Why It Can Be Effective To Be Just When Sharing Climate Burdens

Abstract: This article aims to provide both efficient and just ways of sharing mitigative and adaptive climate burden costs. Time is an important factor when constructing policies which are set out to turn negative temperature trends around. Justice is another crucial value to consider when deciding who ought to carry out these climate burdens. Moreover, how we consider efficient and just sharing of burden costs, relies on practicality in relation to moral responsibility. Moral responsibility can be applied to those who have polluted and those who have benefitted from pollution. However, there are practical issues that hide between the lines. Justice grounded only on moral responsibility, such as ‘the polluter pays principle’ and ‘the beneficiary pays principle’, can only account for a limited portion of climate burdens. Because there are leftover burdens that need to be shared, and a climate window of opportunity to regard, we need to allocate the burdens both fairly as well as efficiently, such as ‘the ability to pay principle. In this paper, I will present a case that takes all of these dimensions into account and I will illustrate that it indeed can be effective to be just when sharing all climate burdens.