Dominic Roser

Climate justice and historical emissions

Climate change can be interpreted as a unique case of historical injustice involving issues of both intergenerational and global justice. We split the issue into two separate questions. First, how should emission rights be distributed? Second, who should come up for the costs of coping with climate change? We regard the first question as being an issue of pure distributive justice and argue on prioritarian grounds that the developing world should receive higher per capita emission rights than the developed world. This is justified by the fact that the latter already owns a larger share of benefits associated with emission generating activities because of its past record of industrialisation. The second question appears to be an issue of compensatory justice. After defining what we mean by compensation, we show that different kinds of compensatory principles run into problems when used to justify payments by historical emitters of the North to people suffering from climate change in the South. As an alternative, we propose to view payments from wealthy countries for adaptation to climate change in vulnerable countries rather as a measure based on concerns of global distributive justice.

Distributive Justice and Climate Change. The Allocation of Emission Rights

Abstract The emission of greenhouse gases causes climate change. Therefore, many support a global cap on emissions. How then should the emissions allowed under this cap be distributed? We first show that above average past emissions cannot be used to justify a right to above average current emissions. We then sketch three basic principles of distributive justice (egalitarianism, prioritarianism, and sufficientarianism) and argue, first, that prioritarian standards are the most plausible and, second, that they speak in favour of giving people of developing countries higher emission rights than people of industrialised countries. In order to support this point it has to be shown, inter alia, in what ways the higher past emissions of industrialised countries are relevant for today’s distribution of emission rights.

Saving the Planet by Empowering the Young

We examine whether there is a good case for empowering the young—through youth quotas and further measures—in order to increase environmental protection. While we shed no doubt on the cause of empowering the young in general or on the cause of protecting the environment in general, we raise a number of worries about using the former as an instrument for the latter. First, from a democratic perspective, it is objectionable to increase the influence of a certain part of the electorate as a means for giving additional weight to certain views. Second, the reasons that make it important that certain segments of society represent their interests themselves hardly apply in the case of the young. Third, we should not overstate how much more the young are affected by environmental degradation than the old, in particular not when we take into account that other unrepresented groups—such as the unborn, non-citizens, and animals—are heavily affected by present environmental policy decisions as well. Fourth, it is surprisingly unclear whether the young display particularly strong pro-environmental attitudes and behavior.

Advancing the interdisciplinary dialogue on climate justice

Climate change is an extraordinary, multi-faceted challenge for mankind and the scale of the challenge is reflected in the breadth and depth of issues of justice it confronts us with (Gardiner et al. 2010). First of all, given the long time spans involved, this includes questions of intergenerational justice (Page 2007): Since a large share of the effect of present emissions will only arise after a significant time lag, it is necessary to consider what type and level of climate actions we owe our descendants. Such a discussion on intergenerational justice necessitates, in turn, extensive debates about risk: Given that there is and will always remain significant scientific uncertainty about the precise future effect of present emissions, determining appropriate margins of safety is crucial (Gardiner 2006; Hartzell-Nichols 2013). Of course, our descendants are not the only relevant stakeholder in these debates: Effects of climate change on the present generation, on animals, and on the rest of nature are grounds for climate action as well (Palmer 2011; Nolt 2011). Another issue of concern is rather about justice within the present generation, as decisions to be made not only involve the overall amount of climate action, but they also need to answer the question on how to split up the burden of taking this action (Caney 2012; Miller 2009). Given that emissions do not respect borders, this means allocating responsibility for climate action on a global scale. Seeking global justice in mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage is particularly relevant given that many of the more vulnerable countries have comparatively lower (historical and current) per capita emissions and lower capacity to address the problem. While these larger questions of intergenerational and intragenerational justice make up the core of the ethical challenge of climate change, climate change brings up a host of further ethical issues, for example moral aspects of policy instrument choice (such as population control, market measures, or lifestyle changes),

Climate Justice: Past Emissions and the Present Allocation of Emission Rights

The emission of so-called greenhouse gases have caused, and will cause, climate change with highly unequal consequences for people depending on, inter alia, where and when they live. We assume the need for a global cap on emissions as a matter of intergenerational justice and argue for the plausibility of an equal per capita distribution of the benefits from emission generating activities over the whole lifespan of individuals. We investigate how past emissions ought to be taken into account in distributing emission rights among currently living people. We distinguish three objections against taking into account historical and past emissions (reflecting the non-identity problem, the problem of limited knowledge of those who caused the emissions and the problem of currently living people being in no position to have hindered these emissions). We sketch two ways of taking into account some of the consequences of historical and past emissions that are compatible with normative individualism and a third way that relies on considering states as transgenerational entities that can be considered liable inter-temporally.

The Timing of Benefits of Climate Policies. Reconsidering the Opportunity Cost Argument

We examine the Opportunity Cost Argument (OCA) for discounting in detail. We distinguish several understandings of discounting and claim that discounting is supported by the OCA in the sense that the timing of the benefits of a policy affects whether we have good reason to pursue this policy. The basic logic of the argument – illustrated by the example of climate policy – consists in the fact that the resources used for a certain strategy of mitigating climate change could also be used for alternative investments, such as an adaptation strategy or other kinds of mitigation strategies. These alternative investments might yield even larger returns when compounded over time. The OCA can do without a number of premises often associated with discounting. In particular, it does not presuppose pure time preference. However, the OCA does presuppose strong premises as far as substitutability is concerned. The argument supporting the OCA is also shown to be relevant for the counterpart of discounting, compounding in the case of present compensation for past injustices.

Klima und Umwelt

Sauberes Wasser, fruchtbare Boden, angenehme Temperaturen: Die Beschaffenheit der Umwelt in all ihren Facetten ist einer der wichtigsten Bestimmungsfaktoren menschlicher Lebensqualitat. Die Umwelt verandert sich seit jeher, doch der Stellenwert des Menschen als deren absichtlicher und unabsichtlicher Gestalter ist seit der industriellen Revolution viel wichtiger geworden.