Justice and Past Emissions
Stephen M. Gardiner
Department of Philosophy and Program on Values in Society
University of Washington, Seattle
Part I
Introduction
The Broad Consensus in Climate Ethics

Serious climate action is required
(‘the action claim’)

The developed countries should bear
the largest burden of a transition to a
low carbon future, at least in the
short-term (‘the burden claim’).
These views are not completely
unanimous, and there are differences
in the details; still, they are very
widespread.
Support for the Burden Claim
The major approaches to fairness:

Historical: the developed countries are responsible for most of the cumulative
emissions currently causing climate change

Moral equality: the developed countries consume much more per capita than other
countries (e.g., in 2007, the US average was 5.32 metric tons of carbon, Australia 4.84,
the UK 2.47 New Zealand 2.11; China 1.16, India 0.35, and Bangladesh 0.08)

Priority to the least well-off: developed countries are much richer on average (per
capita income in 2007 was more than US$45,000 in the US and UK, but only $2604 in
China, $976 in India, and $428 in Bangladesh), and more than 10% of the world’s
population lives on less than $1 per day, unable to meet their basic needs (UN 2009).

Utilitarianism: it seems better for happiness to allow the global poor access to
emissions to meet their subsistence needs and to move out of poverty, than to protect
the “luxury emissions” of the richer countries. Moreover, there are good utilitarian
reasons for supporting the other approaches to justice, as secondary principles
(Singer 2002)
Hesitation about Past Emissions
A mainstream position:
•
deny relevance prior to 1990 (or perhaps
somewhere 1985-1995)
•
arguing that prior responsibility is
implausible, largely on ethical grounds
(e.g., Singer 2002, Jamieson 2001, Caney 2004, Miller 2010,
Posner and Sunstein 2008, Posner and Weinstein 2010)
Some core arguments:

ignorance

“first-come, first-served”

dead emitters

practicality
Thesis
General conclusions:

The usual objections to taking past emissions
seriously are too quick.

The issue of past emissions is more complex
than the mainstream position suggests.

Past and future emissions are intertwined, and
cannot be so easily separated.
Specific proposals:

Reject the simple threshold and 1990 views in
favor of a more complex profile

Accept the “fair access” framing

Take seriously the wider consequences of
rejecting liability for past emissions, and
collective responsibility

Limit liability by appealing to pluralism and a
conditional responsibility view
Part II
The Presumptive Arguments
(1) “You Broke It, (therefore) You Fix It”

Those who cause a problem have an
obligation to rectify it, and also
assume additional liabilities, such as
for compensation, if the problem
imposes costs or harms on others.
Already familiar in environmental law
and regulation (e.g., the “polluter
pays” principle)
(2) Fair Access
•
The atmosphere’s capacity to
absorb greenhouse gases
without adverse effects is a
limited resource that is, or
ought to be, held in common.
•
If some have used up the
resource, and in doing so
denied others access to it, then
compensation may be owed.
The latecomers have been
deprived of their fair share.
Part III
The Ignorance Objection
The Basic Objection
Past polluters were ignorant of the adverse
effects of their emissions, and so ought
not to be blamed. They neither intended
nor foresaw the effects of their behavior,
and so should not be held responsible.
Todd Stern (the top U.S. negotiator) at
Copenhagen:
“I actually completely reject the notion of
a debt or reparations or anything of the
like.
For most of the 200 years since the
Industrial Revolution, people were
blissfully ignorant of the fact that
emissions caused a greenhouse effect.
It’s a relatively recent phenomenon.”
Response #1: Blame isn’t the issue
Some relevant concepts:




Causal responsibility: A brought it about
that X
Moral responsibility: A has a duty with
respect to X (e.g., to avoid or prevent it)
Moral Blame: A should be morally
blamed if X occurs
Moral Accountability: A is morally liable
if X occurs (e.g. to compensate for the
costs)
Claim: We can have moral responsibility
without moral blame, but with moral
accountability
Example: if my dog digs under my (imposing
and serious) fence, escapes into your
yard and destroys your vegetable patch,
I am not causally responsible or morally
blamable, but I am morally responsible
and accountable for the damage.
(This is so even if the damage is not the
result of negligence on my part. The
basic point is: it is my dog, and part of
what one takes on when one has a dog
is these kinds of responsibilities.)
Response #2: “You Broke It, You Fix It”
Rationale
Commonsense morality:
if I accidentally break something of yours,
we usually think that I have some
obligation to fix it, even if I was ignorant
that my behavior was dangerous, and
perhaps even if I could not have known.
Why?
It remains true that I broke it, and in many
contexts that is sufficient. After all, if I am
not to fix it, who will? Even if it is not
completely fair that I bear the burden, isn’t
it at least less unfair than leaving you to
bear the costs of my behavior alone? (e.g.,
Shue)
Response #3: Fair Access Rationale
Suppose that I unwittingly deprive you of your share of
something and benefit from doing so. Isn’t it natural
to think that I should step in to help when the
problem is discovered?
Example:
Suppose that everyone in the office chips in to order
pizza for lunch. You have to dash out for a meeting,
and so leave your slices in the refrigerator. I (having
already eaten my slices) discover and eat yours
because I assume that they must be going spare.
You return to find that you now don’t have any
lunch. Is this simply your problem?
We don’t usually think so. Even though I didn’t realize at
the time that I was taking your pizza, this does not
mean that I have no special obligations. The fact
that I ate your lunch remains morally relevant.
Response #4: Who knew, and when did
they know it?
1965: Johnson Administration
“Through his worldwide industrial civilization, Man is
unwittingly conducting a vast geophysical experiment.
Within a few generations he is burning the fossil fuels
that slowly accumulated in the earth over the past 500
million years. The C02 produced by this combustion
is being injected into the atmosphere; about half of it
remains there. The estimated recoverable reserves of
fossil fuels are sufficient to produce nearly a 200%
increase in the carbon dioxide content of the
atmosphere.” (126)
Understanding a Basic Threat
“Pollutants have altered on a global scale the carbon dioxide content of the air” (p. 1)
“the data show, clearly and conclusively, that from 1958-1963, the carbon dioxide content
of the atmosphere increased by 1.36 percent” (116)
“We can conclude with fair assurance that at the present time fossil fuels are the only
source of CO2 being added to the ocean-atmosphere-biosphere system.” (119)
“By the year 2000 the increase in atmospheric CO2 will be close to 25%. This may be
sufficient to produce measurable and perhaps marked changes in climate …” (126-7)
“With a 25% increase in atmospheric CO2, the average temperature near the earth’s
surface could increase from 0.6 to 4.0 degrees C, depending on the behavior of the
atmospheric water vapor content … A doubling of CO2 in the air, which would happen
if a little more than half of the fossil fuel reserves were consumed, would have about
three times the effect of a twenty-five percent increase.” (121) [three times = 1.812.0C]
Response #5: Why a Sharp Threshold?
Surely there are important gradations both before and
after 1990 …
Emissions prior to 1990:
An evolving view? Arrenhius (1903) … Keeling
1960s … Johnson Administration (1965)
Emissions after 1990:
Example: US initial commitment to stabilizing
emissions at 1990 levels by 2000, basic agreement
to Kyoto (1998), withdrawal from Kyoto (2001),
Copenhagen commitments (2009) …
Part IV
The “First-come, First-served”
Objection
An (Alleged) Disanalogy
In the pizza case, you have a clear right to the
eaten slices, because you have already paid
for them. But in the case of emissions,
where the shares of the latecomers are used
up by those who come earlier, it might be
maintained that the latecomers have no such
claim. Perhaps it is simply “first-come, first
served,” and hard luck to the tardy.
A Counter-interpretation: “Free for All”
If a resource initially appears to be unlimited, then
those who want to consume it might simply assume
at the outset that no issues of allocation arise.
Everyone can take whatever they want, with no
adverse consequences for others. In this case, the
principle is not really first-come, first-served (which
implies that the resource is limited, so that some
may lose out), but rather “free for all” (which does
not).
Since it is assumed that there is more than enough for
everyone, no principle of allocation is needed.
“So, What Happens If …”?
What if the assumption that the resource
is unlimited turns out to be mistaken,
so that free for all becomes
untenable?
Do those who have already consumed
large shares have no special
responsibility to those who have not,
and now cannot?
Does the original argument for “free for
all” justify ignoring the past?
Arguably, not …
If the parties had considered at the outset the
possibility that the resource might turn out to be
limited, which allocation principle would have
seemed more reasonable and fair:
(a) “free for all, with no special responsibility for
the early users if the resource turns out to be
limited”, or
(b) “free for all, but with early users liable to extra
responsibilities if the assumption of
unlimitedness turns out to be mistaken”?
Reasons to reject (b):

makes later users vulnerable in an
unnecessary way,

provides a potentially costly incentive to
consume early if possible

especially implausible if there are harms to
third parties as well.
Part IV
The Dead Emitters Objection
The Basic Objection
Since significant anthropogenic emissions have
been occurring since 1750, many past
polluters are now dead. Given this, it is
said, “polluter pays” principles no longer
really apply to a substantial proportion of
past emissions; instead, what is really being
proposed under the banner of polluter pays
is that the descendents of the original
polluters should pay for those emissions,
because they have benefited from the past
pollution (because of industrialization in
their countries).
However, the argument continues, this
“beneficiary pays principle” is unjust
because it holds current individuals
responsible for emissions that they did not
cause (and could not have prevented), and
in ways which diminish their own
opportunities.
Response #1: Not Dead!
(a) More than half of cumulative emissions
have occurred since the mid-1970s. So,
for much of the pollution, many of the
polluters are still around.
(b) “Polluter pays” can still apply if it refers
not to individuals as such but to some
entity to which they are connected, such
as a country, people, or corporation.
Moreover, this is the case in climate change,
where polluter pays is usually invoked to
suggest that countries should be held
responsible for their past emissions, and
these typically (though not always) have
persisted over the time period
envisioned.
Response #2: Defending the Collective
Many proponents of the ‘dead emitters’ objection
the moral relevance of states, and instead
invoke a strong individualism that claims that
only individuals should matter ultimately from
the moral point of view.
However, this move makes the argument more
controversial that it initially appears.
On the one hand, even many individualists would
argue that states often play the role of
representing individuals and discharging many
of their moral responsibilities. Given this, more
needs to be said about why the fact of
membership is irrelevant for assigning
responsibility.
Response #3: Radical Individualism?
On the other hand, the argument ignores the issue that a
very strong individualism would also call into question
many other practices surrounding inherited rights and
responsibility.
Put most baldly, if we are not responsible for at least
some of the debts incurred by our ancestors, why are
we entitled to inherit all of the benefits of their
activities? In particular, if we disavow their
emissions, must we also relinquish the territory and
infrastructure they left to us?
The worry here is that, if successful, the attempt to
undermine polluter (or beneficiary) pays is liable to
prove too much, or at least to presuppose a radical
rethinking of global politics. Perhaps this radicalism
is theoretically correct. Still, it is not clear that it is
okay to apply it selectively in this context.
An Alternative Approach
Of course, it is true that holding some contemporaries
accountable for the past emissions of their
ancestors/benefactors may result in unacceptable
burdens for them.
However:

We should recognize that this is a different issue,
to be addressed on its merits.

We can also say that past emissions are only one
of the relevant ethical considerations, to be
integrated with others.

We could propose that those who find the overall
package of benefits and burdens bequeathed to
them be allowed to relinquish both the benefits
and burdens, and return to a background state of
equality.
Part IV
The Practicality Objection
Political Impracticality
Objection: if agreement is to be
politically feasible, we must
ignore the past and be
forward-looking in our
approach.
.
Response #1: ‘Oh Yeah?’
Claim: the objection makes a rash claim
about political reality.
A genuinely global agreement is needed
to tackle climate change, and since
many nations of the world would not
accept an agreement that did not
explicitly or implicitly recognize past
disparities, any attempt to exclude the
past from consideration is itself
seriously unrealistic.
(Neumeyer 2000, Athanasiou and Baer
2002)
.
Response #2: Is Separation so Easy?
On the one hand, the future emissions that make climate
change pose such a large threat do so principally against
the backdrop of past emissions. Not only do these remain
in the atmosphere for a long time, but they also make any
given level of future emissions more dangerous than it
might have been. Hence, the past constrains the future,
and past emitters might be held liable for that.
On the other hand, a similar point applies in reverse. The
“liability” of the past is in part determined by future
behavior. Past emissions become more dangerous if there
are greater future emissions. Hence, though it might
initially be tempting to assign responsibility for adaptation
efforts (say) solely on the basis of past emissions, this
obscures the fact that how much adaptation is ultimately
necessary (or feasible) will depend on future emissions as
well.
Given these points, the issue of past emissions casts a
notable shadow over other allocation questions.
Part VIII
Conclusions
Thesis
General conclusions:

The usual objections to taking past emissions
seriously are too quick.

The issue of past emissions is more complex
than the mainstream position suggests.

Past and future emissions are intertwined, and
cannot be so easily separated.
Specific proposals:

Reject the simple threshold and 1990 views in
favor of a more complex profile

Accept the “fair access” framing

Take seriously the wider consequences of
rejecting liability for past emissions, and
collective responsibility

Limit liability by appealing to pluralism and a
conditional responsibility view