Backward-Looking Principles of Climate Justice: The Unjustified Move from the Polluter Pays Principle to the Beneficiary Pays Principle
Item Type
Author
Language
English
Abstract
Climate change involves changes in the climate system caused by polluting human activities and the social and natural effects of these changes. The historical and anthropogenic grounds of climate change play an important role in climate justice claims. Many climate justice scholars believe that principles of climate justice should account for the historical and anthropogenic sources of climate change. Two main backward-looking principles have been proposed: the polluter pays principle (PPP) and the beneficiary pays principle (BPP). The BPP emerged in the literature on climate justice in response to certain objections raised against the PPP. In this paper, I focus on two of these objections: the causation objection and the excusable ignorance objection. Defenders of the BPP have traditionally assumed that this principle is not vulnerable to those objections, which renders the BPP superior to the PPP. In this paper, I challenge this underlying assumption. My argument here is simple: moving from the PPP to the BPP in response to any of these objections might be unjustified because the BPP is affected by at least some of the considerations giving rise to these objections.
Subject
Beneficiary pays principle
Causation
Climate justice
Excusable ignorance
Fairness
Legitimate expectations
Polluter pays principle
Publication Title
Publication Year
2022
Publication Date
2022-11-08
Journal abreviation
Res Publica
Source
Springer Link
License
ISSN
1572-8692
Short Title
Backward-Looking Principles of Climate Justice
URL Document
Citer cette ressource
Backward-Looking Principles of Climate Justice: The Unjustified Move from the Polluter Pays Principle to the Beneficiary Pays Principle,
dans Science & Ignorance,
consulté le 21 Novembre 2024, https://ignorancestudies.inist.fr/s/science-ignorance/item/4600