Table Of ContentPhilosophical Foundations of Climate
Change Policy
Philosophical
Foundations of Climate
Change Policy
JOSEPH HEATH
1
3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication Data
Names: Heath, Joseph, 1967– author.
Title: Philosophical foundations of climate change policy / Joseph Heath.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2021] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020055999 (print) | LCCN 2020056000 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197567982 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197568002 (epub) |
ISBN 9780197568019 | ISBN 9780197567999
Subjects: LCSH: Climatic changes—Government policy. |
Climatic changes—Philosophy.
Classification: LCC QC903. H427 2021 (print) | LCC QC903 (ebook) |
DDC 363.738/74561—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020055999
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020056000
DOI: 10.1093/ oso/ 9780197567982.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
Contents
Preface vii
Introduction 1
1. False Starts 19
1.1. Traditional Environmental Ethics 23
1.2. Liberal Environmentalism 37
1.3. Conclusion 60
2. Climate Change and Growth 63
2.1. The Undemandingness Problem 66
2.2. Limits to Growth 72
2.3. Impacts of Climate Change 80
2.4. Sustainability and Fungibility 91
2.5. Catastrophe 101
2.6. Conclusion 107
3. Intergenerational Justice 109
3.1. The Consequentialist Challenge 113
3.2. The Structure of Intergenerational Cooperation 118
3.3. Applications and Objections 128
3.4. Just Savings 139
3.5. Conclusion 147
4. The Case for Carbon Pricing 149
4.1. Market Reciprocity 150
4.2. Carbon Pricing 160
4.3. Example: Food 171
4.4. Complementary Policies 175
4.5. Conclusion 180
5. The Social Cost of Carbon 182
5.1. Embedded CBA 184
5.2. Basic Principles of CBA 192
5.3. CBA and Regulation 198
5.4. Objections and Replies 204
5.5. Climate Change 218
5.6. Compensating the Losers? 223
vi Contents
6. Positive Social Time Preference 230
6.1. The Case for Temporal Neutrality 233
6.2. Reflective Equilibrium 249
6.3. Institutionalized Responsibility 254
6.4. Thinking Politically 258
6.5. Discounting for Deontologists 261
6.6. Conclusion 264
Conclusion 269
Notes 275
Bibliography 313
Index 329
Preface
This work was originally brought together as a series of lectures, presented
in May 2018 at the Department of Philosophy at Bayreuth University. I
would like to extend a special thanks to Julian Fink and his colleagues at
Bayreuth, both for the warm reception and intellectually stimulating en-
vironment, and also for providing me the impetus to assemble my various
thoughts on this question into something more closely resembling a co-
herent position.
People who have helped me in various ways with the development of
this work include Idil Boran, Virginie Maris, Marc Davidson, Chad Horne,
James Brandt, Hamish Russell, Rachel Bryant, Katherine Browne, Bruce
Chapman, Julian Fink, Axel Gosseries, Xavier Landes, Lukas Meyer, Dan
Moller, Nils Holtung, Stephen Gardiner, Kian Mintz- Woo, Lukas Tank,
and Arthur Ripstein. Some of our exchanges were adversarial, and so the
people listed should not be held responsible for the contents of this work,
or for the failure to discourage me from making certain claims. Naturally
I owe a special debt to those who read the entire manuscript or provided
research assistance. Special thanks to Jovy Chan for completing the index.
Portions of this work have been presented at Queen’s University,
Duke University, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Brown University,
Université de Montreal, Stockholm School of Economics in Riga,
Harvard University, University of Maryland, SUNY Buffalo, and of course
Universität Bayreuth. Special thanks again to members of the Department
of Philosophy at Bayreuth for inviting me to present the 2018 Wittgenstein
Lectures, on which this book is based. Thanks as well to the several dozen
talented students at Bayreuth, who attended every lecture and spent two
hours each afternoon pressing me on the various points made. I would
also like to thank students at the University of Toronto, both in philosophy
and in public policy, for discussion of these topics over the years. Finally, I
would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
of Canada, the Trudeau Foundation, as well as the Jackman Humanities
Institute at the University of Toronto for financial support, which has
funded both research for the book and release time for its preparation.
viii Preface
This book includes modified presentation of material that has
appeared previously in the following publications: “The Structure of
Intergenerational Cooperation,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 41:1 (2013):
31– 66; “Climate Ethics: Defending a Positive Social Time Preference,”
Journal of Moral Philosophy, 14:4 (2016): 436– 462; and my book The
Machinery of Government (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020).
Introduction
I would like to begin with both an apology and an explanation for the title of
this book: Philosophical Foundations of Climate Change Policy. This is some-
thing of a mouthful and, at the same time, not particularly inspiring. I have
chosen it, however, because of my desire to communicate clearly both the na-
ture and the scope of the work. This is not a book about climate change per se,
but rather about how governments should respond to climate change. It is,
in other words, concerned with climate change policy. The argument, how-
ever, is somewhat backward compared to many other contributions made
by philosophers in this field. Rather than starting with a philosophical view
and then working out its implications for climate change policy, I start rather
with climate change policy—o r more specifically, with the range of policy
options that can seriously be contemplated under anything like our current
circumstances— and I work back from this to a discussion of the philosoph-
ical view that one should hold.1 This is based on my conviction that a plau-
sible normative- philosophical theory (such as a “theory of justice”) should
have the capacity to generate policy recommendations within the space of
feasible alternatives and, thus, should be able to help policymakers both to
select the right response and to defend it with serious arguments.
By “feasible” here, I am not talking about political feasibility.2 I am merely
talking about feasibility under the ordinary constraints that force us humans
to organize our societies with the basic institutional structures that we have.
These structures include, most importantly, the organization of production
and distribution through a market economy, state intervention to correct a
variety of market failures, as well to achieve a less-t han- perfect measure of
redistribution, and, finally, the absence of any supranational authority with
independent coercive power (i.e. world government).3 These are features
of the world that we live in that may change someday, but that are unlikely
to change within the time frame required to address the problem of climate
change. They also serve as constraints on the policy space, in the sense that
no one with any real political power, and no one who is in a position to advise
anyone with real political power, takes seriously proposals that would require
Philosophical Foundations of Climate Change Policy. Joseph Heath, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press
2021. DOI: 10.1093/ oso/ 9780197567982.003.0001
