The problem of past emissions and intergenerational debts

Abstract

AbstractThe problem of past emissions – how to share fairly the costs of climate-changing emissions caused by polluters who are no longer in existence – presents an increasingly pressing challenge to scholars and policy-makers. Since standard contribution-based principles are inapplicable when it comes to past emissions, theorists have instead proposed various non-contribution-based historical principles. This paper develops such a principle – the Inherited Debt Principle – which seeks to account for the intuition that historical injustice matters to current duties in a way that does not appeal to the counterfactual benefits derived from that injustice. This principle, it is argued, offers a surprisingly plausible solution to the problem of past emissions.Keywords: beneficiary pays principleclimate changehistorical emissionsjustice AcknowledgmentsEarlier versions of this paper were presented at the 2010 meeting of the Nordic Network in Political Theory in Oslo, at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Gothenburg, and at the conference 'Climate Change and Justice' at Magdalen College, University of Oxford. I am grateful to all who provided feedback on those occasions, in particular Christian Baatz, Simon Caney, Clare Heyward, Robert Huseby, Ingmar Persson, Joakim Sandberg, and Henry Shue. This paper was written as part of the project 'Fair and Feasible Climate Change Adaptation', which is co-funded by the Swedish Research Council and Formas. I gratefully acknowledge their financial support.Notes1. Other GHGs have well-defined lifetimes. For example, reducing a perturbation to 37% of its initial amount takes approximately 12 years for methane and about 110 years for nitrous oxide (IPCC Citation2007, pp. 824–825). The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, however, depends on the rate of emissions minus the rate of removal, and assuming constant rates of removal, reductions in emission rates will only reduce the growth in atmospheric concentration – 'surplus' CO2 would remain in the atmosphere indefinitely (Archer et al. Citation2009). Thus, it is incorrect to focus on how long a particular carbon atom once released stays airborne. What matters to climate forcing is the increased concentration of GHGs, and as more CO2 is emitted, higher concentrations are maintained in the carbon cycle.2. The same problems are raised by other GHGs, especially long-lived ones such as nitrous oxide. Different lifetimes only affect the temporal scope of the problem of past emissions. However, since CO2 is the most important driver of climate change, and increasingly so (Butler Citation2012), I will focus on CO2.3. For an influential statement of this kind of view, see Caney (Citation2005). For a typology of duties to combat climate change, and the meaning of 'mitigation' and 'adaptation', see Duus-Otterström and Jagers (Citation2012).4. A variant of this problem is non-wrongful emissions by currently existing agents, e.g. excusably ignorant emissions (e.g. Bell Citation2011). However, with regard to such emissions, one possibility is to defend a principle of strict liability (Caney Citation2005). Past emissions represent a more robust challenge to contribution-based principles.5. Even allegedly non-cosmopolitan accounts of global ethics usually accept a duty to ensure that everyone enjoys at least a minimum set of rights (e.g. to subsistence) or well-being (Miller Citation2007, ch. 7, Nagel Citation2005, Rawls Citation1999, pp. 105–120). So perhaps there is no need, in the interest of more widespread appeal, to deny cosmopolitan positive duties. However, climate change will also cause harm that does not push its victims below basic sufficiency. We could imagine that the solution to the problem of past emissions I will lay out applies only to such harm.6. For reasons of disclosure, I believe there are far-reaching cosmopolitan positive duties. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see what would follow if they are taken out of play. My argumentative strategy thus takes its cue from Pogge (Citation2008) in that it tries to reach what seems like attractive conclusions from maximally inclusive premises.7. The non-identity problem was most famously treated by Derek Parfit, who argued that persons seemingly cannot be harmed by the necessary conditions of their own existence (provided that they have lives worth living). This is true for what Parfit refers to as 'Different People Choices' (Parfit Citation1987, p. 356) and on a person-affecting view of morality according to which harm and benefit must be harm and benefit to particular persons. Note that Parfit (Citation2011, p. 231) himself rejects the person-affecting view. Boxill (Citation2003), Sher (Citation2005) and Cohen (Citation2009) have advanced an argument that transgressors can harm, and owe compensation to, descendants of their original victims if the descendants post-conception are worse off than they would have been had the original victims been compensated.8. Parfit (Citation1987, pp. 487–490) toys with the idea that someone can benefit from being born. One potential problem with that view, however, is that it might not enable us to make intuitive distinctions between those who have been caused into existence as 'climate winners' and 'climate losers'.9. BPP is also subject to a number of general objections. Some question that receipt of benefits is sufficient to generate duties (Nozick Citation1974, p. 93), especially when benefits are forced upon us. Others argue that BPP will be plagued by various kinds of unfairness (Caney Citation2006).10. On some definitions IDP might seem a modified version of BPP. In particular, it shares some resemblance with the 'unjust enrichment' BPP recently defended by Edward Page (Citation2012). My contention, however, is that BPP should (and will) be understood counterfactually, and that it would be advisable to use a different term for a substantially different kind of historical principle. Terminological matters aside, the principle also uses a distinctive set of concepts and premises to reach its conclusions.11. There are different ways in which the claims to the common good could be understood, e.g. as common ownership or as private ownership of one's 'share' (Risse Citation2008).12. I say 'external, distributable resources' because some results of past atmospheric overuse might not be possible to redistribute. Suppose a person has invested her tainted resources into an expensive but effective exercise regime. She might now have an unusually robust physique, but it is hardly possible to transfer this resource to others (nor would it be permissible even if it were possible).13. This worry can be stated more strongly: by demanding action, we blame or punish those with inherited debts. But IDP clearly does not say that people inherit blame-entailing wrongdoing. It only demands that extra burdens be taken by those in possession of atmospherically tainted resources, which is consistent with deeming them entirely blameless.14. It might be, however, that one's life plan is intimately interwoven with the tainted thing or even that one's survival depends on it. As argued by Waldron (Citation1992), in such cases it is entirely plausible that the resource need not be relinquished. This suggests that IDP should at times be tempered by complementary or overriding principles.15. Caney's primary principle is the Poverty-sensitive polluter pays principle, which holds that 'persons should bear the burden of climate change that they have caused so long as doing so does not push them beneath a decent standard of living' (Caney Citation2010, p. 218). The remainder concerns climate duties which this principle cannot handle (non-anthropogenic climate change, emissions of the poor and past emissions).