Climate change is widely considered one of the world’s most pressing issues. If we keep going down the current path, the future is warm, but, unfortunately, not bright.
We know there’s a problem. Green house gases are increasing the mean temperature of the Earth and the overall variability of temperatures and weather. However, amongst discussions of ideas about solutions to climate change lies the question of who is responsible for it and to what extent?
Who could be?
There are number of nations, which consist of a number of companies and governmental entities which consist of a number of individuals who contribute to climate change, each to a certain extent.
Empirically, there are some nations that have emitted far more than other nations, take the US or China for example. However, measuring from the level of the nation can already lead to spurious conclusions about how moral responsibility should be allocated. Because should we measure per capita emissions, Australia sits at the top of the emitters list (go us!).
Whichever way we decide to slice the pie of emissions, it is an empirical question. How we decide to slice the pie of responsibility and furthermore what we should do about it is a philosophical, economical and political issue, all tied into one.
Can Someone be Called “Responsible” for Climate Change?
If someone does not know they are causing harm, can they be held responsible? Or more precisely, should they be? Framed like this, the assignment of responsibility to past emitters may seem unfair. However, if they did know they were causing environmental damage and continued to ignore the negative externality, then they ought to be held responsible. Ignorance can extend past simply not knowing whether they were emitting, but also whether they thought those emissions even have an effect (climate change deniers), or perhaps ignorance about the moral significance of individual, organisational and national action.
Parallel to this question of ignorance is when should the timeline of negative effects be calculated from. If I drive my car, for example, it does not immediately cause a flood in the Philippines. However, I may have contributed to some flood years in the future. Not only is it hard to create direct causal links between emissions and effects, but many of the effects are second, third or higher order consequences of the emissions, making it harder to quantify yet again.
If we decide on any length of time from when emissions were released to when the effects take place, more problems arise. If we find that a company from 1930 is responsible for causing a certain dollar figure of environmental damage, but that company no longer exists, who takes the responsibility now?
National Responsibility
If we’re able to decide who is responsible and from what period and when, which could be a thesis on its own, the next questions raised is how much in the way of reparations should the perpetrators pay? One could analyse how much the emitter has gained from their emissions i.e. if producer X produced N goods due to emitting C Liters of CO2, then they should have to pay some amount relative to the profit gained from the N goods, that was enabled by those emissions. This is called the Beneficiary Pays Principle (BPP). They who benefit from emissions ought to pay.
An easier method of distributing responsibility is the Polluter Pays Principle (PPP), whereby whoever pollutes is responsible for those emissions. It is calculated based on how much they emit and have emitted, which is a far simpler (though certainly not easy) empirical task than required by the BPP where the notion of “benefit” must be quantified.
A third method distinguishes developed and developing countries as a way to more fairly distribute the responsibility. Since developed nations have contributed the most to global warming thus far, and as a result have been able to hasten their development, they should have greater moral and financial responsibility than those still developing. Developed nations also have more dispensable income that can be allocated towards combatting climate change. Whereas developing nations need all the money they have reinvested into infrastructure around food and water, governance etc. This is termed the Ability to Pay Principle (APP).
Approaches to Reducing Emissions
No matter the way we allocate blame, we need actionable methods of reducing emissions at a national level.
One popular way to reduce national emissions is a carbon tax. By taxing carbon, the private cost of production is raised to the social cost of production. That is, because emissions are a negative externality, which are by definition not accounted for in the cost or value of a good, the externality can be internalised i.e. included in the private cost. This then decreases the production quantity of things of which their process causes emissions.
Other similar methods include:
- Regulatory restrictions/limits: A company will receive a hefty fine for exceeding their limit. There is no incentive to drop emissions further once under their limit.
- Trading schemes: A company can exceed their limit, if another company is willing to reduce their emissions even lower and then sell the “space” they have to emit
- Subsidies: Give companies money to put solar panels on their rooves or subsidise vegan foods
International Responsibility
The problem with the above categories of responsibility distribution (BPP, PPP, APP) is that in order for one to be globally effective, it requires global cooperation. Governmental decision making is not designed for easily agreeing on international interests and global cooperation.
Another issue with international responsibility is the free-rider problem. Given most emissions come from the US and China, without these countries being involved an international agreement it becomes near pointless.
If the agreement is largely pointless, what is the incentive, both morally and economically to lower emissions? Morally you might say that by decreasing your emissions as a nation you will slow down the rate of emissions and therefore delay the negative effects. However, economically you likely see great benefit in continuing to use fossil fuels. Having more transport, increasing mobility of citizens and producing more stuff i.e. an increase in GDP which is largely correlated with an increase in a nation’s well-being. These positive effects are, after all, the reason so much has been emitted already.
The apparent conflict of moral and economic perspectives only occurs because the economic case I elaborated above is only concerned with short-term economic effects. If we were to take a long-termist perspective, we see that actually we lose economic output later e.g. less arable land, more destruction from natural disasters and extreme whether etc. But even then, should one nation realise this and take action, it does not feel like justice.
The effects of one nation’s good will to reduce emissions are distributed globally. Unfortunately for the economics of climate change, the atmosphere is not restricted to individual nations and so they have no economic incentive not to emit. They do not feel the extent of their emissions on themselves only, it’s shared among everyone.
Briefly, a country that chooses to do good and emit nothing, will still feel the effects of other nations that choose to emit.
International Action
Programs like an international emissions trading schemes might help to alleviate this sense of injustice, by having the bad actors pay for their bad acts to the good actors, making the actors neutral overall. However such a scheme still requires majority global participation to be effective and needs to have hard limits on each nation’s emissions. Without these limits there would be no point in trading to allow for more emissions.
Technology transfer is one way in which international cooperation toward climate change reduction can work, with positive economic effects. But, by trading with developing nations, developed nations can share their renewable energy technology, such that these nations will not need to go through a period of large green house gas emissions on their way to development. They can skip go straight to an energy system of renewables, with the support of developed nations.
Individual Responsibility
Evidently, it’s difficult to frame the question of moral responsibility at a nation level. It’s also difficult pragmatically, to do the relevant quantification for each. And at that international level, our institutions just aren’t designed to cooperate in such ways. However, there is great hope at the individual level.
Each person makes daily consumption decisions. Consumption decisions have an impact on others. Therefore each person has a moral responsibility to make decisions that do not cause harm to others, now or in the future.
We can take public transport instead of driving. We can eat vegan. We can put solar panels on our houses. We can use keep-cups. We can turn off lights when not in use. There are simple things we can do to make an impact. A million small impacts is a large impact.
Sure, your individual influence may not be visible, but that is only a limitation of measurement. We are unable to see the atmosphere sliced up, and see how much we’ve personally contributed. However, we do know that more emissions is bad. And so we know that emitting more is bad. Therefore we know that engaging in daily (and otherwise) practices that are the cause of less emissions is good.
You should also consider the second order consequences of becoming environmentally conscious. People around you notice, and may begin to feel they should do more. Consequently, when it’s the social norm to take actions with the environment in mind, it’s much harder for people, and especially companies, to go against that norm.
You have the ability to impact the future of the planet. Don’t abdicate responsibility. Take action.
