weeps down the front of a light-blue dress. Flies are drawn to the diseased tissue, and the woman waves them away mechanically.”3 Although every experience of illness is unique, Farmer’s account of poverty and sickness is sadly illustrative. Extreme poverty is the leading cause of death globally. At full capacity the Kariba Dam drives turbines on the north side that produce more electricity than any other source in Zambia. Still, energy poverty is endemic. According to the World Bank, only about 42 percent of Zambia’s population has access to elec- tricity. And in rural areas, a mere 12 percent have access.4

Contents Preface xi Introduction 1 1. Hope for a Warming Planet 15 Beyond a Reasonable Doubt 15 Well Below 2°C 21 The Anti-Poverty Principle 25 Hope- Makers 30 2. Uncertainty and Precaution 35 A New World 35 Visions of Prosperity 36 Epistemic Gaps and Planning Havoc 39 Irreversibly Rising Seas, Abrupt Warming, and Mass Starvation 41 Risk and Uncertainty 43 The Argument for Precaution 46 The Environment, Bathing Babies, and Space Invaders 49 Legacy 51 3. Intergenerational Justice 54 Moral Judgments and Moral Theory 54 Help and Do No Harm 56 Discounted Utilitarianism 65 Intergenerational Equality 68 Anti- Catastrophe 70 Musings 72 4. Global Poverty and Responsibility for Climate Change Mitigation Policy 73 Unequal Progress 73 Human Development 74 viii Contents Development as Empowerment 77 The Right to Promote Sustainable Development 81 Responsibility for Mitigation 85 Solidarity in Mitigation 90 Solidarity, Justice, and Hope 95 5. Justice and Adaptation 97 Adaptation and Mitigation 97 The Aims of Adaptation 99 Poverty and Adaptation Capacity 102 A Pro-Poor Formula 104 Adaptation and the Right to Promote Sustainable Development 107 Support for Adaptation 108 Conditions and Threats 112 Solidarity in Adaptation 116 An Abundance of Reasons 119 6. Hope for the Paris Agreement 120 The Paris Agreement and the Right to Promote Sustainable Development 120 Problems with Paris 121 The Problems of Political Economy 125 Mobilizing for Paris 129 Growth, the Environment, and Technology 134 Green Growth, Zero Growth, and Sustainable Development 140 Hope for Paris 151 7. Supplementing Mitigation: A Pro-Poor Approach 152 The Geophysical Limit on Mitigation 152 The Problems of Political Economy Revisited 153 Negative Emissions Technology 155 Solar Radiation Management 161 Messing with Nature 170 Technology and Innovation 176 8. Hope for the Anthropocene 177 The Era of Human Impact 177 Wars and Walls 179 The Misanthropocene 181 Contents ix Realistic Utopias 184 Valuing Nature 192 Human Development and Natural Value 199 Hope in the Anthropocene 202 Notes 205 Index 233

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