Book contents
- Climate Justice and Historical Emissions
- Climate Justice and Historical Emissions
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Climate Ethics, Affirmative Action, and Unjust Enrichment
- 2 Historical Responsibility and Climate Change
- 3 Historical Emissions
- 4 How Legal Systems Deal with Issues of Responsibility for Past Harmful Behavior
- 5 Asking Beneficiaries to Pay for Past Pollution
- 6 Benefiting from Unjust Acts and Benefiting from Injustice
- 7 A Luck-Based Moral Defense of Grandfathering
- 8 In Defense of Emissions Egalitarianism?
- 9 In the Name of Political Possibility
- 10 Right to Development and Historical Emissions
- Index
- References
8 - In Defense of Emissions Egalitarianism?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 February 2017
Book contents
- Climate Justice and Historical Emissions
- Climate Justice and Historical Emissions
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Climate Ethics, Affirmative Action, and Unjust Enrichment
- 2 Historical Responsibility and Climate Change
- 3 Historical Emissions
- 4 How Legal Systems Deal with Issues of Responsibility for Past Harmful Behavior
- 5 Asking Beneficiaries to Pay for Past Pollution
- 6 Benefiting from Unjust Acts and Benefiting from Injustice
- 7 A Luck-Based Moral Defense of Grandfathering
- 8 In Defense of Emissions Egalitarianism?
- 9 In the Name of Political Possibility
- 10 Right to Development and Historical Emissions
- Index
- References
Summary
While the view that every person is entitled to the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions is supported by many, it has been fiercely criticised by Bell and Caney. They criticise Emissions Egalitarianism (EE) for being “Atomist” and “Isolationist”, i.e. for ignoring climate-induced costs not related to mitigation on the one and considerations regarding global justice on the other hand. The paper aims at investigating whether EE can be defended against their critique. Based on a reconstruction by Seidel, Section 2 and 3 discuss key aspects of the global commons argument for EE. Since the argument rests on an atomist and isolationist approach, sections 4 and 5 discuss arguments in defence of Atomism and Isolationism respectively. We argue that both approaches are unconvincing. Section 6 then sketches how EE could be defended as a second best option instead. We compare EE with Caney’s most recent emission allocation proposal and argue that EE has a higher institutional and political feasibility. We conclude that EE would make the world more just and lead to a global redistribution of resources that can function as capacity building for more complex allocation procedures in future.
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- Information
- Climate Justice and Historical Emissions , pp. 165 - 197Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2017
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