The problem of past emissions and intergenerational debts (original) (raw)

Individual Compensatory Duties for Historical Emissions and the Dead‐Polluters Objection

Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2019

Debates about individual responsibility for climate change revolve mainly around individual mitigation duties. Mitigation duties concern future impacts of climate change. Unfortunately, climate change has already caused important harms and it is foreseeable that it will cause more in the future, in spite of our best efforts. Thus, arguably, individuals might also have duties related to those harms. In this paper, I address the question of whether individuals are obligated to provide compensation for climate related harms that have already occurred. I explore two possible strate- gies to answer that question. The straightforward strategy answers in the affirma- tive. Two approaches embrace this strategy: the ‘ecological citizenship’ approach and the benefits-based approach. I challenge those two approaches and rule out an affirmative answer. The alternative strategy answers in the negative but provides a way to respond to why currently living individuals should pay for burdens created for past individuals. Two possible approaches embrace this alternative: the com- munity-based approach and my own state-based benefits approach. I will argue that individual duties do not fall under the realm of compensatory justice, but they have nonetheless a duty to bear compensatory burdens allocated to their states.

Intergenerational Responsibility. Historical Emissions and Climate Change Adaptation

2007

It is widely held that climate change requires that we engage in strategies of adaptation as well as mitigation, but the normative questions surrounding justice in adaptation remains insufficiently investigated. This paper asks, from a presumption that climate change adaptation presents burdens which needs to be fairly distributed between states, what a fair way of allocating remedial responsibility for adaptation would look like. A number of principles are analyzed, some of which attach normative weight to causal contribution to the problem and others not. The conclusion is that none of the suggestions prevalent in the literature is without profound problems, but a promising path for the future is to construct pluralistic models of justice which are sensitive to both a state's level of pollution and its ability to pay. The paper ends, however, by predicting that while adaptation from a normative standpoint is an other-regarding duty, actual future adaptations regimes are likely to be market-based. Particularly likely is an insurance-based regime, according to which each state is expected to fend for its own protection.

Intergenerational Justice: How Reasonable Man Discounts Climate Damage

Sustainability, 2012

Moral philosophers and economists have evaluated the intergenerational problem of climate change by applying the whole gamut of theories on distributive justice. In this article, however, it is argued that intergenerational justice cannot imply the application of moral ideal theories to future generations. The formal principle of equality simply requires us to treat like cases as like. If intergenerational justice is to have any meaning, it would require future generations to receive the same treatment under the law and the same treatment from the authorities, as far as cases are like. In the context of climate change, the reasonable man standard from tort law is of particular relevance. There is no justification to handle pollution across generational boundaries according to norms which differ from the (international) laws for handling pollution across national borders. It is argued that this implies, for example, that a zero social rate of time preference should be used in cost-benefit analysis of climate policy: climate damage experienced by future generations should be discounted neither for their higher expected wealth, nor purely for their being remote.

Climate Change, Intergenerational Justice and Development

2009

The subject of this paper is distributive justice in relation to financing greenhouse gas abatement. After separating the various questions of distributive justice in climate change (first section) and isolating the financing issue (second section), the paper explores whether any effective moral norms resolving this question already exist. It is argued that such norms still have to be constructed. As a basis for the further discussion, a criterion for moral duties is proposed, progressive norm welfarism, which takes up the constructivist idea (third section). Ethical , intuitive, moral and political considerations finally converge into a proposal for ‘no harm to developing countries’ (fourth section).

Climate Justice and the Duty of Restitution

Moral Philosophy and Politics, 2023

Much of the climate justice discussion revolves around how the remaining carbon budget should be globally allocated. Some authors defend the unjust enrichment interpretation of the beneficiary pays principle (BPP). According to this principle, those states unjustly enriched from historical emissions should pay. I argue that if the BPP is to be constructed along the lines of the unjust enrichment doctrine, countervailing reasons that might be able to block the existence of a duty of restitution should be assessed. One might think that the duty to provide restitution no longer has moral weight if many benefits were already consumed, if the particular benefits obtained from historical emissions cannot be transferred from one country to another, or if present members of developed countries framed their life plans based upon the expectation of continued possession of those benefits. I show that none of these reasons negate the duty to provide restitution.

Climate Justice and Historical Responsibility

The Journal of Politics, 2019

Ever since the 1992 Rio Declaration, global environmental diplomacy has revolved around the principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities". 1 The principle asserts that, while all states should contribute to tackling the challenges of climate change, developed states should bear a greater share of the burdens than developing states. The legal documents that affirm the principle give two reasons for this differentiation of burdens amongst states. The first is historical: developed states bear a greater causal responsibility for global warming insofar as they have emitted greater amounts of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the past. The second reason appeals to considerations of wealth: developed states are better able to bear burdens in adjusting to climate change in view of their greater levels of wealth. 2 Most normative political theorists agree that both of these reasons have some weight in justifying differentiated responsibilities amongst states in tackling the challenges of climate change. 3 However, there is disagreement about the weight we should assign to each reason, and therefore, also, about how exactly responsibilities for tackling climate should be 1 See Principle 7 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (1992), Article 3 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (1992) and Article 10 of the Kyoto Protocol (1997). I am indebted to Caney (2005, 773) for these references.

Intergenerational Justice and Climate Change

Political Studies, 1999

Global climate change has important implications for the way in which benefits and burdens will be distributed amongst present and future generations. As a result it raises important questions of intergenerational justice. It is shown that there is at least one serious problem for those who wish to approach these questions by utilising familiar principles of justice. This is that such theories often pre-suppose harm-based accounts of injustice which are incompatible with the fact that the very social policies which climatologists and scientists claim will reduce the risks of climate change will also predictably, if indirectly, determine which individuals will live in the future. One proposed solution to this problem is outlined grounded in terms of 2 See M. Grubb, 'Seeking fair weather: ethics and the international debate on climate change ', International Affairs, 71, 3 (1995), 463-96; H. Shue, 'Avoidable necessity: Global warming, international fairness, and alternative energy', in I.

Individuals' contributions to harmful climate change: the fair share argument restated

Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2019

In the climate ethics debate, scholars largely agree that individuals should promote institutions that ensure the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. This paper aims to establish that there are individual duties beyond compliance with and promotion of institutions. Duties of individuals to reduce their emissions are often objected to by arguing that an individual’s emissions do not make a morally relevant difference. We challenge the argument from inconsequentialism in two ways. We first show why the argument also seems to undermine the case for duties to promote institutions that the arguments’ proponents endorse. Second, we argue that individuals ought to cut emissions if they exceed their fair share of emissions entitlements and, by emitting, contribute to climate-related harm. In response to inconsequentialism, we specify the notion of ‘contribution’ via the so-called NESS theory, according to which an act is causally relevant for and contributes to an outcome if it is a Necessary Element of a Set of conditions that is Sufficient for the outcome. After refuting two objections to our approach, we conclude by discussing how to deal with possible conflicts between duties to promote institutions and to reduce one’s emissions.