Journal of Social Philosophy-Special Issue - The Global Environment, Climate Change, and Justice - Vol.40no.2

CONTRIBUTORS
Robin Attfield is professor of philosophy at Cardiff University, where he has

taught Philosophy since 1968. His latest book is the edited collection The
Ethics of the Environment (Ashgate, 2008). His latest monograph is Creation,
Evolution and Meaning (Aldershot + Ashgate, 2006). As an ethicist he has
participated in conferences and workshops on environmental ethics and on the
ethics of global warming of UNESCO and Fondazione Lanza (among others).
Simon Caney is professor in political theory, University of Oxford, and Fellow
and Tutor in Politics at Magdalen College. He is the author of Justice Beyond
Borders (Oxford University Press, 2005). He currently holds an ESRC Climate
Change Leadership Fellowship (2008–2011). He is working on two
books—Global Justice and Climate Change (with Derek Bell—under contract
to Oxford University Press) and On Cosmopolitanism (under contract to Oxford
University Press).josp_1452 4..6
Stephen M. Gardiner is associate professor of Philosophy at the University
of Washington in Seattle. His main research interests are in ethical theory,
political philosophy, environmental ethics and Aristotle’s ethics. He is a
co-editor (with Simon Caney, Dale Jamieson, and Henry Shue) of Climate
Ethics (Oxford University Press, forthcoming) and the editor of Virtue Ethics,
Old and New (Cornell, 2005).
Tim Hayward is professor of environmental political theory at the University
of Edinburgh. He has published widely in environmental theory and his current
research integrates this with international political theory. His most recent book
is Constitutional Environmental Rights (Oxford University Press, 2005).
Keith Hyams is lecturer in political theory at the University of Exeter and an
activist with the Camp for Climate Action. He is the author of articles on
Nozick, political authority and the morality of consent, and is completing a
book entitled The Liberal Battleground: Consent in Morality and Politics. His
present research explores the foundations of egalitarian justice and the nature of
moral justification.
Catriona McKinnon is reader in political theory at the University of Reading.
She has written on liberalism, cosmopolitanism, toleration, equality and
distributive justice, and the values and ideals of welfare policy. She is the
author of Liberalism and the Defence of Political Constructivism (Palgrave,
2002), Toleration: A Critical Introduction (Routledge, 2006), and the editor of
Issues in Political Theory (Oxford University Press, 2008). She is currently
completing a book on climate change and liberal justice, due for publication
in 2010.
Darrel Moellendorf is professor of philosophy and Director of the Institute
for Ethics and Public Affairs at San Diego State University. For the 2008–09
academic year he is a Member of the School of Social Sciences at the Institute
for Advanced Studies. His main research is in the areas of global justice and
morality and climate change.
Steve Vanderheiden is assistant professor of political science and
environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is the
author of Atmospheric Justice: A Political Theory of Climate Change (Oxford
University Press, 2008) and editor of Political Theory and Global Climate
Change (MIT Press, 2008).
Editor’s Note
Carol C. Gould
This special issue of the journal addresses the crucial contemporary issue of
climate change and places it in relation to the broader concerns with justice and
with the global environment more generally. I have had the privilege of coediting
this issue with Tim Hayward, Professor of Environmental Political Theory at the
University of Edinburgh, who was one of the first thinkers to consistently focus
on the significance of the environment for social and political philosophy. I am
grateful to Tim for taking the lead in shepherding this project through its various
stages and for doing the large part of the editorial work. The fruits of this labor will
be evident to readers, but I can say in advance how truly pleased I am to present
here the original thinking of so many distinguished contributors. I hope that this
special issue will stimulate further philosophical attention to the range of issues
involved in preserving a global environment adequate to human well-being, in
which norms of equality and global justice come to play an increasingly substan-
tial role. Although the articles here do not primarily speak to the concern for
nonhuman animals and other beings on our planet, their interests too are obviously
deeply implicated in climate change, and topics along those lines will continue to
be a focus of articles in subsequent issues of this journal.josp_1453 133..134
This issue also marks a significant transition in the journal’s editorial process.
The longtime Managing Editor of the journal, Kathalene Razzano (who super-
vised much of this issue’s editorial work as well) has had to return to full-time
dissertation writing, and a new Managing Editor—Francis Raven—has taken over
that position from her. Kathalene was a model editor, I think, who not only
performed the usual editorial tasks with precision, but developed a distinctive
managerial style marked by personal attention to authors and reviewers. Francis
brings to this position his experience in a similar role at the Journal of Aesthetics
and Art Criticism and he has thus far enabled a seamless transition in our evalu-
ative processes. I am confident that authors and reviewers will enjoy working with
him and will find him insightful, efficient, and helpful.
Please note that the journal has a new e-mail address beginning with this issue
and we ask that all submissions be directed to it: jsocphil@gmail.com. If you
would like to contact the Editor directly with suggestions for special issues or with
comments about the journal, the address for that is: jspeditor@gmail.com. We also
request that authors adhere closely to the publication guidelines located on the
inside back cover of each issue. This journal strives for a triple blind review
process, in which not only are reviewers and authors anonymous to each other, but
JOURNAL of SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY, Vol. 40 No. 2, Summer 2009, 133–134.

© Copyright the Author. Journal Compilation © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
134 Carol C. Gould
also the identities of authors of submitted articles are blind to the Editor through
all stages of the review process, until after the final decision to accept or reject a
given paper is made. We therefore request that authors be sure to send all sub-
missions only to the managing editor at jsocphil@gmail.com.
Introduction
Tim Hayward
Global environmental issues are moving up the international political agenda.

Climate change, in particular, is now widely recognized as one of the greatest
challenges facing the international community in the twenty-first century.
Until recently, the very occurrence of anthropogenetic climate change was
still a matter of political dispute. But now, even as ideologically driven skepticism
abates about whether dangerous climate change is occurring, we are brought to
consider alarming new scientific findings about the possible nature of the change.
As Stephen Gardiner opens by observing, as recently as the 2001 report of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the problem was still viewed as a
matter of gradual, incremental effects. However, greater attention is now being
focused on the possibility of “encountering major threshold phenomena in the
climate system, where breaching such thresholds may have catastrophic conse-
quences.” Gardiner’s article explores the possibility that awareness of such stark
and dramatic threats could actually serve to break the political inertia that con-
tinues to hold back the implementation of measures that would be adequate to
dealing with the problem as scientists present it. However, he thinks there are
reasons to be skeptical and cautious about such a prospect: for the possibility of
abrupt change might only reshape rather than undermine the usual concerns, and
it might even make appropriate action more rather than less difficult to achieve.
“Worst of all, if the abrupt change is severe, it may provoke the equivalent of an
intergenerational arms race.” The “intergenerational arms race” has structural
similarities to debt deflation. The longer you put off dealing with the problem, the
harder it becomes to deal with it; and the harder it is to deal with, the stronger your
incentive to put off dealing with it. Gardiner concludes we have to look beyond
people’s generation-relative preferences; the hope he holds out is that contem-
plating the possibility of abrupt change will help us engage intergenerational
motivations. If severe abrupt climate change is a real threat, the time for action is
now, when many actions are likely to be prudentially and morally easier than in
the future.josp_1443 135..139
It seems that we need to appreciate, therefore, the sense in which our gen-
eration is enjoying a “free ride” at the expense of future generations. The article
by Simon Caney contributes to our understanding of the nature of this intergen-
erational collective action problem with his critical analysis of the reasons why the
present generation might feel justified in applying a positive social discount rate
and devoting more resources to our contemporaries than to future generations.

136 Tim Hayward
One of the standard justifications for discounting the future is the argument that it
would be wrong to take on the expense of mitigating on behalf of future genera-
tions because they will be better off than us. Of course, it is a matter of contention
whether future generations really will be better off than us—especially if they face
the costs of unabated climate change—but Caney argues that, even granting that
contentious assumption, the conclusion does not follow. Nor, he argues, can
discounting be justified on the grounds that future risks and/or uncertainties—
in virtue of their indeterminable probability—place a lesser call on our current
resources than do our manifest contemporary problems. This issue is at the heart
of contestation about the appropriate meaning and application of the Precaution-
ary Principle. Caney’s innovative argument aims to show how a justification for
precaution can be derived from analysis of how climate change jeopardizes
fundamental human rights. A human rights-oriented approach gives us good
reason to reject “time” discounting, “growth” discounting, and “risk and uncer-
tainty” discounting, he argues, and strengthens the case for an aggressive policy of
mitigation and adaptation dedicated to preventing rights-jeopardizing climate
change.
The context of abrupt climate change and the question of how to justify
precaution are brought together by Catriona McKinnon. In virtue of the prospect
of runaway climate change precipitated by passing various “tipping points” of
abrupt change, Mackinnon argues that a precautionary approach ought to be
adopted by policy-makers. Noting that the Precautionary Principle admits of
stronger and weaker interpretations, and that a strong interpretation is indefensible
as a general principle for policy-makers, she argues it is nevertheless defensible
with respect to climate change, against the background of a commitment to deliver
justice to future generations. Understanding intergenerational justice in broadly
Rawlsian egalitarian terms, she distinguishes two Rawlsian arguments for taking
precautionary action against the worst outcomes of climate change. One would
make reference to the unjust distribution of advantage across generations that
could be caused by failing to take precautions. The maximin principle supports
strong precaution because the worst consequences of not taking precautionary
action are worse than the worst consequences of taking it. On balance, though, she
believes a more powerful argument would make reference to the “unbearable
strains of commitment”: for the consequences of failing to take precautionary
action could be such extreme scarcity of resources and almost unimaginably bad
living conditions that the joint pursuit of justice would be rendered impossible. If
not taking precautions could cause such circumstances for future generations, then
we cannot choose not to take them.
The matter of intergenerational justice is further complicated, however, by
questions of intra-generational justice. Although climate change is likely eventu-
ally to affect everyone—and that may be the reason why, of all global challenges
of environment and justice, it is the one to have most galvanized attention—the
costs of dealing with it are likely to have greater impact on the lives of the poor
among future generations, just as they already do on the poor of the current
Introduction 137
generation. Furthermore, those who suffer most from the effects of climate change
are generally among those who have benefited least from its primary cause,
namely, the emission of CO2 into the atmosphere. Darrel Moellendorf, accord-
ingly, stresses a need for sensitivity to how the intra-generational assignment of
the costs of mitigation and adaptation bears on the just assignment of intergen-
erational costs of climate change. Adapting a broadly Rawlsian approach to model
deliberative intergenerational impartiality, he develops a sophisticated account of
a principle that assigns proportionally equal intergenerational costs, and addresses
potential objections to it—including against Parfit’s nonidentity problem. Some-
thing Moellendorf’s argument serves to show is that if there were today a serious
global commitment to progressively reducing unjust inequalities over time, this
might be some justification for funding present reforms at the expense of future
mitigation—since that would mean institutions were being directed toward well-
being of the future poor too. But because that condition is counterfactual, the
principle of Intergenerational Equality remains more justifiable than the alterna-
tives discussed.
Robin Attfield explores how these concerns about the complex interplay of
issues of intra- and intergenerational justice require us to reconceive the scope and
content of ethics as more traditionally conceived. Taking his bearings from Hans
Jonas’s “imperative of responsibility,” he examines the difficulties—particularly
those highlighted by Parfit—of how ethics can be adapted to deal with the full
range of the foreseeable impacts of our present activities. Attfield’s central theme
is that of “mediated responsibilities.” These arise where there is a distance, spatial
or temporal, between an action and its foreseeable impacts, and Attfield seeks
to show that moral accountability attends causal responsibility as much when it is
mediated as when it is unmediated. One particular area of responsibility is cap-
tured by the idea of “ecological debt,” whereby rich countries make dispropor-
tionate use of ecological space. This idea is explicated by reference to equal
entitlement to environmental capacities—which, he believes, could be supported
on either consequentialist or Kantian grounds. But this means the framework of
decision making needs to be able to track current dispersed responsibilities for
distant and future consequences: Governments as well as individuals need to
recognize their mediated responsibilities.
A specific proposal that links individual responsibility to the wider issues of
climate change, and addresses governments’ responsibility for intra-national allo-
cation, is that of personal carbon allowances (PCAs). Keith Hyams provides an
introduction to this relatively new policy idea and discusses the various questions
of ethics and justice it gives rise to. Philosophical questions about the distribution
of PCAs focus particularly on how to allocate PCAs to individuals and whether
they should be tradable. Answers will be influenced by what we take to be the
rationale for PCAs as a policy option. He argues that it is in virtue of consider-
ations of fairness that PCAs are a better policy option for reducing a country’s
carbon emissions than the obvious alternatives of either tax or industrial quotas.
The task facing those who are moved by this rationale is to identify the norm that
138 Tim Hayward
should regulate the fair introduction of PCAs into the market. In particular, we
ought to examine the normative merits of proposals that mirror methods already
used, or widely supported, to regulate the distribution of emission rights to states
or industrial firms. We should not assume, though, that the normative principles
applicable to the international case will automatically apply in identical fashion to
intra-national contexts.
The capacity of the earth’s atmosphere to absorb carbon emissions is one
(very significant) component of what may, more comprehensively, be described as
“ecological space.” Steve Vanderheiden argues that recognition of the finitude of
ecological space “may invalidate many other longstanding normative commit-
ments from the liberal canon, forcing us to rethink judgments reached on the basis
of obsolete premises in light of a more realistic set of assumptions.” He claims that
while cosmopolitan justice theories—like those of Beitz and Pogge—have begun
to display some recognition of ecological limits, they need to go further. We need
to take seriously how ecological limits potentially constrain economic develop-
ment and we should thus suspend cornucopian assumptions supporting a belief
that growth of production and consumption in developing countries can be sus-
tainable in the absence of economic contraction in industrialized ones. The
principle of “contraction and convergence” that cosmopolitan climate justice
advocates have promoted with respect to global greenhouse gas emissions should
apply more generally to the world’s resources. We need to understand the causal
role that uninhibited individual autonomy in consumption choices can play in
causing ecological harm half a world away. The sphere of unconstrained liberty
shrinks considerably once ecological limits are taken into account: for relevant to
each person’s ability to exercise control over their personal space of autonomy is
the restraint exercised by others in their own.
Tim Hayward’s contribution picks up on these themes to press critical ques-
tions against the widespread presumption that cosmopolitanism represents a con-
tinuation of liberal theories of justice. He points out the tension within liberalism
between its progressive ideals and the ideological service it supplies for a capi-
talist economy. If this tension is not generally regarded as a serious problem
within the context of a liberal nation-state, he thinks it nevertheless has signifi-
cance in the context of the new global challenges. Regarding global justice, he
suggests that the liberals who are most consistent in their thinking are those who,
like Rawls, resist the claims of cosmopolitanism. If so, a consistent account of
cosmopolitanism involves something other than an extension of liberalism.
Regarding the global environment, he suggests that the aim of sustainable devel-
opment has been readily endorsed by liberals because of its optimistic implication
of a potential win-win-win scenario for protecting the environment while also
securing economic development and promoting global justice. Yet if we attend to
the losses and costs associated with this development model, we may find it more
appropriate to reframe the aims relating to global environmental justice in terms
of ecological debt. This is to challenge liberal theorists either to defend the
cornucopian assumption or to think through the full consequences of dropping it.
Introduction 139
These include asking how progressive in fact is a distinctively liberal construction

of ethical goals in the contemporary circumstances of global justice. He suggests
that what present circumstances require is an ethos of restraint and that this, in key
respects, is the antithesis of a liberal ethos.
In any event, the question of what global justice requires in the light of
ecological constraints, on the one hand, and the imperatives of human rights, on
the other, is revealed by the present collection of articles to be as intellectually
challenging as it is practically urgent.
Saved by Disaster? Abrupt Climate Change, Political Inertia,
and the Possibility of an Intergenerational Arms Race
Stephen M. Gardiner
We are all used to talking about these impacts coming in the lifetimes of our children and
grandchildren. Now we know that it’s us.1
In recent years, scientific discussion of climate change has taken a turn for
the worse. Traditional concern for the gradual, incremental effects of global
warming remains; but now greater attention is being paid to the possibility of
encountering major threshold phenomena in the climate system, where breach-
ing such thresholds may have catastrophic consequences. As recently as the
2001 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), such
events were treated as unlikely, at least during the current century.2 But the work
of the last six years tends to suggest that these projections are shaky at best. As
the United States’ National Research Council warns us, climate surprises are
“inevitable.”3 josp_1444 140..162
In this paper, I want to explore some ways in which this paradigm shift may
make a difference to how we understand the moral and political challenges posed
by climate change, and in particular the current problem of political inertia. I will
examine two suggestions. The first is that abrupt climate change undermines
political inertia, in part through undermining three common explanations for it,
based in economic, psychological, and intergenerational factors. The second sug-
gestion is that this shift is in one respect beneficial: the focus on abrupt, as opposed
to gradual, climate change actually helps us to act. On the one hand, it supplies
strong motives to the current generation to do what is necessary to tackle the
climate problem on behalf of both itself and future generations; on the other hand,
failing this, it acts as a kind of fail-safe device, which at least limits how bad the
problem can, ultimately, become.
My thesis is that these suggestions are largely mistaken, for two reasons.
First, the possibility of abrupt change tends only to reshape, rather than under-
mine, the usual concerns; hence, the root causes of moral corruption remain.
Second, the possibility may make appropriate action more, rather than less,
difficult, and exacerbate, rather than limit, the severity of the problem. Worst of
all, if the abrupt change is severe, it may provoke the equivalent of an intergen-
erational arms race.

josp_1444 140..162
Saved by Disaster? 141
I. Abrupt Climate Change
The debate on global change has largely failed to factor in the inherently chaotic, sensi-
tively balanced, and threshold-laden nature of Earth’s climate system and the increased
likelihood of abrupt climate change.4
Until recently, scientific discussion of climate change has been dominated by

what I shall call “the gradualist paradigm.” Researchers tended to assume5 that the
response of natural phenomena to increases in greenhouse gas concentrations
would be mainly linear and incremental, and this assumption tended to result in
analogous claims about likely impacts on human and nonhuman systems. Hence,
for example, the original IPCC report projected a rise in global temperature at an
average of 0.3°C per decade in the twenty-first century,6 and typical estimates of
the economic costs of impacts ran at around 1.5–2 percent of gross world product.7
Such results are hardly to be taken lightly, and much of the first three IPCC
reports was taken up with showing how and why they are matters of serious concern.
But recent research suggests that they may underestimate the problem. This is
because there is increasing evidence that the climate system is much less regular
than the gradualist paradigm suggests. In particular, there may be major threshold
phenomena, and crossing the relevant thresholds may have catastrophic conse-
quences. Scientists have been aware of the possibility of such thresholds for some
time. But recent work suggests that the mechanisms governing them are much less
robust, and the thresholds themselves much closer to where we are now, than
previously thought. This suggests that we need an additional way of understanding
the threat posed by climate change. Let us call this “the abrupt paradigm.”8
Where might this paradigm be instantiated? Three possibilities are especially
well-known. The first is ice sheet disintegration, accompanied by a major rise in
sea level. In the past, such change has occurred very abruptly—as much as “an
average of 1 m of sea level rise every 20 years” for four hundred years.9 Further-
more, the current potential for change is substantial. Melting the mountain glaciers
and Greenland alone would lead to a sea level rise of around seven meters, and
adding the West Antarctic ice sheet would boost the total to twelve meters.10
Moreover, it is easy to see why such melting could be catastrophic. Even a total
rise of more than two meters “would be sufficient to flood large portions of
Bangladesh, the Nile Delta, Florida, and many island nations, causing forced
migration of tens to hundreds of millions of people.”11 Indeed, since “a large
portion of the world’s people live within a few meters of sea level, with trillions
of dollars of infrastructure,”12 James Hansen believes that such a rise would
“wreak havoc with civilization,”13 making the issue of sea level “the dominant
issue in global warming” and one which “sets a low ceiling on the level of global
warming that would constitute dangerous anthropogenic interference.”14 Given
this, it is clearly a matter of concern that the Greenland ice sheet is “currently
thought to be shrinking by 50 cubic kilometers per year,” and that this might prime
the ice sheets for a sudden, “explosive,” and irreversible disintegration.15
142 Stephen M. Gardiner
The second possibility is a weakening of the ocean conveyor of the North

Atlantic, which, among other things, supports the Gulf Stream to Western Europe.
Again, paleoclimatic evidence suggests that the system is vulnerable to abrupt
change. Furthermore, substantial effects on ocean circulation are projected by
climate models, and there is little reason to doubt that such change could be
catastrophic, at least to some countries.16 Given this, it is sobering to see some
scientists reporting that the conveyor may already be showing some signs of
disruption.17
A third, less-understood possibility is that “vast stores of methane hydrate—a
super-greenhouse gas—that are currently frozen under the oceans will, when
global warming has reached some point, rise to the surface and dissipate them-
selves into the atmosphere.”18 Again, there is precedent. Such a release is said to
have caused the biggest extinction of all time, the end of the Permian era 251
million years ago, when ninety percent of species were suddenly lost.19 Clearly, a
change of this kind would be catastrophic. A New York Times columnist aptly
referred to it as “the Big Burp Theory of the Apocalypse.”20
Now, the three prominent examples are of serious interest in their own right.
However, it may be that the most important thing about them is the support they
lend to the abrupt paradigm. This is because perhaps our greatest uncertainty at the
moment concerns how good we are at identifying catastrophic risks. In short, it is
reasonable to think that our current grasp of the possibilities is seriously incom-
plete;21 and this may be the most crucial fact from the point of view of policy.
If there are abrupt thresholds, where might they be? Recent work suggests
that some are in the area of projected emissions, and of these, some may be close
by. According to the IPCC, the preindustrial atmospheric concentration of carbon
dioxide was around 280 parts per million (ppm), and the current concentration is
around 380 ppm. Based on a range of model scenarios, making different assump-
tions about rates of technological change and economic and population growth,
the IPCC projects atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide of 535–983 ppm,
and an increase in surface temperature of 1.1–6.4°C (best estimate, 1.8–4.0°C) by
the end of the century.22 Estimates of where the relevant thresholds might be
include: 1°C for the disintegration of the Greenland ice sheet; 2°C, 450 ppm CO2
or 2–4°C, 550 ppm for the West Antarctic ice sheet; and 3°C in one hundred years,
700 ppm CO2 for a shutdown of the thermohaline circulation.23 Clearly, we are in
dangerous territory.
II. Some Causes of Political Inertia
Still, perhaps the news is not all grim. For it has been suggested that the
possibility of abrupt change may help us out of our current problem of political
inertia. Let me first sketch this problem and then suggest why it might be thought
that the threat of abrupt change might help.
The fact that climate change poses a serious threat has been known for
some time. In 1988, the United Nations Environment Program and the World
Meteorological Association created the IPCC, and charged it with the task of
providing member governments with state of the art assessments of “the science,
the impacts, and the economics of—and the options for mitigating and/or adapting
to—climate change.”24 In 1995, the IPCC claimed that “the balance of evidence
suggests a discernible influence on climate.”25 In 2001, it went still further,
asserting that “most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to
have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations,”26 and in its most
recent report in 2007, it upgraded this assessment to “very likely” (meaning a
probability of 90% or more).27 The IPCC’s main conclusions have been endorsed
by all major scientific bodies, including the National Academy of Sciences, the
American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the
American Association for the Advancement of Science. This consensus appears to
be remarkably robust.28
Despite this, progress on solving the problem has been minimal. First, as a
matter of substance, humanity’s emissions of the main greenhouse gas, carbon
dioxide, grew by nearly thirty percent between 1990 and 2005.29 Moreover, there
is no sign of serious, sustained reductions either globally or in particular nations:
indeed, the rate of growth has increased recently to around two to three percent per
year.30 Estimates of future trends vary considerably.31 But under a scenario usually
taken to be representative of “business as usual,” annual carbon dioxide emissions
will increase over the century from around eight gigatonnes of carbon (Gt C) in
2000 to around twenty Gt C in 2100, an increase of 250 percent (to >700 ppm
CO2).32 Under a more extreme scenario of rapid, fossil-fuel intensive growth, the
figure rises to around twenty-nine Gt C per annum in 2100, an increase of more
than 350 percent (to around 1000 ppm CO2). Second, at the political level, despite
some notable efforts, overall progress has been less than impressive. In the global
arena, several weak agreements have been made, but then broken. At national
levels, even those nations who express the strongest commitment to tackling
climate change publicly—such as the European Union, United Kingdom, and
New Zealand—have had difficulties in restricting their emissions.33
Plainly, there is a mismatch between the apparent seriousness of the problem
and our collective institutional response. What accounts for this? No doubt there
are many possible explanations, more than one of which may play a contributing
role. Here I shall discuss three particularly prominent suggestions, to see how far
they might be undermined by the emergence of the Abrupt Paradigm.34
1. Economics
One explanation for political inertia is, of course, that people believe that
action is not justified. Such arguments are often couched in economic terms.35 So,
for example, Bjorn Lomborg asserts that “economic analyses clearly show that it
will be far more expensive to cut CO2 emissions radically than to pay the costs of
adaptation to the increased temperatures.”36 Now, in my view, such arguments are
dubious even under the gradualist paradigm. Nevertheless, it is worth discussing
the impact of the Abrupt Paradigm on them, since it appears to undercut these
economic arguments even more decisively.
Let us begin with the usual objections. First, interpreted as a general claim
about economic analysis, Lomborg’s assertion appears to be false. In fact, the
results of economic analyses vary widely, and are inconclusive. Hence, for
example, the economist Clive Spash asserts:
[E]conomic assessment fails to provide an answer as to what should be done. The costs of
reducing CO2 emissions may be quite high or there may be net gains depending on the
options chosen by the analyst. The benefits of reducing emissions are beyond economists’
ability to estimate, so the extent to which control options should be adopted, on efficiency
grounds alone, is unknown.37
However, second, interpreted more narrowly, Lomborg may be correct. If he

means to refer only to standard economic approaches—in particular those relying
on current market prices and employing substantial discount rates (of the order
of five percent or more)—then it may be true that there is wide agreement in
the results of such analyses in the direction he suggests. However, unfortunately,
this claim does not have the implication that Lomborg intends—that inaction on
climate change is justified—since it is precisely these features of standard eco-
nomic approaches that many people argue makes them inappropriate tools for
assessing long-term impacts. For one thing, over the long term, prices change in
response to such things as technological advances and changes in supply and
demand, driven in part by wider social changes. Such changes are, by their nature,
very difficult to predict. Moreover, the associated uncertainties are significant
enough to undermine the use of fine-grained cost–benefit analysis over the very
long term. Commenting on the problem, John Broome goes so far as to say:
“Cost–benefit analysis, when faced with uncertainties as big as these, would
simply be self-deception.”38 For another thing, there are serious theoretical and
practical issues surrounding the use of positive discount rates for the long-term
future. Some object that such rates should not be used at all, while others claim
that the rate employed should at least be substantially lower than the standard
rates.39
In short, the standard economic approach looks extremely problematic for
long-term impacts of climate change. But perhaps there is a rejoinder. Enthusiasts
for the standard approach may want to argue that we need not be too concerned
about future uncertainty so long as climate change itself has only a minor impact
on factor prices; and perhaps they will claim that the worry about discount rates
can be overcome if we make sure that we reinvest productive gains and save for
the future. Even as it stands, this rejoinder has limited appeal.40 Still, the abrupt
paradigm may undermine even this. For one thing, a severe abrupt change, such as
a substantial temperature drop in Europe caused by a major change in ocean
circulation in the North Atlantic, would presumably have a large impact on global
society, and so on relative prices. Indeed, a report commissioned by the Pentagon
speculated that the regional impacts of a shutdown in the thermohaline circulation

would be “a world where Europe will be struggling internally, large numbers of
refugees washing up on its shores, and Asia in serious crisis over food and water,”
such that “disruption and conflict” would be “endemic features of life.”41 For
another, such a change would probably affect both the productivity of investment,
and the possibility of intergenerational saving. If there is a severe abrupt change,
we might predict that the current generation would dissave whatever had been set
aside for the future in order to address more immediate hardships. (More on this
later.) Again, consider the Pentagon report: “In the event of abrupt climate change,
it’s likely that food, water, and energy resource constraints will first be managed
through economic, political, and diplomatic means such as treaties and trade
embargoes. Over time though, conflicts over land and water use are likely to
become more severe—and more violent. As states become increasingly desperate,
the pressure for action will grow.”42
In conclusion, a severe abrupt change would surely undermine the reliability
of existing cost–benefit analyses of climate change. Hence, there is at least one
respect in which the possibility of a catastrophic abrupt climate change does seem
to help with the problem of political inertia: it appears to undermine (what was left
of) the appeal of the economic arguments.
2. Psychology
A second prominent explanation for political inertia is psychological. For

example, Elke Weber claims that political inertia is not surprising, since neither
peoples nor their governments have (yet) become alarmed about climate change,
and this has meant that they have not (yet) become motivated enough to act.43
Why aren’t people alarmed? A full explanation would no doubt be very
complex. But Weber’s account suggests that the outline is accessible enough. In
short, human beings have two processing systems—the affective and the
analytical44—and these two systems are influenced in different ways, and by
different kinds of inputs. Moreover, in cases involving risk and uncertainty—such
as climate change—the affective system is dominant.45 This gives rise to a number
of general problems. First, the two systems can, and often do, offer different
judgments for the same cases.46 Second, the reasons for these differences seem
shallow. In particular, the two systems acquire information in different ways—the
affective tends to rely on personal experience, whereas the analytical favors
statistical descriptions—with the result that “ostensibly same information can lead
to different choices depending on how the information is acquired.”47 Third, for
reasons we shall see in a moment, the interplay of the two mechanisms gives rise
to a systematic bias in decision making: “low-probability events generate less
concern than their probability warrants on average, but more concern than they
deserve in those rare instances when they do occur.”48
To make matters worse, these problems interact badly with some related
psychological phenomena surrounding risk. For one thing, Weber claims that
there is a “finite pool of worry.” People have a limited capacity for the kind of
worry that motivates action, so that an increase in concern about one risk tends to
reduce concern about others.49 For another, there is an analogous limitation in
people’s responses to problems even when they are motivated to act. Decision
makings have a “single action bias,” such that they are “very likely to take one
action to reduce a risk that they encounter and worry about, but are much less
likely to take additional steps that would provide incremental protection or risk
reduction.” Moreover, this bias persists even if the single action taken is neither the
most effective, nor suitably coordinated with other actors, since a single action
alone is enough to reduce worry.50
These two tendencies have a number of implications. First, the presence of a
finite pool of worry suggests that we can expect political inertia even when people
appreciate that a particular problem exists, if concern for that problem is “crowded
out” by other issues that seem more pressing. Second, given its dominance, failure
to engage the affective mechanism is likely to result in a particular problem’s
being marginalized by other—perhaps objectively less important—concerns that
do so engage.51 Third, even successful engagement is not enough, given the
“single action bias.” Hence, in cases where piecemeal, incremental policy making
is unlikely to work, it is vital not only to take major action when an issue has
succeeded in grabbing the political spotlight, but also then to take all (or most) of
the action necessary.
The relevance of these general claims to climate change seems clear. First,
most of the available information comes from science and is both abstract and
statistical. Hence, it engages the analytical system. However, given the dominance
of the affective system, such engagement is liable to be ineffective by itself.
Second, it is difficult to engage the affective system in the case of climate change
because within that system “recent personal experience strongly influences the
evaluation of a risky option”52 and “personal experience with noticeable and
serious consequences of global warming is still rare in many regions of the
world.”53 Third, given this, we should expect a communication problem. Weber
claims that statistical information has a different impact on those who are used to
employing their analytical systems and those who are not. Hence, she claims,
there is likely to be a mismatch between the reactions of scientists and laypeople
to the same information.54 Finally, concerns about the psychological limits of
attention and action seem pressing. For one thing, empirical work suggests that
many people see climate change as a real problem, but also rank it below many
other concerns, particularly when it comes to voting behavior.55 For another, many
political communities do seem to have suffered from a kind of attention-deficit
disorder when it comes to climate change. Moreover, those efforts that have been
made tend to be predominantly piecemeal and incremental. Even the current
Kyoto agreement is routinely defended as “merely a necessary first step.” But
these may be dangerous tendencies given the single action bias.
What are the implications of all this psychology? Weber suggests that we
must find a way of engaging the affective system, “perhaps by simulations of
[global warming’s] concrete future consequences for people’s home or other

regions they visit or value.”56 But then she adds that invoking the gradualist
paradigm is unlikely to work:
To the extent that people conceive of climate change as a simple and gradual change . . . the
risks posed by climate change would appear to be well-known and, at least in principle,
controllable (“move from Miami to Vancouver when things get too hot or dangerous in
Florida”). While some of the perceived control may be illusory, the ability or inability to
take corrective action is an important component of vulnerability.57
Instead:
It is only the potentially catastrophic nature of (rapid) climate change (of the kind graphi-
cally depicted in the movie “The Day after Tomorrow”) and the global dimension of
adverse effects . . . that have the potential for raising a visceral reaction to the risk.58
In short, Weber claims that the abrupt paradigm has the capacity to engage the
affective system in a way sufficient to motivate action. Given this, the growing
scientific support for that paradigm is indeed good news in one respect. For it
offers a potential way out of psychologically induced political inertia.59 Of course,
Weber herself wants to go even further than this. For she asserts that it is abrupt
climate change alone—and only truly global and catastrophic instances of it at
that—which can help.60
3. The Intergenerational Analysis
The third explanation of political inertia is, I confess, my own. This suggests
that one root of the problem lies in its intergenerational structure. The basic idea
can be illustrated (in a simplistic way) as follows.61 Imagine a sequence of groups
occupying the same territory at different times. Suppose, for the sake of simplicity,
that each group is temporally distinct: no member of one group exists at the same
time as any member of another group (i.e., there is no “overlap” between the
groups). Call each group so conceived a “generation.”62 Suppose then that the
preferences of the members of each group are “generation-relative”: they concern
only things that happen within the time frame of that group’s existence. Finally,
suppose that there are such things as temporally extended goods: goods that have
benefits and costs that accrue in more than one generation. For current purposes,
let us distinguish two kinds of such goods: those that have benefits in one
generation and costs in later generations can be called “front-loaded goods”; those
that have costs in one generation and benefits in later generations can be called
“back-loaded goods.”63
Other things being equal, in such a situation we would expect that if each
group does exactly as it pleases it will consume as many front-loaded goods as
possible, and eschew all back-loaded goods. But this observation appears to raise
a basic problem of intergenerational fairness. Surely, the thought goes, there are
situations in which a given group ought to forgo at least some front-loaded goods
and invest in at least some back-loaded goods; presumably there are at least some
constraints (of fairness, or justice, or some other such notion) on legitimate
intergenerational behavior. If this thought is correct, then we might expect that
groups that are unaware of, or do not recognize, such constraints will tend to
overconsume front-loaded goods, and underconsume back-loaded goods. In other
words, each such generation will take advantage of its temporal position by
illegitimately passing on costs to later generations for the sake of securing benefits
for itself, and illegitimately forgoing opportunities to benefit later generations for
the sake of avoiding costs to itself. Moreover, this problem will be iterated over
time—since the incentives that generate the basic behavior arise anew for each
generation as it comes into existence—with the result that such buck passing is
likely to produce cumulative effects on generations further along the temporal
sequence. Hence, one can expect a systematic bias in overall decision making
across generations. Let us call this “the problem of intergenerational buck
passing” (PIBP).64
Elsewhere, I have argued that the PIBP is manifest in the case of climate
change.65 On the gradualist paradigm, this looks especially likely. But might the
abrupt paradigm help? Initially, it appears so, since the potential proximity of the
relevant thresholds appears to undercut the intergenerational aspect of climate
change. Consider, for example, the following statement by the (now former)
British Prime Minister Tony Blair:
What is now plain is that the emission of greenhouse gases, associated with industrialisa-
tion and strong economic growth from a world population that has increased sixfold in 200
years, is causing global warming at a rate that began as significant, has become alarming
and is simply unsustainable in the long-term. And by long-term I do not mean centuries
ahead. I mean within the lifetime of my children certainly; and possibly within my own.
And by unsustainable, I do not mean a phenomenon causing problems of adjustment. I
mean a challenge so far-reaching in its impact and irreversible in its destructive power, that
it alters radically human existence.66
Blair’s main claim appears to be that the impacts of climate change are both
extremely serious, and coming relatively soon. (He does not mention abrupt
climate change explicitly, but it is reasonable to assume that this is what he has in
mind.) If this is right, it seems to give current people powerful reasons to act.
Again, the abrupt paradigm appears to extinguish a major source of political
inertia.
III. Against Undermining
At first glance, then, it appears that the abrupt paradigm undercuts all three of
the major explanations for political inertia we have considered. But I shall now
argue that in the case of the last two explanations, this appearance is deceptive.
Instead, it is plausible to think that the possibility of abrupt climate change will
actually make the intergenerational problem worse, rather than better, and that the
psychological problem will add to this sad state of affairs.
Let us begin with the intergenerational problem. Blair suggests that some
impacts of climate change are serious enough to “[alter] radically human exist-
ence,” “within the lifetime of my children certainly; and possibly within my own.”
A rough calculation suggests that this means possibly within the next twenty-six
years, and certainly within the next seventy-five (or fifty-eight) years.67 At first
glance, such claims do seem to undermine the usual intergenerational analysis.
But this is too hasty. For the notion of proximity is made complicated in the
climate change case by the considerable time lags involved—the same lags that
give rise to the PIBP.
Consider the following. First, the atmospheric lifetime of a typical molecule
of the main anthropogenic greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, is often said to be
around two hundred to three hundred years. This introduces a significant lagging
effect in itself, but obscures the fact that around twenty-five percent remains
for more than a thousand years.68 Moreover, many of the basic processes set in
motion by the greenhouse effect continue to play out more than thousands of
years. Second, these facts have implications for the shape of the climate change
problem. For one thing, the problem is resilient. Once the emissions necessary to
cause serious climate change have been released, it is difficult—and perhaps
impossible—to reverse the process. For another, the problem is seriously back-
loaded. At any given time the current impacts of anthropogenic climate change do
not reflect the full consequences of emissions made up to that point. Finally, this
implies that the full effects of current emissions are substantially deferred. Even
if we are to reap some of what we sow, we will not reap all of it.69
These points suggest that it is worth distinguishing two kinds of proximity:
temporal and causal. When Blair claims that the impacts of climate change are
coming soon, he means to speak of temporal proximity: The impacts are near to
us in time. But claims about causal proximity are different. Here the claim is that
the point at which we effectively commit the earth to an abrupt change by our
actions is close at hand. Given the presence of resilience, serious back-loading and
substantial deferral, temporal proximity does not always imply causal proximity,
and vice versa. This fact has important implications, as we shall now see.
1. Domino Effect
Consider first a scenario where we are in a position to commit humanity (and

other species) to a catastrophic abrupt impact, but we ourselves will not suffer that
impact because it will be visited on future generations. In other words, there is
causal, but not temporal proximity. (Call this scenario “Domino Effect.”) Several
of the most worrying impacts currently envisioned seem to fit this scenario. For
example, even very rapid ice sheet disintegration is presumed to take place over
centuries, such that its impacts are intergenerational;70 similarly, the limited work
that has been done on deposits of methane hydrate in the oceans suggest that the
associated impacts would not arise for several centuries, if not millennia.71 Hence,
the real concern in these cases is with causal proximity. The worry is that by our
actions we may commit future generations to catastrophic climate changes.72
However, such a scenario clearly raises, rather than undermines, the intergenera-
tional analysis. So, we will have to look elsewhere for a challenge to the PIBP.73
2. On the Cards
A second kind of scenario would involve temporal but not causal proximity.
Suppose, for example, that we are already only a few years from crossing a major
climate threshold, and that at this point we are already committed to doing so. The
most obvious reason why this might be the case would be because, given the time
lags, our past emissions make breaching the threshold literally inevitable. But it
might also be that we are already committed because there are emissions that we
are morally no longer going to be able to avoid, for example, because avoiding
them would impose intolerable costs on current people and their immediate
descendents. (Call this scenario “On the Cards.”)
If it turned out that On the Cards characterized our situation, and if we knew
that it did so, then the implications of the abrupt paradigm for political inertia
would be more mixed than the basic objection to the intergenerational analysis
suggests. First, and most obviously, On the Cards might simply reinforce inertia.
Suppose, for example, that a given generation knew that it would be hit with a
catastrophic abrupt change no matter what it did. Might it not be inclined to
fatalism? If so, then the temporal proximity of abrupt change would actually
enhance political inertia, rather than undercut it. (Why bother?)
Second, and less obviously, On the Cards may provoke action of the wrong
kind. For example, assume, for simplicity, that the two main policy responses for
climate change are mitigation of future impacts through reducing the emissions
that cause them and adaptation to minimize the adverse effects of those impacts
that can or will not be avoided. Then, the following may turn out to be true of On
the Cards. On the one hand, the incentives for the current generation to engage
in mitigation may at least be weakened, and might disappear altogether. This is
because, if a given abrupt change is, practically speaking, inevitable, then it
appears to provide no incentive to a current generation with purely generation-
relative motivations for limiting its emissions. Perhaps the current generation will
still have reasons to engage in some mitigation, since this might help it to avoid
further impacts (including abrupt impacts) after the given abrupt change. But the
given abrupt change does no motivational work of its own. Hence, its presence
does not help future generations. On the other hand, the incentives for the current
generation to engage in adaptation might be substantially improved. If big changes
are coming, then it makes sense to prepare for them.74 In itself, this appears to be
good news for both current and future people. But there are complications. For it
remains possible that the current generation’s adaptation efforts may be unfair to
the future. This point is important, so it is worth spending some time on it.
Let us consider three ways in which the improved motivation for adaptation
provided by On the Cards may come into conflict with intergenerational concerns.
First, considering only its generation-relative preferences, a current generation
aware of an impending abrupt change will have an incentive to overinvest in
adaptation relative to mitigation (and other intergenerational projects). That is,
given the opportunity, such a generation will prefer to put resources into adapta-
tion (from which it expects benefits), rather than mitigation (which tends to benefit
the future).75 Moreover, even within the category of adaptation, the current gen-
eration will have an incentive to prioritize projects and strategies that are more
beneficial to it (e.g., temporary “quick fixes”) over those that seem best from an
intergenerational point of view.
Second, this problem is likely to be exacerbated by psychological effects. For
example, Weber claims that proximity which brings with it engagement of the
affective mechanism often leads to an overreaction—“low-probability events gen-
erate . . . more concern than they deserve in those rare instances when they do
occur.”76 Hence, those in the grip of an abrupt change are likely to overinvest in
their adaptive responses.
Third, and most importantly, the proximity of the abrupt change may actually
provide an incentive for increasing current emissions above the amount that even
a completely self-interested generation would normally choose. What I have in
mind is this. Suppose that a generation could increase its own ability to cope with
an impending abrupt change by increasing its emissions beyond their existing
level. (For example, suppose that it could boost economic output to enhance
adaptation efforts by relaxing existing emissions standards.) Then, it would have
a generation-relative reason to do so, and it would have this even if the net costs
of the additional emissions to future generations far exceed the short-term ben-
efits. Given this, it is conceivable that the impending presence of a given abrupt
change may actually exacerbate the PIBP, leaving future generations worse off
than under the gradualist paradigm (or than they would be if the earlier generation
had not discovered the falsity of that paradigm). Furthermore, just like the original
PIBP, this problem can become iterated. That is, if the increased indulgence in
emissions by earlier generations intent on adapting to a specific abrupt climate
change worsens the situation for a subsequent generation (e.g., by causing a
further threshold to be breached), then the later generation may also be motivated
to engage in extra emissions, and so on. In short, under the On the Cards scenario,
we may see the structural equivalent of an Intergenerational Arms Race surround-
ing greenhouse gas emissions. Abrupt climate change may make life for a par-
ticular generation hard enough that it is motivated to increase its emissions
substantially in order to cope. This may then increase the impact on a subsequent
generation, with the same result. And so it goes on.
At first, the possibility of an intergenerational arms race may seem outland-
ish, in at least two ways. For one thing, it may seem to envisage an impossible, or
at least very remote possibility: that the proximity of abrupt climate change could
motivate even more greenhouse gas emissions than are currently being generated.
For another, it may seem to attribute to a generation a hopelessly immoral (and

therefore utterly unrealistic) outlook.
The first objection seems to me implausible. Consider, for example, a sub-
stantial change in the ocean conveyor brought on by climate change. If the
physical impacts in Europe were anything like the magnitude of the past events
mentioned by oceanographers, then the social and economic impacts would likely
be very large, and negative.77 Is it implausible to think that such impacts would
cause a sharp change in energy and industrial policies in Europe? Is it unlikely that
a Europe facing shortages of food, water, and fuel (as the Pentagon report pre-
dicted) would abandon high energy taxes and clean burning technologies, seeking
whatever aid additional energy could give it in fighting such problems?78 More-
over, is it likely that the rest of the world, witnessing such impacts, would stand by
and stoically refuse to aid those in distress? Would they not relax their own
standards, burning their own oil and coal in whatever ways might be helpful in
alleviating such a tragedy? Such actions seem entirely natural. Moreover, they are
likely to be exacerbated by the psychology of risk. If Weber is right that there is
a finite pool of worry, and a single action bias, one would expect a current
generation to be consumed with the immediate tragedies of a severe abrupt change
at the expense of other, more long-term worries.
This brings us to the second objection. However likely people might be to act
in these ways, wouldn’t they have to be grossly immoral to do so? I am not so sure.
As the above scenario suggests, there may be something admirable about the
actions of such a generation, even if there is also something tragic, in that such
actions predictably harm future people. Indeed, such a generation may be morally
justified in its actions. Considering a similar situation, Martino Traxler likens the
case to one of self-defense:
Where the present harm from not emitting is conspicuous enough, we would be unrealistic,
unreasonable, and maybe even irrational to expect present people to allow present harm and
suffering to visit them or their kith and kin in order that they might avoid harm to future
people. In these cases, we may with good reason speak of having so strong or so rationally
compelling a reason to emit that, in spite of the harm these emissions will cause to (future)
others, we are excused for our maleficence.79
We seem then to have uncovered a way in which abrupt climate change may
lead to a form of the PIBP that is actually worse in several respects than the one
suggested by the Gradualist Paradigm. First, abrupt climate change might increase
the magnitude of intergenerational buck passing, by increasing the presence of
front-loaded goods. If a current generation can protect itself more effectively
against an abrupt change through extra emissions that harm the future, then it has
a reason to do so.80 Second, a severe abrupt change may make taking advantage
of such goods not simply a matter of self- or generation-relative interest (which
might be morally criticized), but morally justifiable in a very serious way. Hence,
abrupt change may make buck passing even harder to overcome.81
3. Open Window
On the Cards shows that it is possible for abrupt change to make matters
worse. But perhaps that scenario is too pessimistic. Hopefully, even though
there is a sense in which the climate thresholds are close, it is not true that we
are already committed to crossing one.82 Interestingly, this thought reveals a
tension in the proximity claim that is supposed to undermine the intergenera-
tional problem: to be successful, the threatened abrupt change must be tempo-
rally close enough to motivate the current generation, but distant enough so as
not yet to be “on the cards.” This tension suggests that the argument against the
intergenerational analysis presupposes a very specific scenario: that there is an
abrupt change that would affect the current generation, to which the planet
is not yet committed, but to which it will become committed unless the
current generation take evasive action very soon. (Call this scenario “Open
Window.”)
Several issues arise about Open Window. The first, obviously enough, is
whether there is such a window, and, if so, how big it is. These are empirical
questions on which our information is sketchy. Still, the preliminary estimates are
not particularly encouraging. First, two parameters loom large. At the present
time, scientists often say that there is a further temperature rise beyond that which
the Earth has yet experienced but which is “already in the system.” Estimates of
this commitment typically range from 0.5 to 1.0°C, suggesting that a fair amount
of climate change is already literally “on the cards.” The vital issue then becomes
how much more is in effect on the cards, since we cannot stop the world economy
(and so the current trajectory and level of global emissions) on a dime. Barring a
sudden technological miracle, the answer to this question would also seem to be
“a substantial amount.” These facts suggest that we are already committed to any
abrupt changes likely to arise in the short to medium term. Thus, On the Cards has
substantial relevance.
Second, preliminary calculations suggest that our ability to avoid a more
substantial commitment is limited. Consider, for example, the European Union’s
call for limiting the global temperature rise to 2°C in order to avoid “dangerous
climate change.” The origins of this target are a little unclear;83 but according to
one recent analysis, its policy implications are sobering. At the very least, strong
action appears to be needed very quickly:
. . . to have a high probability of keeping the temperature increase below 2C, the total global
21st century carbon budget must be limited to about 400 Gigatonnes. . . . A budget of 400
GtC is very small. To stay within this budget, global emissions would almost certainly have
to peak before 2020 and decline fairly rapidly thereafter. If emissions were to continue to
grow past 2020, so much of the 400 GtC budget would be rapidly used up that holding the
2C line would ultimately require extraordinary rates of emission reduction, rates corre-
sponding to such large and historically unprecedented rates of accelerated capital-stock
turnover that, frankly, it’s difficult to imagine them occurring by virtue of any normal,
orderly economic process. Time, in other words, is running out.84
But given the current substantial growth in global emissions, stabilization in less
than fifteen years is a very ambitious target. According to the authors of the
analysis, the 400 Gt budget is so tight that even if the developed nations were to
reduce their emissions to zero by 2028, it would require serious reductions by
developing countries starting in 2030. Obviously, absent some technological
miracle, the antecedent of this claim is politically (and morally) impossible. But
the consequent is almost as implausible, given that projections indicate that in
2030, the developing nations will still be quite poor.85
It is thus unclear whether the 2°C target is feasible. Hence, if meeting that
target is really necessary for avoiding any catastrophic abrupt impacts for the
current people—and, some, of course, believe that 2°C is too high86—then the
prospects for motivating action on those grounds appear slim. Much would then
depend on how many other impacts that are still causally proximate are temporally
close enough to have notable effects on the current generation. This remains an
empirical question. But the projections suggest that we are now dealing with a
very limited subset of the impacts of climate change. In short, for a generation
interested only with impacts that affect its own concerns, the window may be
closed, or at best, only slightly ajar.
Hopefully, the projections just cited will turn out to be unduly pessimistic.87
Hence, it is worth making some observations about the importance of the PIBP even
if there is an Open Window for the current generation. Our second issue then is
whether, if the window is open, this undermines the relevance of the PIBP. One
concern is that generations might care less about the end-of-life abrupt climate
change than earlier-in-life ones. Another is that even an open window severely
restricts the relevance of future people’s concerns. For Open Window to be
effective, there have to be enough effects of present emissions that accrue within the
window to justify the current generation’s action on a generation-relative basis. But
this ignores all the other effects of present emissions—that is, all those that accrue
to other generations. So, the PIBP remains. Moreover, in light of the PIBP, there is
a realistic concern that solutions that avoid a particular abrupt climate change will
be judged purely on how they enable a present generation to avoid that change
arising during their lifetime, not on their wider ramifications. In other words, each
generation will be motivated simply to delay any given abrupt climate change until
after it is dead. So, it may endorse policies that merely postpone such a change,
making it inevitable for a future generation. Finally, sequential concerns may arise
even under the open window scenario. Considering the PIBP, it would be predict-
able that earlier generations tend to use up most of any safety margin left to them.
Given this, it may turn out that some later generation cannot help pushing over a
given threshold, and using up most of the safety margin for the next.
4. The Self-Corrective Argument
If all of this is the case, the potential for the abrupt paradigm to undermine
the intergenerational problem appears to be slim. But before closing, it is worth
addressing one final argument. Weber suggests that the psychological problems
she identifies may eventually take care of themselves:
Failing these efforts, the problem discussed in this paper is ultimately self-corrective.
Increasing personal evidence of global warming and its potentially devastating conse-
quences can be counted on to be an extremely effective teacher and motivator.88
The basic idea seems to be that, once realized, the impacts brought on by inaction
on climate change are of a sort to engage the affective mechanism. Of course, as
Weber recognizes, this may only happen once a substantial amount of damage is
already done, and the planet is committed to significantly more.89 Still, the claim
is that at least there is some kind of limit to inertia provided by the phenomena of
climate change themselves.
Does the abrupt paradigm impose some limit on how bad climate change
can get? Perhaps. But again the intergenerational problem rears its ugly head. If
climate change is resilient and seriously back-loaded, the effects on a present
generation that experience an abrupt change and know these facts are unclear. If
further bad impacts are already on the cards, or if the open window is only slightly
ajar, then, if the present generation is guided by its generation-relative preferences,
we may still expect substantial intergenerational buck-passing, and so more
climate change. Experience of abrupt impacts may not teach and motivate, pre-
cisely because for such a generation the time for teaching and motivating has
already passed—at least as far as its own concerns are implicated. Moreover, we
should expect other factors to intervene. If a generation experiences a severe
abrupt change, we might expect long-term concerns (such as with mitigation) to
be crowded out in the finite pool of worry by more immediate concerns. We might
also expect such a generation to be morally justified in ignoring those concerns, to
at least some extent. In short, we might expect something akin to the beginnings
of an intergenerational arms race.90
IV. Concluding Remarks
This paper has considered three theses: that the possibility of abrupt change
undermines the usual economic, psychological, and intergenerational causes of
political inertia; that it provides the current generation with positive motivation
to act; and that it implies that there is some kind of fail-safe system that will
limit humanity’s ongoing infliction of climate change on itself and other spe-
cies.91 Against these claims, I suggested that although the real possibility of
abrupt change does tend to undermine economic explanations for inertia (which
were, however, not very strong anyway), it does not undercut either its psycho-
logical or intergenerational roots. Instead, the abrupt paradigm threatens to
make climate change an even worse problem than the gradualist model it is
supposed to augment or supersede. Abrupt climate change may actually increase
each generation’s incentive to consume dangerous greenhouse gas emissions,
and may even cause at least some generations to have a moral license to
do so.
I conclude that we should not look to the disasters of abrupt change—either
the actual experience of them, or increasing scientific evidence that they are
coming—to save us. One implication of this is that we should not waste precious
time waiting for that to happen. If severe abrupt climate change is a real threat,
the time for action is now, when many actions are likely to be prudentially and
morally easier than in the future. Still, how effectively to motivate such action
remains a very large practical problem, about which the psychologists have much
to teach us. In my view, if we are to solve this problem, we will need to look
beyond people’s generation-relative preferences. Moreover, the prevalence of the
intergenerational problem suggests that one set of motivations that we need to
think hard about engaging is those connected to moral beliefs about our obliga-
tions to those only recently, or not yet, born.92 This leaves us with one final
question. Can the abrupt paradigm assist us in this last task? Perhaps so: for one
intriguing possibility is that abrupt change will help us to engage intergenerational
motivations. Indeed, Weber explicitly suggests as much in the full version of a
passage quoted earlier:
It is only the potentially catastrophic nature of (rapid) climate change (of the kind graphi-
cally depicted in the movie “The Day after Tomorrow”) and the global dimension of
adverse effects which may create hardships for future generations that have the potential
for raising a visceral reaction to the risk.93
If Weber is right that the potential effects of abrupt change on future people can
cause the needed psychological effects,94 then the psychology of abrupt climate
change might turn out to be of profound importance after all, even taking the PIBP
into account. Still, this would now be because such change helps to underwrite a
solution to the intergenerational problem, not because it undermines its applica-
tion.95 Hence, such a result would fit well with the main aim of this paper, which
has been to show that a solution to the intergenerational problem is still required,
and that, given this, these are the relevant psychological and philosophical ques-
tions to be asking.
This paper was originally prepared in 2006. Versions were presented at work-
shops on Global Justice and Climate Change at San Diego State University and
the University of Reading, and also at the University of Delaware and the Uni-
versity of Leeds. I am grateful to those audiences, and also to Neil Adger, Peter
Atterton, Cecilia Bitz, Simon Caney, Paula Casal, Dale Jamieson, Willett
Kempton, Catriona MacKinnon, Andrew McGonigal, Darrel Moellendorf, Henry
Shue, and two anonymous reviewers. I am especially grateful to Lije Millgram for
initial discussions, and to Michael Oppenheimer for inviting me to attend the
Princeton workshop on climate change and the psychology of long-term risk in
late 2005 that persuaded me to write it up.
Notes
1
Martin Parry, co-chair of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
quoted in David Adam, Peter Walker, and Alison Benjamin, “Grim Outlook for Poor Countries in
Climate Report,” Manchester Guardian, September 18, 2007.
2
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). The 2007 Report is equivocal. For example,
Working Group I tried to avoid the topic of rapid ice sheet collapse, and was criticized by some
scientists for doing so, while Working Group II asserted that the chances of such collapse were
considerable. (See IPCC, Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis; IPCC, Climate Change 2007:
Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007]; Cornelia
Dean, “Even Before Its Release, World Climate Report Is Criticized as Too Optimistic,” New York
Times, February 2, 2007; David Adam, “Scientists Warn It May Be too Late to Save the Ice Caps,”
Manchester Guardian, February 19, 2007.) The Synthesis Report charted an intermediate course,
saying that it projected linear sea level rise, but more rapid change “cannot be excluded.” More
generally, it stated: “Anthropogenic warming could lead to some impacts that are abrupt or
irreversible,” and mentioned high levels of species extinction as an example. (IPCC, Climate
Change 2007: The Synthesis Report [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007], 13.) For a
more recent assessment, see Timothy Lenton, Hermann Held, Elmar Kriegler, Jim Hall, Wolfgang
Lucht, Stefan Rahmsdorf, and Hans Joachim Schnellnhuber, “Tipping Points in the Earth’s Climate
System,” Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences 105, no. 6 (2008): 1786–93.
3
US National Research Council, Committee on Abrupt Climate Change, Abrupt Climate Change:
Inevitable Surprises (Washington DC: National Academies Press, 2002).
4
Robert Gagosian, “Abrupt Climate Change: Should We Be Worried?”, Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institute (2003), 12.
5
One scientist suggested to me that they were right to do this, since standard methodology says that
we should consider the null hypothesis before exploring “more exotic” possibilities. This claim
suggests that the paradigm shift may have procedural roots: the standard methods of science
encourage a focus on the linear before the abrupt. If true, this raises questions about whether such
a procedure is desirable. Perhaps under some circumstances—such as the threat of catastrophe—
society might want to put a stronger priority on investigating nonlinear possibilities.
6
IPCC, Climate Change 1990: The Scientific Basis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990);
cf. Donald Brown, American Heat: Ethical Problems with the United States’ Response to Global
Warming (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), 18–19.
7
John Houghton, Climate Change: The Complete Briefing, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004), 184.
8
For explicit mention of “a new paradigm,” see US National Research Council, Abrupt Climate
Change, 1. The Council offers the following scientific definition of an abrupt change: “Techni-
cally, an abrupt climate change occurs when the climate system is forced to cross some threshold,
triggering a transition to a new state at a rate determined by the climate system itself and faster
than the cause.” But, recognizing that what is important from the point of view of policy is the
societal and ecological impacts, it also suggests that an abrupt change is “one that takes place so
rapidly and unexpectedly that human or natural systems have difficulty adapting to it” (ibid., 14).
I have two concerns about these definitions. First, it is not clear that being unexpected ought to be
essential to the second definition. If we could reliably predict that we were just about to cross a
major climate threshold, this would not lessen the policy concern. (More on this later.) Second, and
more importantly, there is some tension between the definitions. Since the policy definition makes
no mention of thresholds and new states, it seems that a perfectly regular but high magnitude
change might count as abrupt on the second definition but not the first.
These points help to bring out my reason for using the language of “paradigms.” Since our
primary policy concern is with the impacts of climate change, the relevant difference between
gradual and abrupt change appears to be one of degree, rather than kind. Suppose, for example,
that on the gradualist paradigm the climate system turned out to be very sensitive to even quite
small alterations, so that the increments of uniform and regular climate change were large. Then,
the linear change envisioned by gradualism might turn out to have results that mirror severe abrupt
change in their phenomenology and impacts. Conversely, if a sudden and irregular change were
only of modest magnitude, then it might resemble the typical gradualist changes in its effects.
Under such scenarios, the issue of whether the underlying change was scientifically regular or
abrupt would not be of much interest to policy-makers, since it is only if the impacts of gradual
and abrupt change diverge substantially that the distinction becomes important. This suggests that
we need terms that will help us to focus on the most salient impact scenarios. With this in mind,
I have characterized the irregular change in the abrupt paradigm in terms of catastrophic out-
comes, thresholds, and proximity. Clearly, we might encounter catastrophic outcomes quickly
even under linear change (e.g., if the magnitude of such change were considerable), and if that
were the case, much of what is said about the abrupt paradigm below would apply equally to this
kind of gradual change. Still, given prevailing gradualist views, it seems safe to say that the usual
gradualist paradigm is not of this form. My claim then is that the abrupt and gradualist paradigms
are good focal points for discussion. This can be the case even if both are a little caricatured.
9
James Hansen, “A Slippery Slope: How Much Global Warming Constitutes ‘Dangerous Anthropo-
genic Interference’?” Climatic Change 68 (2005): 269–79, at 269.
10
Michael Oppenheimer and Richard Alley, “The West Antarctic Ice Sheet and Long-Term Climate
Policy,” Climatic Change 64 (2004): 1–10; United Nations Environment Program, Global Envi-
ronment Outlook 4 (2008), 64 (available at http://www.unep.org/geo/).
11
Hansen, “A Slippery Slope,” 274.
12
James Hansen, “Defusing the Global Warming Time Bomb,” Scientific American 290 (2004): 68–77,
at 73.
13
Hansen, “A Slippery Slope,” 275.
14
Hansen, “Defusing,” 73.
15
Quirin Schiermeier, “A Sea Change,” Nature 439 ( January 19, 2006): 256–60, at 258; James Hansen,
“Can We Still Avoid Dangerous Human-Made Climate Change?” Talk presented at the New
School University, 2006.
16
Gagosian, “Abrupt Climate Change”; Richard Alley, “Abrupt Climate Change,” Scientific American
291, no. 5 (2004): 62–69, at 68; R. J. Stouffer et al., “Investigating the Causes of the Response of
the Thermohaline Circulation to Past and Future Climate Changes,” Journal of Climate 19 (2006):
1365–87; Michael Vellinga and Richard A. Wood, “Global Impacts of a Collapse of the Atlantic
Thermohaline Circulation,” Climatic Change 51 (2002): 251–67.
17
See, for example, Harry L. Bryden, Hannah R. Longworth, and Stuart A. Cunningham, “Slowing of
the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation at 25 Degrees North,” Nature 438 (December 1,
2005): 655–57. Many facets of such work remain controversial. Though most agree that
the past events occurred and were accompanied by a slowdown, there is disagreement about the
extent of the climatic impacts, how they might be relevant to predicting future climate change,
and whether we are indeed seeing signs of such change already. Still, much of this controversy
concerns when we might expect a change, not whether there will be one if global warming
continues well into the future. Models predict a point “beyond which the thermohaline circulation
cannot be maintained,” but also that this requires warming of 4–5°C. Most scientists apparently
believe that we will not experience that this century (Schiermeier, “A Sea Change,” 257); but it is
worth pointing out both that this hardly lessens the intergenerational issue, and that even a small
probability of collapse this century is a matter for concern.
18
Brian Barry, Why Social Justice Matters (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005), 260.
19
Robert Berner, “Examination of Hypotheses for the Permo-Triassic Boundary Extinction by Carbon
Cycle Modeling,” Proceedings of the American Academy of Sciences 99, no. 7 (2002): 4172–77;
Barry, Why Social Justice Matters, 260.
20
Nicholas Kristof, “The Big Burp Theory of the Apocalypse,” New York Times, April 16, 2006.
21
Alley, “Abrupt Climate Change,” 69. Consider, for example, the recent emergence of ocean acidi-
fication as a serious concern.
22
IPCC, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2007).
23
For a summary, see Michael Oppenheimer and Annie Petsonk, “Article 2 of the UNFCCC: Historical
Origins, Recent Interpretations,” Climatic Change 73 (2004): 195–226. More recent work by
Lenton et al., “Tipping Points,” gives similar estimates: 1–2°C for Greenland, 3–5°C for the West
Antarctic, and 3–5°C for the thermohaline. They identify loss of Artic summer sea ice as the most
imminent threat, at 0.5–2°C with a transition timescale of approximately ten years.
24
IPCC, Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, 7.
25
IPCC, Climate Change 1995 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), cited by Houghton,
Climate Change, 105.
26
IPCC, Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, cited by Houghton, Climate Change, 106.
27
IPCC, Climate Change 2007: The Scientific Basis, 8.
28
Naomi Oreskes, “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,” Science, December 3, 2005, 1686.
29
Gregg Marland, Tom Boden, and Robert J. Andres, “Global CO2 Emissions from Fossil-Fuel
Burning, Cement Manufacture, and Gas Flaring: 1751–2005” (2008). Carbon Dioxide Informa-
tion Analysis Center, United States Department of Energy. Available at: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/
trends/emis/glo.htm.
30
Hansen, “Can We Still Avoid?”; Frances Moore, “Carbon Dioxide Emissions Accelerating Rapidly,”
Earth Policy Institute (2008), available at: http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/CO2/2008.htm;
and James Hansen and Makiko Sato, “Greenhouse Gas Growth Rates,” Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences 101, no. 46 (2004): 16109–14.
31
This is mainly because they must be based on different projections of factors such as consumption
behavior, population, and economic growth.
32
Houghton, Climate Change, 116.
33
European Environment Agency, The European Environment: State and Outlooks 2005 (available at
http://www.europa.eu/publications/state_of_environment_report_2005_1); Roger Harrabin, “UK
Seeking CO2 Trading Increase,” BBC, September 18, 2008; Stephen Gardiner, “The Global
Warming Tragedy and the Dangerous Illusion of the Kyoto Protocol,” Ethics and International
Affairs 18, no. 1 (2004): 23–39.
34
Important suggestions not considered here include scientific uncertainty, media bias, misinformation
campaigns, and cultural barriers to change. I do not wish to deny the importance of such
considerations, nor that of a more general account of political inertia. I do assume, however, that
the three considerations I do consider are important enough to deserve separate treatment (see
Bjorn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001];
Climatic Change 77: Special Issue on Climate Change and the Psychology of Long-Term Risk
[2006]; and Gardiner, “The Global Warming Tragedy.”).
35
Some, of course, argue that the science is not compelling. Others add that there is some kind of
conspiracy afoot. For current purposes, I will set such views aside. For some discussions, see
Brown, American Heat; Gardiner, “Ethics and Global Climate Change”; Gardiner, “The Global
Warming Tragedy”; and Elizabeth Desombre, “Global Warming: More Common than Tragic,”
Ethics and International Affairs 18, no. 1 (2004): 41–46.
36
Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist, 318.
37
Clive L. Spash, Greenhouse Economics: Value and Ethics (London: Routledge, 2002), 178.
38
John Broome, Counting the Cost of Global Warming (Isle of Harris, UK: White Horse Press, 2002), 19.
39
Tyler Cowen and Derek Parfit, “Against the Social Discount Rate,” in Justice Between Age Groups
and Generations, ed. Peter Laslett and James Fishkin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1992), 144–61; Martin Weitzman, “Why the Far Distant Future Should Be Discounted at Its
Lowest Possible Rate,” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 36 (1998): 201–8;
Nicholas Stern, The Economics of Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2006).
40
First, Broome’s fundamental point is about historical uncertainty in general, not the effects of climate
change in particular. Second, there are major concerns about whether we will actually reinvest in
long-term projects.
41
Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall, “An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications
for United States National Security” (2003), 14. Available at: http://www.grist.org/pdf/
AbruptClimateChange2003.
42
Ibid., 22.
43
Elke Weber, “Experience-Based and Description-Based Perceptions of Long-Term Risk: Why
Global Warming Does Not Scare Us (Yet),” Climatic Change 77 (2006): 103–20, at 103. See also
Anthony Leiserowitz, “American Risk Perceptions: Is Climate Change Dangerous?” Risk Analysis
25, no. 6 (2005): 1433–42, at 1438 and 1440; and “Before and After the Day After Tomorrow,”
Environment 46, no. 6 (2004): 23–37, at 27. Broader psychological, institutional, and political
explanations are canvassed in Oppenheimer 2006 in the papers by Baron, Bazerman, Leiserowitz,
and Sunstein. I focus on Weber’s account because it has the most direct relevance to the distinction
between the abrupt and gradual paradigms.
44
Weber, “Experience-Based,” 104.
45
Ibid.
46
Ibid.
47
Ibid., 106.
48
Ibid., 102.
49
Hence, for example, “increases in the concern of the U.S. public about terrorism post 9/11 seem to
have resulted in decreased concern about other issues such as environmental degradation or
restrictions of civil liberties” (ibid., 115).
50
51
Ibid., 105.
52
Ibid., 103.
53
Ibid., 108.
54
Ibid.
55
See references in Dale Jamieson, “An American Paradox,” Climatic Change 77 (2006): 97–102, at
101–2, n. 1.
56
57
Ibid., 112.
58
Ibid., 113–14. (More on the full version of this passage later.)
59
Weber does point out that there is some concern that abrupt climate change may “crowd out” other
legitimate policy concerns. (See my later remarks about the intergenerational arms race.)
60
This view is far from universal. For example, a recent report argues that emphasis on abrupt change
is actually counterproductive: “. . . the scale of the problem as it is shown excludes the possibility
of real action or agency by the reader or viewer. It contains an implicit counsel of despair—‘the
problem is just too big for us to take on’. Its sensationalism and connection with the unreality of
Hollywood films also distances people from the issue. In this awesome form, alarmism might even
become secretly thrilling—effectively a form of ‘climate porn’. It also positions climate change as
yet another apocalyptic construction that is perhaps a figment of our cultural imaginations, further
undermining its ability to help bring about action.” See Gill Ereaut and Nat. Segnit, Warm Words:
How Are We Telling the Climate Story and How Can We Tell It Better? (London: Institute for
Public Policy Research, 2006), 7.
61
The next two paragraphs are adapted from Stephen Gardiner, “The Pure Intergenerational Problem,”
The Monist 86, no. 3 (2003): 481–500.
62
I do not intend this as a general definition of a generation. This is just a helpful way to talk within
the example.
63
Obviously, these are extreme cases and in the real world most intergenerational goods will have a
more complex profile than this. We might say that the goods distinguished are “pure” versions of
the relevant goods. But, of course, similar concerns will arise for goods with more complex
profiles whose net costs and benefits are distributed in the same general way. Talking
in terms of pure front-loaded and back-loaded goods merely simplifies the exposition of the
problem.
64
For an earlier analysis of the problem, see Gardiner, “The Pure Intergenerational Problem.” Note that
the PIBP does not assume that there ought to be no consumption of temporally diffuse goods.
Moreover, any application of the PIBP will need to be understood against the background of some
theory of what would constitute legitimate consumption of such goods. However, this is not to say
that the existence of the PIBP is contingent on some particular theory of legitimate intergenerational
consumption. Instead, the PIBP arises for any such theory that does not assume that the then-current
generation may do completely as it pleases. Hence, the PIBP assumes only that there is a genuine
question about legitimate intergenerational consumption, and that the right answer is not that one.
65
See Gardiner, “The Global Warming Tragedy.” Obviously, the application of the PIBP to the real
world is complicated by several factors, and especially the existence of generational overlap. But
I do not think this undermines such an application in this case. For some general reasons for
skepticism about overlap, see Gardiner, “The Pure Intergenerational Problem.”
66
Tony Blair, Climate Change Speech (2004). Available at: http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/
page6333.asp.
67
Blair’s four children were born between 1984 and 2000. If we assume an average lifespan of eighty
years, then he is claiming with certainty that there will be radical impacts no later than 2080. Since
Blair himself was born in 1953, he is also claiming that radical impacts could come before 2033.
Moreover, on the reasonable assumption that he intends to suggest that abrupt climate change
would have profound effects on the course each of their lives (rather than simply being observed
by them right at the end of their lives), Blair presumably envisages time frames notably closer than
these outlying dates.
68
David Archer, “Fate of Fossil Fuel CO2 in Geologic Time,” Journal of Geophysical Research 110
(2005): 5.
69
See Stephen Gardiner, “A Perfect Moral Storm: Climate Change, Intergenerational Ethics and the
Problem of Moral Corruption,” Environmental Values 15 (2006): 397–413.
70
Hansen, “Defusing.”
71
Lenton et al., “Tipping Points”; David Archer and Bruce Buffett, “Time-Dependent Response of
the Global Ocean Clathrate Reservoir to Climatic and Anthropogenic Forcing,” Geochemistry.
Geophysics. Geosystems 6 (2005), Q03002, doi:10.1029/2004GC000854; Danny Harvey and
Zhen Huang, “Evaluation of the Potential Impact of Methane Clathrate Destabilization on Future
Global Warming,” Journal of Geophysical Research 100 (1995): 2905–2926.
72
For this reason, Hansen describes the ice sheets as a “ticking time bomb” (Hansen, “Slippery Slope,”
275). I prefer the analogy of a Domino Effect, since the central issue is that one generation is in a
position to initiate a chain of events that will be very difficult (though not impossible) to stop.
73
Blair himself mentions both a mismatch in timing between cause and effect, and the intergenerational
dimension, suggesting a sensitivity to the PIBP.
74
Alley, “Abrupt Climate Change”; US National Research Council, Abrupt.
75
This incentive is likely to be augmented by the possibility of greater opportunities for “double
counting” and “no regrets” policies within adaptation, as opposed to mitigation, projects. For
example, suppose that one adaptation strategy involved building up emergency response capabili-
ties. Such a strategy would presumably bring with it benefits for dealing with non-climate as well
as climate-related disasters.
76
77
Some people may regard the possibility of such impacts as itself outlandish. But that will not help
here. For here we are considering arguments that use such possibilities in their main premises. The
question is, if such impacts are possible and likely close by, does this undermine the intergenera-
tional problem? My answer is that it does not.
78
Note that California’s widely-lauded recent climate change legislation includes an explicit “safety
valve” clause, such that the Governor may delay or suspend regulations “in the event of
extraordinary circumstances, catastrophic events, or threat of significant economic harm.” See

California Assembly Bill 32 (2006), section 38599.
79
Martino Traxler, “Fair Chore Division for Climate Change,” Social Theory and Practice 28 (2002):
101–34, at 107. See also Stephen Gardiner, “Is Arming the Future with Geoengineering Really the
Lesser Evil?” in Stephen Gardiner, Simon Caney, Dale Jamieson and Henry Shue, eds., Climate
Ethics: Essential Readings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
80
Of course, such a scenario may arise under gradual change as well, even given the modest rate of
change posited by the gradualist paradigm. It is simply more likely to arise, to arise quickly, and
to swamp intergenerational concerns under the abrupt paradigm.
81
It is worth noting that the presence of an “intergenerational arms race” with a bias toward adaptation
might easily result in an economic argument for inaction predicated on the premise that unfettered
economic growth is the best adaptive strategy. In many cases—though not always—this may
manifest a form of what I elsewhere call “moral corruption.” See Gardiner, “A Perfect Moral Storm.”
82
More weakly, perhaps we are committed only to crossing some thresholds and not others, and the
abrupt climate change to which we are not yet committed is, on balance, worth avoiding, even for
our own sakes.
83
Barry, Why Social Justice Matters, 265; Oppenheimer and Petsonk, “Article 2 of the UNFCCC.”
84
Sivan Kartha, Tom Athanasiou, Paul Baer, and Deborah Cornland, “Cutting the Knot: Climate
Protection, Political Realism and Equity as Requirements of a Post-Kyoto Regime,” 4. Emphasis
in original. Available at http://www.ecoequity.org.
85
Ibid., 10.
86
E.g., Barry, Why Social Justice Matters, 267.
87
Notice, however, that even if that is the case, they may enter into the present reasoning of the current
generation, and so corrupt its decision making.
88
Weber, “Experienced-Based,” 116.
89
In the sentence immediately following the quoted passage, she says “unfortunately, such lessons may
arrive too late for corrective action.” On the face of it, this remark appears to contradict the
“self-corrective” claim. But this is an uncharitable reading. I provide a better one immediately
below in the main text.
90
These remarks are not criticisms of Weber herself, since she envisions that the motivation will be
intergenerational. See next section.
91
Taken together, these claims are comforting in at least two ways. First, they suggest that the way to
overcome political inertia is simply to make current people aware of the possibility of abrupt
climate change, through personal experience or relevant simulations of that experience. Awareness
ought to be enough—the thought goes—because the current generation does appear to be vulner-
able to such change, and the magnitude of it is sufficient to engage the right affective mechanisms.
Second, the three claims imply that if, for some reason, this does not work, at least there is a limit
to how bad it can get before the problem of political inertia finally goes away.
92
We need also to think about duties to nonhuman nature. But since this is, at best, a far more difficult
case to make, let alone to motivate people from, I leave it aside here. For a few remarks, see Stephen
Gardiner, “Environmentalism: An Update,” in A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy,
2nd ed., ed. Robert Goodin, Philip Pettit, and Thomas Pogge (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), 589–92.
93
Weber, “Experienced-Based,” 113–14; emphasis added.
94
Leiserowitz may disagree with this. He says “climate change is unlikely to become a high-priority
national issue until Americans consider themselves personally at risk” and though he may be taking
a broad view of the “personal” in this passage—probably intending to refer to “impacts on
themselves, their family or their local community”—this is still likely to be too narrow to capture the
kind of intergenerational concern needed. See Leiserowitz, “American Risk Perceptions,” 1437–38.
95
Some believe that the overlap of generations—parents with their children and grandchildren—is
enough to neutralize the PIBP and ground intergenerational justice. I believe that this approach is
too quick. See Gardiner, “Pure Intergenerational Problem”; and Stephen Gardiner, “A Contract on
Future Generations?” in Intergenerational Justice, ed. Axel Gosseries and Lukas Meyer (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2009), 77–119.
Climate Change and the Future: Discounting for Time,
Wealth, and Risk
Simon Caney
There is no quality in human nature, which causes more fatal errors in our conduct, than
that which leads us to prefer whatever is present to the distant and remote, and makes us
desire objects more according to their situation than their intrinsic value.1
It is widely recognized that the Earth’s climate is undergoing profound

changes. The most authoritative analysis is that produced by the Intergovernmen-
tal Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In its most recent report, the Fourth Assess-
ment Report, the IPCC confirmed that the Earth’s climate is getting warmer and
is projected to continue to do so. The report employs six different scenarios.
According to these six scenarios, the likely increase in temperature ranges from
1.1°C to 6.4°C and the likely increase in sea level ranges from 0.18 meters to 0.59
meters.2 Climate change will have very severe impacts on many people—
producing poverty, disease, instability, and death from freak weather events. It
will, in particular, have dire consequences for members of developing countries. I
have argued elsewhere that it jeopardizes fundamental human rights.3 In light of
this, there is a strong case for engaging in a vigorous policy of mitigation.
Some, however, query this, arguing that many of the impacts of climate
change will be felt in the future and that future disadvantages can be discounted.
My purpose in this paper is to explore the issues of intergenerational equity raised
by climate change. To do so, it is necessary to start with a recognition of the
intergenerational nature of anthropogenic climate change. Greenhouse gases have
a long life span and emissions at one time can exert a considerable influence on
events decades, even millennia, later. To take the example of carbon dioxide:
molecules of carbon dioxide can last for very different time periods, depending on
whether they are located in the atmosphere or near the surface of the ocean or deep
in the ocean. The average lifetime is approximately one hundred years.4 The
emission of greenhouse gases thus raises questions of intergenerational, as well as
international, equity. What obligations do we owe to future generations? May we
(should we) apply a positive social discount rate and devote more resources to our
contemporaries than to future generations?josp_1445 163..186
The answers to these questions make a considerable difference not simply to
whether current generations should engage in mitigation or not. Suppose that we
think (as very many do) that some mitigation is necessary, the social discount rate
also bears on the question of how much current generations should mitigate and

164 Simon Caney
this remains hotly contested. To ask by how much current generations should
lower emissions requires one to assess their interests with the legitimate interests
of future people and so the question of whether a discount rate should be applied
to future generations is crucial here. As many have emphasized, the resources to
be spent on combating climate change (both the funds that should be spent on
adaptation and the opportunities foregone by mitigating) could be spent on other
contemporary problems—including malaria, AIDS, malnutrition, and global
poverty.5
A number of different reasons have been suggested as to why current gen-
erations may legitimately favor devoting resources to contemporaries rather than
to future generations. These—either individually or jointly—challenge the case
for combating climate change. In this paper, I distinguish between three different
kinds of reason for favoring contemporaries. I argue that none of these arguments
is persuasive. My answer in each case appeals to the concept of human rights. It
maintains that a human rights-centered perspective to climate change enables us to
address each of these reasons.
I. The Social Discount Rate
To address the question of how current generations should make decisions

which bear on the interests of future people, it is essential to introduce the concept
of a social discount rate.6 This concept has been discussed by economists from
Alfred Marshall, A. C. Pigou, and Frank Ramsey to contemporary economists like
Sir Nicholas Stern.7 It refers to the rate by which the claims of future generations
to resources currently held by current generations diminishes or increases or
remains constant over time. A social discount rate, thus, determines the extent to
which resources should be devoted to people’s interests now in preference to
people’s interests at a later date.8 The higher the positive social discount rate the
less should be spent on the future. To explicate the concept further and relate it to
the issue of climate change, it is useful to have some figures in front of us. The
Stern Review has famously argued that the cost of attaining a stabilization level of
550 pm CO2e, thereby mitigating climate change, amounts to approximately one
percent of global GDP per annum.9 Eric Neumayer calculates that, in practice, this
would require an outlay of $350 billion per annum rising to a figure of $1000
billion by 2050.10 So the question to be examined is whether this sum is better
spent on current generations or on future generations.
Why might one legitimately hold that the money should be spent on current
generations rather than future ones? Standard analyses of the social discount rate
comprise four separate components, each of which shall be dealt with in turn.
A. First, there is what economists call pure time preference. Some hold that it is
appropriate to ascribe a lower weight to human interests the further they are in the
future just because of the fact that they exist in the future. Thus, one reason for
Climate Change and the Future 165
adopting a social discount rate is that one thinks it appropriate to reflect pure time
preference. Pigou, Ramsey and, more recently, Sir Nicholas Stern have argued that
pure time preference is morally illegitimate.11 Similarly, Roy Harrod famously
says that “pure time preference [is] a polite expression for rapacity and the
conquest of reason by passion.”12 On his view, it is “a human infirmity.”13 Henry
Sidgwick takes a similar view, stating that “the time at which a man exists cannot
affect the value of his happiness from a universal point of view; and that the
interests of posterity must concern a Utilitarian as much as those of his contem-
poraries.”14 Pure time preference, however, is far from being the only relevant
consideration.
B. Second, we need to ascertain the correct principle of intergenerational equity.

Suppose that one holds that there should not be any pure time preference. One might
still permissibly decide to devote resources to current people over future people for
a second reason, depending on what principle of intergenerational equity one
adopts. One way to see this is to set intergenerational matters to one side for a
moment. Consider a theory of justice that applies solely to a current generation. It
will have several component parts. First, it has to decide whether all persons have
equal moral status or whether some have greater moral standing than others. (In the
intergenerational context, those who subscribe to pure time discounting are reject-
ing the principle of equal moral standing.) Now once we have determined this first
issue we then have to decide what distributive principle applies. Should it be
economic equality or a Rawlsian difference principle or libertarianism or a desert
theory or a sufficientarian approach or something else? Now the same question
applies at the intergenerational level. Once the issue of time discounting has been
addressed, we then need to identify whether relations between generations should
be determined by a principle of equality or maximizing the good or whatever the
market produces or something else. The key point is that one might hold that current
generations should devote resources to current generations in preference to future
generations because of the distributive principle one affirms.
C. Risk and Uncertainty. The considerations adduced so far do not exhaust the
reasons why one might devote resources to current generations over future gen-
erations. Two additional reasons to do so arise from each generation’s lack of sure
knowledge of future generations. First, we lack sure knowledge of the impacts
of climate change. Second, we lack sure knowledge that human life will continue
to exist. For example, the Stern Review on The Economic of Climate Change
discounts by 0.1 percent per annum to reflect the possibility that humanity might
die out for nonclimate-related reasons.15 Clearly, it matters what changes to the
environment (rising sea levels and temperature increases) occur and how likely
each possible scenario is. It also matters if humanity disappears because of some
nonclimate-related calamity. If humanity dies out for nonclimate-related reasons,
then one reason for being concerned about climate change (its impact on human
life) no longer applies.16 Now if, for either reason, one is not certain that there will
166 Simon Caney
be malign effects on human life then, so it might be argued, there is a case for
discounting the amount which one is going to spend on preventing a calamity from
possibly taking place.
Before proceeding further it is worth noting the distinction between “risk,”
on the one hand, and “uncertainty,” on the other. Risk refers to cases where one
identifies an outcome and can determine the probability that it will occur. Uncer-
tainty, on the other hand, refers to cases where one identifies an outcome but is not
able to determine the probability of its coming to pass.17 Both might give us reason
for discounting, but they are importantly different. For example, if one has reliable
probabilistic assessments to hand, then one can calculate the expected utility and
makes one’s decision on that basis. Where, though, we face uncertainty this course
of action is unavailable to us.
Putting this together, then, we see that the extent to which people may devote
resources to the present as opposed to the future is a function of the following four
variables: (1) the legitimacy of pure time preference (may we accord less weight
to their interests?); (2) the principles of intergenerational justice (what principles
of justice govern the relations between people over time?); (3) the certainty of the
harmful effects (will these dangerous changes happen?); and (4) the certainty of
human existence (are we sure that what we are doing will result in threats to
human beings?).
II. Pure Time Preference and Discounting
Let us now consider one factor in the social discount rate and analyze one
common argument for prioritizing current generations over future generations
that focuses on this one variable. The first argument to be scrutinized makes the
following claim:
Argument 1: Current generations should prioritize current generations over the interests of
future generations because it is permissible (and maybe even morally required) for current
people to engage in pure time preference.
Argument 1 defends a positive pure time discount rate. If we accept it, it follows
that current generations should spend less on mitigation and adaptation than if
they adopt a zero pure time discount rate. In what follows I shall reject this view
and defend an alternative.
Before I introduce the view to be defended, it is worth drawing attention to the
possibilities. Some apply a zero pure time discount rate to all values. As was noted
earlier, Pigou, Ramsey, Sidgwick, Stern, and others have argued for the correct-
ness of this view. A second group has defended a positive pure time discount rate.
What both views have in common is their assumption that one should treat all
values in the same way. All values should be subjected to exactly the same
(positive, negative, or zero) pure time discount rate.
A third position is, however, worth considering. This view adopts what might
be termed a Scope Restricted Pure Time Discount Rate (or more simply, the Scope
Restricted View). This applies a zero pure time discount rate to some values but
not to others. Stated more fully, the Scope Restricted View has three features.
First, it posits that there is a plurality of different values. Second, it affirms what
I shall term the Rights Principle. This holds that persons have human rights to the
protection of fundamental human interests from the threats posed by dangerous
climate change. Climate change jeopardizes various human rights including, for
example: (1) the right to life (since storm surges, flooding and freak weather
events, and heat stress will all lead to human deaths); (2) the right to subsistence
(since the increase in temperatures, increased flooding, and rising sea levels will
lead to crop failure and therefore malnutrition); (3) the right to health (since
climate change will lead to increased exposure to vector-borne diseases (like
malaria) and water-borne diseases (like dengue and diarrhea); (4) the right to
property (since flooding, sea-level rise, and freak weather events may destroy
people’s privately and collectively owned property); and (5) the right not to be
subject to enforced relocation (since sea-level rises will force inhabitants of
coastal settlements or small island states to move).18 The Rights Principle calls
then for the nonviolation, and the protection, of these vital rights—all of which are
threatened by dangerous climate change.19 There are a number of different ways
of grounding these rights. I here assume that they are justified on the grounds that
they protect vital human interests that are sufficient to generate duties on others.20
Now the third part of the view to be defended holds that a zero pure time
discount rate should be applied to the Rights Principle, but it need not be applied
to other political principles or values. Human rights that are jeopardized by
climate change should thus be secured (with no discrimination against those
further off in time), but other more marginal interests (like being able to travel to
interesting countries, or, more generally, the interest in satisfying preferences)
may be subject to a positive pure time discount rate. Current generations should
then act so as not to bring about a state of affairs in which people in one hundred
years’ time are unable to exercise their rights, but might be allowed to weight
future people’s interests in preference satisfaction, say, less than current people’s
interest in preference satisfaction.
Note that my version of the Scope Restricted View is not committed to calling
for (or rejecting) a positive pure time discount rate for other values such as
preference satisfaction. It simply allows the possibility that that might be the case.
My emphasis is more on the first part: We may not discount current and future
people’s vital rights if, when and because the threat to them from climate change
is further off in the future.21
A. Thus far, I have described the Scope Restricted View but not defended the
approach to pure time preference that it adopts. I now wish to motivate some
168 Simon Caney
support for the claim that the rights jeopardized by climate change should not be
subject to a positive pure time discount rate and hence why Argument 1 fails. Let
us consider then what reasons might support a zero pure time discount rate.
The most common argument is one originally presented by William Stanley
Jevons and later defended by A. C. Pigou. In The Theory of Political Economy,
Jevons writes: “To secure a maximum of benefit in life, all future events, all future
pleasures or pains, should act upon us with the same force as if they were present,
allowance being made for their uncertainty. The factor expressing the effect of
remoteness should, in short, always be unity, so that time should have no influ-
ence.”22 Jevons’s argument, then, is that the “maximum of benefit” requires not
according greater weight to a unit of pleasure because it is nearer in time. To prefer
a smaller unit of utility at t1 to a greater unit of utility at t2 would lead to a
suboptimal level of utility. We find the same argument in Pigou’s seminal The
Economics of Welfare. It is on the basis of this argument that he concludes that
pure time preference is a failure of rationality: in his words, “our telescopic faculty
is defective.”23
Clearly, this argument will not provide a defense of the Scope Restricted View
outlined previously. Moreover, even if we set this aside, the limitations of this
argument are fairly clear. It presupposes a maximizing consequentialism and for
very familiar reasons (its indifference to the distribution of goods and its insen-
sitivity to individual rights) I think that that position is unacceptable. Indeed, the
argument exemplifies and illustrates a deep flaw in any maximizing doctrine.
Consider the situation of an individual who is born in the future. The Jevons–
Pigou argument would provide such a person with greater protection than they
would be afforded by a positive pure time discount rate. However, note that that
outcome is not animated by a commitment to the individual per se. Jevons’s and
Pigou’s argument does aid the condition of future people but it does so only
indirectly. Its direct concern is with increasing the total amount of well-being and
it happens that a zero pure time discount rate furthers that goal. It illustrates well
Rawls’s objection that utilitarianism treats each individual merely as “a container-
person.”24 Given the problems with this argument, let us consider an alternative
argument.
B. A second objection to Argument 1 appeals (at a general level) to the ideal of

impartiality and then (more specifically) to the logic underlying the Rights Prin-
ciple. Consider impartiality first. The ideal of impartiality insists that political
decisions should not reward or penalize people on the grounds of personal prop-
erties that lack any fundamental moral relevance. It is on this basis that we hold
that persons should not be discriminated against because of their race or gender
or socioeconomic class. These factors do not correspond to any morally relevant
features of persons. In the same way, however, it seems inappropriate to discrimi-
nate against a person simply because of their location in time, for that seems
equally arbitrary. It may be appropriate to favor some in some circumstances—
if they are more deserving or more needy or they some possess other morally
relevant property—but simply being born further into the future is not one of these
properties. Put the other way round: being born earlier in time is just not the right
kind of property to justify favoritism.
To illustrate this point, we may consider Sidgwick’s defense of a zero pure
time discount rate for this exemplifies the kind of reasoning advocated by the
impartiality argument. Sidgwick’s argument appeals to what is of fundamental
importance from a utilitarian point of view (namely, “utility”) and deduces the
appropriate pure time discount rate from that. Given that all that matters is
the promotion of utility, it follows that “the time at which a man exists cannot
affect the value of his happiness from a universal point of view; and that the
interests of posterity must concern a Utilitarian as much as those of his
contemporaries.”25
This Impartiality Argument can similarly be applied to the reasoning under-
lying the Rights Principle. Consider again the fundamental tenets of the theory.
The argument for the protection of core rights invokes an orthodox conception of
rights (in my case Raz’s “interest theory”).26 The latter ascribes rights to agents
when this protects an interest that is sufficient to impose duties on others. This,
note, makes no reference to time. All that matters is the possession of fundamental
interests and the reasonableness of the demands made on others, where that might
include how demanding those demands are, whether it is unfairly burdening
people, and so on. Time is not a morally relevant consideration. The logic of the
case for rights entails, therefore, that there should be a zero pure time discount rate
for the protection of rights. Put otherwise, a theory of justice animated by the
dignity of persons and respect for their interests contains in it no room for
ascribing lesser protection of these rights for some than for others. This argument
thus defends the application of zero pure time discount rate to the protection of
rights.
Note, moreover, that the argument under scrutiny does not commit us to
applying a zero pure time discount rate to any other values. It simply appeals to the
rationale underlying rights and argues that these do not allow any pure time
discounting. As such it is, of course, silent on what kind of pure time discount rate
is appropriate for other values. In short, this argument justifies the Scope
Restricted View defined earlier in this section (II.A).27
It would be useful at this point to take stock and to return to the case of
climate change. I have defended a zero pure time discount rate for the protection
of the human rights jeopardized by climate change. This is supported by the
Impartiality Argument (and an examination of the rationale underlying rights).
This conclusion has considerable importance for climate change because the
latter jeopardizes key rights. Given that these should receive equal weighting
throughout time this strengthens the case for an aggressive program of
mitigation.
170 Simon Caney
III. Economic Growth and Discounting
Let us now turn to a second type of argument for devoting resources to current
people over future people. Consider the following common argument:
Argument 2: Future generations will be wealthier than current generations and it is

therefore more appropriate for current generations to devote resources to their contempo-
raries rather than to future people. It follows that it would be wrong to mitigate on behalf
of future generations when they will be much better off than us.28
This is not an argument for pure time discounting. It is an argument for thinking
that even if those who are currently alive weight future people’s well-being as
equal in standing to that of their contemporaries, they should devote more
resources to their contemporaries because current generations are worse off than
future generations will be.29 It makes the case for what William Nordhaus calls
“growth discounting.”30 Broken down into its constituent parts, this argument
claims:
(1) It is wrong to devote resources to future generations rather than to current

generations if future generations are wealthier than current generations.
(2) Future generations will be wealthier than current generations.
Therefore,
(3) Other things being equal, it is wrong to devote resources to future genera-
tions rather than to current generations.
One response to this would be to dispute premise (2) and to challenge whether this
would be the case even if there is dangerous climate change. Alternatively, one
might query the certitude with which this argument pronounces that future gen-
erations will definitely be wealthier. Can we be that sure? Such confidence cer-
tainly seems unwarranted at the moment. Isn’t there a risk that a global recession
might leave some future generations worse off than the current one? If so, how
does that affect the argument?31 I want, however, to focus on premise (1) and to
argue that (1) relies on an implausible principle of intergenerational justice. Why
would it be wrong to devote resources to future generations if they are wealthier
than current generations?
A. Three reasons suggest themselves. First, of course, many welfare economists

who subscribe to (1) will appeal to the principle of diminishing marginal utility.32
That is to say, they will start with a commitment to utilitarianism and then add that
the marginal utility of each extra unit of wealth decreases the wealthier a person
is. It follows from these two assumptions that, if future generations will be
wealthier than current generations, then it is wrong to devote resources to
future generations. Therefore, current generations can discount the resources to be

devoted to future generations.
However, this argument is vulnerable to an obvious objection, namely that it
fails to disaggregate within generations and hence tolerates outcomes in which
some lead appalling lives.33 It succeeds only if we consider each future generation
as an aggregate and if we do not distinguish, for example, between the future
Africans and future Americans who are members of the same generation. Thus
even if a future generation at t2 is very wealthy and much wealthier than the
generation alive at t1 that can hide the fact that some are very badly off at t2 (and
indeed are worse off than some of the poorest at t1). Once disaggregated in this
way, the case for devoting resources to the present (which in this context means
not pursuing mitigation on behalf of future generations) diminishes because by
doing so we will be bringing into existence a state of affairs in the future in which
some, perhaps many, are needlessly unable to enjoy the fundamental rights speci-
fied by the Rights Principle.
There are, however, more sophisticated arguments for (1) which avoid this
problem. Consider, for example, the following two arguments:
The Ability to Pay Argument: This holds that justice requires that those with the most
ability to pay should bear the burden of combating social ills. It follows from this that if
future generations are wealthier then they should foot the bill for combating climate
change. In virtue of their wealth, they can bear the burden more easily than current
generations.
The Cost-Effectiveness Argument: This holds that we should distribute resources in the
most cost-effective manner. If future generations are wealthier then they have a greater
ability to save lives than do current generations. Therefore, they, rather than current
generations, should pay because by doing so they can achieve more good.34
These arguments are subtly different. The Cost-Effectiveness Argument is con-

cerned with the number of lives saved and says that deferring the effort to combat
climate change to later generations would be desirable because by doing so we can
save more lives. The Ability to Pay Argument, by contrast, is not committed to the
claim that deferring the effort until later saves more lives. It claims that it is fairer
to any would-be duty-bearers to postpone efforts till later.35 Its focus is on the
putative duty-bearers (it is wrong to burden X if Y is wealthier); whereas the focus
of the Cost-Effectiveness Argument is on the recipients of any program designed
to combat climate change, and more generally secure people’s rights (it is wrong
for humanity to try to help group (A) now when humanity could help group
(A+100) later).
Both the Ability to Pay Argument and the Cost-Effectiveness Argument are
better arguments than the preceding utilitarian one because, unlike it, they are not
necessarily indifferent to the protection of human rights, including those rights
specified by the Rights Principle. Proponents of both can be concerned with
ensuring that everyone has a guaranteed decent standard of living. Both are
nonetheless unconvincing.
172 Simon Caney
B. Consider first the Ability to Pay Principle Argument. This encounters several
problems. First, as I have argued at greater length elsewhere, the problem with
relying on this principle to attribute responsibilities is simply that it conflicts
with a very deep conviction that polluters should generally pay for their acts of
pollution.36 If, for example, I leave rubbish in the street then, ceteris paribus, I
have primary responsibility to clear it up—not some other actor who happens to
have more wealth than me. Similarly, if my firm releases toxic waste into a river
thereby harming others, we have a strong conviction that my firm should be
held accountable for this—and not another firm that is wealthier. The view that
the polluter should pay is one that is deeply rooted in our moral convictions and
it follows from the principle that agents should be held responsible for their
ends.
Suppose, though, that we accord some role to the Ability to Pay Principle, a
second complication with the argument is that accepting the Ability to Pay
Principle does not entail that we should allocate all of the burden associated with
this role to future generations. Even if future people are, as an aggregate, wealthier
than the current generation, there are, no doubt, some who are currently alive who
are much wealthier than many future people will be. So an Ability to Pay Principle
would require them to bear a burden in proportion to their wealth. Rather than
allocate all responsibilities to future generations, it would endorse a scheme in
which some wealthy current people pay and some poor future people do not.
(Note, of course, that this second response cannot show that all growth discount-
ing is impermissible. It simply establishes that the responsibility cannot be at-
tributed entirely to future generations—but, for all that it says, it is compatible
with thinking that some of it should be borne by contemporaries. As such, it
is compatible with the current generation attributing some priority to [some]
contemporaries.)
There are, however, deeper problems with the Ability to Pay Argument.
That many future people will be wealthier than many of those who are currently
alive does not entail postponing the effort to combat climate change later for
two further reasons. First, obviously the cost of tackling the problem may—
indeed almost certainly, will—increase and might increase by more than the
increase in wealth. It is a nonsequitur to affirm that since a generation at t2 is
wealthier than a generation at t1, it follows that the t2 generation should address
the problem. Furthermore, the economic evidence strongly suggests that the rate
of growth of the cost will exceed the rate of growth of global GDP. The appeal
of an Ability to Pay Principle is that by allocating the tasks to the most advan-
taged it both enables a task to be performed and ensures that the duty-bearers
are more able to pursue their own ends and goals. If, however, the costs of the
task increase at a greater rate than the level of wealth increases, then the ratio-
nale of the Ability to Pay criterion is not served. If one is concerned that duty-
bearers have a space to pursue their own projects, then it may be better to
allocate the task to those with less wealth if the cost of the task to them is
commensurately lower.
A final limitation in the Ability to Pay Argument is that it is incomplete. It is

concerned only with what one might term the “duty-bearer perspective”—and
with ensuring that the correct potential duty-bearer is allocated the responsibility.
As such, it alone is unable to show that the duty should be allocated to future
generations. For we also need to know whether they will do the job effectively.
Suppose that if the job were done at t1 it would be done more effectively than it
would be if it were done at t2. This would give us a reason to tackle it sooner rather
than later and therefore to burden earlier generations rather than later ones. The
point is simply that being fair to the duty-bearers is not the only relevant
consideration—being fair to the recipients of the policy also matters. This leads us
to the third argument for premise (1).
C. For consider, now, the Cost-Effectiveness Argument. Does this give us reason
to devote our resources to current generations in preference to future ones? There
are four reasons to resist this conclusion. First, the argument overlooks the
obvious fact that tackling a problem earlier can be much cheaper than tackling it
later. So even if future people have more wealth that does not mean it is right to
defer tackling the problem to them because that advantage might be outweighed
by the fact that the cost of “solving the problem” may cost even more. The Stern
Review makes precisely this argument in support of its claim that current
resources should be dedicated to combating climate change now.37
There is, moreover, a particular problem with postponing action on climate
change that merits attention. Climate scientists have argued that greenhouse gas
emissions may set in train irreversible processes that subsequently impact on
future generations. Humanity may reach a “tipping point,” and after this it will not
be possible to avert dangerous climate change. This arises because climate change
may generate positive feedbacks which bring about additional climate change.
Climate change becomes a self-reinforcing process. A recent review by David
Frame and Myles Allen, climate modelers based at Oxford University, helpfully
identifies six possible positive feedbacks. These include: (1) the release of
methane from hydrates in the oceans (sometimes referred to as the “cathrate gun
hypothesis”); (2) the release of methane from permafrost as the latter melts; (3) the
loss of tropical forests, and in particular, the Amazon (and therefore the loss of
their capacity to serve as carbon sinks); (4) an increase in ocean acidification
which in turn destroys phytoplankton and thereby undermines the ability of
oceans to absorb carbon dioxide; (5) the slowing down of the Atlantic Thermo-
haline Circulation (ATC); and (6) increases in water vapor which augment the
warming effect.38 To attribute the responsibility to later generations may then to be
to leave it until it is too late.
A further weakness in the Cost-Effectiveness Argument is that its focus is
solely on the capacity of future generations to achieve more. However, before we,
the current generation, create a situation in which there will be winners and losers
in the future, we also need to know whether those who will be very wealthy in the
future will use that capacity to protect the most vulnerable from dangerous climate
174 Simon Caney
change and uphold their fundamental rights. We need, that is, to know what they
will be disposed to do as well as what they can do. Moreover, given the historical
record, we can hardly be confident that in creating a world with a very wealthy
group we will be creating a group who are properly motivated to protect the
fundamental human rights of all, including the most vulnerable. In light of this, it
would, I think, be irresponsible of powerful decision-makers in one generation not
to mitigate climate change in the hope that the world they create will be one
in which a wealthy component secures the fundamental rights of all from the
threats of climate change. Anyone motivated by a commitment to fundamental
human rights would not gamble in this way with the plight of those alive in the
future.
A fourth, and final, point should now also be duly noted. I argued above that
the Ability to Pay Argument is incomplete. For a parallel reason, the same is true
of the Cost-Effectiveness Argument. Suppose that we show that future generations
are more effective at solving problems. This does not entail that the future
generations ought to address the problem for we need also to consider the duty-
bearer perspective. If, for example, justice requires that those responsible for
causing a problem should pay, then contemporary polluters should pay and it is
unfair on later generations to attribute this duty to them. It is important not only
that people’s entitlements are protected but also that the burden of protecting these
entitlements is fairly distributed.
In short, none of the three arguments support premise (1) of Argument 2. Each
fails, in different ways, to protect the fundamental rights that are jeopardized
by anthropogenic climate change. The Diminishing Marginal Utility argument
focuses exclusively on aggregate outcomes and is therefore quite compatible with
permitting policies which threaten the fundamental rights of some; the Ability to
Pay Argument is focused solely on who should bear the duty of combating climate
change and therefore it too ignores the question of whether allocating this duty to
future generations will result in the protection of persons’ fundamental rights from
the threats posed by climate change; and the Cost-Effectiveness Argument is
motivated by a concern to protect the rights of the vulnerable, but it overlooks the
tremendous costs involved in postponing action until later.
D. Let us suppose that the concerns raised in section C are all met. Suppose that
we know that future people will be much wealthier (they can pay); suppose that
the Ability to Pay Principle is correct and it is right to allocate the responsibility
to combat climate change to them (they ought to pay); and suppose, finally, that
we know that the wealthy people in the future will be disposed to protect the
fundamental rights of all from the threats posed by climate change (they will pay).
Even so, Argument 2 fails because it makes the questionable assumption that
greater wealth can counterbalance the threats posed by the worsening climate that
we the current generation help to produce.
Why should we accept this assumption? One might give two arguments for
it.39 The first contends that greater economic wealth enables people to adapt and
thereby avert the ill-effects of climate change. Let us term this the Adaptation
Response. The second reason one might think that economic growth counterbal-
ances a deterioration in the climate is that one thinks that people might be unable
to adapt to the change but that the money can serve as compensation for the loss.
Let us call this the Compensation Response.40
Both arguments for why economic growth matters fail. The problem with the
first is that it is unduly sanguine about the effectiveness of adaptation. It assumes
that if money is available and deployed to further adaptation then the rights of
those threatened by climate change are secure. This overlooks several critical
problems. First, although climate scientists understand the general processes of
climate change, they are often unable to specify what changes will happen to
which specific areas. Preparing for adaptation is therefore very much an imperfect
science. Furthermore, adaptation requires not simply resources but accountable
governance structures, ones in which political elites are responsive to people’s
need for protection from environmental threats, and greater wealth on its own
cannot bring this about. Consider in this light those living in authoritarian and
corrupt political systems—there can be no assurance that financial support will
reach the vulnerable areas. In addition to this, even if we know where climate-
related threats will occur and even if political elites are responsive to the needs of
their people, adaptation policies (such as building dykes, having better drainage
systems, and so on) are not fool-proof and thus cannot be relied upon to prevent
any harms arising from climate change. The Adaptation Response fails.
Consider now the Compensation Response. This accepts that adaptation may
not suffice and hence that climate change may violate certain key rights. But it
adds that this is acceptable if the victims of the violation of these rights are
compensated in monetary terms.
This argument also fails. Rights entail duties on others not to violate them and
if others do violate them then, other things being equal, they are under a duty to
compensate those wronged. What is generally impermissible is deliberately to
violate a right with a view to compensating people for it. One cannot assault
someone and then make it up to them by paying for their hospital bills and fully
covering all aspects of their recovery. The point is that one should not inflict that
wrong in the first place: it is impermissible to inflict the bad with a view to creating
a good to make up for this.41 It misunderstands the nature of a right to choose to
violate it when one has the option of not doing so.42 There are, of course,
exceptional cases where this is permissible, but the point is that these arise in
emergencies. In normal policy-making rights are not to be violated, and certainly
not when there are other morally acceptable courses of action available.43
Thus, neither the Adaptation Response nor the Compensation Response can
show that economic growth can offset the threats posed by climate change.
Argument 2’s claim that current generations should not mitigate climate change
on the grounds that future generations will enjoy higher average wealth and that
this economic growth counterbalances the resulting dangerous climate is thus
further undermined.
176 Simon Caney
IV. Risk, Uncertainty, and Discounting
Let us now consider a third reason for discounting. One argument often given
in defense of discounting the amount of resources to be devoted to a problem is
that the projected harms may not materialize or that we are uncertain about their
likelihood. As was noted earlier, the projected changes to the Earth’s climate
involve both risks and uncertainties. The IPCC, for example, lists various impacts
and then assigns rough probabilities to each. In addition, some phenomena are
more accurately described as uncertainties (that is, we cannot formulate a reliable
probability for them).44 These risks and uncertainties lead then to the following
argument:
Argument 3: Since climate change is projected to result in risks (i.e., outcomes with a
probability of less than one) and/or uncertainties (i.e., outcomes whose probability cannot
be ascertained), current generations should discount future impacts and should, therefore,
devote current resources to their contemporary problems rather than to future ones.
A. Argument 3 would be advanced by advocates of Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA).

On this view, we should multiply the cost or benefit of an outcome by the
probability of its occurring. Any probability less than 1 is a form of discounting.
This approach does have intuitive appeal. If we cannot be sure whether a bad event
will occur, or if we know that the probability of it occurring is less than one, then
it seems natural to devote less resources to combating that problem than we would
if we knew that the bad event would definitely occur.
In what follows I shall argue, however, that we should reject Argument 3. I
maintain that the fact that statements about the harmful effects of climate change
refer to risks and uncertainties, rather than definitely known impacts, does not
justify paying less of a cost. A sound response to the current climate change, I
suggest, would prescribe exactly the same course of action (in terms of the money
spent) to mitigating climate change as would be appropriate if it were known that
the malign effects would definitely occur. To put it another way round, I shall
defend a precautionary approach to climatic risks and uncertainties. However,
rather than appeal to a version of the precautionary principle in the premises that
follow, I shall adduce four considerations which are jointly sufficient to entail a
precautionary conclusion.45
First, though, let us consider CBA. Applying CBA to climate change is
problematic for two reasons. The first is that CBA requires probabilistic assess-
ments in order to calculate the expected utility for any event, but it is at a loss when
we face uncertainties. And, as many have observed, it is extremely hard to ascertain
with any precision or confidence the probabilities of many of the specific impacts
caused by climate change.46 Second, and more fundamentally, this way of thinking
about risk seems inappropriate in this context. CBA may be applicable in the
context of one person’s life. If I am considering taking a grave risk and I alone will
bear its potential burden then it might seem appropriate for me to consider the issue
simply in terms of the expected costs and expected benefits to me. However, it is
inappropriate to adopt this model when we are considering cases where some (high
emitters who are affluent) are exposing others to grave risks and jeopardizing their
rights. The interpersonal context makes all the world of difference. The principles
applicable within the context of one life are not the same as those applicable across
lives.47
Under what conditions, if any, is it fair for one group to expose another
group to risks? Two different kinds of approach are available, both of which
invoke rights. One answer takes a procedural form. It holds that exposing some
to risks can be just if the risk-bearers have a genuine choice (for example, they
have the right to veto the proposal and can do so without inappropriate reper-
cussions) and they consent to being exposed to risk. They might, for example,
accept the risk if they can share in the benefits of the risky activity and/or if they
are guaranteed adequate compensation if the possible hazards materialize. This
procedural route is, however, not available to us given that some of the risk-
bearers have yet to be born and some are but infants now. So we have reason to
consider a second type of approach—a substantive approach that focuses on
whether the distribution of burdens and benefits is fair according to some sub-
stantive criteria.
In light of this one might seek to develop a comprehensive theory of when
exposing others to risks is just and then apply that to climate change. Such a theory
would provide the necessary and sufficient conditions for imposing risks on
others, and by doing so would develop a theory of “fair risk” that is applicable for
all situations. That would be a very ambitious project. It is also unnecessary for
our purposes—which are to examine whether it is justified to discount the impacts
of climate change because of the uncertain nature of climate projections. In what
follows I shall therefore pursue a more modest task, and will identify several
conditions which both apply specifically to the current changes to the climate and
provide guidance on the legitimacy of discounting.
B. The following line of reasoning will, I believe, show that it is unjust for the
world’s highest per capita emitters to expose others to the risks associated with
dangerous climate change. Moreover, they should not discount the projected
ill-effects on the grounds that they are merely risks and uncertainties.
Why should we adopt such a cautious approach to global climate change? The
following four rights-centered considerations, I think, provide a conclusive
answer.
(R1) The changes to the climate involve both (a) a high probability of severe threats to large
numbers of persons’ fundamental human rights and (b) a possibility of even more cata-
strophic threats to fundamental human rights.
First, note that the IPPC’s reports differentiate between seven different categories
of probability—ranging from “virtually certain” (>99%), “very likely” (90–99%),
178 Simon Caney
and “likely” (66–90%) at one end of the spectrum to “very unlikely” (1–10%) and
“exceptionally unlikely” (<1%) at the other.48 They maintain that many of the
dangerous changes to the Earth’s climate are “likely” or “very likely.” The Fourth
Assessment Report, for example, concludes that in the twenty-first-century
droughts, more frequent intense cyclones and extreme sea-level rises are “likely”;
that heatwaves and extreme precipitation are “very likely”; and that increased
temperatures are “virtually certain.”49 If we turn now to the projected impacts on
human rights, the IPCC reports maintain that climate change will lead to loss of
life, exposure to disease and malnutrition. It distinguishes between different levels
of confidence, ranging from “very high confidence” (“at least 9 out of 10 chance
of being correct”) and “high confidence” (“about 8 out of 10 chance”) to “very low
confidence” (“less than a 1 out of 10 chance”).50 And many of its projections of
dangerous threats to fundamental human interests are ones which it categorizes as
“high confidence.” To take one example, the IPCC’s chapter on human health has
“high confidence” that climate change will lead to (1) “increased malnutrition”;
(2) an increase in “the number of people suffering from death, disease and injury
from heatwaves, floods, storms, fires and droughts”; and (3) increased “cardio-
respiratory morbidity and mortality.”51
Consider now (b). In addition to the prospects of drought, flooding, sea-level
rise, and freak weather events, there are possible effects which, if they occurred,
would be catastrophic, but the probability of them occurring is very low. Three
phenomena in particular are worth mentioning here. First, there is a possibility
that the Greenland Ice Sheet will melt, thereby raising sea levels by seven
meters.52 Second, it is also possible that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet will melt.
According to Michael Oppenheimer and R. B. Alley, this alone would increase sea
levels by approximately five meters.53 Both of these would be calamitous: They
would devastate the rights to life, health, and subsistence of inhabitants of small-
island states and all those who live or work on the coast. A third possibility which
is related to, but distinct from the preceding two, is the slowdown or collapse of
the ATC. This too is unlikely but if it occurred it would have considerable impact,
including reducing temperatures in Europe.54 According to Michael Vellinga and
Richard Wood, both scientists at the Metereological Office in London, the collapse
of the ATC may lead to a drop in temperatures in Europe of between 1 and 3°C.55
These three phenomena illustrate then the possibility of abrupt nonlinear climate
change.56
Note, however, that in itself (R1) is insufficient to ground a policy of precau-
tion. That one course of action has grave—even catastrophic—risks attached to it
does not entail that one should eschew it, for the other options available might also
have equally grave risks.57 This leads to my second point. For the second step in
my argument is that:
(R2) Affluent members of the world can abstain from emitting high levels of greenhouse
gases, and thereby exposing others to risk, without loss of their own human rights.
(R2) is supported by two considerations. First, many affluent people expend

energy on activities which might have value but are not needed for the realization
of people’s human rights, and can therefore be foregone without sacrificing their
rights. Consider, in this context, the emissions stemming from driving cars, taking
plane flights, poorly insulated housing, and inefficient energy use. Cuts from all of
these are needed to avoid dangerous climate change, but the loss involved cannot
be said to compromise any human rights. Second, affluent people in the industri-
alized world are also able to engage in some activities to which they have a human
right, without employing the fossil fuels that they currently use. For many the right
to a decent minimum standard of living (which entails rights to heating) can be
met without exposing others to risk—if, for example, they use renewable energy
sources rather than fossil fuels. For both of these reasons affluent members of the
world can abstain from exposing others to risks without the loss of their own
human rights. It might be true that mitigating climate change and funding
adaptation will be costly (though we should bear in mind the statistic quoted
earlier from the Stern Review [p. 3]), but these costs do not involve a loss of
human rights and, as such, cannot compete with the priority to protecting people’s
human rights articulated by (R1).
These two considerations alone might be thought sufficient to ground a
precautionary approach.58 In case there is any doubt, two additional supplemen-
tary considerations further consolidate the case for holding that the high emissions
of the affluent is unjust. Consider now:
(R3) The risks of dangerous climate change will fall disproportionately on those whose
human rights are already violated.
There is consensus among climate scientists and environmental economists that

anthropogenic climate change will have particularly severe effects on people who
already lack fundamental human rights. Disease, malnutrition, and poverty are
already rife in Africa and climate change risks making it even worse. Furthermore,
sea-level rise will impact heavily on the members of Bangladesh—who currently
lack fundamental subsistence and health rights. For affluent persons and corpo-
rations to engage in a Business as Usual approach would therefore be for them to
gamble with the condition of those who already lack fundamental rights protec-
tion, threatening to render them even worse off.59
The case for affluent emitters to cut their emissions so as not to expose others
to grave risks is strengthened further if we note one additional feature of the
current situation:
(R4) The benefits that arise when the affluent of the world emit high levels of greenhouse
gases falls almost entirely to them, and not to those most at risk from climate change.
It is arguable that for some to expose others to risk can be morally acceptable if the
risk-taking is part of an equitable scheme. To use a familiar example, one might
180 Simon Caney
think that it is permissible for some to drive motor vehicles even though they pose
a fatal threat to some because the risky activity is part of an equitable scheme
which is generally beneficial, including to the risk-bearers. Even nondrivers might
value the practice of driving—it means that their friends and family can visit,
goods can get transported promptly from one end of the country to another, food
gets delivered to shops still fresh, business and personal correspondence can arrive
swiftly, and so on.60 Now the point of (4) is simply to add that no such argument
can be made in defense of the current emissions of the world’s wealthy—because
the benefits redound almost entirely to the risk-takers and not the risk-bearers.
In short, the preceding argument holds that it is wrong for some to engage in
activities which are likely to violate the human rights of others (and might lead to
a catastrophic outcome) in situations where the risk-takers need not engage in the
risky behavior and can avert it without forfeiting their own human rights, when
the risk-bearers already lack fundamental human rights, and when the benefits of
the risky behavior fall to the risk-takers and not the risk-bearers.
C. What does this mean for the social discount rate? I think the answer here is that
it is wrong to discount potential harms to others on the grounds that the likelihood
of their impact is either less than one or it is unknown. The implication of the
argument given previously is that the affluent should simply abstain from the risky
behavior in cases where (R1)–(R4) apply. It is not that they should carry on with
the reckless activity but do it less often. They should desist entirely. They should
act in exactly the same way and bear exactly the same cost (the opportunity cost
of not engaging in the risky behavior) as if it were known beyond doubt that the
harmful impacts would materialize. If, however, this is the case the upshot is that
there should be zero discounting for risk. It makes no difference to the assessment
if the probability is one hundred or eighty-five percent, say.61
D. Three further points bear noting. First, note that the argument presented
previously—like the arguments in sections II and III—is grounded in a commit-
ment to human rights. Human rights are invoked in three places. (R1) invokes the
fact that there is a threat to people’s human rights; (R2) states that the cost of not
violating people’s human rights does not itself involve a loss of rights; and (R3)
draws attention to the fact that many of those most vulnerable to the risky
activities already lack fundamental rights. Second, note that my claim is that
(R1)–(R4) are sufficient to ground a no-discounting conclusion. To assert this is
not to claim that some other conditions (maybe weaker versions of (R1)–(R4) or
maybe some other combination) may not also be sufficient to ground this conclu-
sion. Maybe they are. My point is simply that the factual conditions are those
described by (R1)–(R4) and that given these we should accept the conclusion I
urge. Note too that my argument does not claim that (R1)–(R4) are necessary to
ground the no-discounting conclusion. Third, in the preceding analysis I have
deliberately focused on the responsibilities of affluent emitters. One interesting
and important implication of the argument relying on (R1)–(R4) is that it does not
show that all agents should observe the “precautionary” principle. The reason for
this stems from (R2), which focuses on the advantaged and argues that they can
avoid the risky behavior without suffering an undue loss. However, many of the
citizens of countries like China and India are in a different position. It is not true
of them that can they abstain from exposing others to risk without loss of their
human rights. For them to adopt a precautionary approach would be for them
potentially to jeopardize their fundamental rights. As such, it is arguable that they
are entitled to engage in the emissions necessary to their fundamental rights even
if by doing so they contribute to dangerous climate change.62 If the choice they
face is between not surviving and acting in such a way that exposes others to
severe risks, then they have a case for emitting the greenhouse gases necessary to
achieve a basic minimum (though this might, of course, depend on the numbers
involved).63
V. Conclusion
Climate change jeopardizes fundamental human rights. I have argued that

seeing climate change in this way helps us to address the intergenerational chal-
lenges posed by climate change. In particular, I have
1. rejected a uniform positive pure time discount rate and defended a distinctive
approach to pure time discounting, arguing that a zero pure time discount rate
should be applied to the Rights Principle but it need not be applied to other
values;
2. rejected the argument that we may discount the interests of future generations
because they will be wealthier, and argued that this does not respect the
fundamental rights of future people; and
3. rejected the argument that risk and uncertainty justify discounting. When we
bear in mind the interpersonal nature of the situation and the rights of the
risk-bearers, we should conclude that the advantaged should not expose the
vulnerable to the possibility of further rights violations.
A human rights-oriented approach can thus provide guidance on how to think

about the social discount rate. Furthermore, it gives us good reason to reject
“time” discounting, “growth” discounting, and “risk and uncertainty” discounting.
As such, it strengthens the case for an aggressive policy of mitigation and adap-
tation dedicated to preventing rights-jeopardizing climate change.
This paper was presented at the “Justice and Boundaries” Conference, University
College Dublin (May 2, 2008), the Conference on “Human Rights and Global
Law,” University of Palermo ( June 3–8, 2008), the CSSJ seminar (October 27,
2008), and the political theory seminar at the University of Gothenburg (Novem-
ber 29, 2008). Parts of the paper draw on a paper given at Amsterdam University
182 Simon Caney
(March 22–23, 2007), University of Washington (May 3–4, 2007), and University
of Oslo (June 21–24, 2007). I thank the participants for their questions and
objections. I am particularly grateful to John Barry and Göran Duus-Otterström
(my respondents at Dublin and Gothenburg, respectively), and to Paul Baer, Alan
Carter, Steve Gardiner, Tim Hayward, David Miller, Dominic Roser, and Isabel
Trujillo for helpful comments and discussion. The first draft of this paper was
written during my tenure of a Leverhulme Research Fellowship and work on it was
completed during my tenure of an ESRC Climate Change Leadership Fellowship.
I thank the Leverhulme Trust and the ESRC for their support.
Notes
1
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985 [1739–40]), bk. III, pt. II,
sec. VII, p. 590.
2
Susan Solomon, Dahe Qin, and Martin Manning, “Technical Summary,” in Climate Change 2007:
The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ed. Susan Solomon et al. (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2007), 70. It is important to bear in mind that the sea-level projections
exclude “future rapid dynamical changes in ice flow.”
3
See Simon Caney, “Human Rights, Responsibilities and Climate Change,” in Global Basic Rights, ed.
Charles Beitz and Robert Goodin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 227–47; and Simon
Caney, “Climate Change, Human Rights and Moral Thresholds,” in Human Rights and Climate
Change, ed. Stephen Humphrey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2009).
See also Tim Hayward, Constitutional Environmental Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2005) for a defense of a “human right to an adequate environment” (especially chapter 1).
4
Sir John Houghton, Global Warming: The Complete Briefing, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004), 30–31.
5
Bjørn Lomborg has famously argued that the resources devoted to mitigating climate change could be
better spent elsewhere. See Bjørn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real
State of the World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 322–24; and also the views of
the panel of experts reported in Bjørn Lomborg, ed., Global Crises, Global Solutions (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004), 605–44.
6
The social discount rate has been widely ignored by philosophers. For a rare example, see the
illuminating discussion of discounting by Derek Parfit in Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1986), 480–86.
7
See Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics, 8th ed. (London: Macmillan, 1961 [1920]), bk. III,
chap. V, sec. 3–4, pp. 119–23; A. C. Pigou, The Economics of Welfare, 4th ed. (London: Mac-
millan, 1946), 24–30; Frank Ramsey, “A Mathematical Theory of Saving,” Economic Journal 38,
no. 152 (1928): 543–59; and Sir Nicholas Stern, The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern
Review (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), esp. 35–37 and 50–60.
8
In what follows I shall refer frequently to “future generations.” Note, of course, that a social discount
rate has a bearing not simply on those who have not been born but also on those who are currently
alive who will remain alive for several years to come. It bears on what resources we devote to
people’s interests in the future where that includes people who are already alive and those who will
be born by then. It would be cumbersome to make this point repeatedly and so for simplicity’s sake
I will refer to future generations.
9
Stern, The Economics of Climate Change, 239.
10
Eric Neumayer, “A Missed Opportunity: The Stern Review on Climate Change Fails to Tackle the
Issue of Non-substitutable Loss of Natural Capital,” Global Environmental Change 17, nos. 3–4
(2007): 300.
11
Pigou, The Economics of Welfare, 24–30; Ramsey, “A Mathematical Theory of Saving,” 543; and
Stern, The Economics of Climate Change, 35.
12
R. F. Harrod, “The Supply of Saving,” in Towards a Dynamic Economics: Some Recent Develop-
ments of Economic Theory and Their Application to Policy (London: Macmillan, 1949), 40.
13
Ibid., 37.
14
Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed. (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company,
1981 [1907]), bk. IV, chap. 1, sec. 2, p. 414.
15
Stern, The Economics of Climate Change, 53 and 663.
16
Even if humanity dies out one might have other very considerable reasons to avert dangerous climate
change. One might have moral reasons stemming from a concern for the natural world and the
lives of nonhuman animals. I endorse these other reasons but want to focus here on the impact of
climate change on human beings.
17
I here follow Frank Knight’s seminal discussion in Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit (Boston and New
York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1921), esp. 19–20 and 197–232.
18
For excellent empirical data on the impacts of climate change, see Martin Parry, Osvaldo Canziani,
Jean Palutikof, Paul van der Linden, and Clair Hanson, eds., Climate Change 2007: Impacts,
Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report
of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2007); and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Wolfgang Cramer, Nebojsa Nakicenovic, Tom Wigley,
and Gary Yohe, eds., Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2006).
19
Some, of course, deny that future people have rights. For an argument defending the ascription of
rights to future persons, see Caney, “Human Rights, Responsibilities and Climate Change,” sec. I.
20
For an argument to this effect, see Caney, “Climate Change, Human Rights and Moral Thresholds.”
My account is indebted to Raz’s articulation of the interest theory of rights. See Joseph Raz, The
Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), chap. 7 in general and p. 166 in particular.
21
Note there are other different kinds of Scope Restricted View. See, for example, that defended by
Avner de-Shalit, Why Posterity Matters: Environmental Policies and Future Generations
(London: Routledge, 1995), 13–14, 54–55, and 62–65.
22
William Stanley Jevons, The Theory of Political Economy, 2nd ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970
[1879]), chap. III, p. 124.
23
Pigou, The Economics of Welfare, 25; cf. also pp. 25–26.
24
Rawls, “The Independence of Moral Theory,” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philo-
sophical Association 48 (1974–75): 17. The point is also made in “Reply to Alexander and
Musgrave,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 88, no. 4 (1974): 645.
25
Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 414.
26
See note 20.
27
I have argued elsewhere that this Scope Restricted View is also not vulnerable to various objections
leveled against zero pure time discount rates: Simon Caney, “Climate Change, Human Rights and
Discounting,” Environmental Politics 17, no. 4 (2008): 548–50.
28
For this viewpoint see Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist, 314; William Nordhaus, “Dis-
counting in Economics and Climate Change,” Climatic Change 37, no. 2 (1997): 317; William
Nordhaus, “The Question of Global Warming: An Exchange,” New York Review of Books 55,
no. 14 (September 25, 2008): 93.
29
Robert M. Solow gives voice to this thought when he writes: “In social decision-making, however,
there is no excuse for treating generations unequally, and the time-horizon is, or should be, very
long. In solemn conclave assembled, so to speak, we ought to act as if the social rate of time
preference were zero (though we would simultaneously discount future consumption if we expect
the future to be richer than the present).” See Robert M. Solow, “The Economics of Resources or
the Resources of Economics,” American Economic Review 64, no. 2 (1974): 9.
30
Nordhaus, “Discounting in Economics and Climate Change,” 317.
31
Issues of risk and uncertainty are addressed in the next section.
184 Simon Caney
32
See, for example, Harrod, “The Supply of Saving,” 38ff.
33
For instructive discussions of the importance of disaggregating groups when considering discount
rates, see Thomas Schelling, “Intergenerational Discounting,” Energy Policy 23, nos. 4/5 (1995):
398–400; and Thomas Schelling, “Intergenerational and International Discounting,” Risk Analysis
20, no. 6 (2000): 835–36.
34
For a similar type of argument, see Dan Moller, “Should We Let People Starve—For Now?” Analysis
66, no. 291 (2006): 240–47. His argument is not concerned with climate change but with the case
for poverty relief but does have a similar (but nonidentical) structure.
35
I am assuming that if we require future generations to bear the burden of combating climate change,
then the policies employed to combat climate change will, correspondingly, take place in the
future. That is, I am ruling out the possibility that the policy enacted to combat climate change is
implemented in t1 and the bill for doing so is somehow picked up by future people at time t100,
say. I am grateful to Vijay Joshi and Andrew Williams for comments on a quite different paper
which drew attention to this issue.
36
There are, of course, exceptions to this. For example, I think it is unfair to make polluters pay if
making them do so pushes them beneath a decent minimum standard of living and thus I affirm a
poverty-sensitive Polluter Pays Principle. For further discussion, see Simon Caney, “Climate
Change, Justice and the Duties of the Advantaged,” Critical Review of International Social and
Political Philosophy 12, no. 2 (forthcoming 2009); and Caney, “Human Rights, Responsibilities
and Climate Change.” I argue there that Ability to Pay considerations should play a subsidiary role.
37
Stern, The Economics of Climate Change.
38
See David Frame and Myles R. Allen, “Climate Change and Global Risk,” in Global Catastrophic
Risk, ed. Nick Bostrom and Milan M. Ćirković (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 273–75.
John Houghton also discusses positive and negative feedbacks in Global Warming: The Complete
Briefing, 35, 39–40, 90–95, and 186. Edward A. G. Schuur and his coauthors have also argued that
the melting of permafrost will result in the release of billions of tons of carbon into the atmo-
sphere: see Edward A. G. Schuur et al., “Vulnerability of Permafrost Carbon to Climate Change:
Implications for the Global Carbon Cycle,” Bioscience 58, no. 8 (2008): 701–14.
39
There is a longstanding debate about whether economic growth can offset the loss of environmental
natural capital. For an important account, see Andrew Dobson’s discussion of different concep-
tions of sustainability in Justice and the Environment: Conceptions of Environmental Sustainabil-
ity and Dimensions of Social Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
40
There is, of course, a third response, namely that the economic growth counterbalances the threats
to some caused by climate change because the evils suffered by some can be outweighed by the
benefits to others. Given my affirmation of the Rights Principle, I set aside this utilitarian kind of
response.
41
This point has been persuasively made by Henry Shue, “Bequeathing Hazards: Security Rights and
Property Rights of Future Humans,” in Global Environmental Economics: Equity and the Limits
to Markets, ed. Mohammed H. I. Dore and Timothy D. Mount (Malden, MA and Oxford:
Blackwell Publishers, 1999), 40–42; and by Clive Spash, Greenhouse Economics: Value and
Ethics (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), chap. 9, esp. pp. 231–36. Shue grounds his
argument on the assumption that the rights in question are inalienable. In contrast to this, I hold
that (1) it is not necessary to appeal to inalienable rights to ground this conclusion; and (2) the
rights Shue posits (like the right to physical security) are not in fact inalienable (people may
consent to others inflicting physical pain on them).
42
There is also the obvious but nonetheless important point that some (e.g., those who lose their life
because of climate change) cannot be compensated.
43
A similar kind of point is sometimes made about natural phenomena of great value (e.g., glaciers or
rainforests or coral reefs). The thought is that these goods are irreplaceable and their loss is
irreversible. On this basis, one might argue that it is wrong to act in such a way that these places
of great beauty are destroyed. For pertinent discussion, see Robert E. Goodin, Green
Political Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992), 57–61; Eric Neumayer, Weak versus Strong
Sustainability: Exploring the Limits of Two Opposing Paradigms, 2nd ed. (Cheltenham: Edward
Elgar, 2003); and Neumayer, “A Missed Opportunity,” 299–301.
44
Moreover, as was noted in the previous section, there is also uncertainty about future economic
growth and uncertainty about the motivations of the wealthy in the future.
45
There are many different versions of the precautionary principle. For some influential formulations
of the precautionary principle, see Principle 15 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and
Development (http://www.un.org/documents/ga/conf151/aconf15126-1annex1.htm) and Article
3.3 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (http://unfccc.int/resource/
docs/convkp/conveng.pdf). For an instructive analysis, see Jonathan B. Weiner, “Precaution,” in
The Oxford Handbook of International Environmental Law, ed. Daniel Bodansky, Jutta Brunnée,
and Ellen Hey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 597–612.
46
This point is emphasized by Stephen Gardiner, “Ethics and Global Climate Change,” Ethics 114, no.
3 (2004): 571–72.
47
My remarks here draw, of course, on Rawls’s well-known claim that utilitarianism “does not take
seriously the distinction between persons” (A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. [Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1999], 24). See also Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Oxford: Blackwell,
1974), 33.
48
Martin Parry, Osvaldo Canziani, and Jean Palutikof, “Technical Summary,” in Climate Change 2007:
Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assess-
ment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ed. Martin Parry, Osvaldo
Canziani, Jean Palutikof, Paul van der Linden, and Clair Hanson (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2007), 27.
49
Solomon et al., “Technical Summary,” 52.
50
Parry et al., “Technical Summary,” 27.
51
Ulisses Confalonieri and Bettina Menne, “Human Health,” in Climate Change 2007: Impacts,
Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report
of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ed. Martin Parry, Osvaldo Canziani, Jean
Palutikof, Paul van der Linden, and Clair Hanson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2007), 393.
52
Jason A. Lowe, Jonathan M. Gregory, Jeff Ridley, Philippe Huybrechts, Robert J. Nicholls, and
Matthew Collins, “The Role of Sea-Level Rise and the Greenland Ice Sheet in Dangerous Climate
Change: Implications for the Stabilisation of Climate,” in Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change,
ed. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Wolfgang Cramer, Nebojsa Nakicenovic, Tom Wigley, and Gary
Yohe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 30.
53
Michael Oppenheimer and R. B. Alley, “The West Antarctic Ice Sheet and Long Term
Climate Policy,” Climatic Change 64, nos. 1–2 (2004): 2. For discussion of the West Antarctic
Ice Sheet, see also Chris Rapley, “The Antarctic Ice Sheet and Sea Level Rise,” in Avoiding
Dangerous Climate Change, ed. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Wolfgang Cramer, Nebojsa
Nakicenovic, Tom Wigley, and Gary Yohe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006),
25–27.
54
For discussion of the Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation, see Michael Vellinga and Richard A. Wood,
“Global Climatic Impacts of a Collapse of the Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation,” Climatic
Change 54, no. 3 (2002): 251–67. See also Michael E. Schlesinger, Jianjun Yin, Gary Yohe,
Natalia G. Andronova, Sergey Malyshev, and Bin Li, “Assessing the Risk of a Collapse of
the Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation,” in Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, ed. Hans
Joachim Schellnhuber, Wolfgang Cramer, Nebojsa Nakicenovic, Tom Wigley, and Gary Yohe
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 37–47; and Richard Wood, Matthew Collins,
Jonathan Gregory, Glen Harris, and Michael Vellinga, “Towards a Risk Assessment for Shutdown
of the Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation,” in Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, ed. Hans
Joachim Schellnhuber, Wolfgang Cramer, Nebojsa Nakicenovic, Tom Wigley, and Gary Yohe
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 49–54.
55
Vellinga and Wood, “Global Climatic Impacts,” 255.
186 Simon Caney
56
For further pertinent discussion see Michael Oppenheimer and R. B. Alley, “Ice Sheets, Global
Warming, and Article 2 of the UNFCCC,” Climatic Change 68, no. 3 (2005): 257–67; Stefan
Rahmstorf and Kirsten Zickfeld, “Thermohaline Circulation Changes: A Question of Risk Assess-
ment,” Climatic Change 68, nos. 1–2 (2005): 241–47; Stephen H. Schneider, “Abrupt Non-linear
Climate Change, Irreversibility and Surprise,” Global Environmental Change 14, no. 3 (2004):
245–58; and the report of the Committee on Abrupt Climate Change—Abrupt Climate Change:
Inevitable Surprises (Washington DC: National Academy Press, 2002).
57
This is a point stressed by Cass Sunstein in Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 26–34.
58
My invocation of R1 and R2 in support of a precautionary policy is broadly in line with Stephen
Gardiner’s analysis of the precautionary principle and his application of it to global climate change
in Gardiner, “Ethics and Global Climate Change,” 577–78. See also his excellent treatment in “A
Core Precautionary Principle,” Journal of Political Philosophy 14, no. 1 (2006): 33–60. Gardiner
draws on Rawls’s maximin principle to construct what he terms the “Rawlsian Core Precautionary
Principle” (p. 48). The latter holds that precaution is appropriate when (i) there is uncertainty; (ii)
people do not particularly value increases above the kind of minimum guaranteed by the maximin
principle; and (iii) people strongly object to falling below the minimum standard guaranteed by
maximin (p. 47). As he says, this interpretation of the precautionary principle entails that we
should adopt a precautionary approach to global climate change (p. 55). Gardiner’s treatment in
“A Core Precautionary Principle” is slightly different to his earlier treatment in “Ethics and Global
Climate Change” for whereas the former applies the precautionary principle only to cases of
uncertainty, the latter applies it to cases where there is a “high” probability of severe effects and
an “unknown” probability of catastrophe (see “Ethics and Global Climate Change,” 577). My
account is closer to this second account, though, by contrast with Gardiner’s account, the concept
of rights plays a crucial role in my argument.
59
Stern, The Economics of Climate Change, chap. 4, esp. pp. 106–14. See also Parry et al., “Technical
Summary,” 64; and Michel Boko, Isabelle Niang, Anthony Nyong, and Coleen Vogel, “Africa,” in
Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II
to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ed. Martin
Parry, Osvaldo Canziani, Jean Palutikof, Paul van der Linden, and Clair Hanson (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007), esp. p. 435.
60
For an excellent discussion see Sven Ove Hansson, “Ethical Criteria of Risk Acceptance,” Erkenntnis
59, no. 3 (2003): 291–309, esp. 305. The example of driving comes from p. 298. I disagree with
Hansson’s proposal but will not pursue that here.
61
On this point, I am in full agreement with Henry Shue’s analysis in “Deadly Delays, Saving
Opportunities: Creating a More Dangerous World?” in Energy and Responsibility, ed. Denis
Arnold (forthcoming), 16. Shue relies on something like my D1 and D2, though he does not couch
his arguments in terms of human rights. Shue also eschews any appeal to the possibility of
catastrophic climate change (that referred to by (b) in my D2) on the grounds that the probability
is not high enough (see “Deadly Delays,” 12–13).
62
I am relying here on the assumption that persons are entitled to emit subsistence emissions. See
Henry Shue, “Subsistence Emissions and Luxury Emissions,” Law and Policy 15, no. 1 (1993):
39–59.
63
Even if one rejects the claim that they can be justified in emitting subsistence emissions in such
circumstances, one might hold that their behavior is excusable. For a canonical statement of this
distinction see J. L. Austin, “A Plea for Excuses,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 57
(1956–1957): 1–30.
Runaway Climate Change: A Justice-Based Case
for Precautions
Catriona McKinnon
[T]he existing estimates of [the] social cost [of climate change] are based on IPCC studies
that so far have not included many . . . irreversible positive feedbacks. . . . So nobody has
yet even asked what price should be attached to a century-long drought in the American
West, or an enfeebled Asian monsoon, or a permanent El Niño in the Pacific, or a methane
belch from the ocean depths, or a collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet, or sea levels
rising by half a yard in a decade. Though, on reflection, these are perhaps questions not best
answered by accountants.1
1. Introduction: Catastrophes and Tipping Points
The basic science of climate change (CC)—our understanding of the way in

which greenhouse gases (GHGs) warm the planet—is well established and under-
stood. However, experts still have limited understanding of the nature and signifi-
cance of various positive and negative feedback effects that could respectively
accelerate or slow CC, and there is much disagreement among them about the
accuracy and reliability of the models positing these effects, and/or the existence
of data sets adequate to support their prediction. In particular, the possibility of
powerful positive feedbacks is increasingly being taken by many experts to under-
mine the “gradualist paradigm” in thinking about CC, most notably as adopted by
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).2 According to this para-
digm, the changes constitutive of CC are cumulative, smooth, and incremental,
which makes them easier to predict and plan for. However, challenges to this
paradigm have it that CC might happen through a combination of gradual changes
and some very abrupt shifts, as we pass various “tipping points.” These events are
points of no return, beyond which positive feedbacks causing runaway CC create
a world not represented in any IPCC scenarios, and beyond the scope of much
scientific imagination to date. The possibility of passing tipping points on the way
to CC catastrophe (CCC) has led some normally cautious scientists to adopt the
language of Armageddon in their attempts to get these possibilities into the public
debate about CC; for example, NASA scientist James Hansen describes the
current state of affairs as “a planetary emergency.”3josp_1446 187..203
There are numerous significant tipping points, and new ones are emerging all
the time.4 To provide focus, I shall limit discussion to a set of frightening positive
feedbacks that scientists have awakened to only recently. Fifty-five million years
ago the Earth experienced a period of extreme and accelerated warming called the

188 Catriona McKinnon
Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM), which triggered the largest mass

extinction event since the “Great Dying” 251 million years ago (in which ninety-
five percent of species went extinct). Many scientists believe that the PETM was
largely caused by the release of trillions of tons of methane from beneath the
oceans. This methane had been trapped in frozen, honeycombed sediments called
“clathrates,” and was released as a result of global warming (probably caused by
solar activity). At present, one to ten trillion tons of methane clathrates exist
beneath the world’s oceans, and could be destabilized by the rapidly warming
oceans. The release of even a fraction of this methane could be catastrophic in at
least two ways. First, it could cause massive underwater landslides that would
create tsunamis comparable in size with, or larger than, the one that started in the
Indian Ocean on December 26, 2004. Indeed, scientists now believe that the
“Storegga slip” eight thousand years ago—which occurred off the coast of
Norway and caused a tsunami of forty feet in Norway, twenty feet in Scotland, and
sixty feet in the Shetlands—was caused by the explosive release of methane from
a destabilized clathrate. Second, the release of methane on this scale could cause
runaway CC from which it would be impossible to recover, given existing levels
of anthropogenic warming;5 it is not science fiction to claim that in these condi-
tions temperature increases could exceed 6°C (see section 4 for more detail). In
this scenario the majority of life on Earth, perhaps including homo sapiens, could
go extinct.6 Call this scenario “Methane Nightmare.”
I shall argue that a precautionary approach ought to be adopted by policy-
makers addressing CC in virtue of the possibility that CC could cause us to pass
key tipping points beyond which positive feedbacks are activated that could cause
runaway and catastrophic CC. I shall present arguments for the Precautionary
Principle (PP) as the approach to CCCs that should be adopted by policy-makers
concerned (as they should be) with intergenerational justice, and I shall under-
stand intergenerational justice in broadly Rawlsian egalitarian terms. What I mean
by this is that it is appropriate to adopt Rawls’s conceit of the original position
when thinking about intergenerational justice. The impartiality modeled by this
method for choosing principles of justice is required not only between members of
the same generation, but also across members of different generations. Rawls
incorporates this commitment into his hypothetical social contract by stipulating
that intergenerational justice is to be governed by his “Just Savings” principle.7
Parties behind the veil of ignorance are to be thought of as contemporaries: they
belong to the same generation (and know this), but they do not know which
generation this is. He calls this the “present time of entry” interpretation of the
original position.8 In this situation, parties would adopt a “maximin” rule to
govern their choices between different sets of principles and, for Rawls, this holds
with respect to intergenerational as well as intragenerational justice.9
Of course, there are few, if any, policy-makers whose decisions conform to,
or whose reasoning reflects, Rawls’s conception of intergenerational justice. But
even if the non-ideal world of non-compliance with principles of justice endures
forever, it still matters that we recognize the ways in which the world is unjust and
Runaway Climate Change 189
could be made better. The defense of the PP offered herein is a (small) part of that
endeavor as applied to the worst effects of CC on human social and political
organization, with particular reference to its intergenerational aspect. In this paper,
I shall distinguish between two Rawlsian arguments for taking precautionary
action against the worst outcomes of CC. I shall show that although both argu-
ments provide compelling grounds for taking such action, the argument making
reference to the “strains of commitment” is more powerful than the argument
making reference to the unjust distribution of advantage across generations that
could be caused by failing to take precautions against CCCs.
2. The Precautionary Principle
One feature of CCCs that makes policy making with respect to them so
difficult is that they are uncertain. In one basic sense, the meaning of “uncertainty”
is clear: that which is uncertain is not certain. Given that nothing in the future is
certain, and given that all policy is future-oriented, uncertainty (in this basic sense)
is integral to the context of every policy decision. Uncertainty in this sense does
not pose a special problem for policy-makers because it is consistent with a future
event being uncertain that it is assigned a probability of happening (indeed,
probability is a way of expressing uncertainty), and once a policy-maker has this
information she can perform a standard risk assessment to guide her thinking
about the event by multiplying its probability by its costs or impact.
This is not the sense in which CCCs are uncertain. Rather, although CCCs are
known to be possible (often because they have happened in the past), the processes
that cause them are so poorly understood that it is not possible to assign a precise
numerical probability to them, and thus a risk assessment cannot be made.10 Clive
Spash’s typology of uncertainty as “weak” and “strong” is helpful here.11 Weak
uncertainty exists when outcomes and their probabilities (understood either as
objective features of the world, or as subjective insofar as derived from persons’
preferences) are known. The context for much policy making is weak uncertainty,
and the dominant approach to policy making in this context is risk assessment.
Strong uncertainty exists when outcomes are unknown and/or unpredictable,
either because the outcomes are indeterminate, or because the state of knowledge
with respect to these outcomes precludes the assignment of a probability to them.
The strong uncertainty of CCCs renders them an elephant in the room in CC
policy debates. Of course, some GHG reduction targets—for example, the UK’s
commitment to cut CO2 by sixty percent by 2050—can be read as addressed to
CCCs just in virtue of the fact that any reduction in GHGs can be seen as an attempt
to mitigate CC, CCCs included. But such policies are certainly not justified
by direct reference to mitigating CCCs; and a cut of sixty percent (let alone the
paltry Kyoto targets) is unlikely to do the job. Furthermore, as already noted, the
bibles of policy-makers addressing CC—the IPCC Reports—do not include CCCs
in their scenario analyses, and work largely within the gradualist paradigm.
The unavailability of risk assessment as a method for policy making with

respect to strongly uncertain CCCs has led an increasing number of thinkers (even
those generally sympathetic to cost–benefit analysis, of which risk assessment is
an example)12 to give serious consideration to the PP as a guide to policy making
for such events.13
The PP is sometimes presented as equivalent to, or derived from, the principle
“better safe than sorry.” So presented, it is hard to refute: Who would rather be
sorry than safe? However, these presentations are inaccurate to the PP as it appears
in policy documents.14 Rather, the PP removes constraints on reasons for action in
policy making where scientific expertise is indispensable: It states that strong
uncertainty about harm need, or must, not stand as a reason for inaction with
respect to policy making that would adequately protect people from these harms.
The principle has a weak and a strong formulation.
The weak PP: When evidence or information is insufficient to establish the
nature and/or probability of harms caused by an activity, policy-
makers are permitted to act in order adequately to protect people
and other entities from these possible harms.
The strong PP: When evidence or information is insufficient to establish the
nature and/or probability of harms caused by an activity, policy-
makers are required to act in order adequately to protect people
and other entities from these possible harms.
The weak PP (WPP) is a permissive principle: It states the reasons on which
it is acceptable for policy-makers to act. The WPP permits policy-makers to take
preventive action for reasons other than certainty that the action is necessary to
prevent a harm. The strong PP (SPP) is a categorical principle. It states the reasons
upon which policy-makers must act; that is, in order to protect people and other
entities from possible harms, even when the nature and/or probability of these
harms is not known. Given this uncertainty, reasons given in justification of action
taken in the name of the SPP must appeal to considerations other than those of
evidence- or model-based support for the belief that the action is necessary to
prevent a harm. It is relatively rare to find examples of the SPP in policy literature;
far more common are varieties of the WPP.15
The WPP is impotent as a constraint on the decisions of policy-makers because
it is satisfied even if decision making on every policy issue in its scope is postponed
until the relevant evidence and information is certain; that is, even if no policy-
maker ever actually takes precautionary measures as set out in the WPP. When one
does not do P despite having permission to do P, one acts consistently with that
permission. Including the WPP in policy documents need have no impact at all on
any commitments appearing elsewhere in them, or in any other documents.16
For this reason I shall focus instead on the SPP. This is a steely principle: It
compels policy-makers to act in the face of strong uncertainty even though their
action may in fact turn out to be an unnecessary precaution against a non-existent,
or vanishingly unlikely, harm. Because such action is almost always expensive
(in literal sterling terms), and costly (in terms of the intrusiveness, disruptiveness,
and unpopularity of legislation to satisfy the principle, and its impact on other
policy commitments), the SPP is generally dismissed as an unworkable and naïve
proposal made by those in the grip of an ideology or suffering from distorted
perceptions of risk.
One way of arguing for the SPP with respect to CCCs is with the claim that
the SPP ought to be adopted by policy-makers in general when framing legislation
for processes that create uncertain risks of harm. It is clear that this sweeping
claim is a non-starter: As Sunstein puts it, “[t]he regulation that the principle
requires always gives rise to risks of its own . . . hence the principle bans what it
simultaneously mandates.”17 Applied at this level of generality, the SPP is literally
incoherent: each course of action it requires of policy-makers it simultaneously
prohibits.18
Although the SPP is indefensible as a general principle for policy-makers,
it is nevertheless defensible with respect to CCCs, against the background of a
commitment to deliver justice to future generations. In the next section I lay out
a Rawlsian argument that makes this case, and I comment on its limitations. In
section 4 I develop a second (and new) Rawlsian argument which is not subject to
these limitations, and which delivers a more potent justification of the SPP with
respect to CCCs.
3. The Playing Safe Argument
Famously, Rawls offers an interpretation of equality as maximin: to treat

people as equals means (among other things) to ensure a distribution of (dis)ad-
vantage among them that makes the worst-off group as well off as possible. In
addition, Rawls conceives of justice as intergenerational in scope, governing
relations across generations as well as within them. These commitments can be
made to work to justify the SPP with respect to CCCs as follows.
The SPP is justified with respect to CCCs because the worst consequences
of not taking precautionary action are worse than the worst consequences of
taking precautionary action, and choosing the former course of action is not
consistent with treating present and future people as equals when we cannot assign
a probability to each outcome, that is, when we are strongly uncertain of each
outcome, as is the case with respect to CCCs. We can see this by adopting the
Rawlsian conceit of the original position, and by imagining what parties choosing
principles therein would say in justification of their choices to those whose
interests they represent. What such persons could not do is to take a bet on the
probability of the worst consequences of no precautions being lower than the
probability of the worst consequences of precautions, given the nature of these
consequences. Call this the “playing safe” argument; in order to make it in full I
need to specify in more detail the nature of the consequences in question.19
The worst consequences of taking precautions against CCCs are that the costs
of adapting to CC turn out to be lower than the costs of taking precautions. The
consequences of CC may turn out to be nowhere near as dire as experts’ worst

fears, and it may be that tipping points and their CCCs exist only in nightmares
and Hollywood movies, or are extremely distant in time, giving us more oppor-
tunity for cheaper precautionary action at a later date. It may be that the Earth is
far more insensitive to our activities than we think. In this scenario, we spend a lot
of money and time—with all the associated opportunity costs this creates—in
taking precautions against consequences now that are in fact not necessary. Esti-
mates of how much it would cost to implement adequate precautions vary widely;
for example, Bjorn Lomborg puts the figure at $37.632 trillion, whereas the
European Commission (working with a generous stabilization target of 550 ppm
to be met by 2100) chooses $1–8 trillion,20 and the Stern Review estimates the cost
at one percent of the world GDP in 2050, or $1 trillion.21 These figures are hotly
disputed, but to make the case against precautions as powerful as possible I shall
adopt the Lomborg estimate. Call this outcome “Unnecessary Expenditure.”
The worst outcome of not taking precautions is that the worst predictions of
the IPCC turn out to be very conservative,22 that the gradualist paradigm is false,
and that we are on the verge of various tipping points, with everything this entails.
The worst outcome of a decision not to take precautionary measures with respect
to CC is catastrophic ala Methane Nightmare.
With these outcomes identified, the playing safe argument from maximin for
the SPP with respect to CC is prima facie powerful: Because Methane Nightmare
is so much worse than Unnecessary Expenditure, we ought not to act as if the
worst case scenario of taking precautions is more probable than this worst case
scenario of not taking precautions, and thus we ought to take precautions against
CCCs. Acting as if the worst consequences of taking precautions are more prob-
able than the worst consequences of not taking precautions is ruled out because the
harms that would be caused to present and future people by policy made on this
assumption, if it turns out to be false, are much greater than the harms that would
be caused by policy made on the first assumption, if this turns out to be false. And
treating people as equals makes it impermissible to gamble with their interests in
this way.
Stephen Gardiner’s elaboration (following Rawls) of the conditions under
which Rawlsian maximin reasoning delivers the requirement to take precautions is
helpful.23 These are when (i) decision makers are in a state of strong uncertainty
with respect to the probability of the events in question; (ii) decision makers are
indifferent to gains above the minimum that a maximin strategy would guarantee;
and (iii) the alternatives to a decision guided by maximin are unacceptable.24
We have seen that (i) is true of CCCs (I shall consider objections to this claim in
section 5). Conditions (ii) and (iii) are questioned when it is claimed that it is
rational or reasonable to gamble on the probability of Unnecessary Expenditure
being higher than Methane Nightmare—and so not to take precautions—because
if this gamble pays off the gains are so much higher than if the bet is not placed
at all, or is placed on the probability of Methane Nightmare being higher than
Unnecessary Expenditure.25 Call this the “skeptical stance.”
There are two comments on the skeptical stance. First, it does not take
seriously the possibility that even if the bet at its heart were to turn out to be good,
we may still have reason not to make it in virtue of how taking precautions against
CCCs could have all sorts of other benefits that would make this choice attractive
even if any CCC turns out to be highly improbable. This is the so-called “no
regrets” strategy: the requirement to take precautionary measures against CCCs
could stimulate technological innovation, efficiency measures, and new forms
of political interaction that could greatly enhance the quality of our lives even if
the precautions turn out to have been redundant with respect to CCCs. In other
words, the opportunity costs created by not taking precautions might make it
always less costly to take precautions, even taking into account the possibility that
the probability of any CCC is tiny. Although the “no regrets” strategy is not part
of Rawlsian maximin and so, strictly speaking, not part of the playing safe
argument, it is certainly not inconsistent with it; indeed, it could be proposed as an
interpretation of condition (iii) above: not taking precautions is an unacceptable
alternative not only because of the possibility of CCCs, but also because of the
possible gains associated with precautionary measures. Of course, whether taking
precautionary action against CC is a no regrets strategy is highly controversial.
Hence, if there is an alternative, or complementary, way to undermine the skep-
tical stance, then all to the better.
This brings me to my second comment, which relates to the type of justice
to which the playing safe argument as it stands appeals. The argument is that CC
policy-makers concerned to treat persons (always remembering that this includes
future generations) as equals should be guided by the maximin rule to take
precautions against CCCs, because Methane Nightmare is much worse than
Unnecessary Expenditure. In what ways, exactly, is Methane Nightmare worse
than Unnecessary Expenditure? Clearly, there are all kinds of losses—in biodi-
versity, to ecosystems, of habitats—that would occur under Methane Nightmare
but not under Unnecessary Expenditure. Let me put these to one side in order
to focus on a harm people in Methane Nightmare would suffer that people in
Unnecessary Expenditure would not. In Unnecessary Expenditure we waste
resources that could have been used to improve the position of the worst off in the
current generation or, indeed, that could have been saved for the benefit of the
worst off in future generations. These are considerations of distributive justice,
and in line with the impartiality at the heart of the Rawlsian approach to justice,
duties of distributive justice are intergenerational in scope.26 If we have a duty to
ensure that the worst off—understood in intergenerational terms—are as well off
as possible, and if Unnecessary Expenditure conflicts with this duty, then we have
a reason to reject courses of action leading to it, and should avoid it, all else being
equal.
The playing safe argument as presented so far can be read as claiming that all
else is not equal: the distributive injustice that would be created by Methane
Nightmare is worse than that created by Unnecessary Expenditure, and we must
choose between courses of action to which Unnecessary Expenditure and
Methane Nightmare attach as worst outcomes, in which case we should aim to

avoid the worst worse outcome—that is, Methane Nightmare—by taking precau-
tions. Any disadvantage that accrues to the worst off as a result of this choice is
justifiable to them in the name of equality: Given the badness of Methane Night-
mare, choosing not to take precautions—given our uncertainty—would be to
gamble with their interests by betting on the probability of Methane Nightmare
being lower than that of Unnecessary Expenditure.
However, as we have seen, making the argument in terms of distributive
justice leaves it vulnerable to the skeptical stance, as follows. This version of the
argument turns on the requirement to ensure that the worst-off generation is as
well off as possible in terms of tangible goods, which includes generations in the
future who may suffer huge disadvantage if we do not take precautions against
CCCs. It can then be objected that tangible goods can be priced, and that the cost
of taking precautions now will make these goods unaffordable for future genera-
tions. People who take the skeptical stance characteristically specify why it is
rational or reasonable to gamble on the probability of Unnecessary Expenditure
being higher than Methane Nightmare (and so not to take precautions) in terms of
monetary gains and losses: crudely, we will be richer, and make future generations
richer, if we do not take precautions. Of course, most people who take this tack
also insist that monetary gains and losses matter because we can do things with
money, such as improving human health.27 However, as has been observed fre-
quently, there are things we value (or ought to value) which cannot be compared
in value to other valuable things, and so are not amenable to being priced.
Consequently, such incommensurably valuable things do not appear in the calcu-
lations that inform rejection of precautionary approaches such as this.28 One of
these things is intergenerational justice.29
The playing safe argument as made so far is limited to a conception of
intergenerational justice in distributive terms. However, there is another way to
make the playing safe argument that articulates the impermissible gamble at its
heart in terms of a more fundamental vision of what intergenerational justice
requires, and evades the skeptical stance. I make that argument in the next section.
4. The Unbearable Strains of Commitment
There is something bad about Methane Nightmare that is related to justice,

but is not well captured in terms of distributive justice, and which is absent in
Unnecessary Expenditure. Highlighting this feature of Methane Nightmare makes
available to us an extra reason for taking precautions against CC that justifies this
choice not just in virtue of an egalitarian commitment not to gamble with the
interests of the worst off in accumulating as many tangible goods as possible, but
also in virtue of a commitment to making it possible for future people to commit
themselves to justice at all. This additional badness turns on the fact that Methane
Nightmare would create unbearable strains of commitment for those living
through and after it: it would make unreasonable any mutual expectations among
future generations that they should propose and abide by fair principles of jus-
tice.30 If this would be true of future generations in Methane Nightmare, then
we—the current generation—cannot adopt principles for action on CC that could
have this outcome.
The strains of commitment are related to the idea of making an agreement in
good faith; in Rawls’s words, “not only with the full intention to honour it but also
with a reasonable conviction that one will be able to do so.”31 Rawls claims that
excessive strains of commitment cause people to withhold affirmation of prin-
ciples of justice in two ways. First, people “become sullen and resentful . . . ready
as the occasion arises to take violent action in protest against [their] condition”;
and second, people “grow distant from political society . . . withdrawn and cynical
[they] cannot affirm the principles of justice in . . . thought and conduct over a
complete life.”32
Any attempt to implement principles of justice in Methane Nightmare—and
many other CCCs—would probably have these effects on people. An indication of
the temperature rises that might be experienced in Methane Nightmare is available
by looking back at the PETM, to which it is thought that the collapse of methane
clathrates greatly contributed.33 In this period, average temperatures increased by
5–10°C.34 One of the few models that address the effect of a global temperature
rises of 5°C predicts severe desertification in already arid regions35—decimating
most of the world’s breadbaskets—combined with huge increases in precipitation
at higher latitudes, making floods and storms more frequent.36 The net result
of a 5°C increase would be worldwide famine, severe conflict over water in the
world’s desertified regions, and extreme territorial insecurity for those living in
the dwindling inhabitable areas as an archipelago of refuges is put under increas-
ing pressure by hungry and desperate people.37
At a 6°C increase, however, things likely become very much worse. Mark
Lynas suggests that the best reference point for this amount of warming is not the
PETM, but rather the end of the Permian era 251 million years ago, when the
“Great Dying” extinction event, which wiped out ninety-five percent of the plan-
et’s species, occurred as a result of a temperature increase of 6°C.38 At the
Permian-Triassic boundary, the oceans heated drastically and became devoid of
oxygen, and so unable to support life, and also spawned superhurricanes which
distributed heat to the poles (a further positive feedback).39 Destabilized methane
clathrates beneath the oceans released huge quantities of CH4 which, if ignited,
would have generated explosive, lethal blast waves traveling at two kilometers per
second, and killing everything in their path.40 The rotting carcasses of animals, and
decaying vegetation, in the oceans released large amounts of hydrogen sulphide,
obliterating any remaining life there,41 killing most remaining land animals when
released into the atmosphere,42 and destroying the ozone layer. For temperature
rises beyond 6°C, predicting the effects is guesswork, but looking to conditions on
Venus gives some indication. It is crucial to note that the temperature increases
that caused the Great Dying probably took ten thousand years to effect, whereas—
even on the conservative estimates of the IPCC—we could achieve such warming
in one hundred years. As Lynas puts it, “[i]f we had wanted to destroy as much of
life on Earth as possible, there would have been no better way of doing it than to
dig up and burn as much fossil hydrocarbon as we possibly could.”43
The extreme scarcity of resources and almost unimaginable conditions in
Methane Nightmare would make the joint pursuit of justice impossible.44 When
there is not enough for each to have even the bare minimum for survival, to ask
anyone to do anything other than pursue their self-preservation and perhaps that of
their family—such as to act according to the demands of justice—is to ask them
to accept death so that others can live. In normal circumstances, the sacrifices in
self-interest required by justice are not unreasonable and, all else being equal, do
not impose unbearable strains of commitment on those on whom they fall. But in
circumstances as desperate as Methane Nightmare, where self-preservation domi-
nates all other motivations, any justice-based request for self-sacrifice will at least
endanger a person’s chances of survival, if not actually require their death. What
makes this request an unbearable strain of commitment is not just the content of
the request in itself; rather, it is that this request be accepted as a requirement of
justice, that is, as a measure against which those upon whom it falls can make no
justified complaint.45 If future generations know that precautions could have been
taken by their ancestors that would have averted Methane Nightmare, and would
have made the request unnecessary, then sullenness, resentment, alienation from
principles from which the request is derived, and violent protest against the
request, are the least we can expect from them.46
If social cooperation is possible in such circumstances, it is not according to
principles of justice. In contrast, the badness of Unnecessary Expenditure is not
related to any unbearable strains of commitment it would create.47 The putative
reason for avoiding it is not that it destroys the possibility of justice, but that
avoiding unnecessary expenditure allows for a more just distribution of goods by
making more goods available for redistribution and/or saving now. That future
generations are made less well off than they could have been because the current
generation takes precautions against the CCCs that its activities could inflict on
future generations is not obviously unjust (indeed, I have claimed that there are
good reasons of justice for taking precisely this course of action). And that
members of future generations know that they could have been made better off had
the current generation not taken precautions does not create a strain of commit-
ment for them that makes their joint pursuit of justice impossible. That future
generations have fewer goods than they would have had had precautions not been
taken is not in itself a reason for them to reject any requirements made of them by
principles of justice in such reduced circumstances, especially given their knowl-
edge that the decision of the current generation to save less in order to take
precautions was made in conditions of strong uncertainty, and in the name of
delivering justice to their descendants.
If not taking precautions against CCCs could impose conditions on future
generations that would make the joint pursuit of justice by them impossible, then
we—the current generation—cannot decide not to take such precautions. When

thinking through our decisions from the point of view of justice we are required
to adopt the standpoint of impartiality, which in part requires that we should not
choose principles of social cooperation that could impose on future generations
conditions which we ourselves could not agree to. To choose not to take precau-
tions against CCCs such as Methane Nightmare violates this fundamental require-
ment of impartiality.48
5. Some Problems
The SPP is a highly controversial principle, and the science of tipping points
and CCCs is young: bringing the two together delivers an approach open to many
objections. I shall consider just two of these here. The first questions the fitness
of the SPP as a principle for policy-makers in conditions of strong uncertainty,
and the second addresses the scope of the SPP.
The first objection focuses on the SPP’s requirement that precautions must
provide adequate protection against uncertain harms.49 With respect to specifying
what counts as adequate protection, there are two basic options:
(a) that we devote all of our resources and efforts to taking precautions; and
(b) that we devote less than all of our resources and efforts to taking precautions.
Prima facie, (a) is implausibly demanding because it would leave no

resources for the pursuit of other important social goals. However, (b) is wildly
vague, and gives no useful guidance to policy-makers. But being more precise
about exactly how many, and what, resources are sufficient for adequate pro-
tection against a harm requires that we specify the probability of the harm:
without this specification, the notion of what is adequate loses its anchor, and
we must rely on guesswork. This fact about specifying what is adequate creates
the following problem. Either we can specify the probability of harmful events
to which the SPP applies, or we cannot. If we cannot, then the SPP provides no
guidance with respect to making policy for those events. Given that we cannot
specify the probability of CCCs, the SPP provides no guidance to policy-makers
concerned with this aspect of CC. There is a way of making the same objection
that comes at it from the other end, so to speak, as follows. We must know that
any given CCC putatively governed by the SPP is not bound to happen—that is,
that its probability is not one hundred percent—otherwise, we would not bother
to think about taking precautions against it (they would be futile, given our
certainty that it is inevitable) and would perhaps just throw a big party instead.50
In that case, we are not in a state of strong uncertainty with respect to the CCCs
I have claimed fall within the scope of the SPP. In sum, the problem can be
posed as a dilemma: Either our genuine strong uncertainty about CCCs makes
the SPP inappropriate as a principle for policy-makers addressing them, or our
application of the SPP to CCCs shows that we are not in a state of strong
uncertainty about them.
In response, I think it is possible to specify two limiting cases to our strong
uncertainty about CCCs that do not undermine the strength and nature of this
uncertainty.51 These are that we know the probability of CCCs is not zero, and is
not 100. That is, we know CCCs are not certain not to happen, and are not certain
to happen, which means that we know that it is possible that precautions could
make a difference, and that enacting them is not necessarily futile. Nevertheless,
we remain strongly uncertain of the probability of these catastrophes within the
range of anything more than zero, and anything less than 100. And given the
catastrophic nature of the events, any probability in this range justifies precau-
tions. This does not, however, mean that we are necessarily committed to devoting
all our resources and efforts to precautions. If the SPP is, sensibly, qualified with
“all else being equal,” then it is possible to claim that all else is not, in fact, equal
because there are other important and urgent demands of justice that require
resources to be achieved. In the face of strong uncertainty, it is these demands that
set constraints on what counts as adequate for protection, and not any further,
more precise, specification of the probability of various CCCs. The question of
what other demands of justice there are that are sufficiently important and urgent
to play this role is, however, properly a political question, to be debated by
members of the demos, and to be decided using appropriate procedures for
democratic decision making. Although experts can provide valuable information
necessary to preserve the quality of such decision making, the decisions them-
selves are ultimately up to us.52
This relates to the second objection. There are various future events that are
catastrophic to the same degree, uncertain in the same way, and would create
similarly unbearable strains of commitment for future generations, as CCCs, but
which are not related to CC and so would remain untouched by any precautionary
policy adopted to mitigate CCCs; for example, comet collision. The Chicxulub
crater in Mexico is the remnant of a ten-kilometer-wide asteroid that struck
sixty-five million years ago, and is widely believed to have caused the extinction
of the dinosaurs.53 Given that such a collision would no doubt do the same to us,
should we be developing missile programs to defend ourselves against this pos-
sible future harm? If so, what about supervolcanic eruptions? Or invasions of
malevolent aliens? Why should we devote our attention and limited resources to
taking precautions against CCCs as opposed to other possible global catastrophes?
Call this the “priorities” problem.54
The priorities problem can be addressed by reflection on the following point.
First, the CCCs to which the SPP applies are anthropogenically caused, and this
distinguishes them from comet collisions, supervolcanic explosions, and so on.
The fact that we are doing things that could be (quickly) moving us closer to
various tipping points gives us a reason for taking precautions against its cata-
strophic effects that we do not have with respect to other non-anthropogenically
caused catastrophes: That we are, or could be, causing the problem prima facie
renders us liable for finding the solution,55 and gives us a reason to prioritize
finding a solution to that problem over others we are not, or could not be, causing
(such as comet collision).
The existence of this reason in part alleviates the priorities problem, but
possibly varies in its potency across two cases marking either end of a spectrum.
In the first case our status as the cause of possible CCCs is bad option luck for
us, the current generation: In the full knowledge that increasing GHG emissions
could move us closer to tipping points leading to CCCs, we are taking our chances
and increasing our GHG emissions anyway. The correct analogy here is with
the drunken driver who knowingly imbibes and then knocks down and kills an
innocent child: The driver is fully morally responsible, and legally liable, for the
death. Just as the driver either ought not to drink, or if it is too late and she is
drunk, ought to take a cab, so we ought to enact precautions to protect future
generations (the exact analogy for our circumstances vis-à-vis GHG emissions is
probably the case of taking a cab). Note that if the problem of CC were not
intergenerational in nature the drunk driver analogy would be incorrect. Instead, it
would be open to us to claim that knowingly and intentionally increasing our GHG
emissions creates risks of harm for no-one other than us and that—invoking
something like Mill’s harm principle56—we are thus under no obligation to abstain
from, or mitigate the effects of, our risky activities. An accurate analogy would
instead be of someone with no dependents or other special obligations to others
who chooses to take heroin knowing the risks. But brute facts about the atmo-
spheric life of CO2, and the speed at which the CC it causes occurs, mean that
vulnerable future generations cannot be written out of the picture: They stand to
us as the innocent child stands to the drunken driver.
The second case, lying at the other end of the spectrum, makes less headway
with respect to the priorities problem. This is when being the cause of a (possible)
harm carries no implications for blameworthiness and is nothing but a piece of bad
brute luck for the agent. The analogy here is of a sober and careful driver who kills
an innocent child through no fault of her own. That we think the agent’s causal
efficacy has some moral significance in cases such as these is shown by the fact
that we would judge any such driver who experienced no regret at having killed a
child—who simply shrugged it off as “one of those things”—as seriously morally
deficient.57 However, explaining the significance of the agent’s causal efficacy for
moral responsibility, and (perhaps) legal liability, in such cases is far from
straightforward.58 If the current generation stands to future generations as the
blameless driver stands to the innocent child she kills, then it is less clear what
difference it makes to the priorities problem that the CCCs under consideration are
anthropogenically caused in contrast to other catastrophes which are not.
However, in my view, and in the view of most experts, we are in fact closer to
the “bad option luck” than “bad brute luck” end of the spectrum—if not, in fact,
at it—in which case the priorities problem is more tractable than at first blush. But
note that even if we were closer to—if not at—the “bad brute luck” end of the
spectrum, the priorities problem does not stymie the approach proposed in this
paper, once we attend to what the problem actually is. The additional work that the
priorities problem asks for is required to justify not extending the SPP to non-
anthropogenically caused catastrophes. This lacuna in the account of the overall
scope of the SPP does not affect the argument that it extends at least as far as CCCs.
Thus, we do not need to wait for these further refinements before starting to think
seriously about how to formulate and implement precautionary policies for CCCs.
6. Conclusion
In conclusion, I have distinguished between two Rawlsian arguments for the

SPP with respect to CCCs. Although both are persuasive, ultimately the “unbear-
able strains” argument provides the most powerful categorical grounds for taking
precautionary action against CCCs. Overall, I have argued that the nature of CCCs
requires us to take drastic precautions against further CC that could lead us to pass
the tipping points that cause them. This is the case notwithstanding the fact that we
are in a state of strong uncertainty with respect to these events; indeed, our strong
uncertainty with respect to them—given their nature—makes the case for action to
prevent them even more persuasive, from the point of view of justice. Some people
translate the strong uncertainty of CCCs into weak uncertainty in order to justify
taking precautionary action using risk assessment.59 My argument is complemen-
tary to theirs. If divergent approaches to the uncertainty of CCCs nevertheless
converge on the PP, then we have what Cass Sunstein calls an “incompletely
theorized agreement” on a policy, that is, an agreement to which parties divided by
often deep theoretical differences can nevertheless give their assent,60 which is
all to the good from a political point of view. In the specific case of CC and its
possible catastrophes, the fact that such an agreement has emerged provides a
sliver of hope in the face of the increasingly dismal prospects for the planet
uncovered by CC science as it progresses. At the level of principle, we are agreed,
whatever justificatory reasons we advance. What is needed now—in the immedi-
ate present—is policy to promote our principles, and the political will to enact it.
I would like to thank Gillian Brock, Nigel Pleasants, Jurgen de Wispelaere, Jo

Wolff, and the audience at the Priority in Practice Workshop, University College
London, April 25, 2007, for very useful comments, suggestions, and discussion.
Work on this paper was supported by a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship
(Grant No. RFG/2006/0303), for which I am very grateful.
Notes
1
Fred Pearce, With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change
(Boston: Beacon Press, 2007).
2
I borrow this term from the excellent discussion in Stephen Gardiner, “Saved by Disaster? Abrupt
Climate Change, Political Inertia and the Possibility of an Intergenerational Arms Race,” Journal
of Social Philosophy 40, no. 2 (2009): 140–62 (this issue).
3
James Hansen, “Tipping Point: Perspective of a Climatologist: Abstract.” Available at http://
pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/inpress/Hansen_1.html (accessed July 5, 2007).
4
See Pearce, With Speed and Violence.
5
Ibid., 90–98.
6
See Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (London: HarperCollins, 2007),
207–62.
7
See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 251–58.
8
Ibid., 121.
9
Rawls argues that “maximin” is the decision rule that would be adopted by parties in the original
position: it directs them to choose principles that govern a distribution of advantages wherein the
worst-off group is made as well off as possible.
10
Cf. Kristian S. Ekeli, “Environmental Risks, Uncertainty and Intergenerational Ethics,” Environmen-
tal Values 13, no. 4 (2004): 426–27.
11
See Clive Spash, Greenhouse Economics: Value and Ethics (London: Routledge, 2002), 122.
12
See, for example, Richard Posner, Catastrophe: Risk and Response (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2004), 148; and Cass Sunstein, “The Catastrophic Harm Precautionary Principle,” Issues
in Legal Scholarship 7 (2007): Article 3, available at http://www.bepress.com/ils/iss10/art3
(accessed July 1, 2007).
13
For example, see Sven Ove Hansson, “The Limits of Precaution,” Foundations of Science 2, no. 2
(1997): 293–306; Per Sandin, “The Precautionary Principle and the Concept of Precaution,”
Environmental Values 13 (2004): 461–75; European Environment Agency, The Precautionary
Principle in the 20th Century (London: Earthscan, 2002); Derek Turner and Lauren Hartzell, “The
Lack of Clarity in the Precautionary Principle,” Environmental Values 13 (2004): 449–60; and
Radoslav S. Dimitrov, “Precaution in Global Environmental Politics,” International Journal of
Global Environmental Issues 5, no. 1 (2005): 96–113.
14
Such as the Maastricht Treaty Article 130r, or the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development
Principle 15. For a comprehensive list of international legal documents in which the Weak
Precautionary Principle (WPP) and the Strong Precautionary Principle (SPP) appear, see European
Environment Agency, The Precautionary Principle, 6.
15
For more on the WPP see Edward Soule, “Assessing the Precautionary Principle,” Public Affairs
Quarterly 14, no. 4 (2000): 309–28.
16
This could be either a consequence of the nature of the principle (it is non-categorical), or a
consequence of the unprincipled nature of policy-makers, or both. I take no stand here on the
question of whether a principle must be categorical to count as such, or to qualify as adequate. As
for policy-makers, it is almost certainly the case that they are often motivated by reasons not
justified by good principles.
17
Cass Sunstein, Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2005), 14.
18
Note, though, that Sunstein does defend a Precautionary Principle for uncertain catastrophes, the
paradigm of which he takes to be climate change catastrophes (CCCs). See Sunstein, “The
Catastrophic Harm Precautionary Principle.”
19
Note that this argument does not turn on the controversial claim that maximin is the principle of
rational choice in all circumstances of uncertainty. Rather, it is (a) limited to CCCs, and (b) it is
an argument from egalitarian justice, which I do not take to be justified by reference to principles
of rational choice.
20
Both figures given in George Monbiot, Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning (London: Allen Lane,
2006), 51.
21
With a range of -1% to +3.5%. The Stern Review, Executive Summary (2006), 13–16, available at
http://www.hmtreasury.gov.uk/media/8AC/F7/Executive_Summary.pdf (accessed February 21,
2007).
22
It is worth noting that the content of IPCC Reports is decided by consensus among the authors. Given
their often deep divergences of scientific opinion, the net effect of this method is to produce
conservative statements—the lowest common denominator of scientific opinion to which all

authors can agree.
23
Note that Gardiner refers to this principle as the “Rawlsian Core Precautionary Principle.” See
Stephen Gardiner, “A Core Precautionary Principle,” The Journal of Political Philosophy 14, no.
1 (2006): 33–60, at 47–48.
24
Ibid., 47. Gardiner also adds a criterion that specifies that the threats addressed by any Precautionary
Principle must be “realistic” (p. 51), for example, not science fiction, purely imagined, paranoid,
purely religiously inspired, and so on. Note that the science that informs Methane Nightmare is
sound.
25
For discussion see Gardiner, “A Core Precautionary Principle,” 56–57.
26
Note, however, that Rawls himself does not conceive of his principle of intergenerational justice (the
Just Savings Principle) as a principle of distributive justice. It is debatable whether he is wise in
this approach. For an alternative interpretation of the Just Savings Principle, see Frederic Gaspart
and Axel Gosseries, “Are Generational Savings Unjust?” Politics, Philosophy and Economics 6
(2007): 193–217.
27
See, for example, Bjørn Lomborg, “Climate Change Can Wait. World Health Can’t,” The Observer,
July 2, 2006.
28
See, for example, Frank Ackerman and Lisa Heinzerling, Priceless: On Knowing the Price of
Everything and the Value of Nothing (New York: The New Press, 1994); and Elizabeth Anderson,
Value in Ethics and Economics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).
29
Of course, economists and utilitarians—for whom all values are commensurable—will vigorously
object at this point. Classic defenses of the existence of incommensurable values fit to meet these
objection can be found in, for example, Isaiah Berlin, “The Pursuit of the Ideal,” The Crooked
Timber of Humanity (London: John Murray, 1990); and Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).
30
Again, economists and utilitarians committed to denying the existence of incommensurable values
will not be moved by such an argument, as they will reject the incommensurable value of
intergenerational justice that lies at its heart. However, it is important to note that, in this case,
all roads could lead to Rome. Economists and consequentialists can make alternative arguments
for the SPP with respect to CCCs that do not depend on the incommensurable value of doing
intergenerational justice. See, for example, Posner, Catastrophe, chap. 3; and Sunstein, “The
Catastrophic Harm Precautionary Principle.”
31
John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001),
102.
32
Ibid., 128.
33
See Gerald Dickens, “The Blast in the Past,” Nature 401 (1999): 752–55.
34
Scott L. Wing, Guy J. Harrington, Francesca A. Smith, Jonathan I. Bloch, Douglas M. Boyer, and
Katherine H. Freeman, “Transient Floral Change and Rapid Global Warming at the Paleocene-
Eocene Boundary,” Science 310 (2005): 333–36.
35
See Syukuro Manabe, Richard T. Wetherald, Christopher Milly, Thomas L. Delworth, and Ronald J.
Stouffer, “Century-Scale Change in Water Availability: CO2 Quadrupling Experiment,” Climatic
Change 64 (2004): 59–76.
36
Chris Huntingford, Rhiannon L. Jones, Christel Prudhomme, Richard C. Lamb, John H.C. Gash, and
David A. Jones, “Regional Climate-Model Predictions of Extreme Rainfall for a Changing
Climate,” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 129 (2003): 1607–21.
37
See Lynas, Six Degrees, 223–30.
38
Ibid., 233ff.
39
See David Kidder and Thomas Worsley, “Causes and Consequences of Extreme Permo-Triassic
Warming to Globally Equitable Climate and Relation to the Permo-Triassic Extinction and
Recovery,” Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 203, nos. 3–4 (2004): 207–37.
40
See Gregory Ryskin, “Methane-Driven Oceanic Eruptions and Mass Extinctions,” Geology 31, no. 9
(2003): 741–44.
41
See Jesper K. Nielsen and Yanan Shen, “Evidence for Sulphidic Deep Water During the Late Permian
in the East Greenland Basin,” Geology 32, no. 12 (2004): 1037–40.
42
See Lee R. Kump et al., “Massive Release of Hydrogen Sulfide to the Surface Ocean and Atmo-
sphere During Intervals of Ocean Anoxia,” Geology 33, no. 5 (2005): 367–400.
43
Lynas, Six Degrees, 254; emphasis in original.
44
Note that this is not to say that there could be no justice between people in such circumstances,
or between us and them; rather, it is to say that they would be in no position to achieve justice.
See Brian Barry, “Circumstances of Justice and Future Generations,” in Obligations to Future
Generations, ed. R. I. Sikora and Brian Barry (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press,
1978), 204–48.
45
For reflections bearing on this point, see John M. Taurek, “Should the Numbers Count?” Philosophy
and Public Affairs 6, no. 4 (1977): 293–316.
46
For more on this question, see my “Getting Motivated in the Last Chance Saloon,” Critical Review
of Social and Political Philosophy (in press).
47
I grant that this claim does not hold in all possible worlds. For example, when the costs of precautions
are one hundred percent of GDP every year, then the harms of Unnecessary Expenditure could
exceed the harms of Methane Nightmare. However, this is not the case, even according to the
highest estimates of the costs of precautions. That the claim is true in the actual world is good
enough for me.
48
For discussion of whether placing the strains of commitment at the heart of political justification in
this way is consistent with a contractualist approach, see Jean Hampton, “Contracts and Choices:
Does Rawls Have a Social Contract Theory?” The Journal of Philosophy 77, no. 6 (1980): 315–38.
49
Thanks are due to Jo Wolff for pressing this objection with me.
50
Mike Otsuka made the point to me in this way, although I think the addition of a big party is mine.
51
I am grateful to Jurgen de Wispelaere for suggesting this way forward to me.
52
Note that there may also be further categorical principles relevant to CC justice which, like the SPP,
ought to frame the political debate but are not themselves justified by reference to the deliberations
of the demos. One such set of principles relates to corrective justice, whereby (roughly) compen-
sation is owed by an agent of harm to those she harms. See my “Corrective Justice and Climate
Change,” Annual Review of Law and Ethics (in press).
53
See Posner, Catastrophe, 24–29.
54
Perhaps the SPP would be insulated to some degree against the priorities problem by incorporating
into the account Gardiner’s “realistic outcomes” criterion (see note 27). This would, for example,
probably rule out alien invasions as events against which CCCs compete for resources necessary
for precautionary action. However, it would not rule out everything. Comet collisions and super-
volcanic explosions are very real possibilities.
55
Note that I do not limit liability with the requirement that an agent of harm is in fact the cause of that
harm; I think that risk creation, where harms have not yet in fact been caused, can create liability
in some cases. See my “Corrective Justice and Climate Change.”
56
This principle states that a person ought to be free from interference by the state and by others unless
her actions affect the interests of others and cause them harm. See John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), chap. 1.
57
For a classic discussion, see Bernard Williams, “Moral Luck,” in Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1981), 20–40.
58
For discussions that bear on this hard question, see Judith Jarvis Thomson, “Remarks on Causation
and Liability,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 13, no. 2 (1984): 101–33.
59
See, for example, Posner, Catastrophe, chap. 3; and Sunstein, “The Catastrophic Harm Precautionary
Principle.”
60
See Sunstein, Laws of Fear, 2.
Justice and the Assignment of the Intergenerational Costs of
Climate Change
Darrel Moellendorf
Matters of intergenerational justice are fundamental to discussions of justice

and climate change. This is the case for several reasons. We are confident that our
emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are having an effect on the global climate
system. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) six different
climate models in their Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) predict global mean
temperature increases ranging from 1.8°C to 4.0°C during this century.1 This is
projected to increase global mean sea levels by 0.18 to 0.59 meters.2 The attendant
weather changes are less certain, as is how they will vary from region to region.
But some of the effects that AR4 predicts as very likely include hotter high
temperatures, more frequent heat waves, and greater precipitation in high lati-
tudes. Effects that it estimates as likely include decreased precipitation in the
subtropics and increased intensity of tropical cyclones.3 The Third Assessment
Report (TAR) warns of a weakening of the thermohaline circulation and its
possible abrupt shutdown after 2100.4 Unlike TAR, however, AR4 does not
discuss the probabilities of severe or catastrophic adverse effects. But this absence
is the subject of controversy among climate scientists, some of whom charge that
politically motivated redactions to AR4 occurred.5josp_1447 204..224
The effects of anthropogenic climate change will produce costs for persons
in the future who will have to adapt to the changes. Crops will need to be
changed or farmers will have to move. For many people food security will be
threatened; some will go hungry as a result; other will starve. Homes and com-
munities will need to be moved as sea levels rise. Some houses will be wiped
out by sudden extreme storms. TAR stresses the disproportionate costs of adap-
tation for lower-income populations and the risks to populations in low-lying
coastal regions and small islands. In general it predicts that, “[t]he impacts of
climate change will fall disproportionately upon developing countries and the
poor persons within all countries, and thereby exacerbate inequities in health
status and access to adequate food, clean water, and other resources.”6 A recent
study indicates that more than six hundred million people (ten percent of the
world’s population) live in low lying areas at higher risk to sea-level rises, and
this amount is expected to increase as the urbanization of the global population
continues.7

Climate Change and Intergenerational Justice 205
The effects of climate change and the costs of adapting to it can be mitigated
by our policy choices. Such choices will produce mitigation costs for us as they
will require significantly different energy production and use policies. Cleaner
sources of energy are more expensive. The relative costs of the alternative sources
of energy can be brought down by increasing the costs of using fossil fuels. But an
increase in the absolute costs of energy is then guaranteed. It is highly unlikely
that there will be significant mitigation without incurring such increased costs.
The costs of adaptation and mitigation apply to a number of activities satisfying
very important human interests, such as transportation, heating and cooling,
shelter, food cultivation and production, security, income, government, and rec-
reation. The assignment of the costs of mitigation and adaptation then is an
important matter of justice.
The matter of justice is between generations. It takes time to reduce global
CO2 emissions. We have no experience of doing so yet. But even if we begin
reducing, the IPCC projects that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere will
continue to increase in the absence of very large emissions reductions.8 TAR
holds that “[s]tabilization of CO2 concentrations at any level requires the even-
tual reduction of global CO2 net emissions to a small fraction of the current
level.”9 The level at which CO2 concentrations are stabilized will establish the
assignment of costs, a higher level will involve fewer mitigation costs but higher
adaption costs. In any case, even after stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of
CO2, surface air temperature will continue to rise by a few tenths of a degree per
century for a century or more, and sea levels will continue to rise for many
centuries.10
The matters of intergenerational justice canvassed above are fundamental to
an account of justice and climate change because in the absence of an account of
duties to future generations any global regulatory scheme for sharing the mitiga-
tion costs of climate change intra-generationally, a scheme such as that which the
international community must devise as a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, will be
morally blind. It would be like agreeing on the relative proportions that members
of a criminal ring must pay back their victims without setting an overall amount.
There would be no assurance that the regulatory scheme was just unless it was
directed toward fulfilling duties to future generations. Taking a position on this
question of intergenerational justice, by, say, setting an atmospheric CO2 concen-
tration target, is, however, unavoidable in the establishment of a post-Kyoto
institutional framework.
In this paper, I shall examine proposals for the distribution of the intergen-
erational costs of climate change. Settling on the appropriate principle is a com-
plicated task for several reasons. The difficulties include, among others, how to
deliberate impartially with respect to intergenerational principles and how to take
account of the interaction between the distributions of inter- and intra-generational
costs. By means of arguments that I hope are appropriately sensitive to these
complexities, I shall offer a qualified defense of a principle that assigns propor-
tionally equal intergenerational costs.
206 Darrel Moellendorf
II
In discussing proposals for the intergenerational assignment of the costs of

climate change, it is important to keep in mind that CO2 emissions are associ-
ated not only with costs—the cost of adapting to or mitigating climate change—
but also with benefits—the benefits of industrial activity, transportation, modern
farming, recreation, heating, and cooling. Although we will have to implement
means for deriving these goods that involve far fewer CO2 emissions, it is none-
theless the case that ever since the industrial revolution the activities that have
generated CO2 have also produced important benefits, capital, and consumer
goods that we continue to enjoy and that future generations will enjoy. Any
reduction in costs for future generations will incur costs for the present and near
future, and therefore predictably a reduction in certain benefits for the present
and future. This is important for two reasons. One is that it is unreasonable to
consider only the costs that future generations will incur from emitting activi-
ties; one has also to consider the gains in wealth that accrue to them due to our
industrial activity. The second is that in the absence of a significant change in
the global institutional structure, the future poor can be expected to suffer
heavily in the payment of adaptation costs; and unless we construct our regu-
latory institutions to avoid it, the opportunity costs of mitigation will likely be
especially costly to those who are presently poor. In the end one cannot really
get a moral grip on the intergenerational alternatives that we face without some
discussion of the intra-generational assignment of the costs and benefits of adap-
tation and mitigation.
The realization that the intra-generational assignment of the costs of mitiga-
tion and adaptation are also matters of justice significantly complicates any
discussion of the assignment of the intergenerational costs of climate change. In
order to attempt headway, I discuss these matters under three different scenarios.
One scenario, which I call Continued Deep Inequality or CDI, assumes that
although very modest gains will be made in addressing absolute poverty, along the
lines of the First Millennium Development Goal, global inequalities and attendant
severe poverty will continue for the rest of the century. My second scenario,
Global Justice or GJ, assumes that global inequalities and attendant severe
poverty are permanently eradicated in the very near future, in the time that it
would take to arrive at a new international agreement on climate change and to
establish the institutions for governing it. Thus, at the inception of the new CO2
emissions reduction regime the global order is substantially just. The third sce-
nario, which I call Progressive Inequality Reduction or PIR, assumes long-term
institutional change, producing significant decreases in inequality and attendant
poverty, such that by the end of this century the global economy is significantly
more just than it is now.
I consider the following three principles for the assignment of the intergen-
erational costs of climate change:
(1) Future Optimality: Present energy policy should produce an optimal sum of
the foreseeable future costs and benefits of CO2 emissions.
(2) Future Sufficiency: Present energy policy should produce a sum of foresee-
able future costs and benefits of CO2 emissions that at least ensures the
maintenance of just political and legal institutions.
(3) Intergenerational Equality: Present energy policy should produce foresee-
able future (adaptation) costs of CO2 emissions whose proportion to overall
future economic output is equal to the proportion of (mitigation) costs to
output of the present generation.
By equalizing the proportions of costs to economic output, Intergenerational

Equality allows that future persons might have more absolute costs than present
persons. This would be permissible if the economic growth that our policies
produced contributed to greater wealth in the future. By focusing on proportional
equality and not absolute equality, then the principle can take into account the
benefits of economic growth, which might be the result of polluting activity.
Future Optimality could be understood in either aggregate or per capita form.
One reason to take it in the per capita form is to control for population growth.
Another way to control for this is to limit its aggregate application to cases in
which the population is the same size. Derek Parfit calls such a version of Future
Optimality The Same Number Quality Claim or simply Q: “If in either of two
outcomes the same number of people would ever live, it would be bad if those who
live are worse-off, or have a lower quality of life, than those who would have
lived.”11 Parfit’s principle is, of course, of limited value precisely because of the
unrealistic constraint that the comparison sets must contain the same population
size. But it is nonetheless the most discussed version of Future Optimality in the
literature on intergenerational justice.
James Woodward has criticized Q because of its demandingness on members
of the present generation.12 This concern is directly applicable to Future Optimal-
ity in either its aggregate or per capita form because both require present sacrifices
to improve maximally the well-being of future persons. They repeat, and amplify
as moral principle, a general historical trend that philosophers in earlier times
viewed as deeply problematic, even to the extent of requiring a theodicy if a
providential understanding of history were to be salvaged. Immanuel Kant worries
that “earlier generations seem to perform their laborious tasks only for the sake of
later ones . . . and . . . that only the later generations will in fact have the good
fortune to inhabit the building on which a whole series of their forefathers . . . had
worked.”13 G. W. F. Hegel more vividly imagines the costs that the providential
account has to justify when observing that history resembles “the slaughter-bench
at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and virtue of individuals
have been victimized.”14
One need not assume that God is directing history to be bothered by Future
Optimality. It is morally troublesome because it seems incompatible with
impartiality with respect to generational membership. It takes the interest of future

persons as counting for everything, and those of the present for nothing. Privileg-
ing the interests of future persons over the present is especially problematic
according the PIR scenario (stated previously) in which poor people in the future
are assumed to be less poor both absolutely and relatively than those who are
presently poor.
The problem with Future Optimality is that it runs afoul of our intuitions
regarding impartiality. It is, however, easier to identify cases in which our intui-
tions about impartiality are violated than it is to understand clearly what impar-
tiality requires. In most of the remainder of this essay this will be my concern.
III
John Rawls’s employment of the original position argument is a contractualist

effort at modeling deliberative impartiality. It seeks an impartial outcome by
means of procedural impartiality, in particular by the parties’ absence of knowl-
edge about various aspects of themselves—their location behind the veil of igno-
rance. Criticisms of contractualist approaches to intergenerational justice call into
question whether there is such an approach that can advance our understanding of
the requirements of impartiality in the context of intergenerational justice and
even whether impartiality is a desideratum of intergenerational justice.15 In this
section I distinguish three versions of a broadly Rawlsian approach and argue that
one is useful for present purposes.
To begin with, consider the requirements for fairness in the deliberation about
principles of justice for the distribution of the costs of climate change. The point
of an argument based upon hypothetical consent, in contrast to actual consent, is
to insulate the outcome from the manner in which real-life privileges can distort
the deliberative process. Given the global scope of climate change, an appropriate
original position—if there is such—employed to justify duties of justice with
respect to the costs of CO2 emissions necessarily would be cosmopolitan in
seeking to prevent parties from bargaining on the basis of their citizenship status.
Moreover, due to the intergenerational nature of the problem of climate change,
the original position also would have to prevent strategic bargaining on behalf of
one’s own generation.
Controversy, however, surrounds the manner of construction of an original
position that could prevent distortions resulting from bargaining on behalf of one’s
generation. Because different constructions of the original position could lead to
different principles being agreed upon, the controversy is material to understand-
ing what intergenerational justice requires. Consider then the following three
possibilities for constructing an original position for intergenerational justice:
1. Intergenerational veil of ignorance and all possible persons. Parties in the

original position are (or represent) all actual persons from the present
generation and all possible persons from all future generations. They are
subject to a deliberative constraint of a generational veil of ignorance that
renders each of them ignorant of which generation is theirs.16
2. Intergenerational veil of ignorance and all actual persons. Parties in the
original position are (or represent) all actual persons from the present and all
future generations. They are subject to a deliberative constraint of a genera-
tional veil of ignorance that renders each of them ignorant of which genera-
tion is theirs.17
3. Present time of entry. Parties in the original position are (or represent) all
actual persons from the present generation. They are subject to a deliberative
constraint of a generational veil of ignorance that renders them ignorant of the
place of the generation, of which they are all members, in history. They are
also subject to the constraint that they must choose only a principle that they
could endorse past generations as having chosen.18
The general idea of the original position is to model deliberative fairness so that
the outcome of the deliberation is distinct and can be endorsed by everyone who
accepts the moral importance of fair terms of deliberation. Different versions of
the original position might be appropriate for different considerations of justice.
In seeking to determine which version—if any—is appropriate, we ask our-
selves not only which considerations ought not to influence deliberation, but
also what manner of constraint can be put on deliberation to remove the
unwanted influence. In actual deliberation we approximate impartiality when we
rule out appealing reasons that could not be appealed to in the original positions
due to its constraints. Each of the three proposals above seeks to prevent one
from rejecting principles simply because they do not favor members of one’s
own generation. In order to determine which principle of intergenerational
justice would be selected once such influences were removed, we must deter-
mine the most sensible manner of preventing the rejection of principles that do
not favor one’s own generation.
Consider the first proposal. In this proposal parties are ignorant of whether
they are (or represent) actual or merely possible persons. Parfit claims that one
cannot deliberate on the assumption that one might not exist. “We can imagine a
different possible history, in which we never existed. But we cannot assume that,
in the actual history of the world, it might be true that we never exist. We therefore
cannot ask what, on this assumption, it would be rational to choose.”19 Parfit’s
point is not, I think, meant to be a psychological one, such as the problems that
some people encounter when trying to reason as if they did not know their gender.
Nor, if we look at the second sentence of the quotation, is the problem only one of
practical deliberation. It seems rather to be an epistemic or logical problem. We
cannot assume about the actual world that we never existed. If this is correct, then
merely possible persons gain no representation in the original position.
Parfit does not elaborate on the point. So, consider two possible lines of
reasoning in support of the view. The first is Cartesian: One’s activity of imagining
the world commits one logically to one’s actual existence. This puts a constraint
on how the actual world can be imagined. Although one might imagine oneself as
deliberating about principles to apply in other worlds in which one does not exist,
one cannot imagine not existing in the actual world. The second is based upon the
idea that justice is meant to apply to the actual world and the claim that a necessary
condition of the actual world is that all and only actual persons exist in it. If any
actual person’s existence is a necessary condition of the actual world, and if one
cannot imagine what is logically impossible, then one cannot imagine actual
persons not existing in the actual world. I do not know which of these lines of
reasoning—if either—Parfit would endorse. Both, however, seem plausible
enough to create doubts about the first version of the original position. So,
whatever the demands of impartiality are, I suppose that they cannot require us to
treat similarly the interests of actual and possible persons.
I turn then to the second manner of constructing the original position. This
construction avoids the problem of the first by including (or representing) only
actual persons, present and future. But there seems to be no non-question-begging
way to arrive at principles on this construction.20 Different principles will guide
different institutional schemes of regulating energy production and consumption.
Within the histories of these different institutional schemes different people will
meet, have sex, and rear children—for the reasons that Parfit rehearses. We cannot
include actual future persons, then, unless we already assume an institutional
scheme. But any scheme is in question so long as the principles that would
regulate it are up for deliberation. Insofar as the constraints of the original position
are meant to model our deliberations about justice, the upshot of the question-
begging charge is that in our thinking about how to act in order to fulfill our duties
to future generations, it makes no sense to suppose that persons who will exist
are somehow fixed. Hence, whatever deliberative impartiality requires, it cannot
range over both persons now living and persons who certainly will live.
Jeffrey Reiman, however, endorses what appears to be this second version of
the original position. “Because they do not know their generation, the parties in
the original position, in effect, represent all and only those people who, from this
moment on, will ever exist: people who are currently living, and future people who
do not yet exist but who one day will.”21 He distinguishes between the properties
of persons and particular persons. “Normally, which particular one is will deter-
mine which properties one has. However, we can distinguish these two, and say
that a person’s fate (whether her life turns out to be good or bad) depends on her
properties and not on which particular she is as such, that is, as distinct from which
properties she has.”22 Reiman maintains that future persons’ rights can be violated
if our actions or institutions assign them properties (such as being impoverished)
that are contrary to their rights. His account allows that the particular person is
contingent on the principles adopted, but that persons’ interests are not contingent.
From a future person’s standpoint, it makes sense to think that it is in his or her interest to
be born with certain properties rather than others, but it is not in his or her interest to be born
this particular one rather than that particular one independent of differences in properties.
Thus a future person’s properties may be morally relevant now, but which particular a
future person is beyond the difference in properties is not.23
In response to the question-begging charge, suppose that Reiman claimed that

in our deliberations about what we owe future generations we can distinguish
between our lack of knowledge about who in particular will exist—which depends
on the principles chosen—and the interests that persons who will exist will have.
Reiman’s view would certainly be attractive if it managed to be a version of
the original position that was free of the problems canvassed above. But this does
not seem to be the case. For either the original position includes only actual
(particular) persons or not. If it does not then, then it includes possible future
persons. It therefore has the problems of the first version of the original position.
If it includes only actual persons from all generations, then it is a question-begging
account since the existence of persons regardless of their severability from their
interests is dependent in part on which principles are selected. Reiman might
counter that it is not persons, but interests that are represented in the original
position. But unless we attach persons to these interests there will be no delib-
eration; and we do not then have a model for the impartial selection of principles.
There does not seem to be a deliberative constraint that will, as it were, let
future generations speak for themselves in regards to what we owe them. Given
the problems associated with the first two versions of the original position, Rawls
seems to have been correct in Justice as Fairness to devise the original position
along the lines of the third version for matters of intergenerational justice. Similar
to the other two, the third constrains deliberation so as to establish impartiality, but
unlike the other two the third does not involve representing parties from future
generations. It therefore does not contain the problem of either including possible
future persons deliberating or of begging the question about principles by includ-
ing only actual future persons. In the present time of entry version, although the
parties are ignorant of their generation’s place in history, they know each other to
be from the same generation; and an acceptable principle is constrained by the
requirement that parties can endorse its selection by previous generations. The
important lesson of this version is that we achieve impartiality in our deliberations
about intergenerational justice in part by binding ourselves only to principles that
we would find it acceptable for previous generations to have bound themselves.
IV
With an account of how to model deliberative intergenerational impartiality in

hand, I return now to the discussion of the principles of justice for the assignment
of climate change-related costs. In discussing choice within an original position
the constraints on the parties are decisive. According to the present time of entry
interpretation, the parties—all members of the same generation—are subject to
four important conditions:
(1) They do not know the place of their generation in history.

(2) They must choose only a principle that they would affirm as having bound all
previous generations as well.
(3) They are indifferent to the well-being of members of other generations.
(4) They seek maximal avoidance of costs for themselves (or for those whom
they represent).
Just as the veil of ignorance constrains the rational pursuit of the primary
goods in the intra-generational original position, so conditions (1) and (2) con-
strain condition (4). Rawls argues that in the intra-generational original position
there would be agreement on a benchmark of equality, but that deviations from
this to affirm the difference principle would be rational given the circumstances.24
In the present case, conditions (3) and (4) would incline parties to favor their own
generation maximally. Condition (2), however, constrains that choice. How do
these constraints play out in considering the principles of Future Sufficiency and
Intergenerational Equality? Would they lead to reasonably determinate results as,
arguably, does the veil of ignorance in the case of intra-generational justice?
In deliberating about these principles I suppose that Intergenerational Equal-
ity guarantees Future Sufficiency, in other words that by Intergenerational Equal-
ity future generations do at least as well as they do by Future Sufficiency. So,
Future Sufficiency might permit the present generation to assume fewer costs of
mitigation than does Intergenerational Equality. The choice between the principles
when looking forward can be seen as a choice between assuming more mitigation
costs now to equalize costs between generations or allowing the possible assump-
tion of fewer costs now so as only to ensure that just institutions are possible in the
future. But when looking backward it is a choice between assuming fewer adap-
tation costs now because earlier generations chose to equalize or assuming greater
adaptation costs now because previous generations only mitigated enough to
preserve just institutions.
An argument that the parties would select Intergenerational Equality over
Future Sufficiency goes as follows:
1. The parties would prefer previous generations to have maximally mitigated

their climate change adaptation costs.
2. The parties would prefer to minimize the costs of mitigating future climate
change.
3. All other things being equal, Intergenerational Equality best satisfies the
preference stated in the first premise.
4. Future Sufficiency best satisfies the preference stated in the second premise.
5. The parties are constrained to choose only the principle that they would prefer
earlier generations to have followed.
6. The parties are constrained to select Intergenerational Equality.
I call this the equality argument. Premises two and four are logically irrelevant to
the argument, but they serve to illustrate the merits of the competing principle. If
premise five were not there, there would be no rational grounds for choosing
Intergenerational Equality over Future Sufficiency. A deliberative impasse would
result. So, premise five has the virtue not only of modeling impartiality but also of
producing a determinate outcome.
I take the equality argument to be a pro tanto warrant for Intergenerational
Equality. In effect, it amounts to claiming that if we adopt an impartial attitude
toward generational membership, and thereby exclude reasons that serve only to
favor one generation over another, there is good reason to endorse the principle
of Intergenerational Equality, which requires not imposing climate change
adaptation costs on future generations that are a greater percentage of the overall
economic output than the percentage of the mitigation costs for the present
generation. In the next two sections I further defend this principle by addressing
objections to it.
One might object to the equality argument on grounds that the deliberative
constraint that parties must select only the principle that they would prefer earlier
generations to have chosen (condition (2) above) favors Future Optimality since
any generation would prefer that the previous ones maximally benefit it. In section
II, I maintained that intuitively Future Optimality seems inappropriate because the
burden that it places on those now alive does not conform to our intuitions about
the requirements of intergenerational impartiality. The present objection contends
that condition (2) does not in fact support our intuitions about intergenerational
impartiality.
This objection, however, fails to appreciate that the original position consists
of practical deliberation about a principle to guide the (unspecified) present
generation in relation to future generations, not a hypothetical deduction of what
present persons would have liked past persons to have done. So, although condi-
tion (2) would not rule out Future Optimality if the parties were not deliberating
about a principle to bind themselves, Future Optimality is ruled out by the parties’
rational self-interest (condition (4)) and indifference to other generations (condi-
tion (3)), since as I discussed in section II Future Optimality would impose
extremely heavy costs on members of the present generation for the sake of future
generations.
The answer above would not be adequate if the parties knew themselves to be
at the end of history with no future generations for whom they must assume costs.
In that case, looking only backward with no concern about the future, they would
select Future Optimality because, once again, this is what they would endorse
past generations as having chosen. But when we deliberate about principles of
intergenerational justice we assume that we are not at the end of history. If we
somehow knew that, there would be nothing for us to deliberate about and no
reason to use the original position argument in any case. In effect, the parties’ lack
of knowledge of the place of their generation in history (condition (1)) models
this. It also rules out saving nothing on grounds that they know that there were no
previous generations, which knowledge would render condition (2) nugatory.
It is important to recognize that conditions (1), (3), and (4) do not function
independently of condition (2). This is already made evident by the discussion of
the equality argument. I noted that premises two and four of the argument are
logically irrelevant to the conclusion, but that in the absence of the general
constraint expressed in premise five, which is what I am referring to here as
condition (2), a deliberative impasse would result. So appealing to conditions (1),
(3), and (4) above to rule out Future Optimality should be understood merely as
modeling the context for the parties in which deliberation constrained by condi-
tion (2) occurs, not as providing reasons for principle selection that are determi-
native independently of condition (2).
To recapitulate, the equality argument is a straightforward way of ranking
Intergenerational Equality over Future Sufficiency. The possibility of selecting
Future Optimality can be ruled out by the deliberative context, in which we
assume that there will be future generations, and the parties cannot assume that
there will not be, so that it makes sense to consider how we should act to limit the
adaptation costs that we pass on to future generations.
VI
Future Optimality was rejected in section II on grounds that it failed to satisfy

an intuitive requirement of intergenerational impartiality. In the previous section I
offered an original position argument against it as well. Neither of these arguments
addresses what might be the most important claim in favor of Future Optimality,
namely that it is the only principle that makes sense in light of the non-identity
problem. In this section I defend Intergenerational Equality against the charge that
it is undermined by the non-identity problem.
As I noted in section II, a version of Future Optimality is what Parfit calls Q:
if in either of two possible outcomes the same number of people would live, it
would be worse if those who live are worse off, or have a lower quality of life, than
those who would have lived.25 This principle requires us to optimize future
outcomes, when the number of persons in the various possibilities is assumed
to be the same. Now Q, Parfit notes, is not an instance of what he calls The
Person-Affecting View, or simply V, that “[i]t is bad if people are affected for the
worse.”26 Presumably, he is using worse here as he uses worse-off, which he takes
to refer “either to someone’s level of happiness, or more narrowly to his standard
of living, or more broadly, to the quality of his life.”27 To claim that a person is
affected for the worse as in V requires a comparison of the person’s well-being in
two different circumstances, the condition of the person as affected and her
condition if the policy had been otherwise. Q does not rely on such comparisons;
instead it compares the condition of different people, those who live and those
would have lived.
Parfit argues that it is a virtue of Q that it is not an instance of V. Employment
of V is limited to cases in which the requisite comparison can be made. But
changes in some institutional frameworks—including especially those regulating
energy production and use—affect who will live in the future. Parfit claims that
person-affecting views cannot account for what is wrong with arrangements in
such cases. For these arrangements do not render actual future persons (whose
lives are worth living) worse off since without such policies these persons would
not have existed.28 Call that the no worse-off argument.29
Now Q avoids the no worse-off argument because it does not require com-
paring the conditions of particular persons in different arrangements. Q can, of
course, only be a provisional account because its application is limited (unrealis-
tically in the context of energy policy) only to cases in which two policies would
result in the same number of people being affected. It is not the limitations of Q
that concern me, however. Rather the important question for present purposes is
whether the principle of Intergenerational Equality is undermined by the reasons
that Parfit offers to reject V.
Perhaps one could avoid the problem of person-affecting accounts of duties in
non-identity cases by claiming that original position type arguments establish
future-oriented duties that are owed to past persons.30 We generally recognize that
we can have a duty to preserve a certain artifact or natural area on the basis of an
explicit promise to a person. So, perhaps we have a duty to mitigate the costs of
climate change adaptation for persons in future generations on the basis of some
kind of implied promise or promissory relation to persons in past generations. This
account treats duties to future persons in a manner analogous to Kant’s treatment
of duties to animals.31 Duties to future persons are indirect duties that are owed
directly to our ancestors.
It would be a misunderstanding of the original position argument, however, to
claim that it justified an implied promissory account of justice to future genera-
tions. The original position argument is meant to justify principles because of the
fairness of the hypothetical procedure that generates the agreement, not because of
an implied agreement between actual people. More generally, it does not seem
reasonable to infer that members of the present generation have made any prom-
ises to past generations in virtue of, say, having enjoyed the fruits of their labor.
Such enjoyment provides no reason to believe that members of the present gen-
eration have undertaken to save some of the fruits to pass on to future genera-
tions.32 But perhaps the claim is that we have a duty to make such a promise, and
having made it we then have a duty to keep it. But then the promissory duty alone
does not justify the duty, it merely reinforces it. The view lacks what it is supposed
to provide, namely an account of why we have a duty to make such a promise in
the first place. The force of Parfit’s criticisms cannot be avoided by taking duties
to future generations as indirect duties directly owed to past generations in virtue
of a promissory relation to them.
It is necessary then to consider directly whether the limitations that apply to

V undermine Intergenerational Equality. Is Intergenerational Equality a version
of V? If so, then apparently it is undermined by the non-identity problem. V holds
that it is bad if people are affected for the worse. One way to read V is as making
a claim about states of affairs. It states the conditions in which states of affairs are
bad: all other things being equal between two states of affairs, one contains more
badness than another if people’s well-being is worse in the one than the other.
Now, the principle of Intergenerational Equality judges institutions or policies,
and is therefore not person-affecting in this sense of V.
But surely it is more charitable to read V as applicable to actions. This can be
done by supposing that Parfit is assuming a premise in a teleological moral theory,
namely that it is wrong to do what is bad. More simply we can read “it is bad” as
equivalent to “an action is wrong.” So read, V says that an action is wrong if the
state of affairs that it produces makes persons worse off than an alternative action.
Read this way, if not fully consequentialist, V is certainly at home in a larger
consequentialist account. Now, the principle of Intergenerational Equality is a
non-consequentialist principle because it entails that an action can be right even if
it is not one that would produce the best state of affairs. This can easily be seen if
for a moment we assume away the non-identity problem. According to the prin-
ciple, institutions that regulate the emissions of CO2 are just when future persons
have been assigned an equal share (proportional to overall output) of the costs of
climate change, even if the costs for these persons could have been lowered by
another set of institutions, such as those that Future Optimality would require.
Hence, Intergenerational Equality does not hold that policies are wrong if persons
are rendered worse off. It is not person-affecting in that sense.
Even if Intergenerational Equality is a non-consequentialist principle, this
does not ensure that it is not a problematic instance of V for it is not obvious
that V includes only consequentialist principles. But the principle of Intergen-
erational Equality does not seem to possess the features that make V problem-
atic in non-identity cases. The non-identity problem has purchase on V because
it requires comparing the conditions of the same persons in two different cir-
cumstances. But insofar as a principle for the evaluation of actions or institu-
tions does not require a comparison between persons’ conditions as they are and
as they might have been, it is not subject to the problems of V. The principle of
Intergenerational Equality does not require such a comparison because it iden-
tifies present persons as wronged when their share of the costs of climate
change (in proportion to their overall output) is greater than that of the previous
generation, not when greater or lesser than some other possible share that these
same persons might have had. Prospectively, Intergenerational Equality provides
us with a reason not to permit CO2 regulating institutions that would bring into
existence persons whose proportional share of the costs of CO2 emissions is
greater than our own.33 The comparison in either case is to earlier costs of
different persons, not the costs that the same persons would have, or would have
had, in some other future.
In response it might be objected that the problem with person-affecting views,

namely that they require a comparison where none can be obtained, afflicts
any meaningful principle that evaluates actions by their impact on individuals,
either with respect to their well-being or with respect to what they are non-
consequentially owed.34 Although Intergenerational Equality appears to avoid
problematic comparisons of the same persons, it either rests on them or is non-
sensical. Consider the following argument:
1. To claim that persons are wronged requires, at least implicitly, a comparison

to a possible state of affairs in which these same persons would not have been
wronged, regardless of whether the wrong is understood as a comparative
diminution of the person’s well-being or as a failure to act in accordance with
non-consequentialist standards.
2. Such comparisons are undermined by the non-identity problem.
3. Intergenerational Equality states a sufficient condition for claiming that
persons are wronged by climate change related institutions.
4. Intergenerational Equality is undermined by the non-identity problem.
The first premise of this argument in effect broadens the class of person-affecting
views to include non-consequentialist principles. It is making a conceptual claim
about what wronged must mean. If wronged is sensibly employed, it must be the
case that there is an alternative action or practice in which the persons would not
be wronged. If true, this premise would either reject Intergenerational Equality as
incoherent for not making the requisite comparison or bring it into the fold of
problematic person-affecting views.
Premise one is, however, implausible. There are well-known and much con-
tested accounts of wrongdoing or injustice that do not satisfy the requirement it
states. Although these accounts might be false, the debate that surrounds them is
normative, not conceptual. It seems implausible to think that they are false simply
because they are incoherent. Consider, for example, Rawls’s Difference Principle.
This principle requires that institutions maximize the expectations of the least
advantaged members of society. Employing the Difference Principle necessarily
involves comparing institutional arrangements to assess in which the least advan-
taged would be best-off. But the principle does not assume that the least advan-
taged will be the same persons across comparisons. This is obvious when one
reflects on how Rawls identifies the least advantaged. He takes three characteris-
tics as salient: those who are most disadvantaged in terms of family fortune and
class origin; those whose natural endowments permit them to fare less well; and
those whose luck in life results in less happiness.35 It is significant that each of
these three characteristics is basic-structure-dependent. In other words, whether a
person is characterized in any one of these ways depends upon how the social
institutions of society assign benefits and burdens. Under different institutions,
different people would be least advantaged. So, if we were to compare an actual
society with its possible alternative that possessed very different institutions—for
example, the actual one being libertarian and the possible alternative being
egalitarian—different persons would be least advantaged. The Difference Prin-
ciple directs us to compare the well-being of these different people, not the same
people in different arrangements. Now, of course, the Difference Principle might
be an invalid principle of justice. Certainly it is controversial. But it is significant
that the controversy that it has generated is normative; it concerns whether the
principle’s requirements are appropriate. It is hard to understand how the Differ-
ence Principle could generate such controversy if it were simply incoherent.
Premise one is implausible. But if premise one is implausible then an inter-
generational principle need not compare different conditions of the same persons
in order sensibly to assert that persons have been wronged by institutions regu-
lating CO2 emissions. And the fact that Intergenerational Equality compares costs
between different persons (intergenerationally) does not make it incoherent.
If there is plausible criticism of Intergenerational Equality it is normative, not
conceptual.
Parfit, however, has two arguments against invoking non-consequentialist
principles to avoid the non-identity problem. In one he criticizes invoking rights
to solve the problem, but since Intergenerational Equality does not invoke rights,
I do not concern myself with that criticism.36 He also contends that non-
consequentialist accounts of wrongdoing must either rely on a failure to gain
consent from those affected by the action or the presence of regret among those
affected. In cases of institutional effects on future persons, consent cannot possi-
bly be obtained. So, the institutions cannot be criticized on this basis. But it is also
not the case that future persons whose lives are worth living, but who must pay
greater proportional costs of climate change than we did, would necessarily regret
our institutions. For they would not have existed but for these institutions.37
Parfit does not analyze the concept of regret in any detail; so it is somewhat
difficult to assess the criticism that because of the absence of regret (where
consent is not possible) there is no non-consequentialist basis for criticizing the
action or policy. I start by noting that regret is an attitude, which either necessarily
involves a moral judgment or not. Either way, however, it seems doubtful that
persons who owe their existence to institutions cannot regret them.
One might hold that to regret a past action or practice necessarily requires the
judgment that it was wrong and the belief that the course of history would have
been morally better without it. Consider then the case of American slavery.
Many—perhaps most—present citizens of the Unite States whose ancestors were
in the country during the time of slavery would not have existed but for the
institutions of slavery. This is plausible with respect to descendents of slaves, but
also, when we consider the scale of related events such as the Civil War, with
respect to very many of those whose ancestors were not slaves. The overwhelming
majority of these people (whose ancestors were in the country at the time of
slavery) judge slavery to have been a gross injustice, even though they would not
exist but for slavery. This is analogous to persons who judge that their share of
climate change-related costs is unjust. The fact that in the case of any given person
she would not exist but for this injustice does not stop her from judging it to have
been an injustice, and from regretting it in that sense. Such moral judgments in
these cases do not seem to be irrational. The only grounds for thinking so would
seem to be that one cannot make moral judgments that are contrary to one’s
interests, but that is far-fetched.
Perhaps the critic of Intergenerational Equality would say that the example
of the descendents of slavery does not capture what is deficient with non-
consequentialist accounts in non-identity circumstances because in the example
the descendents are claiming an historical injustice, but not an injustice to them.
Since the injustice is not to them, they can rationally regret it even though they
would not have existed but for the injustice. The problem arises in the case of a
person claiming not merely that a wrong has existed, but that she has been
wronged, when but for the allegedly wrong act she would not exist. But again, the
response is more or less the same. There does not seem to be anything obviously
irrational about a person judging that in some respects the world would have been
a morally better place if the practice that allowed her to exist had not existed. If so,
it does not seem to matter that one of the wrongs that would not have come to pass
is a wrong to her.
There might be another way in which regret poses a problem to non-
consequentialist views. Not that regret contains a moral judgment about a practice
and that one cannot make a negative moral judgment if one would not exist but
for the practice, but sincere regret necessarily includes the sincere wish that the
practice had not existed. It is a virtue of an account of wrongdoing that it is
consistent with persons sincerely regretting the identified wrong. But if one’s
existence depends upon the practice, a self-respecting person cannot sincerely
wish that the practice had not occurred. Hence, an account of wrongdoing that
identifies such a practice as unjust is deficient.
If the above argument is the problem that regret poses to non-consequentialist
views in non-identity cases, it is not unique to such views. It is a problem for
Parfit’s Q as well. Imagine that in the future self-respecting persons are less
well-off than the same number of other persons might have been if different
institutions had regulated CO2 emissions. Although these persons have been
taught Reasons and Persons in school, and are therefore able to identify the
historical wrongness of regulatory institutions, according to the criticism they
cannot sincerely regret the injustice. If there is a way out for Q it is by denying that
a self-respecting person cannot sincerely wish the non-existence of institutions
upon which her existence depends. But, of course, this way out could be used by
Intergenerational Equality as well.
Perhaps the point about regret is not that persons who would not exist but
for a putatively unjust practice cannot experience regret, but that they might not,
and when they do not, there is no injustice. But it is difficult to see why the
attitude of the putatively wronged person should be a necessary condition of
there being an injustice. This is not a standard feature of non-consequentialist
accounts. According to Rawls, for example, the least advantaged do not need to
resent the social institutions that have governed their fate in order for the insti-
tutions to be unjust. Or consider the role of consent in constructivist accounts of
justification. Typically these accounts do not hold that if one consents to the
putative wrong it is less wrong. Part of the point of constructivist accounts,
which take justification to be a function of some sort of idealized or hypotheti-
cal consent, is that persons’ actual attitudes toward social practices might be
unreasonably influenced by the benefit that they receive from the practice.
Hence, a lack of regret among some of those identified as having been wrong
does not seem undermining of a non-consequentialist principle that holds them
to have been wronged.
In sum, because the principle of Intergenerational Equality does not require
comparisons to other possible states of affairs in which the same persons would
have existed, it is not undermined by the no-worse-off argument. Moreover, it is
not obviously irrational for persons to judge that the institutional order to which
they owe their existence is unjust. And even if we suppose that they cannot wish
to have not existed, this does not provide a reason to favor a version of Q over
Intergenerational Equality. Finally, it does not seem to be the case that the
absence of regret on the part of those who have allegedly been wronged renders
the alleged wrongdoing not wrong. So, the non-identity problem does not
warrant the judgment that Future Optimality is superior to Intergenerational
Equality.
VII
The equality argument advanced in section IV does not take into consider-
ation the three scenarios outlined in section II: CDI, GJ, and PIR. Would parties’
knowledge of which of these scenarios is the case alter the outcome of their
deliberations?
In the case of GJ there are no substantial distributive injustices that Intergen-
erational Equality would aggravate. So, there is no reason to think that the parties’
assumption that GJ is the case, would affect their deliberations in a manner that
would cast doubt on Intergenerational Equality.
If we suppose that the parties operate on the assumption of CDI, they are
aware that serious intra-generational injustices exist and can be expected to
continue to exist regardless of which principle is selected. But Intergenerational
Equality places greater burdens on the present generation than does Future Suf-
ficiency. These extra mitigation costs are not opportunity costs to global justice,
however, because CDI assumes the continuation of injustice either way. But the
mitigation costs might compound existing injustices if they fall disproportionately
on the poor. On the other hand, mitigating adaptation costs can also help to reduce
the compounding of future injustices, which would occur if extra adaptation costs
were assigned to the future poor. So, condition (2), requiring parties to choose as
they would want previous generations to have chosen, provides a reason to believe
that Intergenerational Equality would still be chosen since the lowered adaptation
costs in the present, brought about by greater mitigation costs in the past, will
compound present intra-generational injustice less.
PIR raises other considerations. Under PIR the intra-generational sharing of
the costs of mitigation is likely to be unjust because the costs are assigned under
conditions of injustice. The poor of the world are likely to suffer disproportion-
ately to mitigate the future costs. Although this is likely to be the case in CDI as
well, the difference is that the distribution of future adaptation costs under PIR
will more closely approximate justice than will the distribution under CDI because
of PIR’s progressive reduction of inequality. Hence, under PIR the percentage of
the costs of mitigation that today’s severely impoverished will pay might be larger
than the percentage of the costs that the future impoverished will pay for adapta-
tion, even if overall the costs are proportional. This is for two reasons. In the future
there will be a smaller percentage of the world’s population that is severely
impoverished; and the assignment of costs under a more just distributive regime
might be less likely to compound whatever injustices exist. Additionally, if we
assume a commitment to reduce severe poverty, the matter of the opportunity costs
of mitigation becomes morally salient. The expenditures on mitigation are fore-
gone opportunities to reduce current severe poverty.
If the parties decided on the basis of PIR, would they nonetheless select
Intergenerational Equality over Future Sufficiency? One might think that con-
dition (2) would unambiguously favor Intergenerational Equality in this circum-
stance. For it would place equal proportional burdens on generations which have
unequal proportions of poor people. This would burden more heavily members
of past generations who were poorer than present persons in order to reduce
costs for present persons. However, past generations would also incur opportu-
nity costs since they are committed to the long-term reduction of inequality but,
because of higher mitigations costs, they have fewer resources to devote to the
project. The problem is that such costs would produce greater past inequality
with the likely consequence of greater present inequality, which the parties,
deliberating under condition (2), would seek to avoid. Hence, it is by no means
clear that there is an answer to the question of which principle would be chosen
on the assumption of PIR in the absence of more detailed information about the
context. It would depend upon how the presently least advantaged were to fare
by institutions that required more past mitigations and thereby reduced present
adaptation costs in comparison to institutions that would have mitigated less but
allowed past poverty to be reduced more. This suggests that unlike the assump-
tions of CDI and CG, PIR could affect the outcome of the original position
deliberations. But we cannot be certain how without significantly more infor-
mation about the circumstances.
If presently there were a serious global commitment to progressively reducing
unjust inequalities over time, which commitment would be partially compromised
by diverting funds toward the mitigation of climate change, then there would be
some reasons in favor of Future Sufficiency over Intergenerational Equality. In
such counterfactual circumstances, in which other institutions are already directed

toward improving the well-being of poor persons in the future, it might seem
reasonable to require less with respect to the mitigation of the costs of climate
change.
VIII
I assume that a virtue of an account of justice is its practicality, the extent

to which it can direct our efforts at institutional reform and construction. In the
case of each of the three principles for the distribution of the intergenerational
costs of climate change, rational policy formation would require forecasting
future costs. If we are to be guided by the principle of Intergenerational Equal-
ity, we will have to develop reliable forecasts of the likely future costs and
benefits of various institutional frameworks in order to commit to the one which
seems most likely to equalize proportional costs. Such forecasts will doubtless
be highly imperfect, and things would go better if they were less so. But there
is no reason to be so pessimistic as to think that forecasts will not provide
important guidance.
There is moral satisfaction in knowing that our efforts at just institution
building have been successful. But we are in an unfortunate epistemic circum-
stance with respect to principles of intergenerational justice. We cannot know
whether they will be satisfied. We cannot revise our attempts in light of our
failures because these will never be known to our generation. We can, however,
assess how policies and institutions have worked in the past; and we can learn
more about the properties of the climate system. We can, then, improve our
understanding of what the likely consequences of our institutions will be.
Although we will be denied the satisfaction of knowing that we have acted justly,
we can act with some confidence that we are doing as we ought to do, and hope
that one day there will be people who will be grateful for our efforts, if only we
make them.
Versions of this paper were discussed with the Philosophy Departments at Rhodes
University and San Diego State University and with the graduate students in my
Global Justice seminar at San Diego State University. I am indebted to the
participants in all of those discussions for helping me to clarify my thoughts. I was
also helped by the many comments that I received from Axel Schafer and the
several conversations that we had on these matters. I began this paper while being
hosted by the International Office and the Philosophy Department at Rhodes
University. I also worked on it while receiving support from the Deutscher Akad-
mischer Austausch Dienst, enjoying the hospitality of the Institut für Interkul-
turelle und Internationale Studien at Universtität Bremen. I completed it at the
beginning of a membership at the Institute for Advanced Studies, which was
supported by the Friends of the Institute for Advanced Studies. I am deeply
grateful to all of these organizations for their kind support.
Notes
1
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science
Basis, Summary for Policy Makers, 13. Available at http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment.report/ar4/
wg1/ar4-wg1-spm.pdf (accessed April 3, 2009).
2
Ibid., 13.
3
Ibid., 16.
4
IPCC, Climate Change 2001: Synthesis Report, Summary for Policy Makers, 15. Available at http://
www.ipcc.ch/pdf/climate-changes-2001/synthesis-spm-en.pdf (accessed April 3, 2009).
5
See for example, Fred Pierce, “Climate report ‘was watered down’,” New Scientist (March 10–16,
2007): 10. In 2004 newspapers published stories on a secret Pentagon report discussing the
possibility of the shutdown of the thermohaline circulation and dwindling food, water, and energy
supplies, with the result that “disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life.” See Mark
Townsend and Paul Harris, “Now the Pentagon Tells Bush: Climate Change Will Destroy Us,” The
Observer, February 22, 2004. Available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2004/feb/22/
usnews.theobserver (accessed April 3, 2009).
6
IPCC, Climate Change 2001, 15.
7
Gordon McGranahan, Deborah Balk, and Bridget Anderson, “The Rising Tide: Assessing the Risks
of Climate Change and Human Settlements in Low Elevation Coastal Zones,” Environment and
Urbanization 19 (2007): 17–37.
8
IPCC, Climate Change 2001, 89.
9
Ibid., 90.
10
Ibid., 89.
11
Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 360.
12
James Woodward, “The Non-identity Problem,” Ethics 96 ( July 1986): 820–21.
13
Immanuel Kant, “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose,” in Political Writings,
ed. Hans Reiss, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 44.
14
G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (New York: Dover Publications Inc.,
1956), 21.
15
See for example, Brian Barry, “Justice Between Generations,” in Law, Morality, and Society, ed. P.
M. S. Hacker and Joseph Raz (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 268–84; Edward A. Page, Climate
Change, Justice and Future Generation (Cheltennam: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006), 134–37;
Parfit, Reasons and Persons, 391–93; and Woodward, “The Non-identity Problem,” 824–25.
16
Rawls rejects this construction in A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1999), 120. It is defended by Brent A. Singer, “An Extension of Rawls’ Theory of Justice,”
Environmental Ethics 10 (Fall 1988): 221, and by David A. J. Richards, “Contractarian Theory and
Intergenerational Justice,” in Energy and the Future, ed. Douglas MacLean and Peter G. Brown
(Totowa: Rowman & Littlefield, 1983), 131–50.
17
Jeffrey Reiman employs a version of this in his “Being Fair to Future People: The Non-identity
Problem in the Original Position,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 35 (2007): 69–92.
18
John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999),
160.
19
Parfit, Reasons and Persons, 392.
20
Reiman, “Being Fair to Future People,” 79.
21
Ibid., 83.
22
Ibid., 84; emphasis in the original.
23
Ibid.; emphasis in the original.
24
Cf. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 130.
25
Parfit, Reasons and Persons, 360.
26
Ibid., 370.
27
Ibid., 357–58.
28
Ibid., 361–64.
29
Following Woodward in “The Non-identity Problem,” 805.
30
Marcel Wissenberg defends this view in “Extending Rawls’s Savings Principle,” in Fairness and
Futurity: Essays on Environmental Sustainability and Social Justice, ed. Andrew Dobson (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1999), 191–92.
31
Cf. Immanuel Kant, Eine Vorlesung über Ethik, ed. Gerd Gerdhardt (Frankfurt am Main: Fisher
Taschenbuch Verlag, 1991), 256–58.
32
Cf. Page, Climate Change, 119–24 for a fuller discussion of related issues.
33
Here I am following Woodward’s perspicacious analysis in “The Non-Identity Problem,” 821–27, in
which he compares the kind of reason a principle of intergenerational justice gives to not act
contrary to it to the kind of reasoning that valuing a promise gives to not knowing making promises
that one cannot keep.
34
Page seems to take this view in Climate Change, 138–50.
35
Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 83.
36
Parfit, Reasons and Persons, 364–66.
37
Ibid., 373–74.
Mediated Responsibilities, Global Warming,
and the Scope of Ethics
Robin Attfield
Introduction
In our times, the entire context of ethics has fundamentally changed. So

argued Hans Jonas in The Imperative of Responsibility, a 1984 translation of
two German works of his from 1979 and 1981.1 When the classical texts of
ethics from Plato to Kant were written, the impacts of human action were seen
as affecting almost exclusively the human contemporaries of the agent, and any
long-term outcomes could be disregarded as serendipitous and unpredictable
side effects, inessential for purposes of constructing adequate theories of virtue
or duty. But now, because of technology, the impacts of a great deal of human
action have to be recognized as affecting large swathes of the biosphere and
future generations for many centuries to come. Preserving the conditions for the
continuation of human life on our planet has become an ethical issue, as have
responsibilities with regard to the rest of the biosphere, regarded by Jonas as
needing to be recognized as a sphere of human stewardship, to which anthro-
pocentric approaches both in ethics and in metaphysics are inappropriate. In
general, human responsibilities need to be reconceptualized to match this radi-
cally new context, so that the scope of ethics corresponds to the range of
impacts of human actions and omissions.josp_1448 225..236
While some might quarrel with details of this critique, and others might
question aspects of the revisionist Marxism presented as Jonas’s own new account
of ethics, the broad lines of this account of the context of ethics as it stands are
surely beyond dispute. For the development of technology in the period of the
lives of many of us has significantly changed the range of foreseeable impacts of
human actions and policies, in ways that already affect nonhuman species and
their habitats, and that are almost certain to affect coming generations both of the
near and of the more distant future, both human and nonhuman. In many cases
these have been welcome developments, allowing of increased life expectancy,
greater leisure, enhanced appreciation of art and of the natural world, and effective
treatments for many afflictions that used to have to be accepted as parts of the
natural order. But they also unquestionably raise ethical challenges, unlikely to be
addressed by mere repetition of long-standing theories whether of virtuous dis-
positions and comportment, or of timeless moral rules, or of a dutiful respect
toward contemporary humanity. Indeed if we fail to reconceive the scope and

226 Robin Attfield
content of ethics so as to take the increased range of foreseeable impacts into

account, we are likely to find ourselves advocating by default an irresponsible
disregard for impacts upon most of the biosphere and most of the future. The
scope and content of ethics, then, must be reconceived so as to correspond to the
full range of the foreseeable impacts of human activities, and also of the foresee-
able impacts of policies of nonintervention and inaction.
The task of overhauling ethical theory along these lines of course lies far
beyond the possible aims and thus beyond the scope of the current paper.2 What I
want to consider is a small but significant fragment of these larger issues, and one
which has a strong bearing on the ethics of global warming. This is the issue of
mediated responsibilities and their bearing on global warming, or rather some
aspects of such responsibilities that have not often been brought together and
juxtaposed to the revised context of ethics as depicted by Jonas. If many of our
responsibilities are mediated ones, ones where there is one or another kind of
distance or gap between action and foreseeable impacts, and if this currently
involves such impacts being disregarded or discounted, then we need to address
ways in which the framework of action needs to be modified to cope with these
responsibilities. For agents are often inclined to disregard (or at least discount to
some degree) mediated impacts of their action or inaction, whether good or bad.
But even if this was once understandable, the changed context of ethics makes it
irresponsible for such disregard to continue.
I am concerned here with responsibilities in both of two senses, causal
responsibility and moral responsibility, and shall be suggesting that both of these
apply to mediated responsibility in all its varieties. Where responsibility is not
abrogated by the inability to act (or not to act) or mitigated by one or more of the
relevant kinds of ignorance, my view is that, subject to certain qualifications such
as the distinction between empowering others to do things and making them do
things, agents are just as responsible when their responsibility is mediated as when
it is unmediated. But rather than argue this for all the varieties of mediated
responsibility, I will instead focus on aspects relevant to global warming such as
the impacts of current action on the distant future, and the cumulative impacts of
apparently isolated actions, and on some of their implications for responsibility
and also for political decision making. This undertaking first involves a review of
various kinds of mediated responsibility, and then an application of relevant kinds
to the contemporary world, and to its modes of decision making.
Mediated Responsibilities
Mediated responsibilities include cases where one agent, A, brings it about that
another agent B (or other agents) act(s) or abstain(s) from action with foreseeable
consequences for which (on some views) A may be held responsible, at least in part.
Such cases are sometimes relevant to issues of global warming, as we shall later see,
as when a set of consumers provides incentives to producers elsewhere to engage
in pollutant activities. But there are many other kinds of case where mediated
Mediated Impacts, Climate and the Scope of Ethics 227
responsibilities are also in question. For the impacts of action or inaction can be
situated far away from the agent in space and/or in time, and this of itself can appear
to agents to reduce their responsibility, however certain and predictable and
otherwise unmediated the relation may be between action and impact.3 But this
appearance is illusory. Time bombs are clearly the responsibility of those who make
them and those who install them, even if their victims are unknown, and even if they
do not detonate for a hundred years. So are land mines and the cluster bombs that
land without exploding, thus becoming land mines for all practical purposes.
A full treatment of mediated responsibility would also consider cases where
the impacts of action are less than certain, but retain some tangible probability.
Here it may be claimed that what diminishes responsibility is the uncertainly that
individual actions will have impacts at all. However, when types of actions, such
as dropping cluster bombs, carry a significant average probability of eventual
impacts, the plea that individual tokens of that type may well do no harm is
manifestly unacceptable. There are also cases where the risk of impacts is low, but
the magnitude of the impacts would be very great, and once again talk of mediated
responsibility for those impacts could be in place. (What is right in such cases
might often depend on what the other options are, and this means that in some
cases the responsibility for such risks could be a diminished responsibility.) But
the ethics of risk is too complex a topic to tackle here. For yet further kinds of
mediated responsibility are going to prove more obviously relevant to the ethics of
global warming.
Besides mediation by spatial or temporal distance, by the agency of others, or
by uncertainty, the mediated aspect of responsibility can relate to diffusion. Thus,
impacts can themselves be widely diffused across billions of people and other
creatures, as when a canister-full of CFCs (chloro-fluorocarbons) released as
propellants in one place spreads out and minutely reduces the ozone layer over a
whole continent, and thus the immunity of contemporary creatures living beneath
this layer to skin cancer. A thousand or so such canisters can together make a large
cumulative difference, but each user of such a canister may try telling themselves
that the difference they individually make is imperceptibly small, perhaps just
because it will be a diffused one, and thus of no significance. The likely diffusion
of impacts of itself makes this a case where responsibility is mediated. Causing
diffused impacts may truly be insignificant, as in cases where we speak of “a mere
drop in the ocean,” which could be accurate if what is dropped is a single pinch of
salt. But with CFCs, the atmosphere and its ozone layer, things are notoriously
different.
The same example illustrates the counterpart of diffused impacts, namely
diffused or rather widely distributed causes. For as the CFC case shows, signifi-
cant problems can be caused by large numbers of apparently insignificant actions
having a joint, cumulative impact. But there is a difference between actions that do
not belong to a set (whether simultaneous or distributed across time) likely to have
foreseeable significant joint impacts, and those that do; for the fact that an action
is a member of such a set is often discoverable and sometimes obvious, however
228 Robin Attfield
slight its foreseeable individual impact. In this kind of case, mediated responsi-
bility figures once again.
Derek Parfit on Imperceptible but Cumulative Impacts
Derek Parfit has supplied an intriguing sequence of thought-experiments

about all this. Thus, according to Parfit one of the “mistakes of moral math-
ematics” consists in ignoring the effects of sets of acts, and assuming that if
some act is right or wrong because of its effects, the only relevant effects are the
effects of this particular act.4 Some of his examples are not directly relevant
here, and concern the overdetermination of someone’s death when several
killers strike and one or more of them thus do the victim no distinctive harm,
although their deed would otherwise have proved fatal. What is significant for
present purposes, however, is the lesson that Parfit rightly endorses, namely:
“Even if an act harms no one, this act may be wrong because it is one of a set
of acts that together harm other people. Similarly, even if some act benefits no
one, it can be what someone ought to do, because it is one of a set of acts that
together benefit other people.” (This latter claim could, I suggest, be true of
participation in beneficial international agreements, because of the precedents
set by simply reaching such agreements, and the momentum generated for
further ones. But that is not what Parfit had in mind.) Reasons why sets of acts
may jointly harm or benefit include the acts being ones that singly have imper-
ceptible effects, but jointly make a significant difference.5 And this brings us
back to effects whose causes are a scattering of apparently innocuous and insig-
nificant acts, and thus to mediated responsibility.
The issue now becomes which are the relevant sets of acts that jointly harm
or benefit, and how we can know that our act would be a member of such a set, and
right or wrong as such. Here, Parfit cogently claims that “When some group
together harm or benefit other people, this group is the smallest group of whom it
is true that, if they had all acted differently, the other people would not have been
harmed, or benefited.”6 This claim, if true, exonerates of responsibility agents who
might be added arbitrarily to the relevant group, but whose acts make no differ-
ence to the joint or cumulative effect: unrelated bystanders and their conversa-
tions, for example. (Similarly, we might add here among acts to be excluded acts
which contribute to global warming but are themselves unavoidable, like human
breathing, and like the rearing of cattle, economically indispensable for many poor
Third-World farmers, even though the cattle contribute to global warming through
emissions of methane.)
However, Parfit introduces and endorses a more elaborate claim both about
ethical wrongness and about when agents know enough to be subject to such a
claim. It goes like this: “When (1) the outcome would be worse if people suffer
more, and (2) each of the members of some group could act in a certain way (he
should perhaps have said: ‘in a certain avoidable way’), and (3) they could cause
other people to suffer if enough of them act in this way, and (4) they would cause
these people to suffer most if they all act in this way, and (5) each of them both
knows these facts and believes that enough of them will act in this way, then (6)
each would be acting wrongly if he acts in this way.”7 This claim fits Parfit’s
thought-experiment of The Harmless Torturers (p. 80), who each make someone’s
pain worse by an imperceptible amount. But importantly for current purposes, it
also seems to fit avoidable contributions to global warming, at least where there is
no strong ethical justification for them.
Parfit closes his chapter with a passage about the relation of social history
to ethics, in which he shows some awareness of the kind of themes advanced
by Jonas, and also adds to them. Here is an extract, from the penultimate
paragraph:
Until this century, most of mankind lived in small communities. What each did could affect
only a few others. But conditions have now changed. Each of us can now, in countless ways,
affect countless other people. We can have real though small effects on thousands or
millions of people. When these effects are widely dispersed, they may be either trivial, or
imperceptible. It now makes a great difference whether we continue to believe that we
cannot have greatly harmed or benefited others unless there are people with grounds for a
serious complaint, or for gratitude. . . . For the sake of small benefits to ourselves, or our
families, we may deny others much greater total benefits, or impose on others much greater
total harms. We may think this permissible because the effects on each of the others will be
either trivial or imperceptible. If this is what we think, what we do will often be much worse
for all of us.8
This passage is concerned with humanity alone, and apparently with the current
generation alone, and in these ways fails to take into account many impacts of
current action and inaction, except insofar as current human interests require the
functioning of the same ecosystems and weather systems as are vital to other
species and will be vital to future generations. (Later in Reasons and Persons,
Parfit has much to say about future generations, and how their identity is currently
indeterminate, but partially determined by current generations; hence it would
be unfair to represent him as neglectful of their good.) However, by stressing the
frequently cumulative character of trivial and of imperceptible effects, Parfit
importantly contributes to our grasp of mediated responsibility, and of how ethics
has ceased to concern mainly the interpersonal relations of contemporary human
individuals living in face-to-face communities. Besides, as Jonas remarks, “the
cumulative self-propagation of the technological change of the world constantly
overtakes the conditions of its contributing acts and moves through none but
unprecedented situations, for which the lessons of experience are powerless.”9
Fortunately, there is nothing to prevent us extending Parfit’s message to impacts
affecting prospective generations or to impacts affecting nonhuman species irre-
spective of impacts on human interests, and thus getting to grips with some of the
unprecedented situations envisaged by Jonas. To both of these extensions, the
impacts of global warming are crucially relevant.
230 Robin Attfield
The Case of Global Warming
I should briefly clarify some of the ways in which trivial or imperceptible

impacts contributing to global warming could jointly do serious harm. Not being
a climate scientist, I am taking for granted the overall findings of successive IPCC
reports on global warming and of the scientific consensus that they embody. These
suggest that the cumulative impacts of small contributions to global warming are
contributing to the melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps, and that this is
likely to generate a rise in sea levels sufficient to endanger low-lying cities
worldwide, and also low-lying islands (some of which may virtually disappear
within a century). Another serious possibility is the danger that the Gulf Stream,
which currently bestows a pleasant climate on countries such as Ireland, Britain,
and Norway, will cease to flow, leaving Britain with a climate more like that of
Newfoundland; such a development is far from certain, but is a focus of serious
current concern and could be irreversible, thus comprising a further example of a
crucial threshold being crossed.
Again, global warming seems already to be causing the geographical range
of tropical diseases such as malaria and dengue-fever to increase, as Donald
Brown relates.10 Further thresholds could be crossed, as we can learn from
Brown’s book American Heat, if the gradual polewards migration of wild
species ascribable to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmo-
sphere and the consequent global warming11 leaves stranded land species (e.g.,
species of mammals and reptiles) unable to migrate any further north or south,
and thus to their extinction. Humanity is already extinguishing numerous
species, many of which have never even been identified, through overt activities
such as forest clearance, but this sorry process is liable to be intensified through
the more covert process of anthropogenic climate change. Since species extinc-
tions are in the nature of the case irreversible, further thresholds are liable to be
crossed in this way, albeit silently. Yet a further kind of serious harm arising
from anthropogenic global warming is the displacement of human environmen-
tal refugees, currently estimated at 25 million, and predicted to grow in numbers
exponentially as decade succeeds to decade.12 In a world of more and more
jealously guarded frontiers and overstretched resources, the creation of such
large and growing numbers of refugees is likely to cause great and widespread
anguish and suffering.
Correspondingly, great good could be achieved through an accumulation of
environment-friendly practices, not least but not only on the part of individual
consumers, an accumulation which could well become feasible if enough gov-
ernments and NGOs encouraged the adoption of such practices, and if gov-
ernments fostered them through schemes such as carbon trading and
environmentally-friendly energy-generation. For example, wild species that
might have become extinct could continue to flourish; communities that might
have become processions of environmental refugees could continue to make
their own contributions to cultural diversity and in some cases to sustainable
lifestyles; and ice caps and ocean currents might continue to facilitate a
largely benign global weather system. Thus, the topics of indirect impacts and
mediated responsibilities need not be seen as simply one of duties to avoid
matters becoming worse. They can also concern ways in which life can be
enhanced.
Ecological Debt
However, further light can be thrown on these topics by consideration of

what the economist Juan Martinez-Alier has called “ecological debt.”13
Martinez-Alier detects ecological debt in two conflicts between poor and rich
countries. The first lies in the inadequate compensation paid for the raw mate-
rials of relatively poor countries by richer ones. In view of the power of the
latter to determine or largely to determine world prices, there is probably much
in what he says, but the kind of debt involved seems less obviously ecological
than that of the second conflict that he brings to attention as follows: “Second,
rich countries make a disproportionate use of environmental space or services
without payment, and even without recognition of other people’s entitlements to
such services (particularly, the disproportionate free use of carbon dioxide sinks
and reservoirs).”14 Certainly if we hold that each person has an equal entitlement
to access the capacity of the atmosphere to absorb greenhouse gas emissions,
then countries using more than the total entitlements of their citizens or their
resident population are making use of the entitlements of others, and often
without payment.
That each person has such an equal entitlement cannot be fully argued here,
but could be supported either on consequentialist or on Kantian grounds, or
alternatively on grounds of natural justice. Martinez-Alier thus has good grounds
for his clearest identification of a case of ecological debt. But if so, our actions
have the unlooked-for implication of depriving other peoples of recognition and
payment for their entitlements to atmospheric services, a kind of impact for which
responsibility can reasonably be recognized, albeit on a mediated basis. Indeed,
the concept of ecological debt has a well-established literature, as related by
Martinez-Alier.15
Sometimes, indeed, the use of other countries’ environmental space and
services is more direct and overt. For there is an international trade in the dumping
of pollutant substances, such as dioxin-laden ash, often in exchange for payments
that are determined by the slender bargaining power of the receiving countries.
James Sterba has written about this trade in Justice for Here and Now,16 and Carl
Talbot has christened it “toxic imperialism.” Examples of it are also briefly
discussed in my 2003 book Environmental Ethics.17 This trade seems itself to
exemplify the generation of both of the kinds of ecological debt identified by
Martinez-Alier. But there are other practices plausibly falling under this descrip-
tion and more closely related to climate change.
232 Robin Attfield
Further Impacts of Forms of Trade
For Western consumer societies have become dependent on the cheap manu-
facture of clothes and artefacts in Asian countries such as India and China, and
many of our apparently innocuous practices of retail sales and of shopping have
come to depend on such production. Yet, the practices on which we have come to
rely often embody very poor employment and environmental standards, some-
times involving the exploitation of workers, and sometimes inefficient use of
energy and the consequent pollution of the atmosphere; and the relevant pollutant
substances will almost certainly include greenhouse gases, although if interna-
tional agreements are being honored, they probably do not include CFCs.
In terms of quantity, these emissions probably do not compare with the
emissions from traffic in Western cities. But when varieties of mediated respon-
sibility are under consideration, they should not be forgotten. Those directly
responsible for such emissions are agents in distant places. But the incentives for
them to initiate and develop these practices are the purchasing power of Western
consumers, and in the absence of our behavior as consumers, these practices of
manufacture would probably either not take place, or would adopt different forms
better suited to local markets. So here we have a case where one set of agents
brings it about that others engage in polluting activities. Responsibility is medi-
ated through the actions of others, but cannot for that reason be declared nonex-
istent. Besides the undeniable presence of causal responsibility, it is difficult to
deny that those who participate in and benefit from this trade have a share in the
moral responsibility for its range of impacts, including not only prosperity for
entrepreneurs but also adverse impacts on the ecosystems and atmosphere of Asia.
But the atmosphere of Asia is the same atmosphere as the global atmosphere,
the one whose concentrations of greenhouse gases we should be seeking to
minimize.18
Once this kind of mediated responsibility has been introduced, many other
kinds may well spring to mind. For example, most of us purchase and benefit from
products of long-distance transport, whether in the form of food, clothing, or other
goods. In so doing, we become complicit in the carbon emissions of trucks and
lorries, and sometimes in the air miles or sea miles of the intercontinental freight
trade. In some cases, there would be no other way in which health-giving items
such as bananas could reach our local store; but frequently it is otherwise, and our
participation by association in such long-distance trading is a matter of voluntary
choice.
Such, perhaps, is life in a globalizing world; yet consumers retain some
measure of discretion, and have on occasion made a difference at a distance,
through the exercise of consumer power, as with the boycott of South African
products during the apartheid epoque, and through the activities of NGOs such
as those mentioned at pages 82–84 of my book Environmental Ethics.19 Thus,
where we continue purchasing, we often have both causal responsibility for the
emissions just mentioned, and a measure of moral responsibility, given the
capacity to find out about the impacts of our purchasing, and the ability to do
otherwise. So even though others have causal and probably moral responsibility
too, we can hardly shrug off moral responsibility, once again of a mediated
kind. Nor do these responsibilities disappear simply because the world has
become very complicated, or because there is not enough time to think through
the impacts of all our actions. Indeed the very technology that gives rise to the
problems has also made it possible for pressure groups like Friends of the Earth
and others to disseminate information about current systems and effective cam-
paigning, and thus for individuals to behave as responsible consumers rather
than passive ones. On a similar basis, governments too must be regarded as
having real mediated responsibilities.
Rethinking Decision-Making and International Collaboration
Nevertheless, many of the problems mentioned cannot be tackled adequately

without international agreements, as well as the full participation of national
governments, and global warming is manifestly a case in point. But some of the
aspects of our responsibilities already mentioned, for example for spatially and
temporally dispersed impacts, for probable impacts and for the likely but not quite
certain crossing of thresholds, make this difficult and stretch the recognized basis
for political decision making. It could be maintained that these aspects relate to
political philosophy, and should be reserved for some different occasion. But part
of my contention is that the very changed context of ethics requires us to rethink
not only our responsibilities and related ethical questions, but also how we should
collaborate to discharge responsibilities in a technological and interconnected
world. Another part is that where significant good or harm can be achieved
through an accumulation of tiny impacts of action, but it happens to be difficult to
coordinate actions simply by advocacy and example, we should employ public
institutions in order to publicize the problems, and public policy in order to
encourage beneficent rather than harmful cumulative impacts. We already do this
in many ways, such as publicly sponsored health insurance schemes, among
others.
To express the problems in another way, we need to discover ways in which
to take account of the impacts of current action on all the future generations likely
to be affected thereby, plus the impacts on contemporaries who are not fellow-
citizens, and live on the far side of boundaries or oceans, plus the impacts on
nonhuman creatures worldwide, both now and in the future. In the case of global
warming, all these impacts of current action are relevant to policies and their
formation in the present. Fortunately, some legislators are capable of grasping the
far-reaching nature of the impacts of current action, and ethically enlightened
enough to recognize related responsibilities, and so the situation is not hopeless.
But difficulties arise as soon as we focus on the very forums of decision making
devised to facilitate shared decisions and formulate public policy.
234 Robin Attfield
For our constitutions require us to give special consideration to sovereign

territory and the national interest, while international law requires us to respect
the sovereign independence of the territory of others. Accordingly, the first duty
of each legislature is widely seen to be the upholding of national security and of
the bolstering of the national economic interest over the immediate next few
years. Yet molding current policy in ways devised to uphold the interests of
future people, nonhuman species or foreigners could well be seen as conflicting
with such a duty. I have even seen it suggested that having regard for the inter-
ests of the distant future is actually unconstitutional in a republic whose con-
stitution was drawn up to guarantee the independence of current citizens and
legislators from the demands of others, whether the others are speaking for
themselves or their near or distant successors. But if proposals from interna-
tional bodies are to be rejected simply because they come from international
bodies, there can be little hope that national governments will accede to inter-
national agreements, however important their subject. If, however, the problems
have the international character described earlier, there is every reason to con-
sider suggested forms of international collaboration as proposed at international
gatherings such as those held at Rio (1992) and Kyoto (1997) and Montreal
(2005), even if that might mean some voluntary abridgement of sovereignty in
the cause of making such collaboration effective.
I have also seen it suggested that heeding the long-term good of humanity
would be unconstitutional because undemocratic. Democracy, this line of argu-
ment goes, presupposes that policy will be based on the interests of the electorate,
who are entitled to deselect any government or officers who fail to act in these
interests. So deeply is this presupposition ingrained in democratic constitutions
that if public policy has any other basis the shared constitutional framework of
democratic polities is undermined. This argument, it seems to me, confuses a
weakness of our democratic system, with respect to which governments are prone
to slant their policies to what is likely to please the electorate at the next election,
with how they ought to function, a weakness that also makes governments prone
to disregard or at least partially discount longer-term considerations. For if the
protection of national security and the national interest is among the duties of
government, it must be a duty to facilitate the conditions in which the continued
well-being of the nation will remain in place for at least a number of decades, and
this involves concern for relevant weather systems and ecosystems, which are
likely to include those shared with other nations as well as ones specific to a
country’s own borders and territory. Since, further, continued national prosperity
would be affected by ecological disasters and pandemics initially situated else-
where, there must be some kind of duty to adopt policies concerned for the
ecosystems and weather systems of other countries as well. If, for example, the
hotter surface layers of tropical seas and oceans are generating hurricanes affect-
ing United States territory, the aim of curtailing such climate change, probably
through international collaboration, could well be a legitimate aspect of federal
U.S. policy.
Decision-Making for the Longer Term
But even if democracy is compatible with policies concerned for interests

beyond those of the current electorate, there remain problems about whether
public decision making is not going to be perennially prone to be skewed toward
current interests and away from broader interests and longer-term interests,
however much ethics may recognize all these interests, and responsibilities in their
regard. (Even if many individual voters have broader horizons than this might
suggest, there is also a danger that corporations may bring it about that public
decisions are skewed in just such a way.) For governments, like citizens, cannot
but be seen as bearing mediated responsibilities for the far-flung impacts of their
actions and policies, and yet public decision making, like ethical theory, is always
in danger of seeing itself as having too narrow a scope, and not taking into account
the full range of its impacts and its powers, granted the mediated responsibilities
of governments as well as those of individual citizens.
To counteract such dangers, decision makers should consider whether to
appoint advisers or even a few members of their legislature appointed to represent
unrepresented parties, such as future people, and perhaps those species most
affected by that legislature’s decisions, with duties to consider relevant aspects of
proposed legislation, and entitlements to have their reports taken into account. The
issue of exactly how such representatives of the unrepresented would best be
appointed would of course need to be tackled, but this is not the occasion to
discuss it. What is more important is to find ways (and better ways may well be
suggested) in which the many parties affected by current actions and policies can
be taken into account when decisions are being taken. For if their interests are
unheeded, then the scope of ethics, as delineated above, and the related range of
impacts of current action and inaction, will remain unmatched in our attempts at
public collaboration. But such are the scope of ethics and the range of our
responsibilities (both as individuals and as nations) that we precisely need systems
of public collaboration enabling responsible decisions to be reached that take into
account this full scope and this full range.
We also need matching international collaboration, similarly informed about
the impacts of human action and inaction, as may at last be beginning to happen
since the 2005 Montreal Conference. In any case, while sovereignty remains
legally with national governments, the prospects for adequate international col-
laboration are bound to depend on the eventual willingness of national authorities
to address not just the immediate and local consequences of action, but all the
mediated consequences also. And this clearly holds sway across the fields of
global warming and climate change.
Notes
1
Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age, trans.
Hans Jonas and David Herr (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1984); originally
236 Robin Attfield
published as Das Prinzip Verantwortung: Versuch einer Ethic für die technologische Zivilisation
(Insel Verlag: Frankfurt am Main, 1979) and Macht oder Ohnmacht der Subjecktivität? Das
Leib-Seele-Problem im Vorfeld des Prinzips Verantwortung (Insel Verlag: Frankfurt am Main,
1981).
2
I have contributed to this undertaking in Robin Attfield, Value, Obligation and Meta-Ethics (Amster-
dam and Atlanta, GA: Éditions Rodopi, 1995), and in Robin Attfield, Environmental Ethics: An
Overview for the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge: Polity, 2003).
3
Barnabas Dickson, “The Ethicist Conception of Environmental Problems,” Environmental Values 9
(2000): 127–52; Samuel Sheffler, “Individual Responsibility in a Global Age,” Social Philosophy
and Policy 12 (1995): 219–36.
4
Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 70.
5
Ibid., 78–82.
6
Ibid., 71–72.
7
Ibid., 81.
8
Ibid., 86.
9
Jonas, Imperative of Responsibility, 7.
10
Donald Brown, American Heat: Ethical Problems with the United States’ Response to Global
Warming (Lanham, MD and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002).
11
Ibid.
12
Molly Conisbee and Andrew Simms, Environmental Refugees: The Case for Recognition (London:
New Economics Foundation, 2003).
13
Juan Martinez-Alier, The Environmentalism of the Poor: A Study of Ecological Conflicts and
Valuation (Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2002).
14
Ibid., 213.
15
Ibid.; Robin Attfield, The Ethics of the Global Environment (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
1999), 142.
16
James Sterba, Justice for Here and Now (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press,
1998).
17
Attfield, Environmental Ethics, 116.
18
Brown, American Heat.
19
Attfield, Environmental Ethics, 82–84.
A Just Response to Climate Change: Personal Carbon
Allowances and the Normal-Functioning Approach
Keith Hyams
One of the normative aspects of climate change that has received relatively
little attention from philosophers is the proposal that states reduce their green-
house gas emissions by issuing “personal carbon allowances” (PCAs)—also
sometimes called “domestic tradable quotas” (DTQs), or “tradable energy quotas”
(TEQs)1—to each of their citizens. According to this proposal, citizens would be
required to surrender PCAs in order to engage in various greenhouse gas emitting
activities. The number of PCAs issued each year would decline, so as to ensure
a year-on-year reduction in national greenhouse gas emissions. One version of
the proposal holds that a supranational system of PCAs could provide a global
solution to climate change, with everyone on the planet receiving PCAs equivalent
to a per capita share of global emissions. While a supranational system of PCAs
could provide a global solution to climate change, it would be extremely difficult
to implement a supranational system of PCAs, and unrealistic to expect global
leaders to sign up to such a system.2 On the other hand, a domestic version of the
proposal suggests an attractive way for states to share out emissions among their
own citizens, however emissions are to be shared out between states.
The proposal domestically to issue PCAs was first developed in the 1990s by
Mayer Hillman and David Fleming.3 More recently, the proposal has been further
developed by Richard Starkey and Kevin Anderson at the Tyndall Centre for
Climate Change Research,4 and promoted in popular books by Mayer Hillman and
Tina Fawcett, and by George Monbiot.5 Support for the proposal to issue PCAs
has been particularly strong among civil society groups, although the proposal is
also being taken seriously at government level.6 A recent survey showed PCAs to
be the most favored method for reducing national emissions among respondents
randomly selected from the UK population.7 The Royal Society for the Arts
project CarbonLimited recently piloted the use of Internet-based models of
PCAs.8 josp_1449 237..256
While PCAs could in theory be used by all countries to regulate their national
emissions, the focus of the present paper will be on the fair implementation of a
scheme of PCAs in the developed world, and most of the examples will be drawn
from the developed world context. This is for two principal reasons. First, because
developed countries already have in place most of the political, social, and eco-
nomic institutions necessary for the effective functioning of a system of PCAs.
Second, because the countries that are committed by the Kyoto Protocol to

josp_1449 237..256
238 Keith Hyams
making significant short-term cuts in their national greenhouse gas emissions—

the so-called “Annex One countries”—are all developed countries.
1. Why Personal Carbon Allowances?
Three main considerations motivate the use of PCAs rather than alternative
policy instruments such as tax or industrial quotas. First, an oft-cited benefit of
quota-based approaches in general (including both PCAs and industrial quotas) is
that quota-based approaches allow policymakers to ensure that greenhouse gas
emissions will not exceed a particular cap.9 This consideration provides only a
limited reason to prefer quota-based approaches, however, since a tax-based
approach could also be configured in such a way so as to approximate a cap on
emissions. For example, a cap could be approximated by having marginal tax rates
increase as an agent’s emissions increase, such that emissions become progres-
sively more expensive and eventually—provided that tax rates are high enough—
prohibitively expensive.
Second, it is sometimes argued that PCAs, implemented in an appropriate
manner, will serve to motivate citizens to “do their bit” in the belief that they are
contributing fairly to a larger effort to combat climate change.10 The point here is
not merely that citizens will be motivated to reduce their emissions: This outcome
could be achieved just as well by a tax-based approach. Rather, the point is that
agents’ motivation to reduce their emissions is less likely under a system of PCAs
to be entirely economic. The economic motivation would be supplemented by the
additional moral motivation accompanying the belief that one is contributing
one’s fair share to the burden of discharging a collective responsibility. Neverthe-
less, from the point of view of averting the worst that climate change threatens,
one might reasonably respond that it does not especially matter whether the
motivation to reduce emissions is provided by economic reasons or moral reasons:
the important thing is simply that we do reduce our emissions.
The third and most persuasive reason to adopt PCAs over alternative schemes
is that PCAs allow policymakers to be much more sensitive to issues of fairness.
Alternative schemes like tax incentives and industrial quotas force consumers to
pay the costs of reducing emissions in direct proportion to their purchases of
emission-dependent goods, thereby linking access to emission-dependent goods
solely to ability to pay. A suitably designed system of PCAs, on the other hand,
would allow policymakers to ensure that emission-dependent goods are distrib-
uted not merely in accordance with ability to pay, but in a manner sensitive to
issues of fairness. This consideration, it seems to me, provides the strongest case
for adopting a system of PCAs over alternative schemes.
One of the questions that I will consider in this paper is the question whether
PCAs should be tradable. In the light of what I have just said—that the strongest
case for PCAs over alternative schemes like industrial quotas and taxes is its
ability to decouple access to emission-dependent goods from ability to pay—one
might think that I am already committed to the view that PCAs should not be
A Just Response to Climate Change 239
tradable. Surely if PCAs are tradable then access to emission-dependent goods

would be determined by ability to pay? Indeed it is true that, under a scheme of
tradable PCAs, access to emission-dependent goods would be partly linked to
ability to pay. But—unlike industrial quotas and taxes—under a scheme of trad-
able PCAs, access to emission-dependent goods would not be wholly determined
by ability to pay, since the initial allocation of PCAs would also play a role in
determining access to emission-dependent goods. An agent who has little money
but who is allocated, at no cost, lots of PCAs, may have as much access to
emission-dependent goods as an agent with lots of money who is allocated few
PCAs. The poorer agent may indeed sell some of his PCAs to the wealthier agent,
but it is not at all obvious that the resulting distribution of access to emission-
dependent goods would be unfair, since an agent who sells his PCAs would be
compensated by that which he receives in return for his PCAs. It remains an open
question, then, whether PCAs should be tradable. One may endorse PCAs because
they permit sensitivity to fairness, without being committed to the view that PCAs
should not be tradable.
2. Implementing Personal Carbon Allowances
In designing a system of PCAs, fairness is not the only consideration to be

taken into account, and for reasons of cost and practicality, most advocates of
PCAs, including Hillman, Fleming, Starkey, and Anderson (cited above), would
restrict their use only to household energy and personal transport (including, on
some models, aviation and public transport). Individual consumers would not be
required to use PCAs to purchase other goods, because the cost and difficulty of
calculating their embodied emissions—emissions on which production of the
good relied—would be prohibitively high. In a concession to reality at the expense
of fairness, it is proposed that emissions involved in the production of these other
goods be regulated by other means, for example by the sale of emission permits to
the firms that manufacture or provide them (though with tighter emission caps
than those currently used in existing industrial permit schemes like the EU Emis-
sions Trading Scheme (ETS), from which some firms have made windfall profits
as a result of excessive allocations). Nevertheless, in developed countries at least,
household energy and personal transport account for a large share of national
emissions, so even if the remaining emissions were constrained by other means,
PCAs would still be a major feature of many of the world’s largest economies.11
Considerable work has been done on the technical aspects of implementing a
scheme of PCAs, for example, on quantifying the emissions embodied in various
forms of transport. But there remains an urgent need for work to be done on the
philosophical aspects of PCAs. For despite the growing interest in PCAs, most
philosophical discussions about greenhouse gas emissions continue to focus on
the justice of different proposals for distributing emissions between states. Such
discussion is important in itself and, as we will see, some of the normative appeals
made in the context of such discussions will also be relevant to the domestic
240 Keith Hyams
implementation of a system of PCAs. But there is nevertheless a significant gap,

which this paper aims to fill, insofar as distributional aspects of an intranational
system of PCAs remain largely unaddressed. States have characteristics of poten-
tial moral relevance that individuals do not have, and distributing emission rights
between them therefore raises philosophical issues unique from those raised
by the problem of distributing emission rights among individuals. States, for
example, unlike individuals, have populations of different and changing sizes,
they have identities that span several generations with associated long histories
of benefiting (or not) from different emission levels, they have economies of
differing sizes and with differing characteristics. As such, although some of the
normative principles applicable to the international case may still be relevant to
discussion of the domestic case, we cannot assume that these principles will
automatically apply in identical fashion to both cases.
Philosophical questions about the distribution of PCAs can be divided into
two types. First, there are questions about how to allocate PCAs to individuals.
Second, there are questions about carbon accounting, about how to work out how
many PCAs an individual need surrender in order to purchase a particular
emission-dependent good. Although the focus of this paper will be on the first set
of questions, I nevertheless wish to make a few preliminary remarks about the
second, in order to expose a thread in our intuitions about fairness that is relevant
to both. In particular, I offer a few comments on the problem raised by the need to
disaggregate individual agents’ responsibility for the greenhouse gas emissions
embodied in collective services. The problem is illustrated by the example of
flying. If an agent takes a flight and the flight is only half full, should he be
required to surrender twice as many PCAs as he would have done had he been on
a flight identical in all respects except that it was full? Should he be required to
surrender extra PCAs to carry more luggage on board? In these and similar cases,
intuition suggests that we should be guided by the loosely stated principle that an
agent should be required to surrender more PCAs for choosing to take a more
carbon-intensive option than a less carbon-intensive one, but not for being given
a more carbon-intensive option for reasons beyond their control. That is, our
calculations should be sensitive to choice but not to unchosen circumstance. So,
for example, if an agent, purchasing a flight ticket, chooses a higher-class seat with
more leg room than an economy-class seat (thereby permitting less people to be
carried on the flight), then it seems fair that he should be required to surrender
more PCAs for his ticket than an agent who purchases an economy-class seat. But
an agent who books himself on a flight which turns out, unbeknown to him at the
time of booking, to be half full, then he should not be required to surrender any
more PCAs than an agent who books himself on a flight identical in all relevant
respects except that the flight turns out to be full. Such an approach would
maximize both the intuitive moral appeal of a system of PCAs and the beneficial
incentives created by the system—whenever an agent has a choice in the matter,
PCAs provide an incentive to choose the least carbon-intensive option. These
tentative comments are not, of course, intended to be conclusive. The principle
certainly needs further clarification and justification. But they will hopefully be
helpful nevertheless, if only because, as we will see, they tie in with a wider
commitment to choice-sensitivity and circumstance-insensitivity running through
our moral intuitions about how fairly to implement a system of PCAs.
Note that I will not address herein questions about how we should distribute
the burden of compensating victims of climate change or of helping them to adapt
to a changing climate. While it is possible to design a system of PCAs with the aim
of raising funds to compensate the victims of climate change—for example, by
auctioning PCAs and spending the proceeds on compensation or adaptation—it
would be inappropriate to do so. To the extent that we commit ourselves to raising
such funds through a system of PCAs, we commit ourselves to linking the
distribution of the burden of discharging our collective duty to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions to the distribution of the burden of discharging our collective duty
to compensate the victims of climate change. But we should not link these two
distributions, since different moral principles are likely to apply in each case. As
Vanderheiden notes, equity-based principles are likely to play a stronger role
when allocating future emission shares, whereas responsibility-based principles
should be more significant when allocating the costs of compensation and
adaptation.12
In order to determine how we should allocate PCAs, we need to know why we
should be concerned about their distribution at all. I will argue that there are two
very different rationales that motivate a concern with the distribution of PCAs.
Although appeals are often made to both rationales in popular discussion of PCAs,
it is important that they be clearly distinguished, since they have quite different
implications for the distribution of PCAs. The first rationale for a concern with the
distribution of PCAs is what I will call the rationing case. The rationing case is
concerned to ensure that all agents have an appropriate level of access to a
particular good or group of goods. The rationing case is not content to leave the
distribution of PCAs to the market. The second rationale for a concern with the
distribution of PCAs is what I will call the initial distribution case. The initial
distribution case is quite happy to leave the distribution of PCAs to the market, but
is concerned to ensure that PCAs are introduced into the market in a fair way. Both
rationales appeal to principles underlying widely shared moral intuitions not only
about fair distributions of emission rights, but about fair distributions of goods in
society more generally. Insofar as these principles claim universal applicability, so
too do the rationales for a concern with the distribution of PCAs.
3. The Rationing Case
The case for a regime of PCAs is often compared to the case for rationing
essential supplies during World War II. Such a case appeals to the claim that,
left to its own devices, the market would provide an unacceptable distribution
of a particular good or group of goods. The distribution may be considered
242 Keith Hyams
unacceptable because it would allow some agents to evade their moral responsi-
bilities, because it would result in the denial of some agents’ basic needs or
prevent them from developing central capabilities,13 because it would be too
unequal, or for other reasons. The concern that motivated rationing during World
War II, for example, was a desire to ensure that particular needs—for food and
fuel and so on—were universally met during times of scarcity (hence expectant
mothers and children were allowed more milk and eggs than others, reflecting
their different nutritional needs). Although the motivations that may underlie a
case for rationing PCAs are diverse, they have one important feature in common:
They all insist on the moral importance of maintaining a particular patterned
distribution of some particular good across individuals in society—either PCAs
themselves or some other emission-dependent good or group of goods. As such,
a central implication of the rationing case is that it requires that PCAs not be
tradable. PCAs must not be tradable in order to avoid creating a new market in
PCAs that will determine the distribution of emissions, offering no guarantees that
the moral concerns of those moved by the rationing case will be catered for.
Note that the rationing case does not necessarily require that we equalize
PCAs, depending on the motivation that underlies the case. The basic needs
motivation, for example, requires only that everyone has sufficient PCAs to meet
their basic needs; if any extra PCAs beyond those required for sufficiency are left
within the overall limit, the basic needs motivation is neutral on how they ought
to be shared out. It is even possible to be motivated by equality without being
committed to equalizing PCAs, depending on what it is that we want to equalize.
If one is concerned to equalize access to the rationed good itself, then one will
indeed want to distribute PCAs equally. But it will often not be the rationed good
itself that is important, but some other good which the rationed good is instru-
mental to promoting. One might, for example, think it important to equalize
people’s ability to keep their houses warm, and on that basis ration PCAs un-
equally, because it requires more energy to keep some houses warm than others.
How strong is the case for rationing? Many economists and politicians have
opposed non-tradable PCAs because, unlike tradable PCAs, they will not yield
emissions cuts in the most economically efficient manner. This is an important
consideration, but it need not be the decisive one. If there are strong moral reasons
for rationing, then we might decide that those reasons are ultimately more impor-
tant than the economic considerations. So let me restate the question of present
interest: how strong is the moral case for rationing non-tradable PCAs? There is,
of course, no one general answer to this question. The strength of the case for
rationing depends on the strength of the arguments in its favor, and we must
consider the merits of each such argument individually.
3.1 A Duty to Reduce One’s Own Emissions
First, one argument for rationing non-tradable PCAs says that everyone has a
duty significantly to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions and not merely to
buy their way out of such reductions. This mirrors a case against trading at the
international level put by Sandel, who writes that “turning pollution into a com-
modity to be bought and sold removes the moral stigma that is properly associated
with it.”14 The argument seems to me implausible. Why should we account for
agents’ shares of the collective burden to address climate change in terms of
greenhouse gas emissions rather than in terms that allow agents to discharge their
share of the collective burden in whatever manner they would most prefer to do
so? Agents who would buy extra PCAs if given the opportunity to do so would still
be making a sacrifice as a result of the cap on emissions imposed by the system of
PCAs. Their sacrifice would be paid for in monetary terms rather than greenhouse
gas emissions, but the disvalue of the burden shouldered would be identical—in
market terms—to the disvalue of forgoing the quantity of emissions permitted by
the purchased PCAs. Sandel compares buying emission permits to paying a fee
in order to throw a beer can into the Grand Canyon. But the analogy is flawed,
since the emissions of an agent who buys extra permits remain within the overall
limit of permissible collective emissions, whereas any beer cans thrown into the
Grand Canyon exceed the number of beer cans—none—which can be permissibly
thrown into the Grand Canyon.15
3.2 Basic Needs and Central Capabilities
A second argument for rationing non-tradable PCAs is that a trade in PCAs

could result in some agents being unable to satisfy basic needs, or to develop
central capabilities, because they have insufficient access to emission-dependent
goods. Shue endorses a position along these lines, justifying the rationing of
emission rights by reference to what he calls subsistence rights.16 The problem
with this argument is that a trade in PCAs would not, provided that PCAs are
initially allocated in an appropriate manner, prevent agents from satisfying their
basic needs, or developing their central capabilities, unless they chose to trade
away their PCAs. So this argument requires a commitment to the claim that
emission-dependent needs or capabilities should be satisfied even if the agent
would prefer to satisfy alternative desires instead. Again, I find this claim highly
implausible. At best such paternalism is unnecessary, and at worst it can be
positively harmful. If the relevant needs or capabilities really are so important,
then they will be given priority among an agent’s own preferences anyway. And if
they are not so important, then why should we enforce our own view about what
is best for an agent over their own?
Shue argues that minimum emission rights necessary for subsistence should
not be tradable by analogy with food stamps.17 “Decent societies,” he writes, “do
not in fact market all their food but, instead, reserve significant amounts of it to be
distributed by way of food stamps, or their functional equivalent, which are not
themselves supposed to be marketed but distributed according to need.” But if
giving out food stamps is a mark of a decent society, then that is because
giving out food stamps ensures that agents who are unable to afford food will
244 Keith Hyams
nevertheless have access to food, and such provision does not depend upon the
food stamps that they receive not being tradable. Likewise, even if we agreed with
Shue that society ought to ensure that all agents have sufficient access to emission-
dependent goods for subsistence (I will discuss in the final section of this paper
whether or not society does have such an obligation), then this would only entail
that society ought to give a minimum quantity of PCAs to agents, and not that
those PCAs should not be tradable. We should not confuse a needs- or capabilities-
based argument for doing something for an agent (like giving her PCAs), with a
needs- or capabilities-based argument for requiring an agent to do something for
herself (like not allowing her to sell her PCAs). It is one thing to argue that,
morally, A should do j for B so that B’s basic needs can be met, or so that B’s
central capabilities can be developed; but it is quite a different thing to argue—
much less plausibly—that, morally, A should do j for A, so that her own basic
needs can be met or central capabilities satisfied.
Note that at the international level, considerations along the lines of those just
discussed provided the major rationale for a provision in the Marrakesh round of
climate negotiations that rich countries should not be able to buy, nor poor
countries be able to sell, more than a certain percentage of national emissions.
Such a limit on trade seems to me more justifiable at the international level than
at the individual level. For in the international case, the consequences of a
government’s decision to sell emission quotas fall not only on the government
itself, but also on the individual citizens whom it governs. Since there is a greater
likelihood that governments of poor countries will make decisions about selling
national emission quotas that harm their citizens, than the likelihood that indi-
viduals will make decisions about selling their own PCAs that harm themselves,
a limit on trading intended to protect citizens of poor countries against the
consequences of bad decisions by their government might well be justifiable. That
is, we should not limit trading in order to protect individuals against themselves,
but perhaps we should limit trading in order to protect individuals against their
governments.
3.3 Worsening Existing Injustices
Finally, a third reason for opposing a trade in PCAs appeals to the claim that
such a trade will worsen existing social injustices. We would not, according to this
view, be concerned about a trade in PCAs if we lived in a just society. But given
that we do not live in a just society—because distributions of goods in society are
the result of historical injustices, or because they do not satisfy wider egalitarian
principles of justice—we ought not to allow a trade in PCAs. Rather, we ought to
distribute PCAs in a just manner and insulate that distribution against the unequal-
izing effects of the market.
In what sense would a trade in PCAs worsen existing injustices? Not in the
sense of giving the rich more overall or the poor less overall. When a rich agent
buys a PCA from a poor agent, the value of each agent’s overall holdings remains
unchanged, since the value of the PCA is equal to the value of the money
transferred. The only sense in which a trade in PCAs would worsen existing
injustices is in the sense that the rich would, because of the injustice, have greater
access than the poor to emission-dependent goods. But why arbitrarily pick out
access to emission-dependent goods? The rich may have greater access to
emission-dependent goods if PCAs are tradable than if they are not, but they
would also have less access to other goods (because they will have spent some of
their money on PCAs), and the poor will have more access to other goods (because
they have earned money by selling PCAs). The real problem is the underlying
injustice, and that cannot be remedied simply by prohibiting a trade in PCAs. So,
like the previous two arguments, I conclude that this third argument also fails to
provide a convincing case for rationing PCAs.
4. The Initial Distribution Case
The second rationale for a concern with the distribution of PCAs is a desire
to ensure that PCAs are introduced into the market in a fair manner. The initial
distribution case, unlike the rationing case, has no objection to PCAs being
tradable. The task facing those who are moved by this rationale is to identify the
norm that should regulate the fair introduction of PCAs into the market. The
proposal that has received most attention is the proposal that everyone should be
given an equal share of available PCAs.18 But there are other proposals for
introducing PCAs into the market worth examining, and in particular we ought
to examine the normative merits of proposals that mirror methods already used,
or widely supported, to regulate the distribution of emission rights to states or
industrial firms. Insofar as is possible, we should seek normative consistency
across the board: if there is a case for using one distributional rule for states or
industrial firms then the normative appeals on which that case depends may
provide a prima facie case for using the same distributional rule for PCAs. Of
course it might turn out that the force of the normative appeals does not extend to
PCAs because of differences between individuals, states and firms, or that even in
the international or industrial case the adopted distributional rules are not in fact
justifiable; but only by examining the normative merits of the proposals can we
make such a determination.
4.1 Auctioning PCAs
One proposal that is already used to distribute some emission permits to

industry under the EU ETS, and which is supported in some civil society groups
and think tanks as the best way to distribute permits to industry more widely,19 is
the proposal that governments auction permits. Should auctioning be used to
distribute PCAs to individuals? One objection to auctioning PCAs to individuals
is that it links access to emission-dependent goods to ability to pay, thereby failing
to take advantage of the opportunity that PCAs afford to distribute access to
246 Keith Hyams
emission-dependent goods in a more egalitarian manner. A more fundamental

objection to auctioning PCAs begins with the observation that, in order to sell
something, however the proceeds of the sale are spent, one must enjoy rights to the
item sold. Auctioning assumes that governments enjoy such rights: if they do not,
then governments can no more auction PCAs than can a thief auction his ill-gotten
gains. So do governments have rights to PCAs? Certainly, at the international
level, it is to governments that emission quotas are allocated. Why shouldn’t
governments have rights to divide up these quotas and sell them? The important
point is that international negotiations are not about giving governments emission
quotas for their own use, but for the use of their citizens and industries. Govern-
ments are, in this respect, in the position of trustees in charge of a bequest, or a
charity in receipt of money intended to help the poor; they are not in the position
of the ultimate beneficiaries of the bequest or charitable donation. Quotas are
assigned to governments so that they can distribute them fairly among the various
claimants within their jurisdiction. They are not assigned to governments so that
they can make money by selling them.
The preceding comments demonstrate that the fact that governments are
given emission quotas at the international level does not mean that they have any
rights over those quotas of the sort that would justify their selling emission rights
to their own citizens in the form of PCAs. But the preceding comments do not
answer the more fundamental question, why should we treat individuals, but not
states, as entitled to a share of free emission rights to use or sell as they wish? No
easy answer can be given to this question, since it is so closely linked to the
foundations of the liberal tradition (which is not to say that all non-liberal ide-
ologies need oppose the free allocation of PCAs to individuals). In short, the
liberal tradition begins with individual moral claims and capacities and works
upward from these to justify the moral claims and capacities of states. That is why,
for example, liberals have invested so much time in trying to justify political
authority by reference to individuals’ moral capacities and duties.20 When pre-
sented with the problem of allocating a new resource like greenhouse gas emission
rights, this fundamental liberal commitment requires that we treat individuals as
the primary recipients of the resource. Individuals automatically receive entitle-
ments that they can choose to give or sell to the state, not vice versa.21 (This
argument implies not only that individuals should be given PCAs, but also that
when a government sells emission permits to industry, it is in effect selling that
which belongs to its citizens and so should either give the proceeds of the sale to
its citizens or require their agreement to do otherwise.)
4.2 Grandfathering
A second proposal, known as grandfathering, gives more emission permits to

those who have historically emitted more greenhouse gases. Grandfathering is
used to regulate the allocation of most emission permits to industry under the EU
ETS, was adopted in modified form by the Kyoto Protocol (all nations were
required by 2012 to reduce their emissions by an average of five percent from that
country’s 1990 baseline emissions), and continues to be prominently pushed by
big polluters in international negotiations. Although grandfathering is usually
framed at the level of firms and countries, one might think that grandfathering
should also operate at the level of individuals. The proposal would be that those
individuals who have historically benefited from higher greenhouse gas emissions
be given more PCAs than those with lower historical emissions. Such a proposal
will strike many—and certainly those with egalitarian sympathies—as unjust, just
as it may seem unjust in the international or industrial domain. But given the
widespread advocacy and adoption of grandfathering in the international and
industrial domains, it is important even for opponents of grandfathering that the
arguments for grandfathering be accurately stated and dissected in order to
provide the strongest case against it.
One argument for grandfathering, made by Meyer and Roser, claims that
agents who have used a certain proportion of the earth’s atmosphere in the past
have appropriated that proportion of the earth’s atmosphere.22 But this argument
depends upon a serious misreading of the Lockean theory of appropriation, in
which appropriation depends upon improving use rather than degrading use. By
emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere one does not improve but degrades
the atmosphere. Such degradation does not, according to the Lockean theory
(or any other plausible theory of appropriation), bestow ownership over that
proportion of the atmosphere.
A second argument for grandfathering justifies the practice not by direct
appeal to historical emissions, but by indirect appeal to historical emissions,
insofar as they serve as evidence for the greater extent to which big emitters now
require higher greenhouse gas emissions to sustain their carbon-intensive life-
styles. The reason that we should practice grandfathering, the argument goes, is to
avoid imposing additional, unfair burdens on those with carbon-intensive life-
styles, who would have to make radical changes to their lifestyles if they are not
given more PCAs than other agents. Again, this argument for grandfathering
seems extremely implausible when we recall the reason that we need to restrict
greenhouse gas emissions at all. We do not need to restrict greenhouse gas
emissions because they are becoming a scarce resource. Rather, we need to restrict
greenhouse gas emissions because we owe a collective duty to future generations
to minimize climatic changes. Past emissions already commit us to climatic
changes that will cause a great deal of harm, but if we do not drastically reduce our
greenhouse gas emissions then the harm that we will cause will be all the greater.
In the face of this, there are no good grounds for complaints by big emitters that
they would no longer be able to do what they used to be able to do without extra
PCAs. What big emitters used to be able to do (and, indeed, until such time as an
appropriate regime of PCAs is implemented, are still able to do) was to enhance
their lifestyles at the expense of the victims of climate change, disproportionately
contributing to the harm caused by climate change by engaging in indulgent
activities. In distributing the burden of responding to our collective duty
248 Keith Hyams
drastically to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, it is quite fair that such
indulgences be curtailed first (or at least, that those who wish to continue such
enhancement be forced to buy extra PCAs in order to do so). This is the essence
of Shue’s widely quoted dictum, as applicable to the domestic case as to the
international one, that “whatever justice may positively require, it does not permit
that poor nations be told to sell their blankets in order that rich nations may keep
their jewellery.”23
4.3 Equal Allocations
The most prominent proposal for distributing PCAs is that everyone receive
an equal allocation of PCAs. This is the proposal made by the main designers and
advocates of PCAs, including Anderson, Bottrill, Fawcett, Fleming, Hillman,
Monbiot, and Starkey (cited above). The proposal is mirrored at the international
level in the widely supported (except among big polluters) proposal that the
emissions of all states should converge on an equal per capita allowance for each
state—what Aubrey Meyer calls “contraction and convergence.”24 (A variation on
this proposal takes into account historical emissions so that, in order to equalize
per capita emissions over time, including the past, historically high emitters are
given lower future allowances.25)
That the equal allocation proposal has received so much support strikes me as
an important finding in itself, because the proposal that all naturally occurring
resources should have been divided up equally—and that compensation is payable
by those who received more than their fair share—has never been widely sup-
ported. While some egalitarians, most notably left libertarians such as Hillel
Steiner, have long advocated this position, the proposal has never been regarded as
mainstream.26 But why should atmospheric emission rights be divided up differ-
ently to any other naturally occurring resource? If atmospheric emission rights
should be divided up equally, then shouldn’t other naturally occurring resources
also be divided up equally? Perhaps, then, we should now treat the more general
egalitarian proposal as mainstream: If so many people think it evident that atmo-
spheric emission rights should initially be shared out equally, there seems to be a
strong and widely held intuition in support of the more general egalitarian
proposal.27
4.4 Grandmothering and the Normal-Functioning Approach
Despite the intuitive appeal of the equal allocations proposal, even several of
its main proponents recognize that the proposal doesn’t get it quite right.28 For the
proposal seems unfair when we consider the situation of agents who, as a result of
circumstances beyond their control, would require more PCAs than other agents
in order to function at some normal level. Where possible, governments might
address these sources of unfairness by subsidizing improvements in energy effi-
ciency rather than by handing out extra PCAs: such an approach would be more
sensible in the light of the overall goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Governments might, for example, pay for extra insulation to be installed in
poorly insulated homes, thereby enabling those with formerly poorly insulated
homes to keep their homes warm without requiring extra PCAs. But it will not
always be possible for the government to address these sources of unfairness by
subsidizing improvements in energy efficiency. For example, an agent living in a
part of the country with a particularly cold climate may need extra emission-
dependent energy to keep her house warm, however well insulated the house is.
(To qualify her for extra PCAs, let us suppose that her living in this location is the
result of unchosen circumstance rather than a deliberate choice.) I will use the
term grandmothering to denote the practice of giving extra PCAs to agents in such
situations.
Some agents who might not be able to achieve a normal level of functioning
without extra PCAs might be in a position to buy extra PCAs from those with
excess PCAs, in order to achieve a normal level of functioning. Should govern-
ments give extra PCAs to these agents, or should they be required to buy their
own? Suppose, for example, that the agent who lives in the cold climatic zone
could afford to buy extra PCAs in order to keep her house warm, without thereby
jeopardizing her ability to satisfy other basic needs or develop other central
capabilities. There is no danger that her basic needs or capabilities will not be
satisfied, but it will cost her substantially more to do so. The grandmothering
intuition suggests that we should indeed give the agent extra PCAs, so that she can
keep her house warm at a similar cost to other agents. It would be unfair to require
the agent to buy extra PCAs for herself. So the intuition that justifies grandmoth-
ering is not merely that agents should not be prevented by circumstances beyond
their control from achieving a normal level of functioning, but that they should be
able to achieve a normal level of functioning at a similar cost to other agents. (The
extra PCAs given to these agents need not, however, mean an increase in the
overall national cap, because the extra PCAs given to these agents could be offset
by giving slightly fewer PCAs to all other agents.)
The intuition that we should practice grandmothering suggests that the pro-
posal to equalize PCAs does not quite do justice to our underlying moral com-
mitments. But what are those underlying moral commitments? And how should
we clarify the meaning normal functioning? One way to interpret normal func-
tioning would be by reference to an objective list of basic needs or capabilities. I
argued above that one version of a commitment to an objective list of basic needs
or capabilities could require us to prohibit a trade in PCAs. But such a prohibition
only follows if one’s commitment to satisfying needs or developing capabilities
extends even to cases in which agents would rather pursue other desires at the
expense of their basic needs or capabilities. One might defend instead an alterna-
tive version of the commitment to basic needs or capabilities, according to which
agents should have the option to satisfy their basic needs or develop their central
capabilities, but need not be bound to do so. Such a commitment would not require
us to prohibit a trade in PCAs, but it would require us to ensure that agents either
250 Keith Hyams
have enough PCAs, or have the funds to buy enough PCAs, to ensure that they can
satisfy basic needs or develop central capabilities if they choose to do so.
One problem with the basic needs or capabilities approach is that the
approach provides no grounds for concern if an agent can satisfy basic needs or
develop central capabilities, but only at a significantly greater cost than other
agents. Yet the grandmothering intuition required that agents should be able to
achieve a normal level of functioning at a similar cost to other agents. The basic
needs or capabilities approach fails to account for this aspect of the intuition. The
approach requires us only to ensure that agents can satisfy basic needs or develop
their central capabilities, but not to ensure that they can do so at the same cost as
other agents.
The second reason that the basic needs or capabilities approach is unsatis-
factory is that it cannot account for intuitions about how any additional PCAs
should be shared out, once those required for the satisfaction of basic needs or the
development of central capabilities have already been shared out. Given the scale
of emission reductions required to avert the worst consequences of climate
change, one might think that governments should set national emissions caps at a
level that will ensure that no further PCAs will be available once those necessary
for the satisfaction of basic needs or the development of central capabilities have
been given out. But suppose that caps are set at a higher level, and that extra PCAs
are available. The basic needs or capabilities approach has nothing to say about
how the extra PCAs should be distributed. But it seems to me that we should still
care about how these PCAs are distributed: They should be distributed fairly,
according to some criterion of fairness not explained by the basic needs or
capabilities approach.
More plausible than the basic needs or capabilities interpretation of the
normal-functioning approach is a luck-egalitarian interpretation. Luck-
egalitarianism requires us to equalize the effects of unchosen circumstance on
agents’ opportunities for welfare.29 As such, it understands normal functioning
not in terms of an objective list, but by comparison with the situation of other
agents. According to the luck-egalitarian interpretation of the normal-functioning
approach, we should ensure that PCAs are distributed so that, insofar as is
possible, the distribution does not affect any agent’s opportunities for welfare any
more or less than other agents, as a result of circumstances beyond the agent’s
control.30 In practice this would mean, roughly, that agents for whom activities
important to their welfare are, as a result of unchosen circumstance, more carbon
intensive, would need to receive more PCAs than agents for whom activities
important to their welfare are less carbon intensive. These differences might arise
because the same activity is differentially carbon intensive for two agents in
different circumstances—keeping a house warm in a hot climate and a cold
climate for example. Or they might arise because different agents need to perform
different activities or different levels of activity in order to achieve the same level
of welfare—a younger person, for example, might be able to get around town (to
go to work, to visit friends and family) with a bicycle, whereas an older person
might need access to some form of motorized transport.31 Clearly there are
difficulties in determining when an agent’s situation is the result of choice and
when it is the result of unchosen circumstance. These difficulties are a matter for
ongoing discussion in the wider literature on luck-egalitarianism, and not diffi-
culties that we can hope to address satisfactorily here. But while such difficulties
will need to be addressed in order to actually implement a luck-egalitarian distri-
bution of PCAs, they need not interfere with the present project of defending a
luck-egalitarian distribution of PCAs. That the line between choice and unchosen
circumstance is not always clear implies neither that we should reject the distinc-
tion nor that the distinction does not have the normative relevance claimed for it.
As well as enjoying the theoretical support of luck-egalitarianism, this inter-
pretation yields intuitively plausible results that overcome the difficulties associ-
ated with the basic needs or capabilities interpretation of the normal-functioning
approach. It can explain the intuition that agents should not be prevented by
circumstances beyond their control from achieving a normal level of functioning
at a similar cost to other agents, since the opportunities for welfare of an agent
who has to pay to purchase additional PCAs would be adversely affected by her
financial loss. It also provides a distributive principle that applies both to PCAs
required for subsistence, and to additional PCAs not required for subsistence.
Finally, the luck-egalitarian interpretation allows us to achieve consistency
between the normative principle informing decisions about initial allocations of
PCAs, and the normative principle informing decisions about carbon accounting.
Recall that in the case of carbon accounting—working out how many PCAs an
agent need surrender to purchase a particular emission-dependent good—I sug-
gested that we ought to require agents to surrender more PCAs for choosing to
take a more carbon-intensive option than a less carbon-intensive one, but not for
being given a more carbon-intensive option for reasons beyond their control.
Adopting a choice-sensitive but circumstance-insensitive approach both to the
initial allocation of PCAs and to carbon accounting allows us to capitalize on the
environmentally beneficial incentives of a system of PCAs while remaining faith-
ful throughout to the demands of luck-egalitarian justice.
5. Conclusion
I have argued that we should initially allocate PCAs in a manner that ensures,
insofar as is possible, that the distribution does not affect any agent’s opportunities
for welfare any more or less than other agents, as a result of circumstances beyond
the agent’s control. Once PCAs have been allocated, agents should then be free
to sell their PCAs or to buy more PCAs as they wish. In practice, of course, any
distribution of PCAs will only be an approximation to this ideal. But practical
difficulties do not impugn the moral value of the distributive principle itself, and an
approximation to an ideal is still a better outcome than complete disregard for the
ideal. There is, of course, a trade-off here between simplicity and justice. From a
policy perspective, it is tempting to say that, in order to keep the system simple, we
252 Keith Hyams
should allocate PCAs equally despite the injustices that will arise if we do so. But
I doubt that we need to go so far in prioritizing simplicity over justice. Simplicity is
only of value here insofar as it helps the system to run smoothly and transparently,
so that administrative costs are kept down and so that the public understand the
system and regard it as fair. We will undoubtedly have to compromise justice to
some extent for the sake of these ends, but we need not pessimistically assume that
any variation on equal allocations will prevent their achievement.
So, how should governments that adopt a system of PCAs proceed? Perhaps
the best way to proceed would be initially to distribute PCAs equally, but to hold
some PCAs back for agents who submit successful applications for additional
PCAs on the grounds of their unchosen exceptional circumstance. Such a system
would throw up not insignificant problems: the need to set clear criteria for
unchosen exceptional circumstance; the need to win public support for a system of
PCAs in general and for this distribution in particular; the need to design and
implement a system for fairly assessing applications from those claiming uncho-
sen exceptional circumstance. Any system initially more complex than this would
indeed run the risk of condemning the whole system of PCAs to failure from
the start. But the suggested system could be improved over time, both in order to
take account of more minor variations in circumstance-attributable emission
requirements, and in order to identify not only agents who have greater than
average circumstance-attributable emission requirements, but also agents who
have smaller than average circumstance-attributable emission requirements. So
once the system was up and running, governments might seek to develop more
sophisticated methods for assessing agents’ circumstance-attributable emission
requirements. But they should not rush to do so. By waiting a few years before
developing such methods, governments would have the considerable advantage
not only of having addressed initial problems and let the system settle down, but
also of having access to a wealth of information about the use of PCAs thus far,
which could usefully inform the development of new methods for assessing
circumstance-attributable emission requirements.
For helpful comments I would like to thank Paula Casal, Tim Hayward, Rob
Lamb, Andrew Williams, and two anonymous reviewers.
Notes
1
For more detail on the subtle differences between these schemes, see Catherine Bottrill, “Under-
standing DTQs and PCAs,” ECI Working Paper (2006), http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/research/energy/
downloads/pct/dtq-and-pca.pdf (accessed September 24, 2008); and Simon Roberts and Joshua
Thumim, A Rough Guide to Individual Carbon Trading: The Ideas, the Issues and the Next Steps,
Centre for Sustainable Energy report to Defra (2006), http://www.cse.org.uk/pdf/news1270.pdf
(accessed September 24, 2008).
2
Cf. Paul Baer, “Equity, Greenhouse-Gas Emissions, and Global Common Resources,” in Climate
Change Policy: A Survey, ed. Stephen H. Schneider, Armin Rosencranz and John O. Niles
(Washington, DC: Island Press, 2002), 393–408, at 401.
3
David Fleming, Paper 11—Tradable Quotas: Setting Limits to Carbon Emissions (London: The Lean
Economy Initiative, 1997); David Fleming, “Tradable Quotas: Using Information Technology to
Cap National Carbon Emissions,” European Environment 7 (1997): 139–48; David Fleming,
Energy and the Common Purpose: Descending the Energy Staircase with Tradable Energy Quotas
(TEQs), 3rd ed. (London: The Lean Economy Connection, 2007), http://www.teqs.net/book/
teqs.pdf (accessed September 24, 2008).
4
Richard Starkey and Kevin Anderson, “Domestic Tradable Quotas: A Policy Instrument for Reducing
Greenhouse-Gas Emissions from Energy Use,” Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research:
Technical Report 39 (2005), http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/research/theme2/final_reports/t3_22.pdf
(accessed September 24, 2008).
5
Mayer Hillman and Tina Fawcett, How We Can Save the Planet (London: Penguin, 2004); George
Monbiot, Heat: How We Can Stop the Planet Burning (London: Penguin, 2007).
6
On the UK government position, for example, see Tina Fawcett, Catherine Bottrill, Brenda Board-
man, and Geoff Lye, Trialling Personal Carbon Allowances, UKERC Research Report (2007),
http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/research/energy/downloads/fawcett-pca07.pdf; and http://www.defra.
gov.uk/environment/climatechange/uk/individual/carbontrading/index.htm (both accessed Sep-
tember 24, 2008).
7
Survey conducted by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR)—see IPPR press release, “IPPR
Says Public More Receptive to Personal Carbon Trading than Policy Makers Believe,” 16 July
2008, http://www.ippr.org.uk/pressreleases/?id=3208 (accessed September 24, 2008).
8
http://www.rsacarbonlimited.org/ (accessed September 25, 2008).
9
See Raymond J. Kopp, “CO2 Emissions—Taxes or Permits? Raymond J. Kopp asks whether U.S.
Climate Policy Should Be Based on Taxes or Permits,” Oxford Energy Forum 38 (August 1999):
14–16
10
For example, Roberts and Thumim, A Rough Guide, 8.
11
In the UK, for example, household energy and personal transport accounts for fifty percent of
national greenhouse gas emissions, or forty percent without aviation and public transport.
12
Steve Vanderheiden, Atmospheric Justice: A Political Theory of Climate Change (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2008): 222–23. Vanderheiden’s point is directed at the international context, but
it applies also to the domestic context.
13
See Martha C. Nussbaum, Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
14
Michael Sandel, ed., “Should We Buy the Right to Pollute?” chap. 14 in Public Philosophy (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 93–96, at 94. Goodin makes similar arguments in Robert
E. Goodin, “Selling Environmental Indulgences,” chap. 17 in Debating the Earth: The Environ-
mental Politics Reader, Second Edition, ed. John S. Dryzek (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2005), 239–56, although his arguments are levelled not only at a trade in emission permits, but at
any system that legitimizes emissions for a price, including taxes and non-tradable permits.
15
A stronger argument for prohibiting a trade in PCAs can be made if, instead of treating agents as
being under a collective responsibility to reduce aggregate emissions, one instead argues that
everyone is under an individual duty to reduce their own emissions in order to avoid harming
potential victims of climate change, regardless of what other agents are doing. Such a position
provides a stronger grounding for a prohibition on trading PCAs, but it does so at the considerable
cost of demanding unrealistically high reductions in individuals’ greenhouse gas emissions. As
Vanderheiden (Atmospheric Justice, 162) argues, since any emissions generate increases, however
small, in the likelihood that potential victims of climate change will be harmed, “the upshot is a
ban on nearly all human activity, including the exhaling of CO2, insofar as such acts release
greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.” (I suspect that a case could be made for exempting at least
those activities necessary to sustain life, but it is nevertheless true that the implications of
prohibiting all non-life-sustaining greenhouse gas emissions would still be immense.) Whatever
the moral merits of this position, which depend on involved issues about responsibility for
aggregate harms, they are beyond the scope of the present discussion. In considering how to
254 Keith Hyams
distribute PCAs—or for that matter how to distribute industrial permits or set environmental
taxes—we are already committed to treating the problem as one of sharing out the burden of
discharging a collective responsibility rather than enforcing individual duties to the potential
victims of climate change. Whether the decision to treat the problem this way is based on moral
reasons or policy reasons, it entails rejection of the individual-duty case against trading PCAs.
Note, however, that for policy reasons one might treat the problem in terms of distributing a
collective responsibility while still maintaining that the problem ought, morally, to be analyzed in
terms of individual duties drastically to reduce one’s own personal emissions. As Goodin (“Selling
Environmental Indulgences,” 252) writes, “Environmentalists ought to be realists. They ought not
go tilting at windmills; they ought not let the best be the enemy of the good; they ought get what
they can, here and now, rather than holding out in all-or-nothing fashion when doing so only
guarantees that nothing will be achieved.”
16
Henry Shue, “Subsistence Emissions and Luxury Emissions,” Law and Policy 15 (1993): 39–59; see
also Henry Shue, “Climate,” in A Companion to Environmental Philosophy, ed. Dale Jamieson
(Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2001), 449–59. Shue allows that additional emission rights
beyond those required for subsistence could be made available for trading. For additional argu-
ments against Shue’s position, see Stephen Gardiner, “Ethics and Global Climate Change,” Ethics
114 (2004): 555–600, at 585–86.
17
Shue, “Climate,” 455.
18
See, for example, publications cited above by Anderson, Bottrill, Fleming, Fawcett, Hillman,
Monbiot, and Starkey.
19
For example, Tim Gibbs and Simon Retallack, Trading Up: Reforming the European
Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme (London: IPPR, 2006), http://www.ippr.org.uk/
publicationsandreports/publication.asp?id=513 (accessed September 25, 2008).
20
For an overview of these efforts, see Keith Hyams, “Political Authority and Obligation,” chap. 1 in
Issues in Political Theory, ed. Catriona McKinnon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 9–32.
21
Peter Barnes, Who Owns the Sky? (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2001), 53–54, offers three answers
to the question “why should individuals be treated as the primary recipients of atmospheric
rights?”, all of which seem to me to be grounded in the fundamental liberal commitment to moral
individualism. Also relevant is Pogge’s more practical point that by allowing governments to
control resources on behalf of their populations—what Pogge calls the resource privilege—we
create incentives for political instability and corruption in developing countries. Thomas Pogge,
World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities and Reforms, Second Edition
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008), 119–20.
22
Lukas H. Meyer and Dominic Roser, “Distributive Justice and Climate Change: The Allocation of
Emission Rights,” Analyse and Kritik 28 (2006): 223–49.
23
Henry Shue, “The Unavoidability of Justice,” in The International Politics of the Environment, ed.
Andrew Hurrell and Benedict Kingsbury (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 373–97, at 397.
Quoted by: Michael Grubb, “Seeking Fair Weather: Ethics and the International Debate on
Climate Change,” International Affairs 71 (1995): 463–96, at 478; Matthew Paterson, “Interna-
tional Justice and Global Warming,” in The Ethical Dimensions of Global Change, ed. Barry
Holden (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1996), 181–201, at 183; E. Wesley and F. Peterson, “The
Ethics of Burden-Sharing in the Global Greenhouse,” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental
Ethics 11 (1999): 167–96, at 187; Stephen M. Gardiner, “Ethics and Global Climate Change,”
Ethics 114 (2004): 555–600, at 578.
24
For example, Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain, Global Warming in an Unequal World: A Case of
Environmental Colonialism (New Delhi: Centre for Science and Environment, 1991); Dale Jamie-
son, “The Epistemology of Climate Change: Some Morals for Managers,” Society and Natural
Resources 4 (1991): 319–29; Michael Grubb, Jame Sebenius, Antonia Magalhaes, and Susan
Subak, “Sharing the Burden,” in Confronting Climate Change: Risks, Implications, and
Responses, ed. Irvin M. Mintzer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 305–22; Aubrey
Meyer, Contraction and Convergence: The Global Solution to Climate Change, Schumacher
Briefing No. 5 (Dartington: Green Books, 2000); Paul Baer, John Harte, Barbara Haya, Antonia V.
Herzog, John Holdren, Nathan E. Hultman, Daniel M. Kammen, Richard B. Norgaard, and Leigh
Raymond, “Equity and Greenhouse Gas Responsibility,” Science 289 (2000): 2287; Paul Baer,
“Equity, Greenhouse-Gas Emissions,” 393–408; Tom Athanasiou and Paul Baer, Dead Heat:
Global Justice and Global Warming (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002); Peter Singer, ed.,
“One Atmosphere,” chap. 2 in One World: The Ethics of Globalization (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2002).
25
See Singer, “One Atmosphere,” 43–44; Baer, “Equity, Greenhouse-Gas Emissions,” 402.
26
Hillel Steiner, An Essay on Rights (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994).
27
Vanderheiden (Atmospheric Justice, 103–104) argues that there is a stronger case for an egalitarian
distribution of atmospheric emission rights than there is for other resources, because the atmo-
sphere transcends national boundaries and is not therefore subject to competing property claims
from those states in whose territory other resources lie. This is not to say that the national property
claims should always take precedence over other considerations, but only that a stronger
argument—Vanderheiden looks at the argument from an international Rawlsian original position
to a “resource redistribution principle” made by Charles R. Beitz, Political Theory and Interna-
tional Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979)—must be given for redistributing
resources between nations, than that required to justify an egalitarian allocation of a hitherto
unowned supranational resource. This distinction seems to me difficult to maintain. It is not
enough, to maintain the distinction, that nations claim ownership rights over natural resources in
their territory. Rather, the distinction requires that these claims be morally justified. But if one
endorses the view that unowned, supranational resources like the atmosphere should be distributed
in an egalitarian fashion, then there is a prima facie case for rejecting as morally unjustified the
claims made by nations over natural resources in their territory. All resources were once unowned
and supranational (or at least, before nations existed, extranational), and as such should have been
allocated in accordance with the same egalitarian distributive criteria that apply to the atmosphere.
Since they were not, we ought to conclude that existing claims to national ownership of resources
derive from unjust methods of appropriation, and are not therefore morally justified.
28
For example, Hillman and Fawcett, How We Can Save the Planet, 127; Starkey and Anderson,
“Domestic Tradable Quotas,” 11–14; Tina Fawcett, “Making the Case for Personal Carbon
Rations,” Proceedings of European Council for an Energy Efficient Economy Summer Study—
What Works and Who Delivers? (2005): 1483–93, at 1491, http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/research/
energy/downloads/fawcett-pct05.pdf (accessed September 27, 2008); Fleming, Energy and the
Common Purpose, 31; Monbiot, Heat, 47–48. For a detailed breakdown of the distributional
impacts of giving everyone an equal PCA allocation, see Joshua Thumim and Vicki White,
Distributional Impacts of Personal Carbon Trading, Centre for Sustainable Energy report to Defra
(2008), http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/climatechange/uk/individual/carbontrading/pdf/
pct-distributional-impacts.pdf (accessed September 23, 2008).
29
Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), chaps. 1, 2,
and 7; G. A. Cohen, “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice,” Ethics 99 (1989): 906–44.
30
Vanderheiden (Atmospheric Justice, 226–27) endorses a similar position at the level of national
emission allocations, which he calls a “modified equal shares approach.” Vanderheiden writes that
“differences in circumstance that lie outside of an agent’s control can form the basis for valid
claims for unequal resources, and must do so insofar as these affect opportunities for welfare”
(p. 227). There are two respects, however, in which the present position is more faithful to the
wider luck-egalitarian theory of justice than the position endorsed by Vanderheiden. First, by
applying luck-egalitarian criteria to the distribution of PCAs rather than national emission allo-
cations, the present position recognizes that luck-egalitarian distributive criteria are intended, at
the moral level, to describe what is owed to individual agents rather than to larger moral units such
as nations. Second, the present position endorses only luck-egalitarian criteria for the distribution
of PCAs, whereas Vanderheiden’s modified equal shares approach also endorses need-based
reasons for departing from equality: “the portion of available global emissions to be subject
256 Keith Hyams
to egalitarian distribution ought to be luxury emissions, not total emissions” (p. 226). But
luck-egalitarian and need-based distributive criteria do not combine comfortably in a unified moral
theory, one being a historical distributive principle and the other a patterned distributive principle.
Perhaps these two problems are linked: when luck-egalitarian criteria are applied to states rather
than individuals, the conclusion that states that make bad decisions should be left to suffer seems
unpalatable, precisely because states are not unitary agents in the way that individuals are. Rather,
the citizens who will suffer most within states that make bad decisions are unlikely to be the same
citizens who make the bad decisions. In order to protect these vulnerable citizens, it seems
necessary to supplement luck-egalitarian criteria for the distribution of emission quotas between
states with need-based criteria, even though the latter are unnecessary in the domestic context.
31
Can one say, for example, that “I need extra PCAs so that I can continue to fly to Barbados for my
holidays. You might be content with the seaside resort up the road, but I can only achieve a similar
level of welfare if I go to Barbados”? This raises the problem—usually couched in monetary terms
but equally problematic for emission requirements—that Dworkin (Sovereign Virtue, 48) has
dubbed expensive tastes. The answer depends, of course, on how one draws the distinction
between choice and circumstance (Dworkin draws the distinction so that all expensive tastes fall
on the choice side; Cohen in “On the Currency” and in G. A. Cohen, “Expensive Taste Rides
Again,” in Dworkin and His Critics, ed. J. Burley (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 3–29, draws the
distinction so that some expensive tastes fall on the choice side and some on the circumstance
side). Only if it is really a matter of circumstance rather than choice (e.g., a choice to foster the
taste for Barbados) that you need Barbados whereas I am content with the seaside resort up the
road would you have any case for extra permits, and that seems unlikely on most plausible versions
of the distinction. Furthermore, even if you do need your holiday in Barbados in order to achieve
the same level of welfare that I can achieve in the local seaside resort, nothing in the luck-
egalitarian interpretation of the normal-functioning approach automatically entitles either of us to
our holiday, if the overall emissions cap cannot accommodate such peripheral opportunities for
welfare. More likely to earn serious consideration, perhaps, are cases of so-called “love miles,”
where an agent lives far from close members of his family and needs to fly to see them. Mayer
Hillman (How We Can Save the Planet, 142–43) rejects any claim for additional permits for such
agents, but the luck-egalitarian normal-functioning approach might be more sympathetic, pro-
vided that an agent’s situation is the result of circumstance rather than choice, and that his welfare
would suffer sufficiently if he doesn’t see his family. The choice–circumstance distinction may
throw up particularly thorny issues in such cases. For example, is it a matter of choice or
circumstance that a naturally intelligent and ambitious Angolan pursues an academic career in the
United States and needs to fly back to Angola to see her family? It was her choice to go to the
United States, but it was a matter of circumstance that she was naturally intelligent and ambitious,
and that the universities in the United States were better than those in Angola.
Allocating Ecological Space
Steve Vanderheiden
josp_1450 257..275
Liberals have long been committed to two axiomatic claims about freedom:
that the exercise of control within one’s private space epitomizes individual
liberty, and that each person must be free to define and pursue the good life for
themselves. Together, these claims form a conception of freedom as autonomy
(from the Greek Auto-Nomos, giving law to oneself), conceptualized as a personal
space in which each can act according to one’s own view of the good, free from
external constraint. Liberal theories of justice have embraced such claims about
autonomy, defining justice in terms that recognize sovereignty within one’s
personal space and protect individuality. John Rawls’s primary goods,1 Ronald
Dworkin’s resources,2 and Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach3 all focus on
instrumental goods within a metric of egalitarian justice, allowing individuals full
control over their personal spaces of autonomy while maintaining the bases for
interpersonal comparison that distributive justice requires. This spatial conception
of liberty has dominated liberal thought at least since J. S. Mill’s observation that
“the only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in
our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede
their efforts to attain it.”4 Here, Mill not only defines individual liberty in terms of
autonomy, but he also specifies its limits: each of us should be free to pursue our
own ideas about the good within our own space, bounded only by the space of
others, where our acts infringe upon their autonomy.5 If this autonomous space is
to play the role that Mill and other liberals have long assumed, it must be
sufficiently large to allow for a wide range of actions and choices, allowing each
to express their individuality without encountering the limits that Mill mentions
and the constraints on action that they entail. If almost everything that I do
impedes others from pursuing the good in their way—harming them directly,
limiting their opportunities, or otherwise infringing upon their space—then my
personal space becomes vanishingly small, and my liberty but a trivial abstraction.
This spatial conception of freedom is challenged by analyses emerging from
the ecological crisis, which offer competing accounts of personal space with quite
different implications for the exercise of individual autonomy.6 Given ecological
limits, aggregate ecological space7 (i.e., life-supporting natural resource-based
goods and services, conceived in spatial terms) is finite and threatened by current
patterns of over-appropriation, yielding imperatives to fairly allocate that space
among various claimants, present and future. Uninhibited autonomy, as construed
above, is not sustainable, justifying significant limits on both personal space and

josp_1450 257..275
258 Steve Vanderheiden
acceptable conceptions of the good life if one person’s exercise of liberty is to be

prevented from diminishing another’s opportunity to do the same. The personal
space of autonomy has always been physical and temporal as well as conceptual
in that actions undertaken within it could affect current and future others, and
consideration of such effects has always set the boundaries of each person’s space.
Ecological limits highlight the urgency of fairly allocating personal space,
bounded in this same way but increasingly scarce, and require us to resurvey its
conceptual boundaries in light of its physical and temporal ones. Nearly every-
thing we do to survive (e.g., eating, breathing), not to mention activities associated
with living well, makes a de facto claim on ecological space, and under conditions
of scarcity this could be construed as (following Mill) depriving others of the
ecological space they need to pursue their good, thus justifying severe limits
on our actions and choices. Given such limits, basic actions like breathing and
eating may reside wholly within my personal space of autonomy—at least as it is
construed in the strong sense, in which I am completely autonomous—since they
occupy ecological space that could be claimed by others and which is subject to
distributive justice. Insofar as my sphere of personal liberty is construed as the
domain of what Mill terms “self-regarding conduct” and in which he argues that
“the public has no right to interfere,”8 it appears that this sphere of individual
autonomy becomes vanishingly small in light of analyses concerning ecological
limits. If activities as basic as eating and breathing make claims on shared
ecological space rather than taking place within a purely private domain, then the
liberal sphere of autonomy may be restricted to exclude even rudimentary human
functioning, let alone my cultivation of the sort of individuality that Mill
imagined.
Since nearly all of my acts and choices make claims on ecological space,
justice can no longer tenably be theorized primarily in terms of goods designed to
maximize or maintain personal space, but must instead begin with considerations
of how much shared space any person may defensibly claim. To challenge Mill’s
conclusions with his own logic, ecological limits suggest that very little of our
conduct is genuinely “self-regarding” in the sense that justifies our “absolute”
sovereignty within the personal spaces of autonomy in which persons enjoy “the
liberty of tastes and pursuits.” Rather, nearly all of our conduct “concerns others”
and thus makes us “amenable to society” and the limits placed upon our liberty in
the interest of justice.9 Given the commitments of classic liberal theory transposed
against the recognition of contemporary ecological limits, liberal justice must be
transformed from a set of principles safeguarding liberty and autonomy to ones
placing spatial limits on the ecological claims that persons make in their pursuit of
the good life if it is to continue to play the role of arbiter among competing claims
of individual freedom and guarantor of the social bases for personal autonomy. It
must recognize the causal role that environmental conditions play in human
welfare as well as the links between many of the activities associated with human
welfare and declining environmental conditions. And it must treat the scope of
justice as coterminous with that of the impacts of the relations that it governs,
Allocating Ecological Space 259
extending analyses of justice across national borders and over time where the
circumstances of justice require. That is to say, justice must now be centrally
concerned with allocating ecological space.
The scarcity of ecological space need not undermine the classic liberal con-
ception of freedom as autonomy, and indeed the allocation of ecological space
defines the sphere in which persons can make the kind of autonomous choices that
liberalism celebrates, within the constraints that it recognizes. Absent some notion
of individual entitlement to ecological space, there can be no space for autonomy,
for the two spaces are one and the same. I can be sovereign within my own space
of autonomy only so long as I do not claim an unjust share of ecological space in
the process. But the recognition of this scarcity by liberal theories of justice does
require some rethinking of several classic liberal assumptions that are maintained
by contemporary theories of egalitarian justice, and some changes of emphases
and amendment of several normative judgments issuing from those theories in
light of retained commitments from classic liberalism. In this essay, my aim is to
consider how liberal egalitarian justice theory might be reshaped by heretofore
unacknowledged ecological limits and how it might respond to the under-
theorized but urgent imperative to fairly allocate ecological space.
What Is Ecological Space?
The fact of ecological limits and its implications for various dimensions of
human endeavor have been slow to be incorporated into many existing scholarly
fields, and political theory is no exception. As Aldo Leopold observed of the
absence of an “ecological conscience” within the “intellectual emphasis, loyalties,
affections, and convictions” of persons and normative theories, “the proof that
conservation has not yet touched these foundations of conduct lies in the fact that
philosophy and religion have not yet heard of it.”10 Since the development of
classical liberalism predates the recognition of ecological limits and since the
contemporary inheritors of that tradition remain beholden to many of its core
premises about the human relationship with the natural world, it may not be
surprising that political theory continues to be informed by unrealistic assump-
tions and to be naïve about the human potential to degrade the essential conditions
for ongoing human flourishing. As this fact comes to be incorporated into political
theory, its several normative implications will shape the continued evolution of
liberal political thought in the same dynamic between empirical understanding
and normative prescription that has marked that tradition’s adaptability to change
and ongoing relevance for the past three centuries. How, though, might liberal
concepts of justice and autonomy be informed by this fact, and how might they be
transformed by it?
The fact of limits has been adequately observed elsewhere, but warrants a
brief synopsis here to explicate its relevant features. Humans require environmen-
tal goods and services in order to survive, and desire additional goods and services
beyond mere survival levels in order to flourish. We need clean air to breathe,
clean water to drink, and agricultural produce for food, clothing, and shelter. Our
waste must be assimilated back into the environment, whether from bodily pro-
cesses of digestion and respiration or from our use of energy and consumption of
commodities. These needs are basic in that, following Henry Shue’s distinction
between basic and nonbasic rights, “any attempt to enjoy any other right by
sacrificing the basic right would be quite literally self-defeating, cutting the
ground from beneath itself,”11 and their dependence on natural ecosystems is
essential in that technological substitutes for degraded resources do not currently
and may not ever exist. The satisfaction of these basic human needs and further
wants has some impact on the natural environment somewhere, and we can
conceptualize our aggregate impacts in terms of ecological space, or the amount
of the planet’s surface area needed to sustain our demand for environmental goods
and services at average levels of biological productivity. The best known of such
measures is the ecological footprint,12 which offers perhaps the most ecumenical
of matrices for gauging ecological demand at both individual and aggregate levels,
but in order to focus on the spatial concept of ecological demand rather than the
specific index for measuring it I shall use the more general term here.
Demand for ecological space varies widely among persons and peoples.
According to Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees, who developed the ecologi-
cal footprint idea and index, the average American requires 5.1 hectares of eco-
logical space in order to sustain her annual resource consumption and waste
production, while the average Indian requires only 0.38 hectares and the average
ecological footprint for all humans is 1.8 hectares.13 Manifold external drivers
affect the size of such averages, including national stages of economic develop-
ment, population density, housing patterns, and so on, but within any given society
and social stratum considerable variation in footprint size exist. While one’s social
milieu is a factor in determining one’s footprint, individual acts and preferences
also clearly play a significant role. Members of a common social class in the same
geographic region vary widely in the amounts of energy that is required to heat
and cool their homes, the distances that they must commute for work or choose to
travel for leisure as well as the fuel efficiency of their transportation choices, and
otherwise make a wide range of choices that can significantly increase or decrease
their individual claims on ecological space. Among the drivers of such wide
interpersonal variation is a personal commitment to environmental sustainability:
Some have a strong preference for reducing the amount of ecological space they
require as part of their conceptions of the good, often for some mix of environ-
mental and economic reasons, while others do not. Beyond some survival thresh-
old, individual demand for ecological space is largely discretionary, and varies
according to individual preferences and social norms that can increase or diminish
that demand, making some norms and preferences more sustainable than others.
One fact about ecological space has become manifestly evident in recent
decades: there is not enough space to accommodate the current de facto claims
made through human consumption patterns, let alone those of a more populous
or affluent world. Wackernagel and Rees illustrate this fact and some of its
implications: given the 8.9 billion hectares of biologically productive land and
aquatic ecosystems worldwide and reserving the ecological goods and services
from one-sixth of that space to support all nonhuman terrestrial and aquatic
species, they estimate that the planet contains 7.4 billion hectares of ecological
space that can be directed toward the satisfaction of human needs and wants. With
a current global population of 6.7 billion persons14 and an average individual
ecological footprint of 1.5 hectares, the world is currently running an ecological
deficit of 0.4 hectares/person. This alone bodes ill for the planet’s future, for
reasons to be considered shortly. But as the authors provocatively observe, if all
current persons were to consume resources and produce waste at the rate of the
average American, we would need the ecological capacity of an additional three
earths in order to support this one planet’s human population alone. Average
human footprints paint a disturbing enough picture of unsustainable human con-
sumption patterns, but these wide deviations from the mean reveal equally wide
variations in current claims on ecological space and the related difficulties in
bringing about a sustainable planet. It is possible to accommodate this sort of
excessive demand on ecological space in the short run, for example, by depleting
stored energy reserves and natural capital like forests and fish stocks that generate
natural resources or absorb waste. But this ongoing pattern of overuse is unsus-
tainable and degrades ecological productivity over time, resulting in decreasing
amounts of available ecological space to accommodate future demands. A sus-
tainable planet is one that is able to live within its available ecological space, given
various demands on that space by all its human and nonhuman residents. An
unsustainable one is literally living on borrowed time, whether that debt is
incurred to the planet’s past, through depletion of stored nonrenewable resources
like coal and oil, or to its increasingly bleak future, through the insidious bequest
of depletion and pollution to future generations.
From this one central fact, several related observations follow, and some
normative implications that are often thought to follow cannot indeed validly be
inferred. As I have argued elsewhere,15 global limits on ecological space based on
the earth’s ecological capacity cannot justify highly unequal national limits on
ecological demand based solely on the unequal ecological capacities within
national territories, as if nation-states are entitled to all and only the ecological
resources located within their borders. Those with the good fortune of territorial
natural resource wealth have no legitimate claim to far greater per capita ecologi-
cal footprints merely by virtue of this natural abundance, and those fortunate
individuals that command the contemporary surrogate for abundance in land
cannot necessarily make a justified claim to proportionally larger shares of eco-
logical space than their less fortunate counterparts. Principles of national and
individual allocation cannot simply be inferred from global limits, which concern
physical facts rather than normative claims. The sort of wide inequality in access
to ecological space that is seen in current use patterns requires a separate justifi-
cation from the natural distribution of ecological wealth, and may be indefensible
on any terms. While the fact of ecological scarcity has been invoked on behalf of
a variety of social and political agendas, other and more controversial premises are
required before many such normative judgments can validly be reached. My
interest here lies in what must follow for liberal political theory from recognition
of ecological limits, not in what might follow from that in combination with other
assumptions or biases.
Another observation also necessarily follows: global limits combined with
global demand that is well in excess of those limits entails some international,
interpersonal, and intertemporal allocation of ecological space. At least some
claimants on such space will be forced to curb their ecological demands in light of
scarcity produced by the demands of others. Indeed, allocation must occur even
when global demand for space does not exceed ecological limits, since it does not
require competing claims but rather entails the division of some finite good among
various parties. The conscious recognition of or effort to observe ecological limits
is not a prerequisite to conceiving of human claims upon ecological space as
constituting an allocation, as I use the term here, since to “allocate” presupposes
neither a fair process or outcome nor any intention to deprive those receiving less
or to reward those getting more. Allocations of this sort can be intentional and
based in justified principles of distributive justice or they can be the unintentional
result of current and future use patterns. If the present generation of humans
ignores limits on its aggregate ecological footprint, whether from ignorance,
antipathy, or outright malevolence, this necessarily comes at the expense of future
generations. If the present generation as a whole observes such aggregate limits,
then the refusal by one nation to do so comes at the expense of other nations, and
within a country that observes national limits, individual refusals to limit con-
sumption come at the expense of other citizens. Such is the logic of limits: more
for any one necessarily means less for others.
Several normative judgments can also be inferred from the fact of ecological
limits combined with the inevitability of allocating scarce ecological space and a
simple principle of non-maleficence. If the present generation, through its words
and deeds, continues to ignore ecological limits and claims more than its share of
ecological space, this will almost certainly make later generations vulnerable to
current de facto allocation choices, just as the pollution of a river by upstream
riparian users will almost certainly affect those living downstream. While scholars
may debate the appropriate degree of culpability for harm that is unintentionally
caused, this does little to mitigate the impact of the harm itself. Unsustainable
levels of resource consumption and waste production cause avoidable harm and
suffering, and we know enough about the causal chains linking over-appropriation
of ecological space with the predictable harm that results to fault such acts as
morally negligent, if not willfully malevolent. The over-appropriation of ecologi-
cal space constitutes an unjustified claim to more than one’s share of a finite
resource that carries with it the necessary consequence that later generations will
have to survive with less than their fair share of that shared resource, and so is
unjust. Thinking about how ecological space ought to be allocated is thus not some
optional and empty intellectual exercise, but is rather an inescapable imperative
that can drive contemporary environmental policy decisions and act as a prin-
cipled constraint on individual life plans and conceptions of the good, or its unfair
allocation can be the unintentional but inevitable result of a collective failure to
exercise due moral care. The fact of ecological limits and unavoidability of its
allocation leaves open only two possibilities: the way in which persons, nations,
and entire generations allocate ecological space can either be justified or unjusti-
fied. The claims that each makes on that space through their patterns of resource
use and waste production can be just or unjust, a judgment that stands whether or
not the parties in question acknowledge this to be the case.
Allocation and Normative Judgment
But what does it mean to allocate ecological space among persons and
peoples? The term often conjures the image of some authoritative body that
weighs opposing claims and issues limited use rights on the basis of such claims.
While it is obvious that no such body exists, particularly at the global level, this
image nonetheless captures the essential aspect of an allocation framework. When
determining which of two or more contending parties are entitled to some scarce
good, fair decisions must be guided by the strength of the respective claims rather
than the identity or other irrelevant characteristics of the parties in question. That
one party to the conflict may be wealthier, stronger, or better connected to political
power cannot be allowed to influence allocation decisions unless these constitute
criteria relevant to entitlement claims, regardless of the role that each plays in the
de facto allocation of ecological space through current use patterns. Decisions
about each party’s warranted share of ecological space must be principled rather
merely deferring to greater power or granting concessions to the first claimants,
and should be justifiable to all on the basis of publicly defensible reasons and
objectively measurable criteria. Such decisions, that is to say, are matters of dis-
tributive justice16 rather than issues of “might makes right” or its equivalent.
By appealing to principles of distributive justice to allocate ecological space,
it might appear as though the conventional distinction between ethics and political
philosophy has been collapsed. Actions that make claims on ecological space—a
broadly inclusive category that not only contains much of what was previously
regarded as the domain of ethics but also much of what was once thought to exist
outside of that sphere—must now be subject to principles defining the just distri-
bution of that space. Should one exceed their just share, this transgression could
be condemned as unjust in the distributive sense. That is, the normative judgment
that they should not have acted as they did would be based on their indefensible
claim to more than their share of ecological space, to the detriment of others. But
notice that this is not identical to evaluating the act as wrong in a moral sense. Had
the agent not already made all their prior claims on ecological space that caused
the act in question to be the one that exceeded their individual budget, that act
itself would not be unjust. Hence, it would be mistaken to describe particular acts
or choices as unjust in this sense, though there may be some that by themselves
bust ecological budgets and so result in injustice by necessity. Rather, a person’s

full package of actions or pattern of choices may adhere to or exceed their just
allowances of ecological space. Normative judgments are thus applied to these
packages or patterns, and not to the discrete acts or choices that exceed some
threshold. Ethical judgment therefore remains in the picture, serving as a supple-
ment to judgments based in distributive justice; the former is not subsumed within
the latter. An act can be wrong without being unjust, as when the offense is other
than an excessive claim on shared resources, and unjust without being wrong. To
this latter possibility, which forces the reevaluation of a wide range of acts and
choices, we now turn.
Feminists invoke the slogan “the personal is political” in order to challenge
the conventional division between public and private spheres, where the latter
denotes acts and choices that are regarded as beyond the gaze of normative social
or political judgment. Women’s choices about whether to work or remain within
the home as primary caregivers to their children, whether or not to marry or to
conform to other conventional gender roles, and so on, have been successfully
challenged as adversely affecting other women, and therefore not being the strictly
personal choices that they were once considered. Resting on the liberal distinction
between public and private, the feminist effort to politicize the personal choices of
women (as well as men) can be regarded as less an effort to break this dichotomy
and more an attempt to redraw the line dividing public and private spheres to
accurately reflect the causal connections between the acts and choices of some and
the opportunities of others, often through the constraining mechanism of social
norms. Campaigns to politicize acts and choices that harm women aren’t meant to
obliterate the liberal sphere of protected self-regarding conduct, where persons
can exercise autonomy free from the influence of state coercion or social pressure,
but rather aim to ensure that other-affecting conduct does not insidiously mas-
querade as private in order to deflect normative critique. The aim and effect of
such campaigns is not to make everything a political act, to be subject to public
scrutiny and the force of social norms and possibly also to coercive regulation, but
rather to update the boundary to reflect mistaken past assumptions and shifting
intellectual terrain.
As with feminist campaigns to politicize acts and choices that had previously
if mistakenly been regarded as private, environmentalist efforts to call critical
attention to many consumer choices likewise accept a liberal division between
public and private but assert a mistaken identification of political acts and choices
as strictly personal. Campaigns against highly fuel-inefficient sport utility vehicles
(SUVs), for example, politicize personal transport choices on grounds that such
decisions can potentially harm others and so must be subject to more than purely
private esthetic and economic preferences.17 By the line of argument that emerges
from this critique of automotive choice, the state not only has a right to regulate
motor vehicle fuel economy but also has an obligation to do so, since excessively
inefficient options significantly raise the likelihood that the consumers purchasing
them will contribute to ecological harm through their over-appropriation of
ecological space. While it would be hypothetically possible to avoid such harm

with even the most fuel-inefficient choice of vehicles at sufficiently low rates of
use, this logical possibility does nothing to mitigate the harm that does occur or to
blunt the fact that it would be avoidable through fuel economy regulation. More-
over, one consumer’s decision to buy a large and fuel-inefficient vehicle makes it
more difficult for others to purchase smaller and more efficient models, given
weight and bumper height incompatibilities that raise kill rates when the former
collides with the latter.18 According to this claim, then, one’s transport choices are
political rather than personal; they are subject to normative consideration in ethics
and/or political philosophy rather than being the purely personal choices that some
opponents of automobile fuel economy regulation maintain.
Regardless of the merits of this SUV critique, it serves to illustrate how a
concern with ecological limits can politicize consumption choices that were
previously treated as subject to personal preferences alone. It might be wrong to
purchase and drive a vehicle that necessarily harms others, as by exposing them to
higher risk of injury or death in collisions (as is the case with most SUVs)—an
ethical judgment that holds regardless of what other choices that consumer makes.
On the other hand, it would be unjust to consume energy and produce waste at
rates that exceed one’s fair personal allotment of ecological space, which is far
more likely to result from the use of a fuel-inefficient vehicle than the comparable
use of a fuel-efficient one. Normative arguments for regulatory standards on
vehicle fuel efficiency take the latter form, claiming a public interest in personal
transport choices that justifies the use of public coercion over such choices, here
in the form of prohibitions against excessive inefficiency. Their concern is with
just allotments rather than particular acts, so they focus on the relationship
between vehicle choices and their effects on ecological space over time, noting the
disparity in ecological impacts for otherwise-similar transportation services. But
such regulations do not themselves allocate ecological space, for they place no
upper limit on the overall amount of petroleum that any vehicle can consume or
pollution it can emit. While their motive is derivative of concerns for allocating
ecological space—assuming that regulatory incentives for promoting efficient
transport choices will reduce aggregate as well as individual demand for such
space—they lack the hard cap of a formal allocation. Appeals to justice such as
these aim to remove the consumer’s automobile choice from the realm of purely
private acts, calling for external coercion to facilitate the mitigation of harm
without directly prohibiting harmful acts. In doing so, they call attention to limits
on ecological space, but stop short of any allocation of it to particular persons. In
this sense, environmental standards for individual commodities like automobiles
rest on a kind of second-order moral imperative in that the acts and choices they
prohibit may not themselves be wrong or unjust, but they make it easier for users
of such regulated commodities to avoid contributing to harm and thus to realize
the demands of justice.
Allocating ecological space therefore involves the assignment of moral
responsibility to persons or peoples who exceed their fair shares of ecological
goods and services, holding them culpable for harm that results from the depletion
of those goods and degradation of those services as well as the additional con-
straints that they unfairly impose on others through their over-appropriation of
shared resources. This assignment of moral responsibility may be accompanied
by some state-sponsored rationing scheme and the legal forms of responsibility
for unjust claims that one would entail, but it need not. It is a way of causally
connecting harm that results from aggregate patterns of unsustainable behavior to
the individual acts and choices that produce those aggregate patterns, even where
such discrete acts by themselves are insufficient to cause unique and discernable
harm.
Notice that the allocation of ecological space allows for some threshold of
justified claims on ecological space before further claims become unjust, leaving
in place a sphere of autonomy in which acts and choices that are not otherwise
wrong are treated as private and thus immune from moral or political critique, at
least while associated with purely self-regarding conduct. But many of the con-
sumer choices and consumption activities that are protected as private below the
threshold of fair shares become public above that threshold, inviting normative
critique like that of the fuel efficiency of one’s personal transport choices. Because
limited claims on ecological space are viewed as benign, but excessive ones as
harmful and unjust, the allocation of ecological space makes it impossible to
classify many consumer choices as categorically benign and therefore subject to
consumer sovereignty alone. Many such acts and choices become harmful and
unjust beyond some threshold that defines fair shares of ecological space—and so
are neither wholly private nor public, neither purely self-regarding nor other-
affecting—challenging the classic liberal assumption that discrete acts viewed in
isolation can be categorized as harmful or benign, where the latter “occasions [no]
perceptible hurt to any assignable individual.”19 Liberal autonomy thus takes on a
quantitative rather than qualitative hue once ecological space is allocated, chang-
ing the nature and application of the concept within political theory and requiring
a fundamental rethinking of justice theories that have been grounded in outmoded
conceptions of this classic liberal commitment.
Egalitarian Justice and Ecological Limits
Normative concepts and theories that have been premised upon natural abun-
dance or practically infinite ecological space may become invalid under more
realistic conditions of ecological scarcity. For example, Locke’s theory of prop-
erty acquisition posits a set of conditions for the justified appropriation of land
from the commons so long as each withdrawal leaves “enough, and as good”
behind for others. As Locke writes, “he that leaves as much as another can make
use of, does as good as taking nothing at all.”20 Of course, the converse of this
position is that appropriations of land from the commons that exacerbate scarcity
do “prejudice” others and thus may require their consent, or at least the ability to
justify that appropriation to them. While Locke recognized that the Enclosure
movement21 had already undermined this condition in the British Isles and
throughout most of Europe during his lifetime, he suggested that continued abun-
dance of land in America enabled this premise, which is crucial to his analysis.
Under conditions of perfect abundance in land or ecological space, the appropria-
tion from the commons by one person has no practical effect on opportunities for
others to similarly appropriate, even if it exacerbates scarcity at the margins. As
Locke argues, under such conditions the community has no legitimate interest in
individual claims on common property when none are harmed by them, and the
act of appropriation need not be regarded as a matter of ethics or justice. But
perfect abundance has never existed anywhere, and Locke’s conclusion is invali-
dated under more realistic conditions of scarcity, as others have noted.22
Scarcity of ecological space may invalidate many other long-standing nor-
mative commitments from the liberal canon, forcing us to rethink judgments
reached on the basis of obsolete premises in light of a more realistic set of
assumptions. One such commitment concerns the way that liberal autonomy is
theorized with egalitarian justice theory. Rawlsian justice theory, for example,
endorses social primary goods as the objects of just distribution in part because
they can be more readily redistributed than can natural primary goods, but also
because as all-purpose instrumental goods their recognition as primary is neutral
with respect to various conceptions of the good life. All persons need resources
in order to pursue their own versions of the good life, regardless of what their
individual conceptions of the good entail, so a resource-based view of justice
preserves the classic liberal emphasis on autonomy against objectionable equality
of welfare views as well as perfectionist strains within political thought that seek
to instantiate one particular view of the good within society. As Dworkin’s version
of liberal egalitarian justice theory makes clear, equalizing resources makes it
uniquely possible to hold persons responsible for their choices, allowing for an
endowment-insensitive but ambition-sensitive allocation of social goods.23 Free
to choose any life plan or conception of the good that they desire, persons in
Dworkin’s view are granted virtually unlimited autonomy and then held respon-
sible for the choices that they make from an equal starting point, after redressing
the natural injustice of unequal endowments and neutralizing the effects of luck.
By this conception of individual autonomy, which pervades egalitarian justice
theory generally and provides the characteristic feature that connects it to the
liberal tradition, the focus is on allocating instrumental goods that persons may
deploy as they see fit, subject only to the constraints that they not use them to harm
others and that each bears responsibility for their choices in how such goods are
used.
But by making instrumental economic goods the objects of egalitarian dis-
tribution, and decisions regarding how those goods are used the core element of
individual autonomy, egalitarian justice theories like those of Rawls and Dworkin
obscure the potentially wide variation in claims on ecological space that results
from the way that people use their just shares of goods. This blind spot is due in
large part to the way that both Rawls and Dworkin rely on economic theory to
conceptualize the personal space of liberal autonomy. Dworkin, for example,

bases his envy test on the market-based metaphor of a hypothetical auction, where
egalitarian distribution is achieved so long as no participant prefers someone
else’s post-auction bundle of goods to their own. According to Dworkin’s “market
procedure” thought experiment, “people decide what sorts of lives to pursue
against a background of information about the actual cost their choices impose on
other people and hence on the total stock of resources that may fairly be used by
them.”24 When, for example, multiple bidders desire the same auction lot, the
scarcity of that good drives up its price, providing information to each bidder
about the costs to others of losing access to that good. But this feedback concern-
ing costs to others ends once the auction is concluded. Unless participants were
required to bid on the ecological space that they will claim through their various
consumption-related activities—they are not on Dworkin’s island, where such
space is assumed to be abundant and therefore valueless—then not only do they
lack any “background of information” about how these claims harm others but
they have incentives to impose externality costs on others through unjust claims on
ecological space,25 frustrating the envy test. Only if each person had to either bid
on shares of ecological space in the initial auction or purchase additional unused
shares from others when their claims on space exceeded their personal allowances
(as a form of ex ante compensation for the other’s excessive claims) could
Dworkin’s scheme ensure the genuine equality that it promises. So long as
ecological space is not treated as among the goods to be subject to egalitarian
distribution, incentives toward environmental despoliation are inadvertently built
into Dworkin’s model of autonomy and genuine equality will remain elusive.
Similarly, Rawls’s influential difference principle is premised upon the
absence of limits on the aggregate quantity of social primary goods to be made
available and subject to egalitarian distribution. At the core of the Rawlsian
argument for justified inequality is an assumption, grounded in economic theory
and flavored by economistic commitments to unlimited growth, that incentives
created through unequal allocations of social primary goods can increase the size
of the overall economic pie to be divided among all members of society, making
it possible for such inequality to benefit the least advantaged. Whether or not this
sort of unlimited economic growth is possible shall not be my concern here, but
suffice to observe the sharp contrast between the objects of conventional egalitar-
ian justice theory and those associated with ecological space. The latter are finite
in a way that the former are assumed not to be. Allowing some to claim larger
shares of ecological space may result in a larger overall quantity of Rawlsian
primary goods, satisfying the difference principle if this surplus is redirected
toward the least advantaged, but it cannot increase the amount of ecological space
available to disadvantaged persons and groups. If the maximin rule is to apply to
allocations of ecological space, it cannot be in the same way or for the same
reasons as are invoked in Rawlsian justice theory, since any inequality in the
allocation of a finite good necessarily entails less of that good for the least well off.
Both of these models view autonomy through the metaphor of free persons
deploying instrumental resources in the service of private ends, unconstrained by

external interference, where justice is concerned primarily with the initial alloca-
tion of those economic resources. In ignoring the crucial role of noneconomic
resources like ecological space, both Rawls and Dworkin fail to recognize the
causal role that ecological space plays in human welfare and relegate to a pro-
tected sphere of autonomy many of the activities that contribute to ecological
degradation.
This implication of ecological limits has begun to be recognized within
egalitarian justice theory, albeit indirectly. Ethical cosmopolitans like Charles
Beitz26 and Thomas Pogge27 have noted that highly unequal claims on the earth’s
natural resources stocks are causally responsible for the impoverishment of the
world’s least advantaged, giving rise to claims of compensation in order to redress
earlier injustices, whether through Beitz’s “resource redistribution principle” or
Pogge’s “global resources dividend.” Both reject the Rawlsian premise that an
unequal allocation of the desideratum in question (natural resources themselves
for Beitz, the wealth that results from their exploitation for Pogge) can be ben-
eficial or even benign for those left with less of it as a result. Neither applies their
analysis to ecological space, however, focusing instead on natural resources like
timber and minerals that can be exploited for economic gain but ignoring the
effects of industrialization and increased consumption on ecological capacities for
absorbing waste.28 Moreover, neither takes seriously the way that ecological limits
potentially constrain economic development and thereby pose obstacles to further
human development or the causal role that uninhibited individual autonomy in
consumption choices can play in causing ecological harm half a world away.
In short, cosmopolitan justice theories have begun to display some insights
from the recognition of ecological limits, but there remains much further insight
to be gleaned and implications to be followed. For example, since some nations
routinely make uncompensated claims on the ecological capacities of others by
producing more waste than the sinks within their borders can absorb, a compre-
hensive analysis of ecological space that included ecological inputs as well as
outputs would yield an even stronger case for redistribution and compensation
than those that have been advanced thus far. Beitz and Pogge may be correct in
observing that ecological goods are subject to egalitarian distribution and perhaps
compensation for past and present over-appropriations, but the case for fault-
based liability may be even clearer with ecological services. Moreover, at least
some of these waste assimilation capacities transcend national borders and the
property-based entitlement claims with which they are associated, undercutting
one potent objection to regarding the planet’s resources as commonly held rather
than privately owned and providing additional ammunition against those denying
that justice applies across national borders. Perhaps the best example of a fully
global allocation conflict involves the atmosphere’s capacity to absorb the green-
house gases that cause to climate to change. Since this capacity is not located
within any national borders, rights to it cannot be territorial in the way that
entitlements to other resources are often thought to be. And since climate change
threatens all nations and peoples, independent of their respective emissions of

greenhouse gases, it offers a clear case of global ecological interdependence
against communitarian denials that the capacity to harm across borders establish
the circumstances of justice.29 This finite atmospheric capacity and the interde-
pendence of harmful causes and effects further undermine national claims to
larger shares of atmospheric space based in territorial ecological abundance and
avoid other objections that plague the terrestrial resource-based accounts that have
thus far dominated cosmopolitan justice debates.30
Conclusion: Theorizing Ecological Space
So how might egalitarian justice theories be wielded on behalf of allocating

ecological space, and how does thinking about ecological space constrain or
transform existing theories of distributive justice? Constructing the problem of
global justice in terms of allocating space offers several unique advantages and
illuminates several key features of an adequate normative theory. As noted above,
ecological space is a genuinely global resource in that it transcends national
borders, giving rise to conflicts over individual and national appropriations of
space that adversely affects other nations and persons. Given the zero-sum nature
of such conflicts over finite resources, this spatial conception establishes causal
chains connecting over-appropriation of ecological space by some and avoidable
harm suffered by others. Andrew Dobson suggests that the ecological footprint
idea creates a “space of potential obligation” for grounding a “thick cosmopoli-
tanism”31 based in culpability for harm rather than the thin forms of obligation that
might be generated through membership in a common humanity or mere ability to
assist. The first advantage of conceptualizing justice in terms of ecological space,
then, concerns its scope and site, and the second lies in the robustness of the
obligations that it creates. The spatial conception reveals the global scope of many
cases of anthropogenic environmental harm and the irrelevance of national
borders or membership in either the causal chains that degrade ecological space or
the suffering that results. Climate change is again illustrative: the phenomenon is
largely caused by the world’s most affluent persons and peoples and is expected to
disproportionately harm its poorest, yet the geographical point sources of emis-
sions are not relevant to either its causes or effects.32 The problem’s scope is fully
global, so the site of any effective remedy must involve institutions capable of
avoiding this international injustice, and the failure by those culpable to mitigate
ongoing climate-related harm presents a clear example of fault-based liability,
which offers perhaps the strongest available normative foundation for cosmopoli-
tan justice.33
Because the overuse of ecological space by any generation leads directly to its
degradation and resulting deleterious conditions for future generations, whereas
the several metrics of egalitarian justice cannot so readily be allocated over time,34
construing distributive justice in terms of ecological space allows for more robust
analyses of intergenerational obligations. Finally, because the aggregate human
appropriation of ecological space is causally related to declining habitats for

nonhuman animals, which also require ecological space for their survival and
flourishing, the analysis of anthropocentric obligations like those inherent in
distributive justice can be made commensurable with duties of environmental
ethics insofar as both involve allocating ecological space as the core means of
satisfying their distinct categories of obligations. In contrast with those goods that
are instrumental to human welfare but typically useless to nonhumans, ecological
space offers an object of distribution that clearly illustrates how the demand for
justice among humans exists in tension with obligations between human persons
and communities and nonhuman ones. Conceiving of distributive justice in terms
of the allocation of ecological space among all affected parties thus makes pos-
sible a view that takes into account the international, intergenerational, and inter-
specific aspects of conflicts over scarce resources.
A focus on ecological space rather than social resources like primary goods
need not require the abandonment of autonomy, and indeed maintains some space
for persons to exercise control over their own personal spaces in a fashion that
is derivate of Mill’s classic expression of the concept. But as noted above, this
sphere of unconstrained liberty shrinks considerably once ecological limits are
taken into account, so the focus on autonomy can no longer play the hegemonic
role in justice theory that it once did. Also relevant to each person’s ability to
exercise control over their personal space of autonomy is the restraint exercised by
others in their own personal spaces. Justice theory must therefore incorporate
some metric of ecological goods and bads, allocating not only what people need
to survive and flourish but also what they produce as by-products of that activity.
Conceptions of social justice that envision increasing shares for the least advan-
taged as the key to rectifying unjustified patterns of inequality depend on a naïve
model of beneficial or at least benign economic growth in which increases in
consumption for the poor are possible without even larger decreases in consump-
tion by the affluent. A realistic view of ecological limits would posit at least some
decrease in consumption rates by the affluent as a necessary condition for the
advancement of the poor. While this critique has played out in global environ-
mental politics, against the cornucopian assumptions of those advocating a
version of sustainable development which supposes that growth of production and
consumption in developing countries can be sustainable in the absence of eco-
nomic contraction in industrialized ones,35 its force has not yet been reflected in
egalitarian justice theories that limit their purview to domestic inequalities. Egali-
tarians have not, for example, called for a “contraction and convergence” on
consumption within or even among nations, as cosmopolitan climate justice
advocates have with respect to global greenhouse gas emissions.36
Recognition of ecological limits within egalitarian justice theory need not
necessarily take the form of calls for the leveling down of national economic
production and consumption, as in contraction and convergence climate policy
scenarios. Rather, it might take the form of a more prominent distinction between
those social goods which are subject to zero-sum ecological limits, such as the
forms of wealth that are translatable into increased consumption and therefore
require larger shares of ecological space, and those which are not, such as rights
and liberties as well as the other indices of human development. It may be possible
to expand the array of rights, liberties, powers, and opportunities to be made
available to the world’s less advantaged without decreasing those of the more
advantaged, whereas the same cannot be said of expanding their shares of eco-
logical space. The incentive effects of the difference principle might be redirected
away from economic growth in general—which, when accompanied by increased
claims on ecological space, is necessarily averse to the interests of some disad-
vantaged party, now or in the future—and toward the promotion of greater eco-
logical efficiency, understood as deriving more human welfare from the same
ecological resource inputs and waste outputs. Such efficiency gains may be tech-
nological, allowing users to experience qualitatively similar consumption options
with smaller ecological footprints, or they may involve shifts in social norms,
allowing persons influenced by those norms to decrease their consumption
without concomitant declines in welfare or happiness.37 Insofar as these ecological
efficiency gains can be transferred to the disadvantaged, they satisfy the egalitar-
ian logic of the difference principle, but do so without the inegalitarian conse-
quences. Innovations in ecological efficiency already benefit the innovators—they
derive more welfare from a constant share of ecological space—rendering unnec-
essary what would likely be an unjustified claim on larger shares of that space in
order to support their entrepreneurial efforts. Incorporation of ecological limits
within egalitarian justice theory would by necessity discourage conceptions of the
good that depend on unsustainable acts and choices, as it currently discourages
preferences whose satisfaction necessitates injustice toward others. But it need not
compromise the core intuition that has guided the development of contemporary
justice theory in general: that for all to be treated as free and equal, some limits
on freedom are necessary in order to protect the freedom of others. Conceiving of
this balancing act in terms of allocating ecological space merely highlights how
difficult but nonetheless urgent this endeavor can be.
Notes
1
Rawls defines primary goods as “things which it is supposed a rational man wants whatever else he
wants,” and describes as including “rights and liberties, opportunities and powers, income and
wealth.” John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1971), 92.
2
Ronald Dworkin, “What is Equality? Part 2: Equality of Resources,” Philosophy and Public Affairs
10, no. 4 (Autumn 1981): 283–345.
3
Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), esp. chaps. 1–4.
4
John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty,” in On Liberty and Other Essays, ed. John Gray (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1991): 5–128, esp. 17.
5
This limit is specified by Mill’s harm principle, which serves to demarcate the borders of personal
space and to justify state coercion on individual liberty. According to Mill, “the sole end for which
mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any
of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully
exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.
His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.” In support of this view, John
Skorupksi takes this spatial conception to be central to Mill’s political thought, casting the classic
liberal conception of autonomy upon which Mill relies as “the freedom to do as one wishes within
one’s private domain,” where the “private space” of liberty is distinct from the “public space” of
justice. See Skorupski, John Stuart Mill (London: Routledge, 1989), 364–65.
6
Some critics blame liberal commitments to individual autonomy for enabling rampant ecological
exploitation and undermining the basis of effective state regulation, sometimes even going so far
as to recommend authoritarian forms of government to restrict individual choices. While I don’t
wish to endorse such views here, I take the prevailing view within green politics to hold that
completely unrestricted individual consumer freedom cannot be sustainable on a planet with seven
billion human inhabitants, and that at least some restrictions on that freedom are essential to
bringing about a sustainable society and planet. The form and content of such restrictions,
however, remain a key controversy among those sympathetic to both liberal autonomy and
environmental sustainability.
7
In describing demand for ecological goods and services in spatial terms, I follow Tim Hayward, who
credits Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen for originating the concept. See Hayward, “Thomas Pogge’s
Global Resources Dividend: A Critique and an Alternative,” Journal of Moral Philosophy 2, no. 3
(2005): 317–32, and Georgescu-Roegen, Energy and Economic Myths (New York: Pergamon
Press, 1976).
8
Mill, “On Liberty,” 95.
9
Ibid., 14.
10
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (New York: Oxford University Press, 1949), 210.
11
Henry Shue, Basic Rights (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), 18–19.
12
See Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees, Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on
the Earth (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 1996).
13
Ibid., 97.
14
U.S. Census Bureau, online at http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/popclockworld.html (accessed
August 15, 2008).
15
Steve Vanderheiden, “Two Conceptions of Sustainability,” Political Studies 56, no. 2 ( June 2008):
435–55.
16
I use the term “distributive justice” in the most general sense here, to refer to normatively defensible
allocations of goods, rather than in reference to any particular family of principles of justice.
Whether or not liberal egalitarian theories of justice are appropriate bases for allocating ecological
space, such allocations surely must be based in some sort of principle if they are to involve
justifiable exercises of power and claims on resources.
17
For an assessment of this line of harm-based argument, see Steve Vanderheiden, “Assessing the Case
Against the SUV,” Environmental Politics 15, no. 1 (February 2006): 23–40.
18
See Vanderheiden, “Assessing the Case,” and Keith Bradsher, High and Mighty: The Dangerous
Rise of the SUV (Public Affairs, 2004). Large trucks and sport utility vehicles typically have
bumpers that are higher than those on passenger cars that, in combination with the weight
differential between the two types of vehicles, significantly raise the probability that passengers
in the lower and lighter vehicle will be killed in a collision between the two. In this sense, driving
the former creates a consumption externality for owners of the latter, raising risks for other
motorists.
19
Mill, “On Liberty,” 91.
20
John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, ed. C. B. MacPherson (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett,
1980), 21.
21
The “Enclosure movement” refers to a process by which common land was appropriated for private
use, starting in the 15th century. By the time of Locke’s Second Treatise, the English commons had
been largely appropriated.
22
See, for example, G. A. Cohen, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1995), chaps. 9–10, Michael P. Zuckert, Natural Rights and the New
Republicanism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 255–56, and Clark Wolf,
“Contemporary Property Rights, Lockean Provisos, and the Interests of Future Generations,”
Ethics 105, no. 4 ( July 1995): 791–818.
23
Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2000), esp. chaps. 1–2.
24
Dworkin, “What is Equality?” 288.
25
As rational maximizers, islanders would presumably be motivated by the free rider incentive to
create value for themselves while imposing externality costs on others. Because the degradation of
ecological space held in common presumably affects all rather than exclusively the person causing
it, a tragedy of the commons occurs in Dworkin’s scheme, benefitting the worst environmental
offenders at the expense of all. See Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162
(1968): 1243–48.
26
Charles R. Beitz, “Justice and International Relations,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 4, no. 4
(Summer 1975): 360–89.
27
Thomas W. Pogge, “A Global Resources Dividend,” in Ethics of Consumption: The Good Life,
Justice, and Global Stewardship, ed. David A. Crocker and Toby Linden (New York: Rowman &
Littlefield, 1998): 501–36.
28
Hayward (“Thomas Pogge’s Global Resources”) criticizes Pogge’s global resources dividend for this
reason, arguing that cosmopolitan obligations can more accurately be charted through the use of
ecological space as a metric for egalitarian justice.
29
This is not entirely accurate—carbon sinks like forests comprise part of the planet’s capacity to
absorb greenhouse gases, and such sinks do exist within national territories. For this reason,
nations with substantial forest cover have advocated credits for these carbon sinks within Kyoto
protocol climate obligations. But most of this capacity resides outside of national borders, and that
which does not is subject to the argument advanced by Beitz (“Justice and International Rela-
tions”) against awarding valuable goods to parties based solely upon the morally arbitrary natural
allocation of ecological wealth.
30
For more on how the allocation of greenhouse gas emissions points the way toward a view of
cosmopolitan justice capable of overriding national sovereignty or property-based objections, see
Steve Vanderheiden, Atmospheric Justice: A Political Theory of Climate Change (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2008), esp. chap. 3.
31
Andrew Dobson, “Thick Cosmopolitanism,” Political Studies 54, no. 1 (2006): 165–84, 177.
32
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “There are sharp differences
across regions and those in the weakest economic position are often the most vulnerable to climate
change and are frequently the most susceptible to climate-related damages, especially when they
face multiple stresses.” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2007:
Synthesis Report, Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fourth Assessment Report
of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ed. R. K. Pachauri, A. Reisinger, and The
Core Writing Team (Geneva: IPCC, 2007), 65. Online at: http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-
syr.htm (accessed April 2, 2009).
33
See Vanderheiden, Atmospheric Justice, chaps. 5–6.
34
Rawls, for example, seeks an entirely different basis for intergenerational obligations than he uses
to ground his justice theory, arguing unpersuasively in A Theory of Justice that the idea of just
savings can adequately capture our obligations to futurity. Likewise, Dworkin’s equality of
resources view has trouble establishing the normative bases for intergenerational justice, except to
say that whatever resources exist at the end of one generation must be fairly allocated among
members of the next one.
35
See, for example, Herman E. Daly, “Sustainable Growth: An Impossibility Theorem,” in Valuing the
Earth, ed. Daly and K. N. Townsend (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1993), 267–74.
36
See, for example, Tom Athanasiou and Paul Baer, Dead Heat: Global Justice and Global Warming
(New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002), and Vanderheiden, Atmospheric Justice. Both limit calls
for “contraction and convergence” (i.e., reductions on greenhouse gas emissions from industrial-
ized nations until national per capita emissions can converge around some roughly equal level that
is closer to what developing countries now produce) to the distribution of carbon emissions, which
is at least hypothetically compatible with continued growth in consumption at the top of the
world’s economic hierarchy, rather than calling for a leveling down on the distribution of all
economic goods.
37
Juliet Schor advocates such a redefinition of social norms through what she calls the “downshifting”
of consumption expectations, arguing that this normative transformation can result in lower
consumption with increased happiness. See Schor, The Overspent American (New York: Harper
Collins, 1999).
International Political Theory and the Global Environment:
Some Critical Questions for Liberal Cosmopolitans
Tim Hayward
In recent years the intellectual resources of mainstream liberal political theory

have been increasingly applied to environmental issues, and, of late, especially to
those associated with climate change. That such issues are no longer treated as
marginal concerns with respect to established agendas of political theory is a very
welcome development. Nevertheless, I believe it is worth asking whether contem-
porary environmental concerns should in fact occasion a more radical questioning
of inherited liberal framings of political theory—especially as questions of inter-
national and global relations come to the fore.josp_1451 276..295
In the face of global challenges—particularly widespread severe poverty
and environmental threats—contemporary political theorists are seeking to for-
mulate cosmopolitan responses. While endorsing this cosmopolitan impulse, my
critical questions concern the continued formulation of these responses within
established liberal framings of political theory. Two major changes of context
have occurred since liberalism came to maturity. First, the theory and practice of
liberalism developed before awareness arose of environmental constraints on
economic activity, and on the basis of presuppositions which those constraints
serve to undermine. Second, liberalism developed historically with nation-states
and thus prior to serious consideration of global, cosmopolitan, politics—as
distinct from the international relations between those states as the primary and
usually sole locus of sovereign power. To refer to these developments as
changes of context is perhaps to understate the issue. For they could be thought
such as to challenge certain fundamental, even constitutive, presuppositions of
liberalism.
This, then, is the first general question to consider: what reason is there to
presume that liberalism provides a suitable framing for political theory relating to
global justice and the environment? In section 1, I aim to loosen this presumption
by highlighting how liberalism as a whole is rather ambivalent with regard to both
sets of issues. Regarding global justice, specifically, there are strong liberal argu-
ments against cosmopolitanism. I suggest that if there are stronger arguments to be
advanced against these in favor of cosmopolitanism then they might have to be
supported by premises other than liberal ones. To provide a focus for this sugges-
tion, I point out how cosmopolitanism might better be promoted within a socialist
framing.

International Political Theory and the Global Environment 277
Having thus questioned why liberalism would necessarily provide an appro-

priate framing for global justice, I then question whether it is any more appropriate
for framing global environmental issues. In section 2, the specific focus is on the
idea of sustainable development and liberal understandings of it. The aim of
sustainable development has been widely endorsed because, I suggest, its usual
interpretation conveniently implies the possibility of a win-win-win scenario for
protecting the environment while at the same time securing economic develop-
ment and promoting global justice. Yet the truth may be less convenient, given the
evident tensions between these objectives in practice. As economic development
continues, the global environment deteriorates and global inequalities intensify.
For that reason, I argue, we need also to attend to the losses and costs already
associated with this development model. On this basis, it is more appropriate to
reframe the aims relating to global environmental justice in terms of ecological
debt. This reframing represents a challenge to liberal understandings of “sustain-
able development.”
This argument leads us then to ask critical questions about the empirical
assumptions made in liberal theory regarding the material, biophysical basis of
global political economy. Section 3 thus begins by asking what must be assumed
when liberal cosmopolitans propose, for instance, globalizing Rawls’s difference
principle. For the application of such a principle appears to presuppose that justice
means sharing more fairly the proceeds of ever-increasing wealth as are generated
by a globally liberalized economy. This fosters the same idea it presupposes: that
liberalism will ultimately be good for everyone, providing only that we ensure
some redistribution of surplus value. This general idea seems also to underpin
various suggestions made by contemporary political theorists that relatively
modest reforms of international institutions may suffice to secure basic justice for
all, including the eradication of world poverty. Once we heed the ecological
constraints on growth of the productive economy, however, the basis of this faith
is called into question.
The arguments thus far highlight ambivalences and uncertainties about
liberalism—which are in good measure due to its own internal tensions, particu-
larly between its progressive ethical goals and its morally more troubling asso-
ciation with capitalism. In section 4 I raise some questions about how progressive
in fact is a distinctively liberal construction of ethical goals in the contemporary
circumstances of global justice when these importantly include recognition of
ecological finitude. I question the extent to which peculiarly liberal values should
be preserved by cosmopolitanism, and focus in particular on the argument that
what present circumstances require is an ethos of restraint and that this, in key
respects, is the antithesis of a liberal ethos.
In conclusion, I sum up how, taking human rights as the fundamental norma-
tive touchstone, we can develop an account of what global justice requires in the
light of ecological constraints that is recognizably cosmopolitan but at variance
from liberal understandings of cosmopolitanism in key respects.
278 Tim Hayward
1. Liberalism, Cosmopolitanism, and Global Justice
Today there is an influential current of thought that conceives of cosmopolitan

justice as a globalization of liberal principles. As Anthony J Langlois notes, “much
of what goes by the name of contemporary cosmopolitanism is liberalism envi-
sioned at the global level.”1 What gives coherence to this vision, he states, is the
core of values associated with human rights. But there is a tension within it: while
affirming a basic liberal right to own private property as a way of protecting the
individual, Langlois notes it is also important in the liberal tradition that individu-
als who have less as a consequence of economic structures should be protected
from the power of those better situated by virtue of their private property rights.
He conceptualizes the tension here as one between political liberals, who “have a
focus on the commonwealth, the common good,” and economic liberals whose
focus on individual self-maximization translates into a concern about market
advantage. What is distinctive about political liberalism, then, is a kind of com-
mitment that economic liberals would presumably struggle to recognize as liberal
at all.
I think Langlois’s view fairly reflects that of many liberal cosmopolitans. The
tension within it is one that is familiar from the history of liberal thought. Political
liberals have a moral vision, captured by what C. B. Macpherson saw as the
essential meaning of liberal democracy: “a society striving to ensure that all its
members are equally free to realize their capabilities.”2 This vision, he thought,
could be dissociated from liberal democracy in the sense of “the democracy of a
capitalist market society”: “a liberal position need not be taken to depend forever
on an acceptance of capitalist assumptions, although historically it has been so
taken.” What I think we can consider a distinctively liberal view, quite generally,
is the belief that this dichotomy between ethico-political liberalism and economic
liberalism is in some way satisfactorily manageable and not problematic in any
radical sense. It involves a belief that whatever criticisms might be directed against
economic liberalism as the ideological counterpart of capitalism, the values of
“ethical” liberalism or principles of “political” liberalism are immune from any
implications of those criticisms.
A defining feature of liberalism is thus that it does not have a constitutive
objective of ending capitalism’s endless pursuit of accumulation. It may aim to
make capitalism more “benign,” for instance through policies geared to distribu-
tive justice; and some left-leaning liberals may even emphasize their non-
objection to the ending of capitalism, but there is no sense in which they would
hasten it.
Thus, what “liberalism” means can in part be expounded from the perspective
of critics who would contrast it with socialism. On such accounts liberalism is a
political ideology which serves to legitimate subservience to the capitalist market
either nakedly (e.g., neoliberalism) or more insidiously by expounding moral
principles that will never get traction. C Wright Mills, for instance, wrote: “The
ideals of liberalism have been divorced from any realities of modern social
structure that might serve as the means of their realization. . . . if the moral force
of liberalism is still stimulating, its sociological content is weak; it has no theory
of society adequate to its moral aims.”3
Now this charge may seem overstated in relation to more recent liberal theory.
John Rawls, for instance, was very clear that “ethical principles depend upon
general facts and therefore a theory of justice for the basic structure presupposes
an account of these [political economic] arrangements.”4 Rawls believed that an
adequate sociological understanding was available for his purposes. Accordingly,
however, he was also clear that his normative theory applies to a well-defined
context—that of a modern liberal democratic state.
Given that liberal cosmopolitanism precisely aims at transcending the
nation-state context, Wright Mills’s criticism regains pertinence: how is the
moral theory related to socioeconomic or political realities? But now the ques-
tion is posed from within liberalism. Liberal critics of cosmopolitanism argue
broadly as follows:
(i) Normative theorizing and theories of justice presuppose an account of basic
socioeconomic facts about the context to which the theory applies.
(ii) Liberal political theory presupposes facts of liberal democratic states.
(iii) Not all states are liberal democratic states, and the world as a whole is not
a liberal democratic state.
Therefore:
(iv) Normative liberal political theory cannot simply be applied or extended to
the whole world without, minimally, reviewing the factual assumptions it
originally presupposed.
Rawls himself was clear on this point and developed the quite separate
normative theory of international relations presented in his The Law of Peoples.
So how do things stand with liberal cosmopolitanism? To answer this we need
to observe the distinction drawn by Charles Beitz between “moral cosmopolitan-
ism” and “institutional cosmopolitanism.” The former is a moral philosophy that
presupposes little specifically about the socioeconomic facts of the world; rather,
it takes its bearings from the moral status of individuals. Correspondingly, it
implies nothing very particular about institutional arrangements. If cosmopolitan-
ism is understood purely as a moral position, then, it is not even inconsistent with
nationalism.5 As David Miller put it, if this “weak” interpretation is all there is to
it then “we are all cosmopolitans now.”6
Let us, then, consider what is required of “strong” cosmopolitanism:
(v) Cosmopolitanism as a normative theory applies to the whole world at the

level of basic institutions.
(vi) To apply, the theory must presuppose an account of the facts of the whole
world, including, importantly, economic facts.
280 Tim Hayward
(vii) One possible account of the facts is that of liberal international relations
theory.
(viii) But (at least according to Rawls and others) this account does not support
strong cosmopolitanism.
It would follow, then, that either Rawls gets liberal international relations theory
quite seriously wrong or else strong cosmopolitanism must depend on some
alternative account of the facts.
Political theorists who are consistent in their liberalism—and these include
not only Rawls and his followers, but also people like Miller or Michael Walzer—
argue that there are no grounds for strong cosmopolitanism. Samuel Freeman
captures the problem: “what bothers many cosmopolitans is that global capitalism
has created ways to elude political control by the world’s governments . . . and
part of the problem is that there is no global basic structure to deal with it.”7 It
is no solution to advert to the moral interpretation of cosmopolitanism, for
the problem is precisely the want of adequately cosmopolitan institutions. “It is a
serious failing of cosmopolitan accounts of distributive justice that they discount
the significance of social cooperation and regard distributive justice as asocial and
apolitical.”8 Leif Wenar criticizes cosmopolitans’ “insistence upon radical dis-
tributive principles without a prior demonstration that they can validate the most
fundamental norms of global stability.”9
But if critics of liberal cosmopolitanism seem clearer than its advocates
about what the challenge is, this should not mean they have the last word. Since
Wenar cites Brian Barry in support of his concluding message—that in the
global arena “the problem of establishing a peaceful order eclipses all
others”10—I shall defer to the same authority. What Brian Barry has contributed
to global justice debates is, I believe, a salutary dose of realism. Contrary to
what Wenar implies, Barry’s position does not entail a rejection of cosmopoli-
tanism but rather of the illusions of liberal constructions of it. In his essay “The
Continuing Relevance of Socialism,” Barry writes that “the transformation from
a society ruled by the tyranny of the market to one of freedom requires collec-
tive control over the economy.”11 Whereas the tyranny of the market under
global capitalism is not in principle challenged by liberals, Barry articulates the
redistributive cosmopolitan case in terms that challenge the basic assumptions of
a liberal framing of international relations: “industrial countries have achieved
their present prosperity by first using their own natural resources and then, when
these began to get scarce, by using those of the rest of the world at relatively
low cost to themselves . . . In effect, this bonanza has been turned into accumu-
lated capital that is regarded by these countries as their private property to do
with as they choose.”12 Poor countries meanwhile have been left at a significant
disadvantage in international economic relations. Thus, on the question of secur-
ing a peaceful world order, it is not obvious that cosmopolitans should acqui-
esce in the liberal perspective. Darrel Moellendorf, for instance, offers an
alternative perspective:
The problem is that constitutional democracies with capitalist economies contain a system
of incentives for persons with business interests in other states to advocate the use of state
power to protect those interests. In other words, such states contain a class of people who
have an interest in imperialist wars. Imperialist wars are externalities of a system in which
profits accrue to private individuals. The only way to remove these externalities is through
the establishment of an economic system that is not primarily based upon the profit motive
or one that institutes public control over profits.13
Thus, Moellendorf recognizes that “socialist states may be a desirable goal of an

egalitarian world order.”14
So cosmopolitans can share Wenar’s view about the indispensability of a
peaceful order and yet take a different view of what its accomplishment might
entail. Rather than trust in the idealist tenets of liberal peace coming eventually to
be shared by all peoples through the beneficent workings of a “truly free market,”
cosmopolitanism potentially challenges the adequacy of liberal theory’s con-
struction of the facts of global political economy. Yet this is the break that
liberal cosmopolitans in the tradition of Beitz and Pogge have refrained from
completing.15 Their reason being, I think, that it involves entertaining explanatory
hypotheses—such as those of world systems theory, for instance16—that are
highly controversial within a liberal worldview and are strongly resisted by liberal
critics of cosmopolitanism. At any rate, if “explanatory nationalism” is inad-
equate, this implies there must be a better explanatory theory to account for the
contemporary circumstances of justice globally. But instead of showing how
liberal theory is overoptimistic about the cooperative character of international
political and economic relations, and thereby focusing on the necessary precon-
ditions still to be achieved for a more just world order, the liberal cosmopolitans
promote what is arguably an even more optimistic view of international relations
as a “cooperative scheme” analogous to that of a modern nation-state. To suggest
there is a “basic structure” globally equivalent to that presupposed by Rawls for a
liberal democratic state—if this is understood as referring to a set of constitution-
ally and politically governed institutions—is tantamount to saying institutional
cosmopolitanism is already a reality. This would be liberal political theory becom-
ing once more a moral philosophy cut adrift from moorings in socioeconomic
explanation.
However, the need to liberate cosmopolitanism from liberal assumptions
becomes even clearer when we consider the global environmental context. Here
we may find reason to appreciate Barry’s claim that if the critique of capitalism
implies socialism, then socialism, in turn, provides “the essential intellectual
framework for environmental concerns.”17
2. Liberalism and the Global Environment: Sustainable Development or

Ecological Debt?
As the other contributions to this special issue testify, appropriate political

responses to global environmental threats have to appreciate their connection to
282 Tim Hayward
matters of global justice. In light of this, I pose the question of why it should be
anticipated that liberalism would be a necessary part of an appropriate response.
Various authors have discussed how liberalism can be compatible with envi-
ronmental values. A major focus of their attention in arguing this is on how
liberalism can—despite apparent presumptions to the contrary—accommodate
noninstrumental value of nonhuman nature.18 I do not think we should be sur-
prised to find that liberalism can accommodate a very wide range of ideas,
including those of environmentalists and ecologists. The touchstone of liberalism
as a moral philosophy is, after all, toleration. It is a relatively easy matter for
reasonable people (at least when they find themselves in circumstances propitious
to reasonableness) to reach broad agreement on desirable goals, and the recent
liberal accommodation of environmental goals would be a case in point. But what
is desirable has in practice also to be conditioned by what is possible, and this may
provide a sterner test of the compatibility of liberal and environmental values—of
how well liberal principles can be pressed into service of the aim of securing a
decent environment, when that is understood, especially, as a global environment.
Liberal political theorists—indeed, like businesses and politicians of various
stripes as well as publics—have had little difficulty in embracing the goal of
“sustainable development” as articulated in the Brundtland Report some twenty
years ago.19 Brundtland’s idea of sustainable development held out the appealing
aspiration of international cooperation being able to protect the environment while
at the same time securing economic development and promoting global justice.
Yet the tensions between these objectives remain all too evident. As economic
development continues, the global environment deteriorates and global inequali-
ties intensify. The benefits of development carry serious environmental costs and
are unjustly distributed. We have to recognize that the question of what it means
to pursue sustainable development cannot be answered simply in terms of the
benefits aimed at. We need to attend to the costs involved in achieving them and
to the issue of their just distribution. For either the costs are borne equitably or
those who are already victims of human rights deficits suffer worse.
The most fundamental norm proposed by Brundtland was that every person
has a fundamental human right to live in an environment adequate for their health
and well-being.20 The achievement of this right, for every person, would involve
a more radical transformation of global relations than seems to be supposed in
most discussions of sustainable development. For it cannot be achieved without
also achieving a range of basic social rights; yet the environment also sets con-
straints on economic activity in the aggregate, and thus on the generation of the
wherewithal to fulfill those rights. Considering the conditions of possibility of
its achievement would thus suggest a profound challenge to the system of private
property rights which allows some to draw immense profit from the world’s
natural resources while others are deprived of even the basic necessities of life.
This implication, that full respect for all human rights indivisibly involves
a fundamental challenge to the existing order of property rights worldwide, is
not generally foregrounded in discussions of sustainability. The dominant ethos
remains that of liberalization, premised on the idea that we can all become better
off—the rich raising standards so that the poor benefit too.
Yet the situation is that developed countries benefit from the use of more
natural resources and environmental services than is either ecologically sustain-
able or arguably, especially in light of global inequalities, their due share. From
the perspective of developing countries, we can be accused of running an “eco-
logical debt.” The idea of ecological debt refers to the myriad ways that human
societies today, both separately and in the aggregate, live, so to speak, beyond their
ecological means. Ecological debt accrues whenever resources are taken out of
their natural state at a rate faster than they can naturally be renewed, or when
pollutants are emitted at a rate faster than they can naturally be assimilated.
Allegations of ecological debt can be understood as claims that there is an unjust
distribution of rights in the planet’s various natural resources and environmental
services. The allocation of rights is certainly haphazard: international law accom-
modates an array of property and sovereignty rights which have arisen historically
as products of unregulated exploitation, wars, colonialism, power politics, ad hoc
negotiations, and, in the best of cases, multilateral treaty agreements. Meanwhile,
as international institutions create new rights—for example, carbon emissions
rights or intellectual property rights in genetic resources—old rights, and particu-
larly rights of territorial sovereignty, are being significantly modified. How just
these regimes are, individually or in the aggregate, is a central question for
assessing allegations of ecological debt. The magnitude of the problem is indi-
cated by the estimate that to sustain the world’s population at the current con-
sumption levels of the affluent would actually require the resources of three
additional Planet Earths. Even the current aggregate consumption level, which
includes that of some billion people who exist in absolute poverty, is not sustain-
able. From this perspective, it appears that in myriad ways the affluent are
“ecological debtors” who actively deprive the planet’s poorer peoples of their “fair
share” of the earth’s ecological space.
This perspective is not a liberal one. Liberals, whether cosmopolitan or
nationalist, envisage, at most, a more equitable sharing of economic benefits, but
not any more radical questioning of the justifiability of the benefits themselves. To
assess why it might be considered permissible to disregard such questions, we
need to consider what can reasonably be presupposed about the general circum-
stances of justice in a globally liberalizing world.
3. What Do Liberals Assume About Global Political Economy?
Historically, liberal political theory developed in conjunction with the theory

and practice of liberal political economy. The latter provided important elements
of empirical reference that could be assumed as the context of application for
normative theory. Today, as liberal cosmopolitans attempt to adapt their political
theory to changing contexts, the relation of that theory to any determinate under-
standing of political economy is becoming increasingly uncertain.
284 Tim Hayward
To take an illustration, when liberal cosmopolitans argue for a global exten-

sion of Rawls’s difference principle, they tend to neglect what I think is a crucial
question: If this principle is supposed to operate so that the affluent are incentiv-
ized to maintain economic growth provided that the poor can benefit too, and all
this is subject moreover to a “just savings principle,” how is that growth in fact
going to be maintained, let alone something saved, when the consequences of
economic growth to date are already—as is now, belatedly, recognized—
threatening the very biophysical basis of human life on this planet?
The question as posed is of course an empirical one, and normative political
philosophers do not establish socioeconomic facts. But they do choose the empiri-
cal presuppositions which give meaning and application to their theories. Rawls
himself, for instance, when unfolding his theory of justice, expressly assumed that
persons who deliberate competently about principles of justice “know the general
facts about human society,” “understand political affairs and the principles of
economic theory,” and “know the basis of social organization.”21 In the domestic
context of a modern democratic state with a relatively stable socioeconomic order
such an assumption may have appeared quite serviceable. But what comparable
assumption about taken-for-granted knowledge and understanding can we make
in the global context today? In particular, should we choose to assume that
continued economic growth, on the part of the West, plus all the developing
countries, is possible indefinitely without causing any serious ecological dis-
ruption that would undermine its advance? Or should we choose to be skeptical
about that possibility?
This choice can be characterized as one between a “cornucopian” assumption
and an assumption that that distribution of access to the world’s resources is
somewhat closer to a “zero-sum” game.22
To date, most international political theorists have not been very explicit
about whether they accept or deny the cornucopian presumption. One who is
explicit is Loren E. Lomasky, who states that “The world’s wealth is not zero-sum,
and thus to consume more is not to visit a harm on those who consume less.”23
Problems of poverty on his account are due to incompetent and corrupt regimes.
If rich states have some responsibility for global injustices, it is not due to
“insufficient zeal in applying the difference principle beyond borders. Rather, the
flaw is rooted more deeply in a transgression against the grounding theory of
liberalism: denial of equal liberty to those with whom one transacts.”24 So, it
emerges, the solution is the complete opening of borders to free trade and move-
ment of people within a framework of rule of law that provides well-defined
property rights. The universalist strand in liberal philosophy only needs to be put
into practice with a more complete liberalizing of the world market. Lomasky’s
view is, from an ecological point of view, even more retrogressive than that of
those who advocate globalizing the difference principle. The latter recognize
at least that wealth distribution requires some institutional intervention; on
Lomasky’s it would appear to be expected as a natural consequence of further
freeing up markets. This expectation does not appear to have any clear warrant in
terms of evidence to date; moreover, regarding the question of presuppositions, it

is important to note that in the initial statement quoted Lomasky’s reasoning is
fallacious. It is true that the world’s wealth is not zero-sum; however, at any given
time its amount is determinate and finite; and if we add to this fact the consider-
ation that it is very unevenly distributed, then we can see that the opposite
conclusion to Lomasky’s can be drawn, namely, that the high consumers can very
well visit harm on the worst off by marginal increases in their own consumption.
Now I am sure that many liberals will contend that Lomasky’s libertarian
view is not a view of liberalism one needs to accept. But my question is whether
there is a comparably clear alternative view of liberal theory’s assumptions
regarding political economy. Others may place less faith in the market’s capacity
to deliver material equity, yet I am not aware of any significant strand of liberal
thinking that decisively challenges the cornucopian presumption.
In fact, I believe there is an uneasy agnosticism about this question among
normative theorists who for the most part, accordingly, simply avoid it. Yet the
question goes to a very basic issue about the material circumstances of justice
globally. In what follows, therefore, I consider two lines of resistance against the
ecological critique of the cornucopian assumption. The first involves asking
whether criticism of cornucopianism really is in fact relevant as a criticism of
liberalism; the second is whether cornucopianism can anyway be defended against
ecological criticism.
(i) Is criticism of cornucopianism relevant as a criticism of liberalism? One

potential reason why not would be the following. It is not natural resources that
matter most fundamentally for justice, but a well-ordered society; and the amount
of natural resources required to support good social order is not so great as to
require the indefinite demands implied by the critique of cornucopianism. There-
fore, liberalism, conceived as primarily concerned with implementing a liberal
theory of justice, does not need to make the cornucopian assumption. However,
this line of reasoning does not do more than offer a defense of the agnosticism
referred to. It leaves unanswered some questions that are salient even within its
own terms of reference. If natural resources are assumed to be of limited rel-
evance, where are the limits and how are they maintained, and what would happen
if they were overstepped? Of wider significance is the point that this reasoning is
deployed by those liberals who resist the cosmopolitan generalization of liberal
principles. Liberal cosmopolitans, by contrast, do not accept that less advantaged
nations should have to settle for significantly less in terms of resources than do the
affluent. They cannot therefore consistently appeal to this argument.
A different line of reasoning, however, has been canvassed, for instance, by
the liberal environmentalist Mark Sagoff.25 Sagoff sets out reasons to be skeptical
about whether natural resources matter particularly for global justice. For not only
is what is needed not necessarily natural resources, but, more crucially, to the
extent that what is needed has a natural resource component, it is not scarce. On
this view—which is that of mainstream economists—what is needed is ingenuity
286 Tim Hayward
and knowledge; these overcome scarcity. Therefore, a biophysical perspective on

the economy—that which generates the critique of cornucopianism—is largely
beside the point:
Quantitative increase in the physical dimension of the economy is neither necessary nor
sufficient for economic growth in the conventional sense, which has to do with the value of
production rather than the physical size of whatever is produced or consumed.26
Now in response it has certainly to be agreed that the “value” of production does
not have any uniquely determinable correlation with the biophysical dimension of
the economy, and so we cannot claim that economic growth necessarily entails
any particular increase in biophysical loads. Any such connection in practice
would be contingent on the character of the economy rather than the manifestation
of a necessary truth in any metaphysical or logical sense. It is thus indeed
conceivable that an economy could be so predominantly service-based, for
instance, that any such contingent connection was absent.27 It is also conceivable
that an economy could be so ecologically efficient that the connection was absent.
However, we should not disregard the difference between what is conceivable and
what is actual. In actuality, economic growth is invariably accompanied by
increased biophysical pressures. So empirical actuality is to date certainly differ-
ent from what is implied by the hypotheses that Sagoff conceives. Certainly, the
hypothesis that natural resources matter for justice is not refuted merely by
showing that alternative hypotheses can be conceived. So the critique of cornu-
copianism is not irrelevant. Still, it might be argued to fail.
(ii) So what of the second line of argument, that cornucopianism can anyway be
defended against ecological criticism? The argument here is that even if natural
resources might matter, they are nevertheless not finite, or at least not as limited in
availability as the ecological approach has to suppose they are to support a
principled critique of liberalism’s presuppositions. This argument goes beyond the
claim that economic growth could conceivably be sustained within natural limits
to challenge the idea of natural limits itself. Sagoff locates this claim at the core
of liberal economic thought: “Mainstream economists, such as James Tobin,
Robert Solow, and William B. Nordhaus, typically state that nature sets no limits
to economic growth. Trusting to human intelligence and ingenuity as people seek
to satisfy their preferences and achieve well-being, these economists argue that
people can choose among an indefinitely large number of alternatives.”28 This
view as stated amounts simply to an article of faith—“trusting to human intelli-
gence and ingenuity.” Can it draw on more persuasive support?
Sagoff notes three arguments offered by mainstream economists to show that
knowledge and ingenuity are likely always to alleviate resource shortages. First,
reserves of natural resources “themselves are actually functions of technology. The
more advanced the technology, the more reserves become known and recoverable.”
However, while there is some truth in this, the new reserves themselves stand to be
consumed, and we cannot expect that ingenuity will create more reserves once all
have been discovered and exploited, which is what would need to be the case to
support the mainstream position. This, though, is where the second argument comes
in: “advances in technology allow us not only to increase available reserves but also
to employ substitutes for resources that may become scarce.” Again, there is some
truth in this, but not enough: for it is debatable whether all resources can or should
be substituted; it is also often the case that the substitution itself involves heavy use
of other natural resources—as for instance, when plastics or chemical fertilizers
requiring heavy use of fossil fuels substitute for naturally occurring materials. More
decisively, as a supposed refutation of ultimate natural limits, it again does not
appear to be an argument as such, since it merely asserts that substitutes will always
be available, the thought underlying it being encapsulated in a restatement of faith
“that in the aggregate resources are infinite, that when one flow dries up, there will
always be another, and that technology will always find cheap ways to exploit the
next resource.”29 Yet although this sentence uses the word “always,” the actual
reports cited in evidence refer to a rather shorter time horizon: “the world is not yet
running out of most nonrenewable resources and is not likely to, at least in the next
few decades.”30 Clearly, the ecological economists’ claim that resource depletion
cannot continue indefinitely is not refuted by the observation that it can nevertheless
continue for some decades yet. While the amount of ecological space available is
partly contingent on the efficiency with which natural resources are exploited, this
only means that the “natural limits” to resource exploitation cannot be fixed with
precision once and for all. It would be a non sequitur to conclude from this,
however, that there are no such limits.
Before turning to the third argument, it is worth emphasizing that the question
of natural limits is not merely a technical one but also has profound implications
in the sphere of global justice. For it is not just a question, as some suppose, of
whether “we confront an age of scarcity in the near or, at best, the medium term.”
The actual problem is both more mundane and more immediately pressing.
Natural limits to economic growth are mediated by complex socioeconomic
arrangements that produce wide disparities of outcomes. We only need to consider
the plight of those millions who have lost lives, livelihoods, and homes through
famine, disease or environmental displacement to recognize that these vast popu-
lations have already encountered natural limits. Thus, the claim that there is a
problem of natural limits is not refuted by the observation that the rich can for the
time being stave off the most serious effects of it for themselves.
This point is highly salient regarding the third argument offered by mainstream
economists against the idea of natural limits. This is “that the power of knowledge
continually reduces the amounts of resources needed to produce a constant or
increasing flow of consumer goods and services.”31 As evidence, Sagoff notes that
“Societies with big gross domestic products, such as Sweden, protect nature, while
nations in the former Soviet bloc with much smaller gross domestic products, such
as Poland, have devastated their environments.”32 However, even leaving aside the
point that Sweden’s territorial endowment of resources per capita is something like
288 Tim Hayward
three times that of Poland, a fact which somewhat compromises this particular
comparison, there are more general critical observations to make about the claim
that economic growth ultimately serves to protect the environment.
In support of this claim there has been much attention devoted in the literature
to the hypothesis of an “Environmental Kuznets Curve.”33 According to this
hypothesis, during the process of economic development, countries tend to
increase consumption of energy and materials at the same rate as growth in
income, until a certain level of income is reached; beyond that point further
increases in the level of output will no longer be followed by increases (at the
same rate) of energy and material consumption. However, while there is evidence
that a level of economic growth can bring with it a reduction of material and
energy inputs per unit of output, this stops a long way short of supporting the
general claim that growth is “good for the environment,” as does evidence that
richer countries tend to protect their territorial environments better than poorer
countries. For one thing, ecological efficiency gains per unit of output do not
translate into greater environmental protection if growth of aggregate consump-
tion more than offsets them, which it tends to for reasons inherent in the dynamics
of growth. For another, even to the extent that a de-linking of growth and envi-
ronmental degradation does occur, it is only after the country has reached a
threshold of income and consumption of energy and materials per capita which is
such a high one that it could not be emulated by all countries in the world without
provoking likely ecological collapse in the meantime. Moreover, recent research
has suggested that even if developed countries may go through a dematerialization
phase, they can also then go through a re-materialization phase—so the inverted
U-shaped curve would then appear as an N-shaped one, just depending on the time
window used for observation. But the most fundamental criticism of this hypoth-
esis is that it simply disregards how countries benefiting from economic growth
can effectively export their environmental problems. When account is taken of
how the rich nations can “externalise” the most polluting factors of production, the
very basis of the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis is called into question.
Empirical evidence showing that developed countries have improved their
environments while growing their economies could only be held to support the
economists’ conclusion if it could also be shown that no appreciable resource
depletion, pollution or increased entropy had occurred as a result of that same
economic activity elsewhere in the global ecosystem. The evidence does not show
this.
On the mainstream view, national economies are looked at in isolation and
there is assumed to be no limit to their potential growth. This is because external
impacts are simply disregarded, just as future impacts are discounted.34 This
reflects the traditional liberal political perspective which sees the international
order in terms of relations between discrete nation-states, each rationally pursuing
its own interest.
Cosmopolitans do not share this perspective, and thus have little reason, as
far as I can see, to accept the cornucopian presumption or rely on its future
vindication, given the evident need here and now to begin addressing—for reasons
of both ecology and justice—the overarching problem of ecological debt. Yet
contemporary liberal cosmopolitans appear to envisage relatively modest reforms
that involve a greater sharing of the benefits of a liberal economy, rather than take
a more probing approach to the sustainability of those benefits themselves. If I am
right about this, then cosmopolitanism represents a challenge to liberalism of a
more thoroughgoing kind than liberal cosmopolitans believe.
4. Critical Questions About the Liberal Ethos
Historically, the development of liberalism attended and served the develop-

ment of the modern nation-state. Today, there is a widely held view that liberalism
provides the normative principles not only for international moral and political
cooperation, but for a cosmopolitan world order. However, I think we need to
consider more carefully the extent to which cosmopolitanism really can be seen as
an extension of liberal normative principles.
One of the few voices raising questions about this assumption is that of Katrin
Flikschuh: “If liberal economic policy has significantly contributed to the produc-
tion of extreme wealth in some parts of the earth and extreme poverty in other
parts, can we continue to assert with confidence liberalism’s ‘moral universal-
ism’?” She believes this discrepancy should lead us at the very least “to ask
whether liberal theory is capable of delivering, politically and economically, on its
universalistic moral aspirations.”35 Liberal cosmopolitans tend to treat these moral
aspirations as separable from their “contingent” material conditions of possibility.
Flikschuh thinks we should find this more surprising than we have become
accustomed to do when discussing proposed reforms to the global institutional
order:
if the current global order is a major contributor to global poverty, and if the existence of
that order turns out also to have been an essential prerequisite to the achievement of the
liberal good life in mature liberal societies, how can the proposed reforms be expected to
result in the widening of access to a life-style the possibility of which presupposes the
global status quo?36
She thinks liberals may rather have lost sight of the material presuppositions of
liberalism, and the implications of these:
Arguably, what is depicted in current liberal theorising as the individual quest for the
critically examined good life, is observed by the global poor as an attractively high standard
of living. . . . It is arguably these more material aspects of the liberal good life, rather than
the promise of sharpening one’s powers of critical reflection, that very many of the
materially deprived global poor not only aspire to, but that they may also—given global
terms of production—claim to have a just stake in.37
290 Tim Hayward
The trouble is that the liberal good life is expensive, she observes, and once the
economic costs of making it more widely available are counted, liberal thinkers,
mindful of the “strains of commitment,” frequently shrink back from promoting
its universalization. But if liberals are partial and selective about the values and
obligations to be universalized, this raises critical questions about the extent to
which cosmopolitanism should be conceived in terms of the universalization of
liberal values at all: “. . . is it not more reasonable to accept that institutional
reform is likely to impose new moral constraints—the constraint upon citizens
of the West, for example, to lower their material expectations so as indeed to
enable distant others ‘to meet their basic needs with dignity’?”38 This suggestion
can be reinforced by considering the ecological constraints on the required
resources.
To meet global challenges, it is arguable that we—those of us currently
over-consuming—require the inculcation of an ethic, an ethos, of restraint to
accompany and underpin the recognition of our obligations to reduce our demands
on resources. With this ethos we would “tread lightly” on the earth, and live in a
way that is “simple in means, rich in ends,” with a focus on satisfactions derived
from being as opposed to having. This characteristically “green” conception of the
good life is arguably in humans’ own enlightened interest, entailing the happiness
that comes with exercise of our faculties and capacities rather than sacrifice. An
ethos of restraint can foster the resourcefulness that makes such activities their
own reward rather than something experienced as a cost or sacrifice.39 An ethos of
restraint, though, has in turn to be deeply grounded in a sense, and principles, of
justice. It certainly should not be confused with the self-righteousness of the
affluent ascetic, who, from a position of material security, can demonstrate how
easy it is to “dematerialize” their interests. From the point of view of the have-
nots, it is a perverse mockery to be shown by well-off people how they can “do
without.” The imperative of restraint, then, is a matter both of the good and of the
right.40
Liberalism in many respects is an ethos of non-restraint.41 The way the liberal
emphasis on the value of individual freedom is placed, in particular, does not
clearly or directly tend to promote the kind of collective restraint that global
environmental justice would seem to require. In pursuit of their traditional socio-
economic goals, liberals have embraced a constitutive encouragement of the
pursuit of individual self-interest as the engine of aggregate economic develop-
ment, something whose benefits in due course supposedly will (or can be made to)
trickle down to all. We are accustomed to thinking of our liberties as achieve-
ments, but the fact that they were achieved by people in the past and at some cost
to others tends to be passed over in contemporary versions of the implicit idealism
manifest in various “win-win” ideas such as that of the possibility of adequate
trickle down of wealth and of “sustainable development.” It is as if there is a line
tacitly drawn in the sand: we want the rest of the world to be able to achieve what
we have achieved; but we are not going to enter questions about relinquishing any
of what we have.
This position is defensible with regard to human rights relating to security and
respect of the person—rights to non-zero-sum goods that we should not give up at
all. Indeed, the one clear principle of restraint provided by liberalism (and which
protects such rights) is the harm principle, and this—in virtue of its negative
tenor—is readily universalizable and can unproblematically be extended globally.
But what of the non-non-zero-sum goods, those directly carrying costs, that are
also required for the more complete fulfillment of human rights—including sub-
sistence, livelihoods and adequate living conditions, including an adequate envi-
ronment? Some theorists believe these can also be secured by applying the harm
principle, albeit in novel ways, including as a guide for international institutional
reform: both with regard to environmental harms (as, for instance, some libertar-
ian defenses of using property rights for environmental protection do) and with
regard to global injustices (as Pogge has recently argued regarding the avoidable
harms caused under existing international institutional arrangements).
Refraining from harm, however, is only part of an ethos of restraint. For
restraint in our use of ecological space means not only taking care not to harm
others, but also reevaluating the nature and extent of the benefits we ourselves
draw from our activities, even when these do not immediately or obviously
precipitate some harm on others. If the rich are to retain what they already have,
then the only way the poor can become better off is by increasing aggregate
pressure on the world’s resources; yet its ecology will not sustain this pressure.
Taking this insight seriously, its normative implications should be deeply unset-
tling for those who envisage cosmopolitanism entailing the globalization of lib-
erality. Unless they simply resort to faith in the possibility of indefinite material
expansion through technological innovation, they have to face up to the implica-
tions of recognizing that, from an adequate normative perspective, what we today
have is not, in fact, non-negotiably ours.
If any aspect of this is found “illiberal,” we should not assume, without further
ado, that simply finding it so amounts to an objection. I have suggested elsewhere
we should be cautious about any commitment to substantive liberal values when
these conflict with ecological ones.42 This is not to suggest rejecting all the values
liberal espouse. For instance, as Andrew Dobson argues, it may be that a concep-
tion of political citizenship embracing an ecological orientation has as its principal
virtues “the liberal ones of reasonableness and a willingness to accept the force of
the better argument and procedural legitimacy.”43 But while reasonableness and
a willingness to accept the force of the better argument may be values liberals
typically espouse, I am not sure they are peculiarly liberal values. To think that
liberalism has a monopoly of reasonableness could prove, in today’s world, to be
a dangerous illusion. Liberalism has indeed played an important historical role in
establishing and institutionalizing such principles as tolerance, freedom, civil
rights, procedural equality, and non-discrimination. Yet one can hold these prin-
ciples to be dear while also believing, say, that all property should be communally
owned, or that economic growth should be severely constrained, or that citizens
have as full and dense a set of obligations as they have rights. Reasonableness does
292 Tim Hayward
not entail an obligation to tolerate the intolerable. Non-restraint is, from a green
point of view, intolerable. The planet cannot tolerate it; the worst off cannot
tolerate its effects; future sufferers from humanly induced ecological crises will
not be able to tolerate it either.
In short, then, it seems to me there is good reason to challenge more actively
and determinedly the assumption that cosmopolitanism represents a seamless
continuation of liberalism.
Conclusion
Liberalism has fostered vitally important norms with its commitment to

democracy and human rights, and I do not assume that democracy and human
rights can necessarily flourish in just any non-liberal political context. What I do
suggest is that our thinking about how such norms can be promoted in the altered
context of a globally interdependent, geopolitically re-orientated, and ecologically
constrained world should take its bearing from a more radically open-spirited
assessment of the new context. The project of political theorists to see about
extending domestic theories has of course needed to be tried—since not all
questions are new and inherited wisdom may have much to teach. But I think we
also need to free ourselves from any assumption that this approach will suffice. We
need to be open to the more radical questions thrown up. This means some
“thinking outside the box” of liberalism, and a readiness to reframe questions in
new ways. So while I am not implying that all the values and assumptions of
liberalism should be negated, I do think we need to be open to the possibility that
some might. Approaching them in a spirit of immanent criticism, we can consider
the kind of direction in which this might lead.
The idea that an immanent critique of liberalism leads in the direction of
socialism is to be found in the work of influential political theorists of the
twentieth century. If socialism can be arrived at as an immanent goal of
liberalism—because the realization of individual freedom for all actually
requires socialized material justice as a precondition—then we now also need to
recognize that material justice for all has its own precondition, namely, the
integrity of the compendious resources of the biophysical world.44 Thus, if
the immanent critique of liberalism leads in the direction of socialism, then the
immanent critique of socialism leads in the direction of what may be called
ecologism—or, given that this term may be understood in different ways—
ecological socialism.
We need to recognize rather than evade the extent to which existing interna-
tional institutions are complicit in the logic of capital accumulation.45 For it is this
which so structures global economic imperatives as to render the human calami-
ties associated with ecological debt a systemic outcome and not only a moral
failure. The injustices which existing institutions preside over should not be
assumed to be simply incidental failings of an otherwise just system.
Furthermore, if liberals rightly emphasize the value of peace and stability in

the global order, then we should also be concerned about the serious potential
threats to global stability posed by “ecological insecurity.” For the same circum-
stances that can be condemned as “ecological debt” in a discourse of justice are
liable increasingly to occasion security threats, as already evidenced in growing
conflicts over resources. Liberalism—with its focus on “ecological moderniza-
tion” and the win-win-win interpretation of sustainable development—would not
appear to have an adequate theoretical apparatus for recognizing why such con-
flicts are becoming more pervasive.
Yet departing from liberalism is not to depart from the goals of cosmopoli-
tanism. In particular, we can readily affirm a recognizably cosmopolitan concep-
tion of universal rights and global justice. The basics of justice, on the conception
referred to here, include a universal right of access to the necessary means for a
decent life. I take it as axiomatic that there is this fundamental right: for if there
were not, then the very idea of human rights would be hollow; and if we could not
rely conceptually and normatively on the idea of human rights as a touchstone for
ideas of justice, I doubt we could talk both cogently and persuasively about global
justice at all. As a material premise, I take it that the means of life necessarily and
importantly include biophysical resources; biophysical resources, compendiously,
can be referred to by the term “ecological space.” From these premises it follows
that a right of each human to a sufficient allocation of ecological space is a human
right.46
This right is what I believe cosmopolitanism commits us to as a matter of
justice. Whether liberalism does, I am not so sure. Perhaps what most crucially has
to be debated is whether taking this right seriously means according it priority
over any mere right of property that conflicts with it.47
Earlier versions of this article were presented at seminars of International Politics

and Political Theory research groups at the University of Edinburgh, and at the
Centre for the Study of Global Ethics at the University of Birmingham. I am
grateful for comments from participants, as well from Carol Gould and Piki
Ish-Shalom.
Notes
1
Anthony J. Langlois, “Human Rights and Cosmopolitan Liberalism,” Critical Review of International
Social and Political Philosophy 10, no. 1 (2007): 29–45, at 29.
2
C. B. Macpherson, The life and Times of Liberal Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1977).
3
C. Wright Mills, “Liberal Values in the Modern World,” in Power, Politics and People: The Collected
Essays of C. Wright Mills, ed. Irving Louis Horowitz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963),
189.
4
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 265.
5
See, for example, Kok-Chor Tan, Justice Without Borders: Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, and
Patriotism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 193–94.
294 Tim Hayward
6
David Miller, National Responsibility and Global Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007),
28.
7
Samuel Freeman, “Distributive Justice and The Law of Peoples,” in Rawls’s Law of Peoples: A
Realistic Utopia? ed. Rex Martin and David A. Reidy (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 258.
8
Ibid.
9
Leif Wenar, “Why Rawls is Not a Cosmopolitan Egalitarian,” in Rawls’s Law of Peoples: A Realistic
Utopia? ed. Rex Martin and David A. Reidy (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 107.
10
Ibid., 110.
11
Brian Barry, Democracy, Power and Justice: Essays in Political Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1989), 529.
12
Ibid., 522.
13
Darrel Moellendorf, Cosmopolitan Justice (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2002), 174.
14
Ibid.
15
I raised this issue in relation to Pogge in Tim Hayward, “On the Nature of Our Debt to the Global
Poor,” Journal of Social Philosophy 39, no. 1 (2008): 1–19. Pogge has certainly focussed attention
on crucial facts about the contemporary world order, including facts about international institu-
tions. But I am not aware of any serious dispute about these facts on the part of an “explanatory
nationalist” like Miller. The challenge posed to Pogge by Miller, I think, is to fill in the layers of
social theoretic explanation between “our” individual moral responsibilities and the effects of
global capitalism (see, for example, Miller, National Responsibility, 238–47).
16
I single out this kind of theory (which, incidentally, Barry also considers worth taking seriously—see
Democracy, 476–90) because of its prima facie coherence with a global ecological perspective:
see Tim Hayward, “Global Justice and the Distribution of Natural Resources,” Political Studies 54,
no. 2 (2006): 349–69.
17
Barry, Democracy, 532.
18
See, for instance, Derek Bell, “Liberal Environmental Citizenship,” Environmental Politics 14,
no. 2 (2005): 179–94; and, in the same issue, Simon Hailwood, “Environmental Citizenship as
Reasonable Citizenship,” 195–210.
19
World Commission on Environment and Development, and United Nations Environment Programme
(The Brundtland Report), Our Common Future (New York: The Commission, 1987).
20
In Tim Hayward, Constitutional Environmental Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) I
argued in support of that right and in favor of its implementation in states’ constitutions as well as
in international law.
21
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 137.
22
See, for example, Alf Hornborg, “Cornucopia or Zero-Sum Game? The Epistemology of Sustain-
ability,” Journal of World-Systems Research 9, no. 2 (2003): 205–16.
23
Loren E. Lomasky, “Liberalism Beyond Borders,” Social Philosophy and Policy 24, no. 1 (2007):
206–33, at 214.
24
Ibid., 208.
25
Mark Sagoff, “Carrying Capacity and Ecological Economics,” in Ethics of Consumption, ed. David
A. Crocker and Toby Linden (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998).
26
Ibid., 37.
27
By service-based I am thinking of personal services provided by labor without significant resource
usage; I am not thinking about the “service” sector of Finance Insurance and Real Estate, which
has a much more complicated relationship with productive sectors of the economy.
28
Sagoff, “Carrying Capacity,” 29.
29
Ibid., 31.
30
Ibid.
31
Ibid., 30.
32
Ibid., 38.
33
For an overview, see for example, David I. Stern, “The Rise and Fall of the Environmental Kuznets
Curve,” World Development 32, no. 8 (2004): 1419–39.
34
See, for example, Caney’s article in this issue.
35
Katrin Flikschuh, “The Limits of Liberal Cosmopolitanism,” Res Publica 10, no. 2 (2004): 175–92,
at 176.
36
Ibid., 191.
37
Ibid., 183.
38
Ibid., 189.
39
See, for example, Tim Hayward, “Ecological Citizenship: Justice, Rights and the Virtue of Resource-
fulness,” Environmental Politics 15, no. 3 (2006): 435–46.
40
As such, it would also depend more widely on a sense of human solidarity and an inculcation of
perspectives and values of the kind indicated, for instance, by Andrew Dobson, Citizenship and the
Environment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
41
A somewhat contrasting view is presented by Marcel Wissenburg, “Sustainability and the Limits of
Liberalism,” in Debating the Earth: The Environmental Politics Reader, 2nd ed., ed. John S.
Dryzek and David Schlosberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). His suggestion that
liberalism can be consistent with the principle of restraint seems to depend on the premise that
“liberalism is ultimately about taking one’s individual responsibility seriously” (p. 180) and a
stipulation that “[t]he critique of economic liberalism must . . . be judged on its own merits and
cannot reflect on political liberalism” (p. 181).
42
Hayward, “Ecological Citizenship,” 440.
43
Dobson, Citizenship and the Environment, 89.
44
There are of course reasons for concern about the nonhuman world over and above its function as a
resource for humans. I assume their efficaciousness will correlate positively with the inculcation
of restraint.
45
This point is forcefully argued by John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clerk, “Ecological Imperialism:
The Curse of Capitalism,” Socialist Register (2004): 186–201.
46
For more on this argument see, for example, Hayward, “On the Nature.”
47
In saying this I am drawing a distinction which some liberals will challenge on the ground that some
property rights can actually be justified as human rights. A discussion of this question not being
possible here, I simply note that my phrasing “any mere right of property” leaves open that
possibility.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Robin Attfield is professor of philosophy at Cardiff University, where he has

JOURNAL of SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY, Vol. 40 No. 2, Summer 2009, 133–134.

Global environmental issues are moving up the international political agenda.

JOURNAL of SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY, Vol. 40 No. 2, Summer 2009, 135–139.

These include asking how progressive in fact is a distinctively liberal construction

JOURNAL of SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY, Vol. 40 No. 2, Summer 2009, 140–162.

I. Abrupt Climate Change

Until recently, scientific discussion of climate change has been dominated by

The second possibility is a weakening of the ocean conveyor of the North

II. Some Causes of Political Inertia

However, second, interpreted more narrowly, Lomborg may be correct. If he

speculated that the regional impacts of a shutdown in the thermohaline circulation

A second prominent explanation for political inertia is psychological. For

[global warming’s] concrete future consequences for people’s home or other

3. The Intergenerational Analysis

III. Against Undermining

Consider first a scenario where we are in a position to commit humanity (and

For another, it may seem to attribute to a generation a hopelessly immoral (and

4. The Self-Corrective Argument

IV. Concluding Remarks

extraordinary circumstances, catastrophic events, or threat of significant economic harm.” See

It is widely recognized that the Earth’s climate is undergoing profound

JOURNAL of SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY, Vol. 40 No. 2, Summer 2009, 163–186.

I. The Social Discount Rate

To address the question of how current generations should make decisions

B. Second, we need to ascertain the correct principle of intergenerational equity.

II. Pure Time Preference and Discounting

B. A second objection to Argument 1 appeals (at a general level) to the ideal of

III. Economic Growth and Discounting

Argument 2: Future generations will be wealthier than current generations and it is

(1) It is wrong to devote resources to future generations rather than to current

A. Three reasons suggest themselves. First, of course, many welfare economists

future generations. Therefore, current generations can discount the resources to be

These arguments are subtly different. The Cost-Effectiveness Argument is con-

A final limitation in the Ability to Pay Argument is that it is incomplete. It is

IV. Risk, Uncertainty, and Discounting

A. Argument 3 would be advanced by advocates of Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA).

(R2) is supported by two considerations. First, many affluent people expend

There is consensus among climate scientists and environmental economists that

Climate change jeopardizes fundamental human rights. I have argued that

A human rights-oriented approach can thus provide guidance on how to think

1. Introduction: Catastrophes and Tipping Points

The basic science of climate change (CC)—our understanding of the way in

JOURNAL of SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY, Vol. 40 No. 2, Summer 2009, 187–203.

Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM), which triggered the largest mass

2. The Precautionary Principle

The unavailability of risk assessment as a method for policy making with

3. The Playing Safe Argument

Famously, Rawls offers an interpretation of equality as maximin: to treat

consequences of CC may turn out to be nowhere near as dire as experts’ worst

Methane Nightmare attach as worst outcomes, in which case we should aim to

4. The Unbearable Strains of Commitment

There is something bad about Methane Nightmare that is related to justice,

we—the current generation—cannot decide not to take such precautions. When

Prima facie, (a) is implausibly demanding because it would leave no

In conclusion, I have distinguished between two Rawlsian arguments for the

I would like to thank Gillian Brock, Nigel Pleasants, Jurgen de Wispelaere, Jo

conservative statements—the lowest common denominator of scientific opinion to which all

Matters of intergenerational justice are fundamental to discussions of justice

JOURNAL of SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY, Vol. 40 No. 2, Summer 2009, 204–224.

In discussing proposals for the intergenerational assignment of the costs of