[Posting on behalf of Indur Goklany, environmental policy analyst and author of The Precautionary Principle: A Critical Appraisal of Environmental Risk Assessment (Cato Institute, Washington, DC, 2001).]

My apologies for the late entry into the discussion on climate change and property rights. Nevertheless, here are a few thoughts.

Before anyone gets compensated one has to first figure out who is “responsible” and for what. On that score, while it is possible to assign greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to nations based on where the act of burning a ton of coal, for instance, physically occurs, we should be cognizant that GHG emissions are the effluvia of civilization and all its activities. It is not only energy consumption that contributes to it, but land clearance, crop production, animal husbandry, trade, tourism, and so forth. Moreover, because of the globalized economy, which sustains today’s civilization, economic activity in one country helps provide livelihoods and incomes for many inhabitants of other countries, and vice versa. In fact, a substantial portion of economic growth in developing countries is attributable to trade (Goklany 1995), and remittances and tourism from developed countries. Without such economic activities, U.S. emissions, for example, might be lower, but so would jobs and incomes elsewhere (e.g., in India or Bangladesh). Thus, the improvements in human well-being that have occurred in many developing countries (particularly since World War II) are partly due to the GHG-fueled economic growth in developed countries.

The same economic growth also enabled today’s rich societies to invest in research and development that helped, for instance, raise crop yields worldwide, develop new and more effective medicines (e.g., for HIV/AIDS), provide aid in times of famine or other natural disasters, provide funding for reducing TB, create and support of the Internet, and other items now considered by some to be global public goods (ODS 2003). Also, absent such economic growth, the sum of human capital worldwide would have been much less — consider, for instance, the millions of non-Americans who have been cycled through US universities who, then, have gone back to help in their native countries’ economic and technological development. Clearly, all countries indulge in activities that lead to global warming (GW), and all countries benefit from the activities that cause GHG emissions. So one should try to estimate whether direct and indirect costs of GW will, in fact, exceed direct and indirect benefits.

Some might argue that if the actions of A produce both benefits and harms to B, A should compensate B for the harms, but she cannot subtract the benefits in estimating the amount of compensation (because, after all, B did not solicit A to undertake the actions in question). I would disagree with this because benefits are nothing but negative harms, and should, therefore, necessarily be subtracted in estimating net harm to B. Also, if B insists on not subtracting benefits from the compensation package, he loses his moral claim for any compensation. In other words, you can’t insist on compensation on one hand, and be a free rider on the other.

Some might also argue that one should not take indirect effects of GHG producing activities into consideration: only direct effects should be considered. But the claim for compensation is itself based on indirect (and inadvertent) outcomes. After all, developed countries did not emit GHG emissions with express intent to harm anyone. So there has to be symmetry in these matters.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that one can indeed estimate the fraction of global warming caused by Americans, the next step is to figure out what is the net harm that has been caused to, say, Bangladesh (ignoring for now issues such as whether today’s generation should be liable for damages incurred by previous generations, etc.). To make such estimates, it is not sufficient to know the direct impacts of climate change on Bangladesh, but also the indirect consequences of all GHG producing activities. This involves developing answers to questions such as: had there been no GHG producing activities in developed countries, what would have been Bangladesh’s level of human well-being? What would be its life expectancy (which is currently 62 years and was about 35 years in 1945) had there been no GHG emissions in the interim? What about its hunger and malnutrition rates? How many Bangladeshis (and Indians, I may add) were saved in the 1960s and 1970s because of food aid from the developed countries? How much of the past increase in Bangladesh's agricultural productivity is due to higher CO2 levels, or indirectly due to efforts that were possible because developed countries were wealthy enough to support/stimulate them? Assuming in the future, agricultural productivity declines due to climate change, how do you subtract out past benefits from future harms? [These questions, which are quite germane since food production and distribution are among civilization's GHG generating activities, are just a small sample of issues that have to be addressed to render a full accounting of the consequences of climate change -- and, if there is any accounting at all, it must necessarily be full.]

If one could, in fact, answer these questions, I am skeptical that one would be able to show that the effects of GHG emissions has been, on the whole, negative (at least so far).

And if one doesn’t believe this, one should give up on economic growth and technological development.

References:
Goklany, IM. 1995. “Strategies to Enhance Adaptability: Technological Change, Economic Growth and Free Trade.” Climatic Change 30: 427-449.

ODS [Office of Development Studies]. 2003. Global Public Goods ‘A Highly-rewarding Investment’, Briefing Note 3, UNDP. Available at http://www.undp.org/globalpublicgoods/globalization/background.html. Visited June 24, 2004.