Aretē

Introduction

“I'm not going to let the United States carry the burden for cleaning up the world's air, like the Kyoto treaty would have done.” Here we see President Bush's way of turning the pressing question of what his administration would do about global warming into a machoistic negative-answer that he hopes will gain him votes during the 2000 US presidential debates. Bush thinks it isn't fair that China and India were exempted from the treaty, and claims that he'll only support a more ‘even-handed’ protocol. But when we seriously look at the situation, we find that the Bush Administration's argument falls through, and that the United States should bear most, if not all, of the costs resulting from the human-caused emission of greenhouse gases.

The atmosphere is a resource and so is subject to the rules of distributive justice. If the resource is unlimited, there is no immediate reason for analyzing the distribution of it, since if anyone wants more, it's there for the taking. But as science continues to make ever clearer, the atmosphere can't handle unlimited amounts of greenhouse gases without causing catastrophic changes in climate, and we are in fact quite close to, if not well past, this limit. Because the lives of everyone on the planet are directly affected by the climate, ensuring that the distribution of our atmosphere is just is of the utmost importance.

The Atmosphere and Distributive Justice

Peter Singer has put a lot of thought into the applicability of distributive justice with respect to the atmosphere and concludes that no conception of justice yields any result compatible with the Bush Administration's desire not to bear the costs of climate change. In One Atmosphere, Singer follows Robert Nozick in distinguishing between ‘historical’ principles and ‘time-slice’ principles of distributive justice. “A historical principle,” notes Singer, “is one that says: we can't decide, merely by looking at the present situation, whether a given distribution of goods is just or unjust. We must also ask how the situation came about; we must know its history” (30). As regards the atmosphere, a historical principle holds whomever broke the atmosphere responsible for fixing it; it's a ‘polluter pays’ principle. A time-slice principle, on the other hand, looks only at the current distribution, and decides based on that, not on how it came to be, whether or not the distribution is just. Singer argues that both principles lead to the conclusion that the United States is responsible for grave injustices in the distribution of the atmosphere.

Historical Principles

Singer first looks at the historical principle of distributive justice. In this discussion he alludes to John Locke's Second Treatise on Civil Government in saying that “Because our labour is our own,… when we mix [it] with the land and its products, we make them our own,” and that this is just “as long as the appropriation of what is held in common does not prevent there being ‘enough and as good left in common for others’” (31). Singer's continues this discussion by drawing an analogy between the atmosphere and a giant sink down which we pour our waste. When the drain's capacity is exceeded, ‘enough and as good’ is not left for others. Singer concludes that despite attempts by Locke and Smith to accommodate inequality in the face of inadequate resources, the industrialized nations are not entitled to a bigger share of the atmosphere's capacity than the poor nations (33-34). He goes on to claim that “as far as the atmosphere is concerned, the developed nations broke it. If we believe that people should contribute to fixing something in proportion to their responsibility for breaking it, then the developed nations owe it to the rest of the world to fix the problem with the atmosphere” (38). So, if we adopt a historical principle for identifying and rectifying injustices in the distribution of the atmosphere, we find that the United States, responsible for an absolutely immense portion of the world's emission of greenhouse gases, should be held responsible, in proportion to the amount of emission, for cleaning up the world's air.

Time-slice Principles

In addition to the historical principle, there are a number of conceptions of time-slice principles that Singer discusses. A common defense of the industrialized nations is the argument that because those nations didn't know that there was a limit to the amount of greenhouse gases the atmosphere could handle, the polluters shouldn't be held responsible for injustices caused by past actions. This is a firm ground for arguing in favor of a time-slice principle, which doesn't consider past actions as relevant to the justice of the current distribution. Singer suggests we start by asking, “why should anyone have a greater claim to part of the global atmospheric sink than any other?” He responds, simply, “No reason at all. In other words, everyone has the same claim to part of the atmospheric sink as everyone else. This kind of equality seems self-evidently fair, at least as a starting point for discussion, and perhaps, if no good reasons can be found for moving from it, as an end point as well” (39). This kind of reasoning about fairness is a common starting point for many discussions advocating strict egalitarian distributions. Indeed it does seem self-evidently fair; it's a lesson taught to children when they're presented with a pie that they all must share. Singer starts by asking what the total capacity of the atmosphere actually is, since that must be determined before we can come up with an equal distribution of it. He suggests that a good starting point would be to simply maintain current levels of greenhouse gases. He says that figures out to be roughly 1 metric ton carbon-equivalence for every person on the planet per year. If we were to actually divide up the atmosphere's capacity among the world's population, Singer finds that the United States “would have to reduce its emissions to no more than one-fifth of present levels” (40). So the Bush Administration must think that there is some ‘good reason’ for moving away from a strict egalitarian distribution.

John Rawls, Singer notes, is one who holds that we are justified in moving away from strict equality if doing so improves the position of the least-well-off in terms of resources. Rawls' conception of justice avoids the ‘leveling down’ objection to strict egalitarianism. This objection is that it's possible that a strictly equal distribution is only possible if everyone is brought down to the level of the poorest, without helping the poorest at all. Inequality is allowed, so long as it brings up the level of the poorest. Thus, Singer claims, “if we were to follow Rawls' principle, in distributing the atmosphere's capacity to absorb our waste gases safely, we could only accept a distribution that improves the situation of those who, through no fault of their own, are at the bottom of the heap” (42). So on this conception of justice, the United States would have to show that by emitting more than its fair share of greenhouse gases, so doing actually benefits the poorest nations. Singer goes further: “the only grounds on which one could argue against rich nations bearing all the costs of reducing emissions would be that to do so would make the poor nations even worse off than they would have been if the rich nations were not bearing all the costs” (43). Because the United States already emits more greenhouse gases per capita than any of the poorest countries, if gas emissions are to be reduced, on the Rawlsian view, the United States would have to bear all the costs, unless it could be shown that to do so would hurt the least-well-off. Singer interprets the Bush Administration's stance as an attempt to show just that. The argument goes that the extra emissions benefit the poorest countries by fostering economic growth in the developing world. Bush's plan would allow an increase in the total amount of gases emitted by the United States, citing economic stimulation as justification. But Singer points out that an increase in the United States' emissions places even more of a burden on the other nations of the world if climate change is to be avoided (43). Basically, even though high emission levels may provide peripheral benefits, the atmosphere can still only take so much, so an increase in one nation's emissions must cause a decrease in the other nations' emissions in order to break even. Singer continues by showing that the benefits of high US emission rates are not in fact felt by the other nations. He states, “the primary beneficiaries of US production are the residents of the United States itself” (44). Here again, the Bush Administration's argument falls through.

Fundamental Principles of Fairness

As Singer shows in his article, if we follow Nozick, Locke, and Rawls and analyze the distribution of the atmosphere bearing in mind various conceptions of justice, we find that the United States is charged with bearing almost all the costs resulting from pollution. Henry Shue, in Global Environment and International Inequality, appeals to lower-level commonsense principles of fairness, and so provides a more intuitive way of achieving Singer's conclusions without appealing to high-level concepts of distributive justice. Shue comes up with three principles of equality that he thinks lead to the conclusion that the rich countries should shoulder the costs of pollution.

The first principle deals with fundamental fairness. Shue says, “Once such an inequality has been created unilaterally by someone's imposing costs upon other people, we are justified in reversing the inequality by imposing extra burdens upon the producer of the inequality” (533). More concisely, if you take something of mine, I'm justified in taking something from you of equal value to make up for it. This is the basic principle that all economies are based on, and is undeniably fair. So to apply it to the atmosphere problem, one would say that the industrialized nations take something from the world when they pollute, and reap all or almost all the benefits.

Shue says:

Those societies whose activities have damaged the atmosphere ought, according to the first principle of equality, to bear sufficiently unequal burdens henceforth to correct the inequality that they have imposed. In this case, everyone is bearing costs—because the damage was universal—but the benefits have been overwhelmingly skewed towards those who have become rich in the process (534).

By Shue's first principle, because the developed nations gained wealth through the destruction of common property, and this wealth was not shared, it is only fair that the developed nations bear the costs of reparation.

Unequal Burdens

Shue's second principle states that, “among a number of parties, all of whom are bound to contribute to some common endeavor, the parties who have the most resources normally should contribute the most to the endeavor” (537). This principle comes out of the fact that the seemingly fairer principle, that everyone always pays the same amount in the pursuit of an endeavor, no matter what, ignores the actual situation of the parties involved. Suppose that in order to pay an equal amount, one party would have to give up eating, because he could not afford to pay for food and that common goal together. Or worse still, suppose the amount one would have to pay to achieve an equal burden exceeds his total income! Such a distribution of costs is obviously undesirable. The appeal of progressive rates, Shue says, is that they take the final outcome into consideration. If we take to be true one of the premises of the Bush Administration's argument in favor of an economic conception of equity, namely, that the US produces more than other countries, we find that if we apply Shue's second principle, the United States must bear a greater portion of the costs of pollution than we would otherwise see.

Guaranteed Minimum

When considering what's fair, it is perhaps indisputably true that if the means are available to provide a minimally decent human life to those who would otherwise not have one, it should be done. This is the basis of Shue's third principle.

He states:

When some people have less than enough for a decent human life, other people have far more than enough, and the total resources available are so great that everyone could have at least enough without preventing some people from still retaining considerably more than others have, it is unfair not to guarantee everyone at least an adequate minimum (541).

To illustrate this principle as regards the pollution problem, Shue speaks of ‘general obligations’. He basically says that while the poor countries say to the rich countries “our most urgent request of you is assistance in guaranteeing the fulfillment of the essential needs of our citizens,” and the rich countries' requests are along the lines of “we want you to help us clean up the atmosphere,” as long as the rich countries have no general obligation to meet the poor countries' request, the poor countries certainly don't have any general obligation to meet the rich countries' less calamitous request. From this principle, we can conclude that until the United States provides enough aid to the poor countries so that they have a sustainable economy and the citizens all are enjoying minimally decent human lives, the US has absolutely no right to insist that the poor countries help clean up the world's air.

Conclusion

President Bush's quote, while it may have gained him a few votes of greedy individuals, was, as the preceding discussion shows, morally dubious. No conception of distributive justice allows such great disproportionalities in greenhouse gas emissions, and just about any way we look at it, it seems as though the United States and the other top polluters have to carry all the burden of cleaning up the world's air. To be more “even-handed” than the above principles would almost have to mean that all countries, no matter their population, no matter their actual emission rates, no matter their ability to pay, should contribute equal total amounts to cleaning up the atmosphere, and any claim along those lines has virtually no basis in fundamental principles of fairness or justice.

last updated 2 years ago #