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
3 - Historical Emissions
Does Ignorance Matter?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 February 2017
By
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
This article discusses the claim that it is inappropriate to make members of current day states pay for the historic greenhouse gas emissions of their historical counterparts on account of the fact that those counterparts were not aware of the harm which their actions would cause in the future. I accept that ignorance is a defence against a charge of moral wrongdoing, absent a justified charge of culpable negligence. Nonetheless, it is appropriate to hold those relevantly connected to historical actions which would have been wrongful if performed in knowledge of their likely consequences liable for the costs of those consequences when a specific condition is fulfilled. This is when we are convinced that they would have acted as they did even if they had, in fact, been aware of the likely consequences of their actions. The particular character of human history, particularly in relation to international affairs, renders such a verdict very plausible in relation to historic emissions, and means that there is no unfairness in holding present day peoples responsible for the costs of the actions of their forebears.
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- Information
- Climate Justice and Historical Emissions , pp. 61 - 79Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2017
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