Vol. 21 No. 10 (October, 2011) pp.628-631.
CLIMATE
CHANGE JUSTICE, by Eric
A. Posner and David Weisbach. Princeton,
New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2010. 240pp. Cloth: $27.95. ISBN:
9780691137759. eBook: $27.95. ISBN: 9781400834402.
Reviewed
by David Dehnel, Department of Political Science, Augustana College. Email:
daviddehnel[at]augustana.edu.
Because
the atmosphere is a global commons, effective action to address the problem of
human induced climate change will require unprecedented forms of international
cooperation. Eric Posner and David Weisbach have a written a book that they hope
will clear away some of the conceptual obstacles to international cooperation
and point toward a just but realistically attainable treaty to address the
issue. While they may fall short of achieving these goals, the book is a
provocative and informative exploration of the ethical dimensions of the debate.
The main interest of the book to scholars of law and politics will be as an
application of ethical principles to the dominant issue of international
economic policy. In a clear and thoughtful analysis, the authors apply
jurisprudential concepts such as corrective justice, Rawlsian fairness, and
utilitarianism to the issue of global climate change.
The title
of the book, and most of its original thought, centers on ethical issues. The
authors assume that a treaty to address global climate change is both
economically and ethically justified and further grant that redistribution of
wealth from rich to poor is a moral good. The
thrust of the argument, however, is to rebut or at least problematize most moral
claims about climate change and what to do about it. A core assumption of the
analysis is that to have a realistic chance at adoption a treaty must comply
with the principle of “International Paretianism,” that is, all participating
states must believe themselves to be better off as a result of the treaty. This
principle, a staple of realist international relations, contradicts the ethical
claims most prominent in the climate debate: wealthy nations ought to pay most
of the costs of abatement because they have the wherewithal to do so and because
they have historically been the leading polluters. Posner and Weisbach argue
that these ethical claims are not as compelling as they seem. Therefore,
international negotiators should set to work on a treaty that spreads the costs
such that there are no obvious winners and losers.
In the
first part of the book (chapters 1-3), the authors refer to the vast literature
on climate change to support their main assumptions. They assert that on a
global scale, the future costs due to climate change justify taking action in
the present, and that poor nations are most vulnerable to the impact of climate
change. Nonetheless, they point out that the costs and benefits of climate
change abatement are complex. For example, rising temperatures will likely lead
to more widespread suffering from malaria. Because malaria is (currently) a
disease that mainly affects poor people, it is not clear whether the most
beneficial policy would be unabated economic [*629]development or sacrificing
some development in order to reduce climate change, and therefore, malaria
(p.29). Throughout the book the authors assume that economic development over
the coming century will significantly reduce poverty, though they grant that
climate change could negate a proportion of those gains.
Posner and
Weisbach reject the Kyoto Protocol, deeming it a symbolic action. They suggest
that the United States was justified in not ratifying the protocol for the same
reasons given by the Bush Administration: the U.S. would bear a large share of
the costs of meeting the Kyoto targets and the accord places no limits on the
emissions of developing nations. The authors make a valid point that
self-interest often lies behind moral indignation in the discussion of climate
change, but at times they carry their defense of the United States rather far.
For example, they dismiss Germany’s strong performance relative to Kyoto targets
on the grounds that they benefit statistically from having absorbed the weak
east German economy. They also set aside British emissions reductions because
they stem from a conversion to natural gas that, the authors assert, would have
happened anyway. This logic is unlikely to persuade anyone outside of the United
States to ignore our poor performance since the Kyoto targets were adopted.
In
chapters 4-7 Posner and Weisbach thoroughly discuss, and mainly deflate, the
leading ethical arguments connected to global climate change. Throughout the
discussion they survey various approaches to social justice, including
“welfarist” (utilitarian) and “deontological (rights-oriented) theories. They
concede that the maximization of human welfare justifies substantial transfers
of wealth from rich people to poor people, but they argue extensively that
considerations of distributive justice need not be tied to a climate treaty and
that to do so would likely make a treaty impossible. Maldistribution of wealth
is hardly new, and there is no reason to assume that wealthy nations are about
to abandon their long standing reluctance to spend a lot on foreign aid.
Typically, wealthy nations are not as vulnerable to the costs of climate change,
so a treaty that assigns most of the costs of abatement to them would violate
International Paretianism. This realistic assessment of the interests of wealthy
nations is undeniable, but Posner and Weisbach go beyond the pressure of self
interest to make the controversial claim that the ethical obligations of wealthy
nations really are not as great as they seem.
Posner and
Weisbach discuss the complexities of global wealth redistribution in
considerable detail. One of their points is that negotiations for a treaty
oriented to distributive justice would be burdened by conflicting views on “who
deserves aid and who should pay for it” (p.86). These disagreements reflect
substantial problems in addressing global wealth inequalities. Due to corruption
and mismanagement, aid to poor nations does not necessarily benefit poor people.
The most cost effective investments in climate change abatement are not
necessarily in the poorest nations. The benefits of climate change abatement
will be realized in the future, but what about the poor of today?
After
setting aside distributive justice, the authors also reject a “corrective [*630]
justice” approach that would assign the costs of a climate treaty to those who
are deemed responsible for the problem. It is true, for example, that nations in
Africa have contributed little to the stock of greenhouse gases but are
particularly vulnerable to negative effects from climate change (p.101). Posner
and Weisbach point out, however, that a climate treaty will be worked out among
nations, not individuals. The identification of victims and responsible parties,
central to corrective justice, does not work well at the national level. The
United States has been emitting greenhouse gases for some time, but the current
generation is only responsible for a fraction of the total. To what extent
should individuals be held responsible for the actions of their government (or
governments for the actions of corporations, one might add)? The impact of
greenhouse gases is a recent discovery, and still hotly debated in popular media
despite the scientific consensus. At what point do people who live
energy-intensive lifestyles become culpable for knowingly harming others?
Furthermore, the victims of climate change live in the future, and their
identities and locations can only be guessed at. In some circumstances it will
be very difficult to establish causation, an important element in corrective
justice.
Having
rejected corrective justice, Posner and Weisbach next tackle the proposal to
establish a cap and trade system based on a per capita allocation of emissions
permits. In a cap and trade scheme, a limited amount of permits to produce
greenhouse emissions are distributed and nations that feel the need to burn more
carbon (or cut down their forests) can buy permits from nations that have
permits they don’t use. Some sort of cap and trade scheme may make good sense
from a policy perspective, but Posner and Weisbach emphatically reject the idea
that the permits should be initially distributed to nations in proportion to
their population. (A per capita distribution would be based on the ethical
principle that every individual has an equal right to use, or dump in, the
global commons.) Here, the authors augment (and belabor) their case against the
relevance of concerns for distributive justice, making some strained ethical and
policy arguments. It seems to me that the obvious bottom line is that wealthy
nations will never concede to the radical redistribution of wealth that a per
capita scheme would imply. A per capita distribution of permits would violate
the principle of International Paretianism because big per capita polluters like
the U.S. would have to buy a lot of permits, incurring costs that far exceed the
national benefits of a climate treaty.
The book
contains an interesting and thorough discussion of intergenerational justice.
Posner and Weisbach adopt the radically egalitarian principle of
intergenerational neutrality (the welfare of future generations counts for no
less than our own), but balance it by adopting a moderate version of the
economic principle of discounting the future. Following conventional economic
logic, they grant that it makes no sense to invest in climate change abatement
if investments in economic development would produce future gains that are
greater than the costs of climate change. Market oriented conservatives have
long used interest rate based discounting calculations to render meaningless the
costs of climate change that will be felt more than 50 years into the future.
[*631] Posner and Weisbach soften this result by adopting a lower discount rate
on the grounds that market interest rates account for private but not social
return on investments and because of uncertainty over the extent of potential
environmental damage. They do concede that because individuals in the future are
likely to be richer than us, a transfer from today’s poor to tomorrow’s not so
poor is justified only if the environmental benefits are substantial.
Overall,
one of the interesting things about the book is the extent to which it draws
ideas from a wide range of ideological perspectives. The principle of
International Paretianism tracks with a neo-conservative perspective on
international relations, and the author’s endorsement of the discounting of
future costs and benefits follows, in modified form, market economics. Posner
and Weisbach reject many of the leading ethical claims advanced by those who
contend that wealthy nations should take vigorous action to halt global climate
change. On the other hand, they take the scientific warnings about climate
change seriously, are willing to acknowledge the ethical value of the
environment, and grant that we have substantial moral obligations to future
generations. The result is that the authors conclude that a climate treaty is
justified, albeit one that requires poor nations to share the costs.
I was
impressed by the quality of the analysis of moral issues and the clarity of the
presentation of complex arguments. One question I am left with is the identity
of the audience for the book. The authors say that their goal is to clear away
obstacles in the path to an attainable climate treaty by debunking spurious
moral arguments that, if pressed, would require some nations (mainly wealthy
ones) to bear costs that far exceed the benefits they are likely to gain. It is
not clear to me that these arguments are likely to be convincing to negotiators
for poor nations. The problem of climate change is unusual because it presents a
situation in which the wealthy nations need the cooperation of poor nations
(especially those on a path to rapid development). It is hardly surprising that
the poor nations are pressing their demands for redistribution in this context.
It may be that the developing nations will have to abandon these demands in
order to reach a deal based on mutual self interest. I doubt that the arguments
in this book will help persuade them to do so. The book is more likely to help
Americans feel better about our standard of living and what we have done to
obtain it. That may not be a good thing for its implications outside of the
realm of international treaty making.
© Copyright 2011 by the author, David Dehnel.