Climate Justice Beyond the State 2020038761, 2020038762, 9780367511340, 9781003052562

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Climate Justice Beyond the State

Virtually every figure in the climate justice literature agrees that states are presently failing to discharge their duties to take action on climate change. Few, however, have attempted to think through what follows from that fact from a moral point of view. In Climate Justice Beyond the State, Lachlan Umbers and Jeremy Moss argue that states’ failures to take action on climate change have important implications for the duties of the most important actors states contain within them – sub-national political communities, corporations, and individuals – actors that have been largely neglected in the climate justice literature, to date. Sub-national political communities and corporations, they argue, have duties to immediately, aggressively, and unilaterally reduce their emissions. Individuals, on the other hand, have duties to help promote collective action on climate change. Along the way, they contribute to a range of important contemporary debates, including those over the nature of collective duties, what agents are required to do under conditions of partial compliance, and the requirements of fairness. Targeted at academic philosophers working on climate justice, this book will also be of great interest to students and scholars of global justice, applied ethics, political philosophy, and environmental humanities. Lachlan Umbers is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Western Australia (UWA), Perth. He works primarily in moral and political philosophy, with a particular focus upon issues in democratic theory and climate justice. His work has been published in journals such as the British Journal of Political Science, Philosophical Studies, Political Studies, Social Theory and Practice, and the European Journal of Political Theory. With Jeremy Moss, he is the co-editor of Climate Justice and Non-State Actors: Corporations, Regions, Cities, and Individuals (Routledge). Jeremy Moss is Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney. His main research interests are in political philosophy and applied philosophy. Current research projects include: climate justice, carbon budgets, as well as the ethical issues associated with climate transitions. He is Director of the Practice Justice Initiative and leads the Climate Justice Research programme at UNSW. Moss has published several books, including Reassessing Egalitarianism (Springer), Climate Change and Social Justice (Melbourne University Press), Climate Change and Justice (Cambridge University Press), and, with Lachlan Umbers, Climate Justice and Non-State Actors: Corporations, Regions, Cities, and Individuals (Routledge).

Routledge Environmental Ethics Series Editor: Benjamin Hale University of Colorado, Boulder

The Routledge Environmental Ethics series aims to gather novel work on questions that fall at the intersection of the normative and the practical, with an eye toward conceptual issues that bear on environmental policy and environmental science. Recognizing the growing need for input from academic philosophers and political theorists in the broader environmental discourse, but also acknowledging that moral responsibilities for environmental alteration cannot be understood without rooting themselves in the practical and descriptive details, this series aims to unify contributions from within the environmental literature. Books in this series can cover topics in a range of environmental contexts, including individual responsibility for climate change, conceptual matters affecting climate policy, the moral underpinnings of endangered species protection, complications facing wildlife management, the nature of extinction, the ethics of reintroduction and assisted migration, reparative responsibilities to restore, among many others. Climate Justice and Non-State Actors Corporations, Regions, Cities, and Individuals Edited by Jeremy Moss and Lachlan Umbers Philosophy in the American West A Geography of Thought Edited by Josh Hates, Gerard Kuperus and Brian Treanor Philosophy and the Climate Crisis How the Past Can Save the Present Byron Williston Climate Justice Beyond the State Lachlan Umbers and Jeremy Moss For more information on the series, please visit www.routledge.com/RoutledgeEnvironmental-Ethics/book-series/ENVE

Climate Justice Beyond the State

Lachlan Umbers and Jeremy Moss

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Lachlan Umbers and Jeremy Moss The right of Lachlan Umbers and Jeremy Moss to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Umbers, Lachlan, author. | Moss, Jeremy, author. Title: Climate justice beyond the state / Lachlan Umbers, Jeremy Moss. Description: New York : Routledge, 2021. | Series: Routledge environmental ethics | Includes bibliographical references and index. Subjects: LCSH: Environmental justice. | Environmental policy. Classification: LCC GE220 .U43 2021 (print) | LCC GE220 (ebook) | DDC 363.738/74—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020038761 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020038762 ISBN: 978-0-367-51134-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-05256-2 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction

vii 1

Impending crisis, global intransigence 2 Climate justice and the state 4 Climate justice beyond the state 6 Overview 10 1

The climate duties of sub-national political communities

18

The devolution principle 20 National-level duties 23 Sub-national political communities’ devolved duties 31 Partial compliance 37 Carbon leakage 42 Conclusion 45 2

The climate duties of corporations

54

The contributions and capacities of the carbon majors 56 The duties of the carbon majors in practice 67 Conclusion 75 3

The climate duties of individuals Duties to promote collective action 82 The act-consequentialist approach 83 Free-riding 88 Moral free-riding 90 Objections 97 Conclusion 100

80

vi

Contents Conclusion

107

Motivational concerns 107 Unilateralism 110 Institution-level implications 114 Individual-level implications 118 Final thoughts 124 Bibliography Index

130 143

Acknowledgements

We received a great deal of assistance from many people in the writing of this book. For invaluable research assistance, we should like to thank Eleanor Buckley, Persephone Fraser, and Kitty-Jean Laginha. For helpful feedback, both written and verbal, we should like to thank – among many others – Miri Albahari, Christian Barry, Daniel Burkett, Suzanne Burri, Simon Caney, Elizabeth Cripps, Garrett Cullity, Ben Hale, Remco Heesen, Nin Kirkham, Holly Lawford-Smith, Chris Letheby, Erin Nash, Michael Rubin, Anne Schwenkenbecher, David Van Mill, and Clas Weber. The research for the book was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (DP180100355) and a grant from the University of New South Wales Digital Grid Futures Institute. Each of the following chapters was presented at conferences and in academic seminars. To that end, we should like to express our gratitude to audiences at the Arctic University of Norway, the Australian National University, Macquarie University, Murdoch University, the University of Warwick, the University of Western Australia, Wuhan University, and at the ‘IX Meetings in Moral and Political Philosophy’ Conference, held at the University of Minho, and the ‘Climate Justice Beyond the State’ Workshop, held at the University of New South Wales. Some of the material in the book builds upon articles previously published elsewhere. The ideas discussed in chapter 1 were first explored in: Umbers L. M. & J. Moss (2018). ‘Going It Alone: Cities and States for Climate Action’ Ethics, Policy & Environment 21(1): 56–59, Umbers L. M. & J. Moss (2020); ‘The Climate Duties of Sub-National Political Communities’ Political Studies 68(1): 20–36, and Umbers L. M. (2020). ‘Sub-National Climate Duties: Addressing Three Challenges’. In Climate Justice and Non-State Actors: Corporations, Regions, Cities, Individuals. J. Moss and L. Umbers (eds). UK, Routledge: 29–44. The ideas in chapter 2 were first explored in Moss, J. (2020). ‘Carbon Majors and Corporate Responsibility for Climate Change’. In Climate Justice and Non-State Actors: Corporations, Regions, Cities, Individuals. J. Moss and L. Umbers (eds). UK, Routledge: 45–60. We gratefully acknowledge permission from the publishers of these articles to reproduce some of their contents, here. Lachlan would also like to thank his colleagues at the University of Western Australia for their friendship, support, and camaraderie. He would also like especially to thank Aranee Ramachandran for her love, generosity, and patience, without which the completion of this book would certainly not have been possible.

Introduction

On June 1, 2017, President Trump announced his intention to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement. Trump’s announcement was met with worldwide condemnation. President Macron of France, for example, declared in a televised address that President Trump had “committed an error for the interests of his country, his people, and a mistake for the future of our planet” (Watts and Connolly, 2017). This response is hardly surprising. Climate change is a global phenomenon to which the United States is a major contributor. In 2014, for example, the United States emitted the equivalent of 6.4 gigatonnes of CO2 (CO2e hereafter), rendering it the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, worldwide, in that year. Over time, Trump’s decision may negatively impact communities all over the world. Yet climate change is also a local phenomenon. The greenhouse emissions attributed to countries, after all, are in the first instance produced by the many lower-level actors they contain. For example, the United States’ Environmental Protection Agency reports that the state of Texas, alone, emitted 708.81 million metric tons of CO2 in 2014 (EPA, 2016). If Texas were a country in its own right, it alone would have been the eighth largest emitter of CO2, worldwide, in that year (Olivier et al., 2016, pp. 42–3). Were the nations of the world to adopt adequate national-level climate policies, there would presumably be relatively few interesting questions to ask concerning such actors’ climate duties. A fully adequate national-level climate policy, after all, would presumably be one which (a) took on a fair share of the global burden of responding to climate change, and (b) distributed the associated costs fairly among the various agents internal to the nation in question. In that case, such actors could presumably discharge the bulk of their climate responsibilities by simply complying with the national government’s directives. Yet this, of course, is not the position in which actors like Texas find themselves. National governments around the world have failed to respond adequately to the threat posed by climate change. This prompts an obvious question: what are the climate duties of ‘sub-national’ actors, given the failure of the nations to which they belong to take appropriate action to address climate change?1 The failure of nations to do enough to counter the threat posed by climate change has been exhaustively documented elsewhere.2 The deontic implications of that fact for

2

Introduction

actors beyond the state, however, have received relatively little attention in the climate justice literature.3 The purpose of this book is to consider these implications for three crucially important types of actors: sub-national political communities, corporations, and individuals. This introduction lays the groundwork for the rest of the book. We first offer a brief survey of the empirical literature concerning the threat posed by climate change and the inadequacies of national governments’ existing climate policies. Next, we offer a brief overview of that aspect of the climate justice literature devoted to articulating the character of states’ duties to address climate change – duties which, plainly, they are presently failing to discharge. We then go on to argue that the failure of states to discharge these duties raises important questions concerning the duties of the actors with whom we shall be chiefly concerned over the course of this book. Finally, we shall give an overview of the substantive arguments to come.

Impending crisis, global intransigence In 2014, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that each of the last three decades had been successively warmer than any preceding decade since 1850, and that the period 1983–2012 was, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1400 years (IPCC, 2014b, pp. 2–3). Global average temperatures rose by 0.85°C over the period 1880–2012. Increased oceanic uptake of CO2 has resulted in a 26% increase in the acidity of the world’s oceans. The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, together with the world’s glaciers, have begun to shrink. Over the period 1979–2012, the annual mean Arctic sea-ice extent decreased by 3.5–4.1% per decade, with Antarctic sea-ice extent decreasing by 1.2–1.8% per decade. Over the period 1901– 2010, global average sea levels rose by 19 cm. These effects are already having a serious impact upon virtually all forms of life on Earth. In 2015–2016, for example, prolonged exposure to above-average sea temperatures saw large portions of the Great Barrier Reef subject to ‘coral bleaching’ – the third such event since 1998 (Hughes et al., 2017). A significant proportion of the bleached coral will die off, threatening several dependent species. A World Health Organisation report estimates that 141,000 deaths were caused by climate change in 2004 (WHO, 2009). Lobell et al. (2011) estimate that global maize and wheat production, over the period 1980–2008, was 3.8% and 5.5% lower, respectively, than it would otherwise have been without global warming. This, however, is nothing compared to the possible impacts of climate change over the coming decades.4 Nicholas Stern (2007), for instance, estimates the overall costs of ‘business as usual’ on climate change at the equivalent of 5–20% of global GDP, each year, for the foreseeable future. Several studies have concluded that climate change poses a severe threat to the survival of many species of plants and animals, largely through the elimination of suitable habitats, and the inability of species to adapt to changing conditions (IPCC, 2014a, pp. 300–1). Climate change also poses enormous threats to food security (Wheeler and Braun, 2013). A recent meta-analysis of studies into the projected impact of climate change on

Introduction 3 crop yields in Africa and South Asia (where there is already substantial stress on the food supply), for example, found that overall crop yields are likely to decline by an average of 7.7% by 2050, with the heaviest losses to be felt in African wheat production (−17.2%) (Knox et al., 2012, p. 4). Heavier losses, still, are projected post-2050 (IPCC, 2014a, pp. 505–7). Climate change is also likely to increase human displacement, given projected sea-level rises, increases in the frequency of extreme weather events, and declining agricultural prospects – especially in poorer regions of the world (IPCC, 2014a, pp. 766–71). One study, for example, considered the effect of climate change on river deltas and estimated that 9 million people will be displaced due to rising sea levels and increased vulnerability to flooding by 2050 (Ericson et al., 2006). Estimates of the overall number of ‘environmental migrants’ climate change will create are highly imprecise, given the complex and interconnected nature of the drivers of migration (Piguet et al., 2011). There is wide agreement, however, that there are likely to be many such persons. Climate change is also likely to lead to substantial increases in disease and mortality. There is a clear link between the number of unusually hot days experienced in a particular region, and rates of mortality in that region.5 In 2003, for example, a heatwave (likely partially caused by climate change) in Europe killed up to 70,000 people (Robine et al., 2008). Climate change is likely to substantially increase – and, indeed, is likely already increasing (Christidis et al., 2012) – the number of such days experienced, worldwide. Climate change will also allow mosquitos to spread to regions of the world presently too cold for them to inhabit. Lindsay and Martens (1998) have estimated that, by 2080, this will cause an additional 260–320 million people to be affected by malaria. Climate change will also increase the risk factors for dengue fever, potentially causing, by 2085, 5–6 billion people to be at risk, as opposed to 3.5 billion without climate change (Hales et al., 2002). Because climate change is likely to have an adverse impact upon the global food supply, the proportion of persons who are undernourished (and, thereby, the proportion of persons suffering from nutrition-related disease) is likely to increase, particularly in areas (e.g. sub-Saharan Africa) wherein a substantial proportion of the population is reliant upon rain-fed subsistence agriculture (IPCC, 2014a, pp. 730–1). One study, for example, found that changes in climate, livelihood, and demography could cause nearly 6 million people to become undernourished by 2025 in the nation of Mali, alone (Jankowskaa et al., 2012). Disease outbreaks often follow extreme weather events like storms and floods, both of which are projected to become more frequent as the climate continues to change. Climate change may also contribute to armed conflict, given that many of the recognised drivers of civil war – rates of economic growth and per-capita income, for example – are climate-sensitive (IPCC, 2014a, pp. 772–3). These impacts are likely to be felt most heavily by those who are already vulnerable in other ways – e.g. children, women, the elderly, and the poor (IPCC, 2014a, pp. 717–8). The world cannot now prevent climate change from occurring. We can, however, mitigate the severity of climate change and its attendant harms by reducing

4

Introduction

greenhouse gas emissions. Progress is being made on this front. Article 2a of the 2015–2016 Paris Climate Agreement committed each of the 186 states party to the agreement to the twin aims of constraining “the increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and pursuing “efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels”. Under the agreement, states made a series of pledges to reduce their emissions in line with these objectives. The European Environmental Agency reports that total greenhouse emissions from EU nations declined by 23.7% over the period 1990–2015 (EEA, 2017, p. 71). Investment in renewable energy has soared in recent years, regularly outstripping investment in fossil fuels (McCrone et al., 2018). Since 2004, $2.9 trillion has been invested in renewable energy while the costs of renewable energy installations (e.g. wind turbines and solar panels) have steeply declined. In 2017, 98 gigawatts worth of new solar projects were installed, exceeding the total of new coal, gas, and nuclear projects, combined. In 2017, renewables (excluding large hydro) accounted for 12.1% of global power generation, up from 5.2% a decade earlier. Policy progress, too, has been made. The European Union, for example, established an emissions-trading scheme in 2005. A recent review of studies into the scheme found that it has had a robust, negative impact on emissions levels (Martin et al., 2016). Yet these developments, positive though they are, are nowhere near proportionate to the severity of the threat posed by climate change. Many climate scientists doubt whether keeping global warming to no more than 1.5–2°C above the pre-industrial average would be sufficient to avert the risk of serious harms (e.g. Smith et al., 2009).6 Several studies have concluded that the emissions-reduction pledges made by the nations party to the Paris agreement would not be sufficient to contain global warming to 1.5–2°C (e.g. Rogelj et al., 2016). And, even if they were sufficient, no major industrialised nation is presently on track to meet its pledges (Victor et al., 2017), and there exists no mechanism by which nations can be compelled to do so. Recent estimates, then, suggest that global temperatures are on track to rise to somewhere between 2°C and 4.9°C above the pre-industrial average by 2100 (Raftery et al., 2017), risking many very severe harms.7

Climate justice and the state Surely very little by way of sophisticated argument should be needed to convince anyone apprised of the relevant facts that a much more serious global response to the problem of climate change is urgently required. Yet complex moral questions arise when one considers what that response ought to look like. Any satisfactory response is likely to be costly. But who should bear what proportion of these costs, and why? This question has been much discussed in international climate negotiations, and is the subject of deep disagreement. Developing nations, for example, have typically appealed to the notion of ‘equity’, arguing that developed nations ought to shoulder the majority of such burdens, both because the majority of harmful greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were produced by such nations, and because attempts by developing

Introduction 5 nations to reduce their emissions may diminish their ability to lift their citizens out of poverty. At the 2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, for example, Indian representative Jayanthi Natarajan declared that equity must be the “centrepiece” of any global response to climate change (IANS, 2011). At the very same conference, however, the lead negotiator for the United States is reported to have declared “if equity’s in, we’re out” (Pickering et al., 2012, p. 423). This reflects a widespread view (at least at the governmental level) among many developed nations that developing nations are producing an increasingly large share of global emissions and that it is only fair that they, too, should play their part. How burdens are to be allocated among states in the global response to climate change is also the central question of the philosophical literature on climate justice – and is the issue to which the vast majority of attention has been devoted.8 Standardly, the answer is taken to be a matter of the moral duties of each state with respect to climate change. These, in turn, are thought to depend upon the answers to two questions. First, in virtue of which kinds of considerations do states have duties to help mitigate climate change? Second, to which states do these considerations apply, and to what degree? Philosophers working on climate justice have focused heavily upon such questions in recent years, and have produced a series of increasingly sophisticated answers.9 We shall rely upon the claim that states do, in fact, have such duties. In chapter one, we set out in detail the account(s) of such duties we favour. For now, though, a brief overview will suffice. Perhaps the most prominent approach holds that states have duties to mitigate climate change in virtue of (and in proportion to) their contribution to the harms with which climate change is associated (e.g. Duus-Otterström, 2014; Morrow, 2016; Moss and Kath, 2019; Neumayer, 2000; Shue, 1999). Proponents of this approach begin by appealing to the widely accepted view that there is a general negative duty not to cause harm to others and that agents who violate that general duty have special duties to both stop causing such harm and mitigate those harms for which they are responsible. As we have outlined in some detail, climate change is already causing harm and is likely to do so to a much greater degree over the coming decades. States that have historically emitted large quantities of greenhouse gases, and thereby contributed significantly to the problem of climate change and the harms with which it will be associated, then, have duties to mitigate those harms by reducing their future emissions and helping the victims of climate change adapt. This approach would allocate the bulk of the responsibility for addressing climate change to developed nations, insofar as they have historically produced much of the world’s greenhouse gases and continue to be among the world’s heaviest emitters. An alternative, though by no means mutually exclusive, approach holds that states have duties to help mitigate climate change in virtue of their capacity to do so (e.g. Page, 2011, pp. 417–20). Proponents of this approach begin by appealing to the claim that there are general, positive duties for agents to help avert serious harms where they can do so without unacceptable moral cost.10 Climate change is

6

Introduction

already causing harm, and is likely to cause far more severe harms over the coming decades unless the nations of the world substantially reduce their emissions. As we have already noted, the costs of doing so are not trivial. But – at least in the case of wealthy nations with relatively high levels of well-being and disposable income – they are hardly unacceptable, given the magnitude of the potential harms to be averted and the fact that emissions-reductions are likely to have substantial co-benefits that might partially offset the costs (e.g. improved public health outcomes, see Haines et al., 2009–10). This approach also, then, would allocate the bulk of the responsibility to developed nations, both because the relative costs of emissions-reductions to the wellbeing of the citizens of those countries are likely to be lower, and because (since their overall emissions are often greater than those of developing countries) their capacity to make a difference to the problem is more substantial.11 A great deal of energy has been expended in recent years refining these accounts in the face of objections. The result, over time, has been the development of an increasingly sophisticated literature on the climate duties of states, which now offers a series of powerful arguments according to which states have duties to reduce their emissions to mitigate the threat of climate change.

Climate justice beyond the state Setting out precisely what such duties require of particular states is a massively complex task we cannot hope to attempt here. Still, we think that on any reasonable interpretation, virtually all states are presently failing to do enough to discharge their duties to respond to the threat of climate change. Whatever the precise requirements of these duties, it surely must at least be the case that were all states to discharge them, severe climate change and its associated harms would be avoided. A general view has emerged that, in order to prevent such harms, global warming must be contained to no more than 1.5–2°C above the pre-industrial average. States’ emissions-reduction pledges under the Paris Agreement were at least nominally intended to prevent global warming from exceeding this range. Many have criticised the Paris targets as too weak. And yet, as we have already pointed out, states by and large are not doing enough even to meet even these relatively weak goals. This, we think, makes it virtually impossible to deny that states are presently failing to discharge their duties to mitigate the threat posed by climate change. This gives rise to a series of issues which have been largely neglected in the climate justice literature. States contain very many important actors of different kinds – in particular, sub-national political communities, corporations, and individuals. Were nations to adopt fully adequate national-level climate policies, there would plausibly be relatively few interesting questions to ask concerning such actors’ duties. As we have already suggested, a fully adequate national climate policy would presumably be one which (a) took on a fair share of the global burden of responding to climate change and (b) distributed the associated costs fairly among the various sub-national actors. Plausibly, were such policies to be

Introduction 7 introduced, actors at the sub-national level could largely discharge their climate duties by simply conforming to such policies’ requirements. This, virtually by definition, would likely be sufficient to ensure that they were bearing their fair share of the costs of responding to climate change. Yet this is not the situation in which we find ourselves. States, by and large, have failed to take on a fair share of the costs of responding to climate change. This, then, prompts an obvious question: what are the climate duties of sub-national actors – sub-national political communities, corporations, and individuals, in particular – given the failure of the nations to which they belong to take appropriate action to address climate change? Lest there be any doubt as to the import of this question, it is worth reflecting briefly upon the significance of each of these actors with respect to climate change. Consider, first, the fact that many sub-national political communities (i.e. ‘states’ in the sense of California and Vermont, and cities and municipalities like Los Angeles and London) are major emitters of greenhouse gases. As discussed earlier, if Texas were a country in its own right, it alone would have been the eighth largest emitter of CO2, worldwide, in 2014 (Olivier et al., 2016, pp. 42–3). Cities have been estimated to account for upwards of 70% of global energy-related CO2 emissions (IEA, 2008).12 In 2014, the city of Tokyo emitted 70.1 million metric tons CO2e (CDP, 2018) – an amount roughly equivalent to the emissions produced by the entire nation of Portugal (EEA, 2017, p. 71), for example. Sub-national political communities are also taking action on climate change with increasing assertiveness. In 1990, for example, Toronto committed to reducing the city’s net emissions to 20% below 1988 levels by 2005 (Harvey, 1993). British Columbia introduced a carbon tax in 2008 (Murray and Rivers, 2015). Coming into effect in 2009, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is a cap-and-trade system regulating CO2 emissions from power plants in Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia. On the very same day President Trump announced his intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, governors Jerry Brown of California, Andrew Cuomo of New York, and Jay Inslee of Washington announced the formation of the United States Climate Alliance, a group of states committed to curbing their emissions in line with the Paris targets, in the absence of an adequate national-level climate policy. At the time of writing, the alliance now includes 24 member states and the unincorporated territory of Puerto Rico, together accounting for around 25% of the United States’ total emissions. Several transnational networks now exist, linking sub-national political communities with similar climate goals. The C40 group, for example, comprises over 90 major cities, each of which has committed to contributing towards the goal of constraining global temperature rises to no more than 1.5°C above the pre-industrial average. Sub-national political communities are also playing an increasingly important role in global climate negotiations (Bulkeley, 2010, pp. 231–6). Next consider the role played by corporations. The vast majority of global emissions can be traced to economic activity of some kind, much which can in turn be traced to the activities of corporations. If global shipping corporations

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Introduction

were a country, for example, they (too) would have ranked eighth on the list of the world’s highest emitters of CO2 in 2014 in virtue of their direct emissions, alone (Olivier et al., 2016, pp. 42–3). Global aviation would have ranked 14th. Richard Heede (2014) has found that around 63% of global emissions over the period 1854–2010 are traceable to the activities of just 90 large fossil fuel and concrete corporations. Recent research has, in turn, suggested that these emissions alone are responsible for around 50% of the global warming (around 0.4°C) and around 32% of the global average sea-level increases (around 5.7cm) which occurred over the period 1880–2010 (Ekwurzel et al., 2017, pp. 584–6). Some corporations have recently begun to play a more constructive role on climate change. In 2013, 81% of the world’s largest 500 companies listed on the FTSE voluntarily reported their emissions figures, for instance (Perrow and Pulver, 2015, p. 68). Many European corporations have reduced their emissions under the EU’s cap-and-trade system (Martin et al., 2016). Others have recognised commercial opportunities in climate change and have invested billions in the development of environmentally friendly technology in anticipation of future demand for electric vehicles, solar power, and so on (Pulver, 2011, p. 583). And many large companies have announced ambitious climate targets in recent years. Delta Airlines for example, has pledged to go ‘carbon-neutral’, while Microsoft and Ikea have gone further and pledged to go ‘carbon-negative’ (Domonoske, 2020).13 Yet the significance of these contributions is dwarfed by other regressive steps taken by corporations. Given the sheer proportion of greenhouse emissions generated by their activities, any remotely serious response to climate change poses an enormous threat to the interests of many corporations. Fossil fuel corporations like Exxon (now ExxonMobil), for example, were among the first actors to conduct independent research into climate change (Banerjee et al., 2015). Yet, recognising the threat which regulatory steps to mitigate climate change posed to their interests, many fossil fuel corporations (together with others from industries such as steel, forestry, mining, and automobile manufacturing) have, since the early 1990s, waged a highly effective campaign to undercut attempts to promote climate action, funding conservative think-tanks and contrarian scientists in an attempt to fuel climate scepticism (Dunlap and McCright, 2011, p. 148) and lobbying powerfully against efforts to implement environmental regulations (Perrow and Pulver, 2015, pp. 72–4). Finally, the ordinary conduct of individuals plays a large role in the generation of emissions.14 In the United States and Europe, for example, around a third of total carbon emissions are attributable to direct household energy use (Stern et al., 2016, p. 1). In a review of studies of the contribution of American households to climate change, Erhardt-Martinez et al. (2015, pp. 93–9) highlight the following facts. Over the period 1950–2010, despite significant improvements in household energy efficiency, residential energy consumption in the United States nearly quadrupled due to population expansion, increases in the size of homes, and the proliferation of energy-consuming devices. Over the period 1950–2008, the number of operating vehicles in the United States

Introduction 9 increased 475%, from 43 million to 248 million. Over the period 1950–2010, per capita vehicle miles driven more than tripled to around 9600 miles per year. Light vehicle fuel consumption increased by 62% between 1970 and 2008.15 These emissions, moreover, might be reduced at very little cost. Dietz et al. (2009), for example, have estimated that US household CO2 emissions might easily be reduced by 20% (around 7.4% of total national emissions) with presently available technology (e.g. home insulation, more economical appliances), with minimal to no impact upon household wellbeing. More substantial reductions, still, ought to be achievable as new technologies become available. Many individuals have begun to take action. Many, for example, have begun to practice ‘green consumption’, altering their purchasing habits in an attempt to reduce their impact upon the environment (Erhardt-Martinez et al., 2015, pp. 113–15) – though the efficacy of such steps is heavily contested. The global climate movement comprises hundreds of advocacy groups and coalitions, and has seen thousands of individuals around the world mobilise to demand action on climate change (Caniglia et al., 2015). By one count, on October 24, 2009, for example, 5245 separate acts of protest took place in 181 countries in the run-up to the COP15 climate conference in Copenhagen (Jervey, 2009). On March 15, 2019, an estimated 1.6 million students from 125 countries around the world went on strike to demand climate action (BBC, 2019). The number of civil society organisations devoted to climate action has exploded in recent years. In 2010, for example, there were 467 unique NGOs devoted to pressing for climate action in the United States, alone (Brulle, 2014). Though, as Caniglia et al. (2015) soberingly point out, the structure of the institutions these civil society groups are seeking to influence – principally, national governments and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – is such that these groups’ capacity to deliver policy successes has been fairly limited. So, sub-national political communities, corporations, and individuals have all played, and are continuing to play, a substantial role in generating and responding to the problem of climate change. In light of this, we think it crucial to understand the role that such actors morally ought to play with respect to climate change, given the failure of the state to respond appropriately. Climate justice theorists should not stop thinking about the duties of states. But, in our view, they should also start thinking more about questions of climate justice beyond the state.16 That is the task to which this book is devoted. Before offering an overview of the arguments to come, a brief caveat: we shall not aim to offer precise, practical directions in what follows – e.g. that California must devote 5% of its state budget to some specific carbon abatement project, or that individuals must spend five hours a week agitating for climate action. The justification of any such directives must depend heavily upon highly variable considerations specific to particular agents (e.g. the magnitude of the relevant agent’s particular contribution to the problem of climate change, which alternative courses of action are open to them, and so on). There would be little profit, then, in attempting to offer such directions, here. Our aim, instead, is to offer a way of thinking through the climate duties of actors at the sub-national level and

10

Introduction

to highlight some of the considerations that would be of significance for the relevant actors in attempting to work out precisely what they ought to do, in practice. Determining exactly how each particular agent ought to go about discharging those duties, however, is not a task we shall attempt, here.

Overview The rest of the book proceeds as follows. In chapter one, we consider the case of subnational political communities. We argue that many such communities have duties to act unilaterally – i.e. to reduce their emissions to help mitigate climate change, even in the absence of an adequate national-level climate policy. In doing so, we shall introduce the idea of devolved duties – duties applying to some sub-part of some wider collective to, at least partially, discharge some duty which properly applies to the wider collective, in virtue of the actual or probable failure of that wider collective to discharge that duty. We shall argue that such duties arise where the considerations that ground the duty the wider collective fails to discharge also apply to the relevant sub-part of that community. And we shall argue that at least two kinds of considerations which ground duties to mitigate climate change at the national level (contribution- and capacity-based considerations) also apply to a great many sub-national political communities. Along the way, we shall consider the various direct and indirect ways in which steps taken at the sub-national level might have a positive impact upon the climate. We shall also consider important complications arising out of the inevitable fact of partial compliance and the possibility of carbon leakage. This chapter also offers a detailed overview of the accounts of national-level duties to mitigate climate change upon which we shall rely over the following chapters. In chapter two we consider the case of corporations, with a particular focus upon those large fossil fuel producing corporations known as the ‘carbon majors’. We argue that such corporations have devolved duties of two kinds, similar to those of sub-national political communities. We argue that such corporations have very substantial capacities to make a positive difference to the climate, without incurring unacceptable costs, and therefore have capacity-based devolved duties to take action on climate change. The more challenging questions, however, concern the contribution of such corporations to climate change. After all, while the carbon majors are responsible for extracting a significant percentage of the world’s fossil fuels, this is not (necessarily) the same as being responsible for the emissions that result from their combustion. We argue that the contributions of the carbon majors to the harms of climate change can be productively understood in terms of complicity. We argue that this is so both in virtue of their actions in producing fossil fuels, and also their significant lobbying and public relations efforts. This chapter concludes by considering the steps that might be appropriate for such corporations to take in discharging their devolved duties. We distinguish between four possible strategies – disgorgement, divestment, transformation, and phasing out. We argue that the latter must be the ultimate goal of any plausible attempt on the part of the carbon majors to discharge their climate duties

Introduction 11 but that (since it is essential for fossil fuel production to continue for some time as the world transitions to renewable energy) in the short to medium term, they must also engage in some disgorgement and transformation. In chapter three, we consider the duties of individuals. We argue that the failure of the state to take adequate steps to address climate change entails that individuals have promotional duties – i.e. duties to take steps which raise the probability of action on climate change being taken by the collective(s) to which they belong.17 Promotional duties, generally, are a familiar part of common-sense morality. Yet it turns out to be surprisingly difficult to say quite why they arise in the climate case. Such duties, we show, can neither be derived straightforwardly from collective duties to address climate change, nor justified by appeal to act-consequentialist considerations (at least, in the vast majority of cases). Instead, we argue, such duties might plausibly be grounded upon considerations of fairness. Specifically, we argue that individuals may have duties of fairness to contribute to efforts to discharge duties which properly apply to collectives to which they belong, even where their contributions will make no non-trivial difference to the prospects of the collective in question discharging that duty. We then go on to argue that this entails that individuals have duties to contribute to activist efforts to see to it that states adopt adequate policies on climate change. We also address several objections along the way and engage extensively with Elizabeth Cripps’ (2013) recent work on the topic. The concluding chapter addresses four outstanding issues. The first two are objections. The first holds that our arguments fail because it is infeasible to expect the agents upon whom we have focused to discharge the duties we have attributed to them. The second contends that unilateralism is undesirable with respect to climate change and that – as such – neither sub-national political communities nor corporations have duties to take such action on climate change. After addressing these objections, we consider two further issues concerning the institutional arrangements that might be appropriate for corporations and sub-national political communities to adopt for the discharge of their devolved duties, and what the deontic implications of our project might be for individuals beyond the promotional duties discussed in chapter three.

Notes 1 There is also an increasing recognition in the empirical literature that agents other than states are also going to have to make a contribution if severe climate change and its attendant harms are to be averted (e.g. Rogelj et al., 2016, pp. 636–7). 2 For a useful overview, see IPCC (2014b). 3 There are a couple of exceptions. In particular, Cripps (2011, 2013), Jamieson (2014), Maltais (2013), Umbers and Moss (2018, 2020), and Tan (2015). See also Caney (2016), and many of the essays in Moss and Umbers (2020). 4 For a brief overview, see IPCC (2014a, pp. 11–20). 5 Climate change may marginally reduce winter death rates, but evidence suggests that it is unlikely to do so to any very significant extent (Ebi and Mills, 2013). 6 According to some such scientists, a target of 1°C would be nearer the mark (Smith et al., 2009).

12

Introduction

7 It may be that this intransigence is simply a passing phenomenon. Certainly, there have been some positive developments in recent years. Yet there are also good reasons to worry that serious climate action from the nations of the world will not be forthcoming in the near future. For one thing, such action is likely to be economically costly. Nicholas Stern (2009, pp. 48–55), for example, has estimated the costs of ensuring that levels of atmospheric CO2 do not exceed 500ppm at around 2% of global GDP over the next half-century. These costs are a powerful deterrent against any government taking action, insofar as economic growth is amongst the most powerful predictors of incumbency retention (Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier, 2007). Powerful corporate actors (fossil fuel corporations, in particular) would have their interests severely set back by the kinds of steps that serious action on climate change would entail. Governments have powerful incentives to accommodate the preferences of such actors in policymaking, given both their enormous structural power (Lindblom, 1982) and the resources they are able to bring to bear in lobbying efforts and the like (Gilens, 2012; Drutman, 2015). The people whose interests are likely to be set back most severely – future generations and citizens of poorer nations – lack political power in the wealthy countries of the world, where emissions-reductions are most urgently needed. All this, moreover, is likely compounded by global free-rider incentives (Brennan, 2009, pp. 309–15). The costs to each nation of contributing to the global effort to lower emissions are overwhelmingly likely to outweigh the benefits (at least in the short term), even if all states would be better off were an enforceable global agreement in effect. Nations, then, have powerful incentives to simply refuse to take the steps necessary to lower their emissions by the required amount. 8 Notable contributions include, but are certainly not limited to, Barry and Kirby (2017), Duus-Otterström (2014), Gosseries (2004), McKinnon (2012), Morrow (2016), Page (2006, 2011, 2012), Roser and Seidel (2017), and Shue (2014). Another major contributor is Caney (2005, 2010, 2012, 2014), though he takes a broader view of the agents to whom such duties apply. 9 For an overview of this literature, see Roser and Seidel (2017, chs. 10–16). 10 The classic defence of capacity-based duties of assistance is Singer (1972). 11 Another alternative approach holds that states have duties to mitigate climate change in virtue of their having benefited from the processes in virtue of which climate change, and its harmful consequences, have occurred and will occur (e.g. Baatz, 2013; Gosseries, 2004; Lawford-Smith, 2014; Page, 2012). We shall not rely upon this approach for the simple reason that it is more controversial than the alternatives, facing several objections. See Caney (2006), Huseby (2015), and Knight (2013). Though, for some powerful responses to these objections, see Barry and Kirby (2017). 12 By ‘account for’, here, we simply mean causally originate from, rather than bear moral responsibility for (we shall take up this issue further in chapter three). 13 For obvious reasons, such commitments should be treated with caution. 14 Whether any particular individual (setting aside extreme outliers such as political leaders or petrochemical executives) can reasonably be said to be responsible for climate change and its attendant harms to any non-trivial degree is highly controversial. Compare Broome (2019), and Sinnott-Armstrong (2005), for example. 15 Though they also point out that some of these trends have begun to improve – per capita vehicle miles have fallen to 2004 levels, car ownership has fallen, and total miles driven peaked in 2006 (Erhardt-Martinez et al., 2015, p. 98). 16 We do not mean to suggest that such actors have gone entirely undiscussed. Much has been written on the duties of individuals to reduce their personal emissions (e.g. Barry and Øverland, 2015; Broome, 2012, ch. 5; Cullity, 2015; Lawford-Smith, 2016; Sinnott-Armstrong, 2005). The issues with which these pieces engage, however, are largely orthogonal to those we shall take up, here. 17 We borrow the term ‘promotional duties’ from Cripps (2013).

Introduction 13

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Introduction

Martin, R., Muûls, M. & Wagner, U. J. 2016. The Impact of the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme on Regulated Firms: What Is the Evidence after Ten Years? Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, 10, 129–48. McCrone, A., Moslener, U., d’Estais, F. & Grüning, C. 2018. Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2018, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, United Nations Environment Programme, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Frankfurt, Germany. McKinnon, C. 2012. Climate Change and Future Justice: Precaution, Compensation and Triage, London, UK, Routledge. Morrow, D. R. 2016. Climate Sins of Our Fathers? Historical Accountability in Distributing Emissions Rights. Ethics, Policy & Environment, 19, 335–49. Moss, J. & Kath, R. 2019. Historical Emissions and the Carbon Budget. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 36, 268–89. Moss, J. & Umbers, L. (eds.) 2020. Climate Justice and Non-State Actors: Corporations, Regions, Cities, and Individuals, Abingdon, UK, Routledge. Murray, B. & Rivers, N. 2015. British Columbia’s Revenue-Neutral Carbon Tax: A Review of the Latest ‘Grand Experiment’ in Environmental Policy. Energy Policy, 86, 674–83. Neumayer, E. 2000. In Defence of Historical Accountability for Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Ecological Economics, 33, 185–92. Olivier, J. G. J., Janssens-Maenhout, G., Muntean, M. & Peters, J. A. H. W. 2016. Trends in Global CO2 Emissions: 2016 Report, The Hague PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, Ispra, European Commission, Joint Research Centre. Page, E. A. 2006. Climate Change, Justice and Future Generations, Cheltenham, UK, Edward Elgar. Page, E. A. 2011. Climatic Justice and the Fair Distribution of Atmospheric Burdens: A Conjunctive Account. The Monist, 94, 412–32. Page, E. A. 2012. Give It Up for Climate Change: A Defence of the Beneficiary Pays Principle. International Theory, 4, 300–30. Perrow, C. & Pulver, S. 2015. Organizations and Markets. In: Dunlap, R. E. & Brulle, R. J. (eds.) Climate Change and Society: Sociological Perspectives, Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press. Pickering, J., Vanderheiden, S. & Miller, S. 2012. ‘If Equity’s in, We’re Out’: Scope for Fairness in the Next Global Climate Agreement. Ethics & International Affairs, 26, 423–43. Piguet, E., Pécoud, A. & Guchteneire, P. D. 2011. Migration and Climate Change: An Overview. Refugee Studies Quarterly, 30, 1–25. Pulver, S. 2011. Corporate Responses. In: Dryzek, J. S., Norgaard, R. B. & Schlosberg, D. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society, Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press. Raftery, A. E., Zimmer, A., Frierson, D. M. W., Startz, R. & Liu, P. 2017. Less Than 2 °C Warming by 2100 Unlikely. Nature Climate Change, 7. Robine, J. M., Cheung, S. L., Roy, S. L., Oyen, H. V., Griffiths, C., Michel, J. P. & Herrmann, F. R. 2008. Death Toll Exceeded 70,000 in Europe During the Summer of 2003. Comptes Rendues Biologie, 331, 171–8. Rogelj, J., Elzen, M. D., Höhne, N., Fransen, T., Fekete, H., Winkler, H., Schaeffer, R., Sha, F., Riahi, K. & Meinshausen, M. 2016. Paris Agreement Climate Proposals Need a Boost to Keep Warming Well Below 2 °C. Nature, 534, 631–9. Roser, D. & Seidel, C. 2017. Climate Justice, New York, NY, Routledge. Shue, H. 1999. Global Environment and International Inequality. International Affairs, 75, 531–45.

Introduction 17 Shue, H. 2014. Climate Justice: Vulnerability and Protection, Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press. Singer, P. 1972. Famine, Affluence, and Morality. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 1, 229–43. Sinnott-Armstrong, W. 2005. It’s Not My Fault: Global Warming and Individual Moral Obligations. Advances in the Economics of Environmental Research, 5, 293–315. Smith, J. B., Schneider, S. H., Oppenheimer, M., Yohe, G. W., Hare, W., Mastrandrea, M. D., Patwardhan, A., Burton, I., Corfee-Morlot, J., Magadza, C. H. D., Füssel, H.-M., Pittock, A. B., Rahman, A., Suarez, A. & Ypersele, J.-P. V. 2009. Assessing Dangerous Climate Change through an Update of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) ‘Reasons for Concern’. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106, 4133–7. Stern, N. 2007. The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review, Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press. Stern, N. 2009. A Blueprint for a Safer Planet, London, UK, The Bodley Head. Stern, P. C., Janda, K. B., Brown, M. A., Steg, L., Vine, E. L. & Lutzenhiser, L. 2016. Opportunities and Insights for Reducing Fossil Fuel Consumption by Households and Organisations. Nature Energy, 1, 1–6. Tan, K.-C. 2015. Individual Duties of Climate Justice under Non-Ideal Conditions. In: Moss, J. (ed.) Climate Change and Justice, Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press. Umbers, L. M. & Moss, J. 2018. Going It Alone: Cities and States for Climate Action. Ethics, Policy & Environment, 21, 56–9. Umbers, L. M. & Moss, J. 2020. The Climate Duties of Sub-National Political Communities. Political Studies, 68, 20–36. Victor, D. G., Akimoto, K., Kaya, Y., Yamaguchi, M., Cullenward, D. & Hepburn, C. 2017. Prove Paris Was More Than Paper Promises. Nature, 548, 25–7. Watts, J. & Connolly, K. 2017. World Leaders React after Trump Rejects Paris Climate Deal. The Guardian, 2 June. Wheeler, T. & Braun, J. V. 2013. Climate Change Impacts on Global Food Security. Science, 341, 508–13. WHO, World Health Organisation. 2009. Global Health Risks: Mortality and Burden of Disease Attributable to Selected Major Risks, Geneva, Switzerland, WHO Press.

1

The climate duties of sub-national political communities

Amongst the most striking responses to President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement came from American cities and states, several of whom committed to taking action on climate change, even in the absence of adequate national-level climate policies. On the very day President Trump announced his intention to withdraw from the Paris agreement, the governors of California, New York, and Washington announced the formation of the United States Climate Alliance. This group now includes 24 member states and the unincorporated territory of Puerto Rico (together accounting for around 25% of the United States’ total emissions) committed to curbing their emissions in line with the Paris targets. Many municipal governments followed suit.1 Mayor Peduto of Pittsburgh, for example, reaffirmed a commitment to move the city to 100% renewable energy by 2035 (Hidalgo and Peduto, 2017). More recently, Mayor de Blasio of New York City announced his intention to divest $5 billion worth of fossil fuel assets from the city’s pension fund (Milman, 2018). Yet climate action at the sub-national level, often in the face of national-level intransigence, is nothing new (Bulkeley, 2013). In 1990, for example, the city of Toronto committed to reducing its net emissions to 20% below 1988 levels by 2005 (Harvey, 1993). By 2017, the city’s emissions had fallen to 44% below 1990 levels (Toronto, 2017, p. 3) The state government of New South Wales introduced the Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme in 2003, the world’s first mandatory emissions-trading scheme. By 2010, the scheme was estimated to have either reduced or offset the equivalent of over 90 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions (Perdan and Azapagic, 2011, p. 6045).2 In 2006, California passed the Global Warming Solutions Act, which mandated that emissions must be reduced to 1990 levels by 2020, and to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050 (Bulkeley, 2011). California’s greenhouse gas emissions have steadily decreased every year since 2007 (Board, 2018). British Columbia introduced a carbon tax in 2008, which recent studies indicate has been responsible for a 5–15% drop in emissions (Murray and Rivers, 2015, pp. 677–80). Coming into effect in 2009, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is a cap-and-trade system regulating CO2 emissions from power plants in Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia. The RGGI has been associated with a steep decline in power plant emissions (Murray and Maniloff, 2015). And there are many examples besides these to be found.3

Climate duties of sub-national communities 19 These developments have been the object of increasing interest in the social sciences.4 And, as states continue to fail to adopt adequate national-level policies to address climate change, such efforts are taking on ever-greater importance. Subnational political communities, after all, are substantial contributors to climate change in their own right. Cities, for example, have been estimated to account for upwards of 70% of global energy-related CO2 emissions (IEA, 2008).5 Very little attention, however, has thus far been paid to the normative issues that climate action on the part of sub-national political communities gives rise to.6 In this chapter, then, we shall argue that where states fail to satisfactorily discharge their duties to mitigate climate change by reducing their emissions, the sub-national political communities of which they are comprised may have duties to take such action unilaterally – i.e. to reduce their emissions to help mitigate the threat posed by climate change, even in the absence of an adequate national-level climate policy.7 Climate action at the sub-national level, we think, is an instance of a more general class of cases in which the failure of some collective agent to discharge some duty to which it is subject entails duties for the agents of which it is comprised to take steps to help partially discharge that duty. The chapter, then, begins with a discussion of such cases and a defence of the devolution principle, which sets out conditions under which such duties arise. The following sections then set out the argument with respect to sub-national political communities’ duties to take action on climate change and consider several objections. Before proceeding, however, several qualifying remarks are in order. First, it is important to clarify that our aim, here, is only to defend the claim that many sub-national political communities have weighty pro tanto duties to take steps to reduce their emissions. At least in principle, however, these duties might be outweighed in particular cases by other considerations, all things considered. What each sub-national political community ought to do at any given time, in practice, will be a matter of balancing the reasons which apply to it at that time. Since these will vary very widely community to community, we will have little to say on this issue in what follows (though we will occasionally touch upon it). Second, nothing in what follows is intended to detract from the idea that action at the national level – ideally as part of some fair, enforceable global agreement – represents the ideal response to the climate crisis. To that end, as the following section makes clear, the argument we set out applies only to sub-national political communities belonging to nations that have failed to adopt adequate climate policies. We shall have little to say concerning the duties of sub-national political communities belonging to states that have adopted such policies. Third, the arguments that follow are intended to apply only to sub-national political communities that belong to wealthy, developed nations. In developing nations, there will often be a range of complicating considerations (e.g. potential trade-offs between emissions-reductions and the alleviation of severe poverty), which will render the case for such duties much more difficult to make out at both the national and sub-national level. Though we certainly do not wish to deny that some such communities may have duties of the sort we discuss, here, we shall set such cases aside, for the present.

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Climate duties of sub-national communities

Fourth, questions of legitimate authority have occasionally proven contentious in sub-national climate politics. The cities of San Francisco and Oakland, for example, recently attempted to sue five fossil fuel companies for public nuisance under California state law. The companies succeeded in having the case transferred to the federal court, where it was dismissed (Schwartz, 2018).8 Our argument in this chapter, then, is intended to apply only to sub-national political communities with the legitimate constitutional authority to take steps to mitigate the harms of climate change. Without such authority, it would be impossible (or, at least, illegitimate) for such communities to act upon duties of the sort we shall defend. Finally, we shall argue that many sub-national political communities have a special sort of collective duty to reduce their emissions to help mitigate climate change. A collective duty, in this sense, is a duty which applies to some collective qua collective. Suppose, for example, that a team of four people is rowing a boat up a river. Making the boat move requires the combined efforts of all four. Up ahead, they see a boy drowning. They could very easily rescue the boy by rowing the boat towards him. The rowers, intuitively, would have a duty to do so. Yet this duty must apply to the team qua team, rather than to any of the individual rowers qua individuals. Ex hypothesi, no individual, acting alone, can make the boat move in order to effect a rescue. By ought-implies-can, then, no individual can have a duty to rescue, here (though they will obviously have individual-level duties to contribute to the collective rescue effort). In similar fashion, then, we shall argue that many sub-national political communities qua communities have duties to take steps to help mitigate climate change. This, however, means that our argument must necessarily presuppose that such communities constitute collective agents, insofar as it is only agents that can bear moral duties.9 This assumption, we think, ought to be largely uncontentious. It is widely accepted, for instance, that states constitute collective agents, insofar as they have the features generally thought essential to natural persons’ agency – a continuous identity over time and (through their legislative and executive organs) capacities to deliberate over, adopt, revise, and pursue particular goals and ends (Goodin, 1995, ch. 2; Erskine, 2001).10 Sub-national political communities typically possess these same features. We, therefore, take such arguments to apply mutatis mutandis to such communities, also. Note that we shall discuss the individual-level deontic implications of the collective duties we shall defend in this chapter in chapter three and the conclusion.

The devolution principle The purpose of this chapter is to defend the claim that many sub-national political communities have special kinds of collective duties to take steps to address climate change. A collective, in the sense we have in mind, is simply a set of two or more agents. We shall refer to any proper subset of a given collective as a sub-collective. Sub-collectives might simply be ordinary individual agents. Every individual member of a cricket team, for example, is a sub-collective in this sense.

Climate duties of sub-national communities 21 Alternatively, sub-collectives might themselves also be collectives. Businesses, for example, are collectives of individuals but may themselves also be a part of wider collectives like cartels. In this section, we shall defend the claim that where some collective fails, or is sufficiently likely to fail, to discharge some collective duty, the sub-collectives of which it is comprised may have what we shall refer to as devolved duties to, at least partially, discharge the original collective duty. Consider: Ten on the Shore: A company is holding its Christmas party down at the seaside. The company comprises a CEO, a four-person service team, and a fiveperson sales team. During the party, they see a dinghy capsize, plunging three victims into the water. There are two boats on the shore: a large boat which requires ten people to row and could carry all three victims to safety, and a smaller boat which requires five people to row but could carry only one of the victims to safety. There is only time for one boat trip before the victims drown. The interests of the victims in receiving aid, together with the capacity of the company to assist them, other things equal, clearly give rise to a collective duty on the part of the company to attempt a rescue by rowing the larger boat out to the victims. Yet suppose that the CEO fails to direct the company to affect a rescue. Instead, she says, “Do as you like. I, however, will be remaining on shore.” The service team, also, refuse to join in. Nothing can be done to change their minds. It is virtually certain, then, that the company will fail to discharge its duty to rescue the victims. This, we think, makes a profound difference to the duties of the sales team. Clearly, if it was sufficiently likely that a rescue by the company as a whole was going to be attempted, the sales team would have a duty to contribute to such an attempt. This duty arises out of the very same kinds of considerations which ground the company’s duty to make such an attempt – the interests of the victims, and the capacity of the sales team to provide assistance.11 The optimal response to those considerations on the part of the sales team would be for them to play their appropriate roles in a collective rescue. That way, they could ensure that all three victims would be saved. If, by contrast, they were to act independently (i.e. row the smaller boat out to the victims), they would doom any company-wide attempt to failure and two of the victims to needless death. Yet the failure of the others to co-operate means, effectively, that this optimal course of action is unavailable to them. Attempting to play their part in the wider rescue attempt would, ex hypothesi, simply result in the death of all three victims, given the failure of the others to participate. The appropriate response for the sales team in this case, then, would clearly be to act independently, so as to partially discharge the original collective duty by rowing the smaller boat out to the victims and rescuing one of them. The almost certain failure of the wider collective to discharge its collective duty, then, together with the considerations which ground both the original collective

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duty, and the duties of the sub-collectives of which it is comprised to participate in efforts to discharge that duty where the prospects of such efforts are good enough, give rise to a devolved duty on the part of the sales team to act so as to at least partially discharge the original collective duty. This suggests the following principle: Devolution Principle: If there is some duty, D, which applies to some collective, C, some sub-collective, S, belonging to C will have a pro tanto duty to act unilaterally so as to at least partially discharge D if (1) S is an agent, (2) the considerations which give rise to D also apply to S, (3) those considerations would have given rise to a duty on the part of S to contribute to C’s efforts to discharge D had C been sufficiently likely to act so as to discharge D, and (4) C has either failed to discharge D, or is insufficiently likely to act so as to discharge D. We should make four clarificatory points before proceeding. First, the devolution principle, as stated, merely articulates a set of sufficient conditions for the existence of devolved duties, not a set of necessary conditions. For all we say here, then, devolved duties may arise under different conditions, and for other reasons. Second, on condition (1). Sub-collectives, as we have defined them, are simply proper subsets of the agents belonging to some wider collective. Sometimes, sub-collectives will amount to agents in their own right, either because they will simply be comprised of a single individual or because they will be comprised of sets of agents who, together, meet the conditions for collective agency.12 Yet this will not always be the case. The proper subset of Australians comprising all women aged 18–29 whose surnames begin with the letter X, for instance, is a sub-collective. Yet it obviously fails to meet the conditions for collective agency. Since (as discussed earlier) a necessary condition for an entity having duties of any kind is that that entity be an agent, it follows that not all sub-collectives can have devolved duties.13 Only those sub-collectives amounting to agents – whether individual or collective (as, we can suppose, in the case of the sales team) – can do so. Condition (1), then, ensures that the principle applies only to agential sub-collectives.14 Third, on condition (3). Devolved duties, as we define them, arise in virtue of the actual or probable failure of some wider collective to which the relevant sub-collective belongs to discharge some duty. The sales team’s duties in Ten on the Shore, for example, fit this description. The optimal response to the considerations which apply to the sales team would be to participate in a company-wide rescue attempt. The fact that this response is unavailable in virtue of the others’ non-cooperation has a crucial role to play in explaining why they ought to act independently, instead. Yet there are cases in which the failure of some collective to act makes no difference to the duties of the sub-collectives of which it is comprised. If we tweak the facts of Ten on the Shore such that the larger boat can accommodate only one victim, and the smaller boat can accommodate two, the prospects for action at the level of the wider collective are irrelevant to the sales team’s duties. They should act independently and ensure that two lives are saved,

Climate duties of sub-national communities 23 no matter the others’ willingness to co-operate. There would be no sense, in that case, that the duty of the sales team was ‘devolved’ from the duty of the corporation at large (i.e. there would be no sense in which it followed from the corporation failing to discharge a collective duty applying to it). Condition (3), then, ensures that the principle applies only in cases where the actual or probable failure of some wider collective to act makes some difference to the duties of some or all of the sub-collectives of which it is comprised. Finally, the principle states that devolved duties require sub-collectives to act so as to ‘at least partially’ discharge the original collective duty. This reflects the fact that devolved duties will in some cases require sub-collectives to fully discharge the original duty whereas, other times, sub-collectives will be required to only partially discharge the original duty. As originally described, Ten on the Shore is an example of the latter. The sales team, after all, can only rescue one victim. Yet if the case was modified such that there was sufficient time for three boat trips, the sales team ought, intuitively, to fully discharge the original duty by rescuing all three victims, one at a time. What is required in any particular case will be a matter of the specific considerations in play in the context in question. We will have more to say on this with respect to the climate context, in what follows. Now, we think that the devolution principle entails that many sub-national political communities have devolved duties to reduce their emissions to help mitigate the harms of climate change. Sub-national political communities are obviously sub-collectives of the states to which they belong. They also, as discussed earlier, plausibly meet the conditions for collective agency. That leaves four substantive claims in need of defence. First, that there are national-level duties for states to reduce their emissions to help mitigate the threat posed by climate change. Second, that the same considerations which ground those duties also apply to many sub-national political communities. Third, that were nations to implement adequate climate policies, the sub-national political communities of which they are comprised would be obliged to play their appropriate roles in implementing those policies. And, finally, that many nations are, presently, failing to discharge those duties, giving rise to a devolved duty on the part of many sub-national political communities to take unilateral steps to reduce their emissions. For expository convenience, we shall defend these claims a little out of order. In the following section, we shall defend the first and final claims. In the subsequent section, we shall defend the second and third, before considering a couple of objections.

National-level duties In this chapter, and the following chapters, we shall rely heavily upon the claim that there are national-level duties to mitigate climate change grounded in both contribution and capacity-based considerations.15 We shall therefore take the opportunity, now, to give a more detailed overview of these than might otherwise have been appropriate in a chapter devoted to the duties of sub-national political communities. We shall not give anything like a complete defence of such duties.

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A great deal of energy has been expended by others in recent years in that endeavour. Our aim, instead, is to simply make clear the particular interpretation of such duties we favour, since this will often be of significance in what follows. Contribution-based duties16 Many have argued that states have duties to mitigate climate change in virtue of (and in proportion to) their contribution to the harms with which climate change is associated (e.g. Duus-Otterström, 2014; Morrow, 2016; Moss and Kath, 2019; Neumayer, 2000; Shue, 1999).17 Proponents of contribution-based duties appeal to the widely accepted view that there is a general negative duty not to perform actions which contribute non-trivially to harms to others’ fundamental interests, and that agents who violate this general duty have (among other duties – e.g. duties of compensation) duties to help mitigate the harms to which they have contributed. A corporation that dumps toxic waste into a river and thereby causes children downstream to develop a severe illness, for example, would clearly have (inter alia) duties to clean up the river and see to it that adequate medical care is provided to the children in question. Proponents of contribution-based duties to help mitigate climate change, then, affirm something like the following argument. P1: If an agent, A, makes some non-trivial contribution to some harm to some other agent or agents’ fundamental interests, A will have a duty to contribute to efforts to help mitigate that harm. P2: Many states have contributed non-trivially to the process of climate change. P3: Climate change is causing, and will cause, severe harms to many persons’ fundamental interests. C1: Therefore, many states have contributed non-trivially to harms to many persons’ fundamental interests by contributing non-trivially to the process of climate change. C2: Therefore, those states that have contributed non-trivially to the process of climate change have duties to take steps to help mitigate climate change by reducing their emissions. We think that this argument is sound. We have laid out the evidence for P3 in the introduction. P1, P2, and C1, however, require careful interpretation. It is scientifically uncontroversial that many states have contributed very substantially to the process of climate change by emitting greenhouse gases – chiefly, though not exclusively, CO2. For example, Boden et al. (2016) report that, over the period 1751–2014, around 415 gigatonnes of CO2 was emitted into the atmosphere. Most of these emissions were produced by industrialised nations in North America and Europe – nations which presently enjoy substantial prosperity, compared to developing nations. Yet matters are not as straightforward as they might seem. It is widely accepted that agents have contribution-based duties to mitigate harms only if they are

Climate duties of sub-national communities 25 morally responsible for their contributions to those harms. In general, agents are not morally responsible for their contributions to some harm if they were excusably ignorant of the fact that their actions constituted such a contribution. The notion of ‘contribution’ in P1, then, must be interpreted so as to exclude contributions, the harmful effects of which the relevant agents were excusably ignorant of. Yet this, in turn, gives rise to an important challenge to P2 and C1. It is often pointed out that the fact that emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases might alter the climate is a relatively recent discovery. The production of greenhouse gases by human activity began to rapidly increase with the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s. The first scientific analysis suggesting that this might have an effect upon the climate, however, only appeared in 1896.18 And it was not until the 1950s–1960s that the scientific establishment began to suggest that humanity’s greenhouse emissions might have the potential to cause significant and dangerous climate change. After that time, a scientific consensus slowly emerged, culminating in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s landmark First Assessment Report in 1990. For much of the relevant period of history, then, humanity was excusably ignorant of the harmful climatic effects of their emissions. Perhaps, then, states cannot reasonably be said to have contributed either to climate change, or its attendant harms, in the sense required for them to have contributionbased duties. That, however, is much too quick. It does not follow from the fact that states were excusably ignorant of the harmful climatic effects of their emissions for much of the relevant period of history that states do not have contribution-based duties to mitigate climate change. If our corporation had been excusably ignorant of the harmful effects of its dumping waste into the river at t1, was made aware of those effects at t2, but continued doing so until t3, we should hardly take that to show that the corporation had no contribution-based duties to mitigate the resultant harms. After all, in the period following t2, the corporation would no longer have been excusably ignorant of the harmful effects of its activities. As such, it would have had contribution-based duties to mitigate the harms associated with the waste it dumped into the river over the period t2–t3. Much the same, we think, holds with respect to states and climate change.19 Clearly, states can no longer be said to be ignorant of the harmful climatic effects of their emissions, given the widely acknowledged scientific consensus on the matter. The exact point at which claims to excusable ignorance lost credibility is hard to specify. Yet it could surely be no later than 1990 and the publication of the IPCC’s first assessment report.20 Importantly, a very substantial proportion of total emissions has been produced since that time. For example, over the period 1990–2014, over 200 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide was emitted – almost half the total produced over the period 1751–2014 (Boden et al., 2016). Yet this will not be sufficient, for our purposes. The argument is supposed to establish that individual states have duties to contribute to efforts to help mitigate climate change – not merely that humanity in general has a duty to do so. For this to hold in the case of any given state, that state must have both (a) contributed non-trivially to the process of climate change and (b) thereby contributed

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non-trivially to the harms with which climate change is associated. Establishing the former claim is reasonably straightforward. Anthropogenic climate change is produced by the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Many states have produced large volumes of emissions since 1990 (i.e. after the point at which nations could no longer plausibly claim excusable ignorance of the climatic consequences of their emissions). To pick just a couple of examples, the World Resources Institute reports that, over the period 1990–2014, the United States produced 152.8 gigatonnes of CO2e, China produced 154.6, Germany produced 23.52, India produced 46.5, and the United Kingdom produced 15.6 (WRI, 2019). Demonstrating that any given state’s greenhouse emissions have contributed or will contribute to the harms of climate change is more complex. Given the chaotic and interdependent character of the variables involved, there exists no precise means of estimating the costs associated with any one state’s greenhouse emissions. Nevertheless, some back-of-the-envelope calculations can give us at least some idea. The standard tool used by governments and economists for this purpose is the so-called ‘social cost of carbon’, estimates of which aim to put an approximate dollar figure on the costs associated with each tonne of CO2e emitted over a given time period.21 Estimates vary widely. Recent Nobel Laureate William Nordhaus (2017), whose estimates are among the more conservative, estimates the social cost of CO2e emissions from the present to 2050 at $31 (at the 2010 value of the US dollar) per tonne. Others have produced credible estimates of up to $220 per tonne (Moore and Diaz, 2015). But, whatever the correct figure, it is clear that the expected costs of many states’ emissions are very substantial. The United States’ Environmental Protection Agency, for example, has reported that in 2016, the United States emitted 6.511 gigatonnes of CO2e (EPA, 2018). Even on the basis of Nordhaus’ quite conservative estimate, then, the United States’ greenhouse emissions in 2016 alone have an expected cost of around $201.8 billion. In 2014, China produced 11.6 gigatonnes of CO2e at (again employing Noudhaus’ estimate) an expected social cost of $359.6 billion, India produced 3.2 at an expected cost of $99.2 billion, Germany produced 0.8 at an expected cost of $24.8 billion, and the UK produced 0.49 at an expected cost of $15.19 billion. Such estimates are, for a range of reasons, imprecise. Nevertheless, if they are anywhere close to correct, they suggest powerfully that many states have contributed, and are contributing very substantially, to harm in virtue of the contribution of their greenhouse emissions to climate change. For these reasons, then, we think that there is strong evidence that both P2 and C1 hold, at least in the case of wealthy, industrialised nations. That, in turn, offers powerful support for C2 – i.e. for the claim that such nations have contribution-based duties to help mitigate the harmful effects of climate change. Capacity-based duties Proponents of capacity-based duties to mitigate climate change (e.g. Page, 2011, pp. 417–20) appeal to the fundamental idea that an agent, merely in virtue of their capacity to help prevent some serious harm from occurring without unacceptable

Climate duties of sub-national communities 27 cost, may thereby have a duty to do so. Singer (1972), for example, asks us to imagine that we are standing next to a pond in which a child is drowning. We could rescue the child at the cost of ruining our shoes. There is a powerful intuition, here, that we morally ought to do so. After all, the child’s most fundamental interests are under threat, while the costs of averting that threat are very minimal. Proponents of capacity-based duties to help mitigate climate change, then, affirm something like the following: P1: Where some agent or agents’ fundamental interests22 are seriously threatened,23 and A has the capacity to mitigate that threat without unacceptable cost, A has a capacity-based duty to do so. P2: Climate change seriously threatens many agents’ fundamental interests. P3: Many states have the capacity to mitigate that threat without unacceptable cost by reducing their emissions. C: Therefore, those states which have the capacity to mitigate the threat posed by climate change without unacceptable cost by reducing their emissions have a duty to do so. Now, we also think that this argument is sound. Yet it, too, stands in need of clarification in two important respects. The first point is fairly straightforward, and concerns the notion of ‘unacceptable cost’. In our view, the costs agents can be required to bear in virtue of their capacities to avert some threat to others’ interests vary with the magnitude of the threat in question. If saving the child in Singer’s pond would entail the loss of two fingers, for example, that is hardly a trivial cost. Yet it nevertheless seems that we ought to act. The loss of two fingers is simply outweighed by the importance of preventing the premature death of a child. On the other hand, the loss of two fingers would seem to be much too great a cost for any agent to be required to bear in order to avert some lesser threat to the child (five seconds of severe pain, for example). This, we think, suggests that the costs of some action that might mitigate some threat to some other agent or agents’ interests will be unacceptable where they are disproportionate to the threat in question.24 For any given threat to some agent or agents’ interests, there will inevitably be some vagueness with respect to just which costs associated with mitigating that threat are disproportionate (and, therefore, unacceptable), and which are not. We simply have no clear intuitions with respect to whether the loss of two fingers is or is not disproportionate to preventing a child from suffering an hour of severe pain, for example. This means that applying the account will sometimes be difficult. Such difficulties, of course, are an inevitable consequence of acknowledging that there are a plurality of moral values that cannot be precisely weighed against one another. However, for reasons we shall set out momentarily, we think that matters are reasonably clear in the climate case, such that these difficulties can largely be set aside for present purposes. Second, then, it is important to distinguish between two potential conceptions of what it is to have the capacity to mitigate a threat to another’s interests. Consider, first, the ‘actualist’ view, according to which an agent, A, has a capacity-based

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duty to  if and only if ing would, as a matter of fact, cause the threat in question not to eventuate (and is not unacceptably costly). The actualist view is problematic. Consider, for example: Uncertainty: Alec is standing next to a pond in which a child is drowning. There is a fence around the pond, so Alec cannot wade in to save them. However, there is a vending machine next to the pond which will sell Alec a life-preserver for $50. On the basis of the available evidence, Alec justifiably believes that if he buys the life-preserver and throws it to the child, there is a 0.9 probability that his doing so will save the child’s life. There is a clear intuition, here, that Alec ought to attempt to rescue the child by purchasing the life-preserver. What’s more, that intuition persists even if we specify that, as a matter of fact, Alec’s attempt will fail. To see this, suppose that Alec fails to act and the child drowns. After the fact, it is discovered that the lifepreserver had a previously unknown fault and would have sunk under the child’s weight. We should hardly think that Alec would not thereby have acted wrongly by failing to attempt to rescue the child. After all, while the child was still alive, given the evidence available to him, Alec was very confident of his ability to save the child at a relatively minor cost. The actualist view cannot capture this. On the facts, it is strictly false that Alec had the capacity to avert the threat to the child’s interests. This, clearly, is unsatisfactory. This is of particular concern in the climate context, where the marginal effects of policies to address climate change can be very difficult to estimate precisely and, as such, where there is significant uncertainty as to the effects of the various policies different actors might adopt. For this reason, then, we prefer an ‘evidentialist’ account of agents’ capacitybased duties.25 On this view, A has a capacity-based duty to  if and only if, on the evidence available to A, ing will reduce the level of expected harm by a sufficiently substantial degree, without unacceptable cost. This approach has two significant advantages. First, it gives the intuitively right answer in Uncertainty and will do so in all similar cases. After all, for a cost of merely $50 (hardly unacceptable, given the stakes), Alec can reduce the level of expected harm in the decision-context very significantly. The disvalue of the child’s death would be very great and, on the evidence available to him, Alec can reduce the probability of its occurring very substantially. This is important. Realworld decision-making is shot through with uncertainty. We can never be absolutely sure what the results of any given action we might perform will be – and, as such, we can never be fully certain as to whether any given action we might take in an attempt to avert some harm will, in fact, succeed in doing so. For all practical purposes, then, the actualist view is simply mute. We could simply never know whether any agent had a capacity-based duty to attempt to avert some harm. The evidentialist view, obviously, faces no such difficulty, insofar as whether or not agents have capacity-based duties to act so as to mitigate some harm or other will simply be a matter of the available evidence. As we have already indicated, this will be of particular significance in the climate case.

Climate duties of sub-national communities 29 Second, agents’ capacities to mitigate harm are clearly matters of degree. Both actualists and evidentialists can acknowledge one sense in which this is so: the magnitude of the possible harm in question. If one can in fact save two children by ing (or there is significant evidence that that one can save two children by ing), one obviously has a greater capacity to avert harm than if one can save only one child by ing (or if there is significant evidence that one can save only one child by ing). Under both views, capacity-based duties will grow weightier as the magnitude of the harm in question increases. That, intuitively, is perfectly right. But capacity-based duties also, intuitively, grow stronger as the weight of evidence that the agent in question can avert the harm in question grows. It would be gravely wrong for Alec to fail to attempt to save the child in Uncertainty. Yet his failure to do so would be worse, still, if he justifiably believed there was a 0.99 probability that his attempt would succeed. And his failure to do so would be less grievously objectionable if he justifiably believed the probability of his attempt succeeding was merely 0.5. The actualist view cannot capture this because, on that view, the evidence available to the agent in question has no bearing upon their capacity-based duties. The evidentialist view, however, can easily do so. For these reasons, then, we favour the evidentialist account of such duties. And, this interpretation in hand, the remaining premises of the argument can be shown, straightforwardly, to hold. P2, recall, simply asserts that climate change seriously threatens many persons’ fundamental interests. The facts outlined in the introduction show that that is certainly the case. P3 asserts that many nations have the capacity to mitigate the threat posed by climate change by reducing their emissions, without unreasonable cost. What this claim amounts to, on the interpretation of capacity-based duties we favour, is the idea that by reducing their emissions, many nations have the capacity to reduce the expected harms of climate change, without thereby incurring unacceptable costs. Unfortunately, as we have already made clear in our discussion of contribution-based duties, precise estimates of the expected harms associated with different states’ emissions are simply unavailable to us. Nevertheless, the social cost of carbon can again give us some idea. Recall that, in 2016, the United States produced 6.511 gigatonnes of CO2e at an expected cost (by Nordhaus’ estimates) of around $201.8 billion. A mere 5% reduction in those emissions, then, might reasonably have been expected to avert a decidedly nontrivial $10.9 billion in expected costs. In 2014, China produced 11.6 gigatonnes of CO2e at an expected cost of $359.6 billion. A 5% reduction in China’s emissions, then, might reasonably have been expected to avert $17.98 billion in expected costs. On the basis of the same figures, a 5% reduction in India’s 2014 emissions might reasonably have been expected to avert $4.96 billion in expected costs, a 5% reduction in Germany’s 2014 emissions might have averted $1.24 billion, and a 5% reduction in the UK’s 2014 emissions might have averted $0.75 billion. We wish to stress, again, that all this is very far from precise. In the real world, emissions-reduction policies are beset by a range of complexities that can diminish or amplify their effects. We shall discuss two such effects (carbon leakage and policy diffusion) later on – though we cannot hope to deal with such issues in full.

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Still, these figures, if they are even remotely close to right, suggest powerfully that nations like the United States – together with other major emitters – have the capacity to non-trivially reduce the expected harms of climate change by reducing their emissions. Of course, P3 also asserts that taking steps to mitigate climate change will not be unacceptably costly. It is very unlikely, for any given nation, that there will be no policy options available that would not impose unacceptable costs upon others. The more challenging issue concerns whether the costs to nations themselves would be acceptable. We can say little definite, here. The costs of climate action to the citizens of any given nation (the effects upon whom must ultimately determine whether some policy is unacceptably costly or not) will vary enormously with considerations specific to each nation. Assessing such costs must be done community-by-community. Still, such difficulties notwithstanding, there are two reasons to think that climate action will, at least in many cases, not be unacceptably costly. First, as we have already discussed, the amount of cost agents can be required to take on in virtue of their capacities to avert some harm is, at least partially, a function of the severity of the expected harm they are able to avert. Intuitively, one has no duty to save the child in Singer’s pond if doing so would mean the loss of an arm. On the other hand, if there were 20 or 30 children in the pond one might save, the loss of an arm – though unfortunate – seems more reasonable. As we have already pointed out, the magnitude of the expected harms which might be mitigated by even relatively modest emissions-reduction policies is very substantial. Even relatively heavy costs, then, are unlikely to be unacceptable. Second, it is important to note also that action on climate change may have a range of positive effects (so-called ‘co-benefits’) that might at least partially counterbalance the costs. For example, steps to reduce carbon emissions may be associated with better public health outcomes from improved air quality and increased uptake of active modes of transport like cycling (Haines et al., 2009–10). We are not, of course, denying that action on climate change will often be quite costly. Stern (2009, pp. 48–55), for example, has estimated the annual costs of ensuring that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere do not exceed 500ppm at around 2% of global GDP over the next half-century. Serious emissions-reduction efforts will almost certainly not be cost-free. The only point we wish to defend, here, is that such costs are not likely to be unacceptable, at least in the case of many wealthy, developed nations. For these reasons, then, we think that many nations – wealthy, industrialised states, in particular – have capacity-based duties to take steps to mitigate the expected harms of climate change by reducing their emissions. *** Both contribution- and capacity-based considerations strongly support the claim that many nations – especially wealthy, industrialised nations – have duties to help mitigate climate change. Setting out exactly what such duties require of particular states is a massively complex task that we cannot hope to attempt, here.

Climate duties of sub-national communities 31 Nevertheless, as we have already discussed in the introduction, there are good reasons to think that on any plausible account of the requirements of such duties, the vast majority of states are presently failing to discharge them. To briefly recapitulate, whatever the precise requirements of these duties, we think that it must surely be the case that were all states to discharge them, severe climate change and its associated harms would be avoided. A general view (acceded to by nations party to the Paris agreement) has emerged that, in order to prevent such harms, global warming must be contained to no more than 1.5–2°C above the pre-industrial average. States’ emissions-reduction pledges under the Paris Agreement were (at least nominally) intended precisely to prevent global warming from exceeding this range. Now, many doubt that constraining global temperature rises to 1.5–2°C would avert the risk of severe harms (e.g. Smith et al., 2009). Many also have criticised states’ emissions-reduction pledges as too weak to achieve this goal (e.g. Rogelj et al., 2016). Yet, even setting these issues aside, as Victor et al. (2017) show, no major industrialised nation is presently on-track to meet its emissions-reduction pledges. Consider the United States, for example. In 2015, President Obama pledged to cut emissions to 26–28% below 2005 levels by 2025. Yet Victor et al. (2017, p. 26) suggest that the policies put in place by the Obama administration were only ever likely to cut emissions by 15–19%. Things have gotten worse since Obama left office, with the Trump administration undertaking significant efforts to roll back climate regulations.26 Others are doing better, but still not enough to meet their commitments. Recent estimates, then, suggest that global temperatures are on track to rise by 2–4.9°C by 2100 (Raftery et al., 2017), risking many very severe harms of the kind outlined in the introduction. For these reasons, then, we hold both that many nations have duties to mitigate climate change and that many of these nations are, presently, failing to discharge them.

Sub-national political communities’ devolved duties In this section, we argue that the same contribution- and capacity-based considerations which give rise to national-level duties to mitigate climate change also apply to many sub-national political communities. Were adequate national-level climate policies in place, such considerations would certainly give rise to a duty on the part of such communities to conform to the demands of those policies. This is for at least two reasons. First, an adequate national-level policy would likely prove a more effective response to climate change than unilateral action at the sub-national level. There are many reasons in virtue of which this is so. For instance, where a consistent national-level emissions-reduction policy is imposed, it is not open to emissions-intensive industries to leave communities in which emissions-reduction policies have been imposed for those in which they have not (an issue to which we shall return). Sub-national governments also typically (though not exceptionlessly) have more limited authority than national

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governments and may therefore face important limits in the climate policies they have the ability to impose. Second, co-ordinated national-level action on climate change is likely to have fewer associated costs. Consider the fact, for instance, that not all sub-national political communities have taken, or are likely to take, unilateral climate action. This gives rise to issues of unfairness that an adequate national-level scheme could avoid (we shall also have more to say on this issue, in the following). For reasons of this sort, even figures supportive of climate action at the sub-national level typically regard such steps as second-best to action at the national level. Still, as we have argued, countries have generally failed to adopt adequate climate policies. It follows, by the devolution principle, that those sub-national political communities to whom contribution- and capacity-based considerations apply have duties to take unilateral steps to help mitigate the threat posed by climate change. In this section, we aim to demonstrate that there are several such communities to whom such considerations apply and who therefore have such duties. Contribution-based duties The case for contribution-based devolved duties on the part of sub-national political communities is reasonably straightforward. Contribution-based duties to mitigate climate change arise where an agent has causally contributed, in a manner for which they are morally responsible, to the problem of climate change and its attendant harms. There is little doubt that at least some sub-national political communities contribute nontrivially to climate change. The United States Environmental Protection agency reports that Texas, for example, emitted 708.81 million metric tons of CO2 in 2014 (EPA, 2016b). If Texas were a country, it alone would have been the 8th largest emitter of CO2, worldwide, in that year (Olivier et al., 2016, pp. 42–3). The expected costs of these emissions, even on the basis of Nordhaus’ more conservative estimate, are roughly $21.9 billion, at the 2010 value of the US dollar. Texas, moreover, is hardly the only plausible case. In 2014, the city of Tokyo emitted 70.1 million metric tons of CO2e (CDP, 2018) at an expected cost of $2.17 billion. In 2015, New York City emitted 52 million metric tons of CO2e (LLC et al., 2017, p. 13) at an expected cost of $1.6 billion. Even the relatively small city of Auckland, in 2013, emitted 10.4 million metric tonnes of CO2e (CDP, 2018) at an expected cost of $322 million. As we have said, these estimates are very imprecise. Nevertheless, they suggest powerfully that many sub-national political communities are making decidedly non-trivial contributions to the harms of climate change. To the extent that such communities belong to states which have not implemented adequate emissionsreduction policies, such communities will have devolved duties to take such steps unilaterally. One might object, here, in two ways. First, one might point out that there are many sub-national political communities whose emissions are simply too insignificant to plausibly make any difference to the climate, and therefore to plausibly count as contributing in any non-trivial way to climate change. The Danish town

Climate duties of sub-national communities 33 of Ærøskøbing emitted the equivalent of just 225 metric tons of CO2 in 2015, for example (CDP, 2018).27 In response, we are happy to concede that not all subnational political communities will have contribution-based devolved duties to help address climate change. The point we wish to defend is simply that those communities that are contributing non-trivially to the harms of climate change have devolved duties to act unilaterally where the national communities to which they belong have failed to discharge their contribution-based duties. Second, one might argue that holding sub-national political communities responsible for the emissions generated within their borders is unfair.28 Some proportion of such emissions will be the result of national policies (e.g. federal subsidies for emissions-intensive industries), concerning which sub-national governments can do little. Some other proportion of these emissions will be generated on behalf of other sub-national political communities (a power plant located within one community might supply energy to surrounding communities, for example). Yet considerations of this sort can hardly defeat the argument we are advancing. After all, sub-national political communities might still reasonably be held responsible for some substantial proportion of the emissions produced within their boundaries. American state governments, for example, have the authority to impose regulations upon power plants, which are responsible for around 29% of America’s overall greenhouse emissions (EPA, 2016a, ch. 2 p. 23).29 Sub-national governments often exercise authority over public transport, which contributes directly to emissions but also has important indirect impacts. The quality of public transport influences persons’ choices as to whether to drive personal motor vehicles, for example. Sub-national political communities often co-operate with one another, and with national governments, on activities that produce emissions (e.g. on new infrastructure projects), such that they are often jointly responsible for emissions-intensive activities which take place within their boundaries. And so on. There seems to be no reason, then, why we should not hold that sub-national political communities may have contribution-based devolved duties arising out of some substantial proportion of the emissions produced within their territorial boundaries. Capacity-based duties The case for capacity-based devolved duties is a little more complex. Capacitybased duties are grounded in agents’ abilities to mitigate the expected harms of climate change by reducing their emissions without unacceptable cost. We think it plausible that many sub-national political communities have such abilities. We cannot provide precise estimates of the direct effects of emissions-reductions. Still, some similar back-of-the-envelope calculations can again give us some idea. Suppose, again, that Nordhaus’ estimate of the social cost of carbon is correct. On that basis, a mere 5% reduction in Texas’ emissions in 2014 might have diminished the expected social cost of their total emissions by around $1.1 billion. A

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5% reduction in Tokyo’s 2014 emissions might have saved $108 million a 5% reduction in New York City’s 2015 emissions might have saved around $80 million, and a 5% reduction in Auckland’s 2013 emissions might have saved around $16.1 million. These estimates are, we stress again, very rough. Nordhaus’ estimate may be incorrect. Emissions-reductions by one sub-national political community might have important impacts – for good or ill (we shall argue momentarily that there are reasons to think that such impacts are likely to be good) – upon the emissions produced by other communities. And so on. But, once more, if they are even remotely close to right, they suggest that even relatively modest reductions by some sub-national political communities, at least, can make an important contribution to mitigating the expected harms of climate change. Of greater interest, and perhaps greater importance, however, are the indirect effects that emissions-reductions at the sub-national level may have. In particular, it may be that unilateral action by some sub-national community helps contribute to processes of policy diffusion. Policy diffusion occurs where one government’s adoption of some policy increases the likelihood of the same or similar policies being adopted by other governments.30 Such effects have been observed in many different contexts, including at the sub-national level. In a widely cited study of the diffusion of anti-smoking legislation in the United States, for example, Shipan and Volden (2006) found that, under certain conditions, the adoption of anti-smoking legislation by municipal governments made the adoption of similar legislation at the state level significantly more likely, and that the adoption of such legislation by some states made neighbouring states significantly more likely to adopt similar policies. A later study found that the adoption of such policies by municipal governments made other similarly situated municipal governments more likely to adopt similar policies (Shipan and Volden, 2008). We might reasonably hope, then, that unilateral action on climate change by some sub-national political communities might render it more likely that others will adopt similar policies. A number of recent empirical studies offer reason for hope, on this score.31 In separate studies of the adoption of climate and energy policies by US states, for example, Bromley-Trujillo et al. (2016, pp. 551–3, 559) and Chandler (2009, pp. 3278–9) find the adoption of such policies by ideologically similar states to be among the principal drivers of states’ decisions to adopt similar policies, themselves.32 At the municipal level, Krause (2010) found that the presence of neighbouring cities who had enacted climate protection policies was among the principal drivers of cities’ decisions to adopt climate protection initiatives, themselves.33 There are many ways in which action by particular sub-national political communities might contribute to the ongoing process by which such policies are diffused. Let us consider just three. First, unilateral action by sub-national political communities may help prompt the development of new technologies. The development of environmentally friendly technologies often occurs in response to regulation. Popp (2006), for example, shows that in the United States, patent applications for technologies for

Climate duties of sub-national communities 35 reducing sulphur dioxide emissions from power plants substantially increased in response to the imposition of stricter regulations. As these technologies become available, the cost of adopting regulations falls, rendering it more likely that political communities will implement them. For example, in a study of countries’ adoption of sulphur dioxide regulations, Lovely and Popp (2011, pp. 25–30) show that the number of countries introducing such regulations increased exponentially with the availability of new technologies. It might reasonably be hoped that climate action at the sub-national level might have similar effects. Imposing regulations to limit emissions will increase the demand for new, lower-emission technologies, which might then be transferred to other communities, lowering the barrier to those communities also taking such steps. Second, unilateral action at the sub-national level may contribute to processes of ‘policy learning’. Governments often take lessons from the success of other governments’ policies, and implement similar policies, in consequence.34 Such effects have been widely observed in other contexts. Volden (2006), for example, found that American states often copied policies for the provision of health insurance to poor children from states that had had the most success in this respect. Policy learning, importantly, often results in more effective policies, over the longer term.35 Hilton (2001), for example, surveys the history of the abatement of leaded fuel in motor vehicles, finding that countries who acted later typically achieved faster rates of abatement. This appears to be largely a function of the ability of later movers to draw upon lessons learned by earlier movers concerning the benefits to be gained, the appropriate policy goals to adopt, and the most efficient means of realising them (Hilton, 2001, pp. 259–62). It might well be hoped that similar effects might occur in the case of climate action at the subnational level. Valuable lessons may be learned from (for example) California’s emissions trading scheme, which might fruitfully inform similar efforts by other communities. Finally, unilateral action at the sub-national level might help promote valuable norms.36 Ample evidence suggests that agents are characteristically disposed to comply with the social norms generally thought to apply to them (Bicchieri, 2017). And, as constructivist scholars in political science have often emphasised, governments generally (though, of course, not exceptionlessly) tend to conform to a ‘logic of appropriateness’ (March and Olsen, 2011), constituted by the norms which apply to governments of the relevant type. Few governments (or, at least, few democratic governments), for example, violate fundamental human rights norms, even where it might be in their interests to do so. Norm violations, after all, often entail material costs – e.g. reputational damage, sanctions. Moreover, if the norms in question are internalised by the populations such governments serve, governments have political incentives to embody those norms in policymaking. Norms typically follow a ‘life-cycle’ (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998, pp. 894– 909). ‘Norm entrepreneurs’ begin by attempting to persuade others that some existing norm ought to be replaced. ‘Norm champions’ (early adopters of new norms) take up these norms, embodying them in their decision-making, and pressuring others to do the same. As more agents adopt such norms, the costs of conformity

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to the old norm typically increase, while the costs of conforming to the new norm typically decline (Bicchieri, 2017, ch. 5). Often, a tipping point is reached, beyond which the norm ‘cascades’, with large numbers of previously recalcitrant agents moving rapidly to adopt the new norm. Finnemore and Sikkink (1998, pp. 895–6), for example, point out that between 1848 and 1930, just 20 countries adopted women’s suffrage. From 1930 to 1950, however, 48 countries did so. As Raymond et al. (2014, pp. 204–6) point out, moreover, changing norms can be a particularly valuable way of promoting political change on issues where powerful actors – e.g. fossil fuel corporations – have strong vested interests in maintaining the status quo. Activists do not typically possess the resources of such actors, and so struggle to combat their influence ‘directly’. Changing social norms, then, offers a promising alternative path to political change. Many groups are engaged in efforts to promote norms according to which status quo emission rates are unacceptable.37 Sub-national political communities might make valuable contributions to these efforts, acting as champions for such norms by taking unilateral climate action, thereby increasing the pressure upon others to adopt such norms. Such steps might have important effects upon the behaviour of many different agents. Individuals might face increased pressure to adopt lower-emission lifestyles. And, more importantly, other governments (both national and sub-national) might be prompted to take similar steps, either in virtue of the new logic of appropriateness such steps promote, the costs associated with flouting such norms, or the political pressure they might face to do so as more of their own citizens internalise such norms.38 It might even be hoped that, as more political communities take such steps, a ‘tipping point’ might be reached beyond which such norms might ‘cascade’ in the manner described above. Through a combination of both direct and indirect effects, then, we think that many sub-national political communities have the capacity to make a positive contribution to mitigating climate change.39 Still, such communities will have capacitybased devolved duties to do so only if doing so does not entail unacceptable costs. Now, just as in the case of states, it is very unlikely, for any given sub-national political community, that there will be no policy options available that would not impose unacceptable costs upon others. The more challenging issue, once again, concerns whether the costs to communities themselves would be acceptable. And, once again, we can say little definite on this point. The costs of unilateral action to individuals within the relevant communities will vary enormously community to community. Assessing such costs, then, must be done community-by-community. Such difficulties notwithstanding, there are at least three general reasons to think that unilateral action will often not prove unacceptably costly. The first two of these ought to be familiar from our discussion of the national case. First, as we have seen, the magnitude of the expected harm which might be averted by even relatively modest climate action is highly significant. As such, even reasonably heavy costs might well be acceptable. Second, climate action at the sub-national level might also bring important co-benefits. States which implement emission-reduction measures might enjoy improved air quality and (thus) enjoy important public health benefits, for example.

Climate duties of sub-national communities 37 The final such reason, however, is simply that there are examples of unilateral action at the sub-national level that have not entailed particularly excessive costs. Empirical studies indicate that British Columbia’s carbon tax has been responsible for a 5–15% drop in emissions since its implementation in 2008 and has had only negligible effects upon economic growth (Murray and Rivers, 2015, pp. 677–80). The RGGI, described in the introduction, has been associated with a steep decline in power plant emissions (Murray and Maniloff, 2015), while the states in question have continued to enjoy rates of economic growth above the national average (Fairfield, 2014).40 We do not, of course, deny that unilateral action on climate change at the subnational level may well be quite costly. The point is simply that, in at least a substantial number of cases, such costs will not be unacceptable. *** We think, then, that there are a great many sub-national political communities to whom the considerations which ground contribution- and capacity-based duties to mitigate climate change apply. As we have said, such communities would ideally respond to such considerations by simply playing their part in an adequate national-level climate scheme. But to the extent that such communities belong to states that have failed to adopt such schemes, the devolution principle entails that such communities have duties to take steps to reduce their emissions unilaterally.41

Partial compliance An obvious question prompted by the preceding discussion concerns the costs communities are required to take on in virtue of these devolved duties. In one sense, the matter is straightforward. The costs each community is required to bear will vary with the strength of the duties in question. This, in turn, will be determined by the degree to which the considerations which ground these devolved duties apply to them. And since this will vary very substantially between different communities, so too will the strength of such duties, together with the costs each particular community is required to take on. Large, wealthy communities with substantial historical emissions will be required to take on more extensive costs than poorer communities or those with less historical emissions. The matter, however, is complicated by the inevitable fact of partial compliance. Not all sub-national political communities will take steps to discharge their devolved duties. Perhaps, then, it is unfair to demand that any sub-national political community take such steps unilaterally. After all, by doing so, such communities will impose costs upon themselves (and their citizens) which others will avoid in virtue of their non-compliance. One tempting response to this line of objection runs as follows. Issues of fairness arise only with respect to the distribution of goods to which the agents in question have positive moral claims (c.f. Broome, 1990–1). Suppose two thieves rob a bank. The next evening one thief steals the other’s share of the money. We should hardly wish to say that the latter would thereby have a legitimate

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fairness-complaint against the former. After all, neither thief has any claim to the money they have stolen. Yet suppose, on the other hand, that two people are marooned on a desert island. If one monopolises all the food and water and refuses to share, the other would have an obvious fairness-complaint. Each has a positive, equal claim to the food and water necessary to survive. As such, it is obviously unfair that only one of the survivors should have those claims satisfied. Proponents of this line of objection, then, must necessarily presuppose that the communities to whom our argument is supposed to apply have claims to continue emitting greenhouse gases at roughly the rates at which they do at present. If they do not have such claims, no issue of unfairness can arise in the first place. This, however, straightforwardly begs the question. After all, we have now argued at length that, far from having claims to continue emitting at their present levels, many sub-national political communities have duties to aggressively reduce their present emission levels in order to help mitigate the severity of climate change. Yet this cannot be the end of the story. A proponent of this line of objection might respond by pointing out that even if sub-national political communities do not have claims to continue emitting at present rates, serious emissions-reduction policies will likely involve substantial costs. Adopting such policies, then, may require sub-national political communities to divert resources from other social programmes for the provision of goods to which the communities in question do plausibly have moral claims (public health, education, etc.). Communities that fail to take such steps will not make any such sacrifices. This, prima facie, is unfair. This version of the challenge requires a lengthier response. To begin, following Miller (2011, p. 233), we note that there are three conceptual possibilities with respect to the costs agents may be required to take on under conditions of partial compliance.42 First, less cost than they would have been required to take on under conditions of full compliance. Second, the same costs. Third, more costs. The objection, in its present form at least, holds that in the present instance, the first option is correct – i.e. that given the unfairness involved, sub-national political communities do not have devolved duties to take steps to help mitigate climate change where other sub-national political communities are unlikely to do so. That, however, is far too strong. It is hardly as though complaints of unfairness somehow undermine the degree to which the considerations which give rise to such duties apply to the communities in question.43 If Diane and Elaine each dump equal quantities of toxic waste into a river, causing children downstream to develop a severe illness, for instance, both will have contribution-based duties to clean up the river and cover the children’s medical expenses. Yet suppose that Diane refuses to discharge these duties. That fact would hardly show that contribution-based considerations no longer apply to Elaine. Elaine may well have a fairness-complaint against Diane. Yet that would surely not show that she has no duty to help mitigate – at the very least – that proportion of the harm for which she is responsible. Analogous considerations apply with respect to capacitybased duties. This, however, leaves open the question of how much cost sub-national political communities might be required to take on under conditions of partial

Climate duties of sub-national communities 39 compliance. To this end, then, let us consider Miller’s second option – that, under conditions of partial compliance, agents are required to take on the same costs they would have been required to take on under conditions of full compliance. Some theorists – Murphy (2000, ch. 5), for example – have defended this position on the grounds that it would be unfair if agents were required to take on additional costs in virtue of others’ wrongful noncompliance. We, however, favour the third option, at least in the case at hand. Sub-national political communities that seek to discharge their devolved duties, we shall argue, have duties to ‘take up the slack’ for those who do not.44 Though, as we shall see, the justification of these slacktaking duties varies with the kind of duty with which others fail to comply. Matters are relatively straightforward with respect to capacity-based duties. Consider: Two Children: Two children are drowning in a pond. Horace and Harold are standing on the bank. Each could both easily save one of the children at a minor cost to themselves. Harold, however, refuses to participate in any rescue. Horace clearly has a duty to take up the slack and save both children, even though, by doing so, he will incur additional costs in virtue of Harold’s non-compliance.45 Horace will have a complaint of fairness against Harold, who will himself have special duties to compensate Horace for the additional losses he incurs. That, however, in no way lessens the force of the considerations in virtue of which Horace ought to rescue the children – their urgent interests in survival and his capacity to promote those interests at a comparatively minor cost (Karnein, 2014, pp. 599–600) – and thus the force of Horace’s duties to do so.46 Turning to contribution-based duties, recall that agents have such duties where they have made some non-trivial contribution to some wrongful harm. Where agents fail to discharge these duties, others may (though will not always) have duties to take up the slack. The justification of these slack-taking duties, however, depends upon whether the wrongdoing in question arose independently of the agent to whom the slack-taking duty might potentially apply, or as a result of some wrongful joint action to which the agent in question has contributed. Let us begin with a pair of cases of the former sort. First, suppose Bill has promised to meet Toby for lunch and fails to turn up. Bill thereby wrongs Toby, and thus will have contribution-based duties to repair the injury to Toby – likely, by taking him out to lunch another time. But, intuitively, no one else has a duty to take Toby out to lunch if Bill fails to do so. Yet, alternatively, suppose that Connie is walking in the park and sees Roy deliberately push a child into a pond who immediately begins to drown. Roy, clearly, has a contribution-based duty to rescue the child. Yet, if Roy fails to discharge that duty, Connie clearly would have a duty to rescue the child, instead (provided the costs of her doing so are not excessive). Slack-taking duties clearly arise in the latter case, but not the former. The explanation of our divergent intuitions, we think, arises out of the fact that agents’

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failures to discharge their contribution-based duties can substantially set back others’ interests. Where those interests are of sufficient importance, those setbacks can trigger capacity-based duties on the part of other agents to take up the slack. It is this which explains why Connie should rescue the child. She has in no way contributed to the harm in question, but she nevertheless has the capacity to avert that harm at little cost. No one has a duty to take up the slack for Bill, however, because our interests in others keeping minor promises to us are simply not sufficiently weighty to ground capacity-based duties on the part of other agents to make up for our losses (and, obviously, the contribution-based considerations which ground Bill’s duty to Toby do not apply to anyone else). Now, finally, let us consider cases in which the harm in question arises as a result of joint action. Following Seumas Miller (2006, pp. 176–9), we understand joint actions as actions properly constituted by the individual, intentional actions of a set of two or more agents, where each agent’s action is performed with the true belief that, by acting together, the set of agents in question will jointly realise some shared end. Henry and Laurie carrying a piano upstairs together is a joint action. Henry lifts one side of the piano and walks up the stairs, truly believing that Laurie will lift the other side and follow him, and each shares the end (or goal) of moving the piano. Acts of joint wrongdoing are simply wrongful joint actions.47 Consider the following case, for example: Weakening the Bridge: James and John have decided to destroy a wooden pedestrian bridge by repeatedly firing an antique cannon at its centre. Being heavy and cumbersome, the cannon can only be operated by two persons working in tandem. James and John, working together, have fired several shots at the bridge, considerably weakening it. Unaware of the risk, two pedestrians attempt to walk over the bridge. It collapses under their weight, sending them into the deep water below. This is a clear case of joint wrongdoing. The act of weakening the bridge is clearly wrongful, given the threat doing so poses to others’ interests. Moreover, the weakening of the bridge is a joint action. James and John each play their part in operating the cannon, rightly believing that the other will also do their part. Each shares the goal of destroying the bridge. And each seeks to achieve that goal by co-operating with the other. We shall return to the moral significance of joint wrongdoing in the following chapter. For now, however, we shall focus upon its implications for agents’ slacktaking duties. For suppose that James and John could each rescue one of the victims at a minor cost to themselves, and both victims at greater (but still relatively minor) cost. Other things being equal, a fair division of labour, here, would be for each to rescue one of the victims. Yet suppose that John refuses to participate in any rescue, and that nothing can be done to compel him to do so. It certainly seems clear, in that case, that James would have a duty to rescue both victims in virtue of John’s non-compliance (i.e. to take up the slack).

Climate duties of sub-national communities 41 No doubt, capacity-based considerations have some role to play in explaining why this is so. Yet so too, we think, must contribution-based considerations. For suppose that Jack arrives on the scene immediately after James rescues the first victim. Jack has played no role in bringing the accident about. He and James are equally capable of rescuing the second victim. Nevertheless, there is a powerful intuition that James has a stronger duty to rescue the second child than Jack. We should think it much more wrongful for James to refuse to carry out the second rescue than Jack, for example. The explanation for this, we think, lies in the fact that, where joint wrongdoing occurs, each of the agents that contributes to that wrongdoing is fully morally responsible for the wrongful outcome in question in virtue of their contribution – the fact that every other agent party to the wrongdoing is also fully responsible notwithstanding (Miller, 2006, pp. 180–1). James and John each shared the collective – and wrongful – end of destroying the bridge. Their actions, taken together, constituted the means by which the end was to be achieved. Each of their individual actions constituted an essential part of those actions – both because (ex hypothesi) operating the cannon required their combined efforts, and because their actions exhibit an important form of interdependence. James and John each perform the actions necessary for the destruction of the bridge act because they believe that the other will also do so. In an important sense, then, James acting as he does causes John to act as he does. And vice versa. Even if, in rescuing one of the victims, James has done his ‘fair share’, the considerations which ground contribution-based duties nevertheless continue to apply to him with respect to the second victim. It is in virtue of his participation in a wrongful scheme of collective action in combination with John that the second victim is at risk of drowning. James is fully responsible for the harms inflicted upon both victims. No such considerations apply to Jack and, for that reason, his duty to rescue the second victim is weaker than James’. An agent, A, then, will have slack-taking duties under at least the following three sets of conditions: 1 2

3

Where some agent has failed to discharge some capacity-based duty to mitigate some harm, and A has the capacity to mitigate that harm without unacceptable cost. Where some agent has failed to discharge some contribution-based duty to mitigate some harm, thereby setting back some other agent’s sufficiently weighty interests, and A has the capacity to mitigate that harm without unacceptable cost. Where an act of joint wrongdoing causing harm has been performed by some group of agents of which A is a member, and where some or all of the other members of that group have failed to do their fair share in mitigating that harm.

On these bases, then, we think that sub-national political communities will often have duties to take up the slack in the climate case, insofar as in virtually all cases of partial compliance, at least one of these conditions will be satisfied. In cases where

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some communities fail to discharge their capacity-based duties, it will often be possible for others to step into the breach and further reduce their own emissions without unacceptable cost (given both the level of affluence which obtains in many such communities and the substantial expected harm which might be averted by their doing so). The interests threatened by failures to address climate change are certainly very weighty, as reports into the human impacts of climate change have repeatedly made clear (IPCC, 2014). Where some fail to discharge their contribution-based duties, then, others will often have capacity-based duties to take up the slack. And, as pointed out earlier, the production of emissions often occurs as a result of joint action between multiple political communities. Where one or more of those communities fails to discharge any contribution-based duties arising in virtue of such emissions, their partners in such actions may also have slack-taking duties for contributionbased reasons. For these reasons, we hold that under conditions of partial compliance, many sub-national political communities are required to take on costs beyond those they would have been required to bear under conditions of full compliance. This will indeed give rise to issues of unfairness and points to an important respect in which a uniform, national-level climate policy would be superior to unilateral action at the sub-national level. In our view, however, what follows from that fact is simply that communities that fail to discharge their devolved duties will have fairness-based duties to compensate those communities that take up the slack for the additional costs they incur in virtue of their noncompliance – not that communities have no slack-taking duties, at all.48

Carbon leakage There is a final outstanding issue worth discussing before we conclude. The phenomenon of carbon leakage occurs where the adoption of emissions-reduction policies in one jurisdiction leads to increases in emissions elsewhere, thereby undermining the efficacy of such policies. Experts, generally, think that carbon leakage may occur for two kinds of reasons (Branger and Quirion, 2014, pp. 54–5). First, emissions-reduction policies may decrease the consumption of fossil fuels in some jurisdictions. This decreases global demand for fossil fuels and may thereby make it cheaper (and thus more attractive) for actors in other jurisdictions to increase their own fossil fuel consumption. Second, emissionsreduction policies such as carbon taxes may impose costs upon carbon-intensive industries. This may cause such industries to relocate from jurisdictions where emissions-reduction policies have been introduced to those in which they have not (or where less demanding policies are in place). Even if such industries do not relocate, the introduction of emissions-reduction policies may render their products less competitive, thereby leading to an increased demand for similar or substitute products produced in less-regulated jurisdictions. The possibility of carbon leakage is among the principal arguments deployed by opponents of unilateral emissions-reduction policies at the national level (see e.g. Babiker, 2005). Theorists who have discussed unilateral climate action at

Climate duties of sub-national communities 43 the sub-national level – including those generally supportive of such action (e.g. Ostrom, 2010, pp. 554–5) – often point out that such policies also risk causing carbon leakage. This possibility, in turn, might be thought to undermine the degree to which contribution- or capacity-based considerations can be said to apply to sub-national political communities. The matter is clearest with respect to capacity-based considerations. As we’ve already said, capacity-based duties arise where an agent has the capacity to reduce levels of expected harm to some sufficiently substantial degree, without unacceptable cost. Carbon leakage, insofar as it undermines the efficacy of emissionsreduction policies, must clearly diminish the degree to which any such policies can diminish the expected harms of climate change. Suppose Ohio were contemplating introducing a carbon tax. If their doing so was likely to simply cause emissions-intensive industries to relocate to some other, unregulated jurisdiction where they could continue emitting as before, the expected value of their doing so would clearly be undermined. Contribution-based duties, on the other hand, only arise where an agent has contributed to some harm, in a manner for which the agent in question is morally responsible. If Gerry dumps a barrel toxic waste into a river because Sandi forced him to do so at gunpoint, for example, Gerry is clearly not morally responsible for the ensuing harm. Nor will he have contribution-based duties to help mitigate the harm associated with his actions. Now, it is often assumed that for an agent to be morally responsible for some harm, they must be causally responsible for that harm. This, in turn, suggests that the possibility of carbon leakage might undermine the degree to which any sub-national political community can reasonably be said to be morally responsible for the expected harm with which their emissions are associated. Suppose, for instance, that had Ohio taken steps to reduce its emissions by 10% a decade ago, this would have precipitated an increase in emissions produced in other American states, such that Ohio’s doing so would have made no net difference to the total emissions produced by the United States. This, it might be suggested, entails that Ohio is not causally responsible in the relevant sense for the harms with which these emissions will be associated. The phenomenon of carbon leakage means that they would have been produced whether or not Ohio had taken steps to reduce its emissions. This implies that Ohio cannot be morally responsible for such emissions, either. And this, finally, entails that Ohio cannot have contribution-based duties to help mitigate the harms with which these emissions will be associated. This line of objection invites two sets of responses. First, the challenge to contribution-based duties we have outlined appeals to the claim that an agent, A, may be morally responsible for some harm, H, if and only if A has caused H. Yet, as Sartorio (2004, pp. 319–25) forcefully argues, views of this sort entail unacceptable results in a range of cases. Suppose, for instance, that Charles is tied to a stake. Alan shoots Charles in the heart, instantly killing him. Yet suppose also that had Alan failed to shoot Charles, Betty would have done so instead, and with the same effect. Simple counterfactual dependence accounts of causation (upon which this line of objection relies) entail that Alan fails to cause Charles’ death.49

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Had Alan failed to shoot Charles, Betty would have done so, and Charles would have died regardless. As such, Charles’ death does not counterfactually depend upon Alan’s actions. We should hardly wish to accept that Alan is not therefore morally responsible for Charles’ death. Yet this seems to be precisely what is entailed by the view of the relationship between moral and causal responsibility which underpins this line of objection. Cases of this kind are familiar and have led many philosophers to propose more sophisticated accounts of the relationship between causal and moral responsibility. Amongst the more popular of these approaches, for instance, holds that an agent may be morally responsible for some harm where their actions constitute a necessary element of a set of factors sufficient for the harm in question, where the set itself need not be necessary for that harm.50 On this view, Alan will be morally responsible for Charles’ death, insofar as his shooting Charles would certainly have been sufficient to cause Charles’ death, even if (ex hypothesi) his doing so is not necessary for Charles’ death. Similarly, on such approaches, Ohio would certainly count as responsible for the expected harm associated with the emissions that would have ‘leaked’ to other American states. Their permitting such emissions to be produced within their territory is sufficient for the expected harm with which those emissions are associated, even if it is not necessary. Now, whether this approach is ultimately satisfactory is a question we cannot explore in depth, here.51 Nor need we settle the issue. Our point is simply that the view of the relationship between causal and moral responsibility which underlies this objection is clearly implausible. Alan is clearly morally responsible for Charles’ death. We should reject any view which entails otherwise. And we should likewise reject any view which permits sub-national political communities (or, for that matter, countries) to evade moral responsibility for the emissions produced within their borders by appeal to the fact that some other community might have produced those emissions had they not done so. Second, and more straightforwardly, we might respond to both sets of challenges by questioning the degree to which the possibility of carbon leakage is likely to undermine the efficacy of unilateral emissions-reduction policies at the sub-national level. For any emissions-reduction policy, the rate of carbon leakage with which it is associated is given by the increase in CO2e emissions elsewhere brought about by that policy, divided by the decrease in CO2e emissions brought about by that policy in the jurisdiction in which it applies. In a review of studies into the phenomenon, Branger and Quirion (2014, pp. 54–61) find that attempts to model the effects of emissions-reduction policies ex ante typically predict rates of carbon leakage of around 5–20%. Empirical studies of real-world emissions-reduction policies (e.g. the EU’s emissions-trading scheme), however, have tended to find limited evidence of such effects.52 Moreover, even if (as is at least possible) some potential emissions-reduction policies at the sub-national level give rise to a significant risk of carbon leakage, this may simply be an argument for careful policy design. Some industries will be simply unable to shift jurisdictions – companies which provide public transport in particular cities, for example. Others will be very unlikely to do so, given the costs

Climate duties of sub-national communities 45 associated with relocation.53 The risk of carbon leakage, then, might simply argue for emissions-reduction policies that target industries that are unlikely to shift jurisdictions, rather than against unilateral action more generally. And, even if emissions-reduction policies at the sub-national level will necessarily be accompanied by substantial carbon leakage, there are steps such communities might take to address the issue. Namely, such communities might take steps to offset those ‘leaked’ emissions by – for instance – helping to fund re-forestation efforts or decarbonisation projects in developing nations. Carbon leakage, then, points to another important respect – efficacy – in which adequate national-level emissions-reduction policies are likely superior to unilateral action at the sub-national level. It does not in any obvious way, however, undermine the claim that there are pro tanto duties on the part of sub-national political communities to take unilateral steps to help mitigate climate where the nations to which they belong fail to adopt such policies.

Conclusion If the nations of the world continue to neglect the problem of climate change, it is to be hoped that we will see more unilateral action on climate change at the subnational level. We have argued that there are good reasons to think such action is not merely morally desirable, but morally required. It is worth tempering this with a note of caution, however. Our argument should in no way be seen as an attempt to detract from the idea that states are the most important actors with respect to climate change. Adequate national-level climate policies, in our view, remain the most desirable way of addressing the issue, both because they are likely to be more effective, and because they would realise a fairer distribution of the costs of responding to climate change. Our only claim, here, is that many sub-national political communities have duties to step into the breach until adequate climate action at the national level is forthcoming. Sub-national political communities, however, are hardly the only actors who might plausibly have duties to help address climate change in virtue of the failure of the states to which they belong to do so. Corporations, too, are critically important actors with respect to climate change. The next chapter explores the possibility that they, too, may have devolved duties to take action.

Notes This chapter is partially derived from three previously published papers. First, Umbers L. M. & J. Moss (2018). ‘Going It Alone: Cities and States for Climate Action’, Ethics, Policy & Environment 21(1): 56–9, copyright Taylor & Francis, available online: www. tandfonline.com/10.1080/21550085.2018.1448037. Second, Umbers L. M. & J. Moss (2020). ‘The Climate Duties of Sub-National Political Communities’, Political Studies 68(1): 20–36, copyright SAGE, available online: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/ full/10.1177/0032321718819076. And, third, Umbers, L. M. (2020). ‘Sub-National Climate Duties: Addressing Three Challenges’, in Climate Justice and Non-State Actors: Corporations, Regions, Cities, Individuals. J. Moss and L. Umbers (eds). Abingdon, UK, Routledge: 29–44. We gratefully acknowledge permission to reproduce some of the contents of those articles, here.

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1 See Mayors (2018). 2 The scheme was closed down in 2012 to make way for the short-lived national carbon tax imposed by the Australian federal government. 3 Of course, not all sub-national governments have proven to be so progressive. Indeed, some have actively sought to frustrate efforts to address climate change. In 2015, for example, 27 US states sued the federal government in an attempt to block the implementation of the Clean Power Plan, the centrepiece of the Obama administration’s climate strategy. 4 For an excellent overview, see Bulkeley (2011). 5 Such estimates are somewhat controversial. See Dodman (2009) and Satterthwaite (2008). 6 The only existing treatments of such issues, to the best of our knowledge, are Bulkeley et al. (2014), Umbers and Moss (2018, 2020), and Umbers (2020). 7 Such action may be undertaken alone (e.g. California’s emissions trading scheme) or co-operatively (e.g. the RGGI). The particular steps sub-national political communities should take will be a matter of the particular considerations (e.g. cost, efficacy, fairness) applying to each community. 8 Though, of course, San Francisco and Oakland may well have other legitimate means open to them to help address climate change. 9 For a sophisticated defence of this claim, see Collins (2019, chs. 2–3). 10 In fairness, we should note that there is some dissent on this point. See esp. LawfordSmith (2019, ch. 3). 11 We take this to be a natural extension of Collins’ (2016) account of the basis of individuals’ duties to take on the costs of discharging the duties of the collectives to which they belong. 12 For a compelling account of collective agency, see List and Pettit (2011). 13 An important question, here, is whether the Devolution Principle applies to subcollectives comprised of strangers, or only to pre-existing sub-collectives such as the sales team in Ten on the Shore. That depends entirely upon whether the sub-collective in question meets the conditions for collective agency – a matter which will vary case-by-case. If so, (1) will be satisfied, and the principle will apply if (2)–(4) are also satisfied. If not (as will often be the case), the principle will not apply. That, it might be thought, is problematic. After all, we often speak as though non-agential groups have moral duties. We agree with Collins (2013), however, that such utterances are best interpreted as expressing the conviction that members of such groups have individual-level duties to take steps to cause the group in question to form itself into a collective agent, which might then be subject to collective duties – devolved duties, included. 14 It is for this same reason that, in our construction of Ten on the Shore, the duty falls upon the sales team, who, being a pre-existing sub-collective with (we can presume) internal structures sufficient for collective agency, can appropriately be the subject of moral duties. 15 We do not deny, of course, that there may also be other grounds for such duties – e.g. beneficiary-based considerations. 16 Others have occasionally employed different labels for contribution-based duties, including ‘fault-based’, ‘historical’, and ‘polluter pays’. 17 Amongst the most prominent defenders of contribution-based duties is Simon Caney (2005). Unlike many other proponents of such duties, however, he has often been careful to allow that such duties might also apply to agents other than states. 18 See Arrhenius (1896). 19 For an extended treatment of these issues, see Moss and Kath (2019). 20 It may well be that states have duties with respect to their emissions from before this period, also. The scientific evidence that harmful anthropogenic climate change was occurring and likely to intensify was, after all, what triggered the formation of the IPCC in the first place. 21 For discussion, see Broome (2019, pp. 110–15).

Climate duties of sub-national communities 47 22 It is important to restrict P1 to agents’ fundamental interests, only. Capacity-based duties do not plausibly arise with respect to less significant interests. If Daniel breaks a promise to buy Bob lunch, this will set back Bob’s interests. Yet we should hardly think that, even if Charlie had the capacity to buy Bob lunch instead, Charlie would thereby be obliged to do so. Bob’s interests in receiving a free lunch are simply not important enough to trigger such duties. There will, of course, inevitably be controversy over just which interests are fundamental, in this respect. Yet any plausible account must surely count life, health, and security as fundamental, and it is interests of precisely this kind that are threatened by climate change. 23 The seriousness of a threat to our interests may vary along two dimensions. First, the probability that our interests will be set back by that threat. Second, the magnitude of any possible setback. Where either or both of these is too low, the threat will be insufficiently serious to trigger capacity-based duties in others (after all, each of us is constantly subject to a very wide range of minor threats to our fundamental interests in everyday life which others have no duty attempt to mitigate). There will inevitably be controversy as to precisely which threats count as sufficiently serious. Yet, again, we can safely set this issue aside. Any plausible account must surely count very many of the threats to our interests posed by climate change (disease, extreme weather events, and so on) as being sufficiently serious. 24 This is not to endorse Singer’s (1972, p. 231) famously demanding view that the costs of taking steps to prevent some harm are unacceptable if and only if they are of ‘comparable moral significance’ to the harm in question. The loss of two legs, for instance, seems clearly less morally significant than the premature death of a child. Still, we clearly might reasonably protest against some purported requirement to rescue a child at such a cost that it would be unacceptably burdensome. 25 Our views on this point have been much influenced by Jackson (1991). 26 For an overview, see Irfan (2017). 27 For context, an average individual person born in a rich country in 1950 will emit 800 tonnes of CO2 over their lifetime (Broome, 2012, p. 74). 28 We should note that this ‘territorial’ method of emissions accounting is (somewhat controversially) employed by the UNFCCC, at the global scale. 29 Several American states have imposed such regulations – e.g. the RGGI. 30 For an overview of the field of policy diffusion, see Shipan and Volden (2012). 31 For a partial overview of this literature, see Lyon (2016, pp. 145–7). 32 Matisoff and Edwards (2014), similarly, show that states with similar political cultures are more likely to emulate one another’s energy policies. 33 Though there is some scepticism as to whether this ‘geographical’ diffusion occurs at the state level. See Matisoff (2008). 34 There are many examples of this effect to be found in the literature. 35 Elinor Ostrom (2010) has argued that amongst the principal virtues of a decentralised, polycentric approach to addressing climate change is the potential for experimentation and policy learning at multiple levels of government. For discussion, see many of the essays in Jordan et al. (2018). 36 For discussions of the role of norms in combatting climate change, see Green (2018), Gunningham (2017a, 2017b), Raymond et al. (2014, pp. 204–6). 37 This is among the principal goals of the divestment movement, for example (Gunningham, 2017a). 38 There is important evidence of this effect at work at the sub-national level. Pacheco (2012), for example, finds both that public support for smoking bans in restaurants in US states increases as a result of neighbouring states’ adoption of such policies and that increased public support for such policies makes states more likely to adopt such policies, themselves. 39 It is important to note, here, that some states will have more important roles in play in the policy diffusion process than others. Large sub-national political communities, for

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Climate duties of sub-national communities example, have often been found to be substantially more influential in such processes than smaller communities (see Shipan and Volden, 2008, for example). Measures like economic growth can mask the fact that emissions-reduction policies impose heavy costs upon some individuals. Workers in emissions-intensive industries may lose their jobs and struggle to find new work, for example. These costs, in our view, argue for compensatory measures (e.g. transfer payments), rather than against unilateral action, however. Though, it is important to recall that such duties are pro tanto duties and may be outweighed by competing considerations (e.g. if there was some considerably greater good which might be accomplished by the resources that might otherwise be devoted to combatting climate change). Caney (2016) argues that the response required of any given actor under conditions of partial compliance in the climate case will depend upon the considerations applying to that actor. Our argument, here, is that sub-national political communities to whom the considerations grounding capacity-based duties apply have duties to take up the slack for those who fail to discharge their own duties to take action (what Caney refers to as ‘Responsibility Reallocation’). Our discussion throughout this section has been much influenced by Karnein (2014). Several philosophers have defended national-level slack-taking duties in the climate case (e.g. Caney, 2005, pp. 766–7, 771–2). Of course, real-world equivalents of cases in which agents fail to do their fair share in discharging some capacity-based duty are considerably more complex than Two Children. In the real world, for example, there will be many other important considerations besides those which give rise to the capacity-based duty that must be given weight in any overall assessment as to what agents ought to do all things considered. Rather than undermining our analysis here, however, this simply shows that slack-taking duties of the sort we defend are also pro tanto duties, susceptible to being outweighed by these competing considerations. That, of course, is not to say that there are no limits to the costs Horace can be required to bear in virtue of Harold’s noncompliance. Such costs must still not be morally unacceptable. There are different kinds of joint wrongdoing. Lepora and Goodin (2013, pp. 37–41), for instance, distinguish between conspiring to commit wrongdoing with others, acting co-operatively to commit wrongdoing with others, and colluding in secret with others to commit wrongdoing. Our remarks, here, have been much informed by Barry and Øverland (2016, ch. 4). The canonical statement of the counterfactual dependence account of causation is Lewis (1973). This view is particularly associated with the work of Hart and Honoré (1959), though their principal focus is legal, rather than moral, responsibility. It has been taken up in more recent times by several philosophers. It is adopted, with numerous additional conditions, by Braham and Van Hees (2012), for example. For some scepticism, see Barry and Øverland (2015, pp. 174–6), for instance. Another possible approach to such issues might involve appealing to the wrong of complicity. For discussion, see chapter 2. Though, as Branger and Quirion (2014, p. 60) note, this may be because real-world emissions-reduction policies have often been rather modest in their ambitions and have also often been accompanied by costly efforts to offset the costs of such policies to industry. Barker et al. (2007) hypothesise that this partially accounts for the relatively low observed rates of carbon leakage from unilateral steps taken by European countries.

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Climate duties of sub-national communities 51 Lawford-Smith, H. 2019. Not in Their Name: Are Citizens Culpable for Their States’ Actions?, Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press. Lepora, C. & Goodin, R. E. 2013. On Complicity and Compromise, Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press. Lewis, D. 1973. Causation. The Journal of Philosophy, 70, 556–67. List, C. & Pettit, P. 2011. Group Agency: The Possibility, Design, and Status of Corporate Agents, Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press. LLC, C., Pasion, C., Oyenuga, C. & Gouin, K. 2017. Inventory of New York City Greenhouse Gas Emissions in 2015, New York, NY, Mayor’s Office of Sustainability. Lovely, M. & Popp, D. 2011. Trade, Technology, and the Environment: Does Access to Technology Promote Environmental Regulation? Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 61, 16–35. Lyon, T. P. 2016. Drivers and Impacts of Renewable Portfolio Standards. Annual Review of Resource Economics, 8, 141–55. March, J. G. & Olsen, J. P. 2011. The Logic of Appropriateness. In: Goodin, R. E. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Political Science, Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press. Matisoff, D. C. 2008. The Adoption of State Climate Change Policies and Renewable Portfolio Standards: Regional Diffusion or Internal Determinants? Review of Policy Research, 25, 527–46. Matisoff, D. C. & Edwards, J. 2014. Kindred Spirits or Intergovernmental Competition? The Innovation and Diffusion of Energy Policies in the American States (1990–2008). Environmental Politics, 23, 795–817. Mayors, C. 2018. Climate Mayors: Climate Action Compendium [Online]. Available: http://climatemayors.org/actions/climate-action-compendium/ [Accessed 4/6/2020]. Miller, D. 2011. Taking Up the Slack? Responsibility and Justice in Situations of Partial Compliance. In: Knight, C. & Stemplowska, Z. (eds.) Responsibility and Distributive Justice, Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press. Miller, S. 2006. Collective Moral Responsibility: An Individualist Account. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 30, 176–93. Milman, O. 2018. New York City Plans to Divest $5bn from Fossil Fuels and Sue Oil Companies. The Guardian, 11 January. Moore, F. C. & Diaz, D. B. 2015. Temperature Impacts on Economic Growth Warrant Stringent Mitigation Policy. Nature Climate Change, 5, 127–31. Morrow, D. R. 2016. Climate Sins of Our Fathers? Historical Accountability in Distributing Emissions Rights. Ethics, Policy & Environment, 19, 335–49. Moss, J. & Kath, R. 2019. Historical Emissions and the Carbon Budget. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 36, 268–89. Murphy, L. 2000. Moral Demands in Nonideal Theory, New York, Oxford University Press. Murray, B. C. & Maniloff, P. T. 2015. Why Have Greenhouse Emissions in RGGI States Declined? An Econometric Attribution to Economic, Energy Market, and Policy Factors. Energy Economics, 51, 581–9. Murray, B. C. & Rivers, N. 2015. British Columbia’s Revenue-Neutral Carbon Tax: A Review of the Latest ‘Grand Experiment’ in Environmental Policy. Energy Policy, 86, 674–83. Neumayer, E. 2000. In Defence of Historical Accountability for Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Ecological Economics, 33, 185–92. Nordhaus, W. D. 2017. Revisiting the Social Cost of Carbon. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 114, 1518–23.

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Olivier, J. G. J., Janssens-Maenhout, G., Muntean, M. & Peters, J. A. H. W. 2016. Trends in Global CO2 Emissions: 2016 Report, The Hague PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, Ispra, European Commission, Joint Research Centre. Ostrom, E. 2010. Polycentric Systems for Coping with Collective Action and Global Environmental Change. Global Environmental Change, 20, 550–7. Pacheco, J. 2012. The Social Contagion Model: Exploring the Role of Public Opinion on the Diffusion of Antismoking Legislation Across the American States. The Journal of Politics, 74, 187–202. Page, E. A. 2011. Climatic Justice and the Fair Distribution of Atmospheric Burdens: A Conjunctive Account. The Monist, 94, 412–32. Perdan, S. & Azapagic, A. 2011. Carbon Trading: Current Schemes and Future Developments. Energy Policy, 39, 6040–54. Popp, D. 2006. International Innovation and Diffusion of Air Pollution Control Technologies: The Effects of NOX and SO2 Regulation in the US, Japan, and Germany. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 51, 46–71. Raftery, A. E., Zimmer, A., Frierson, D. M. W., Startz, R. & Liu, P. 2017. Less Than 2 °C Warming by 2100 Unlikely. Nature Climate Change, 7. Raymond, L., Weldon, S. L., Kelly, D., Arriaga, X. B. & Clark, A. M. 2014. Making Change: Norm-Based Strategies for Institutional Change to Address Intractable Problems. Political Research Quarterly, 67, 197–211. Rogelj, J., Elzen, M. D., Höhne, N., Fransen, T., Fekete, H., Winkler, H., Schaeffer, R., Sha, F., Riahi, K. & Meinshausen, M. 2016. Paris Agreement Climate Proposals Need a Boost to Keep Warming Well below 2 °C. Nature, 534, 631–9. Sartorio, C. 2004. How to Be Responsible for Something Without Causing It. Philosophical Perspectives, 18. Satterthwaite, D. 2008. Cities’ Contribution to Global Warming: Notes on the Allocation of Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Environment & Urbanisation, 20, 539–49. Schwartz, J. 2018. Judge Dismisses Suit Against Oil Companies over Climate Change Costs. The New York Times, 25 June. Shipan, C. R. & Volden, C. 2006. Bottom-Up Federalism: The Diffusion of Antismoking Policies from U.S. Cities to States. American Journal of Political Science, 50, 825–43. Shipan, C. R. & Volden, C. 2008. The Mechanisms of Policy Diffusion. American Journal of Political Science, 52, 840–57. Shipan, C. R. & Volden, C. 2012. Policy Diffusion: Seven Lessons for Scholars and Practitioners. Public Administration Review, 72, 788–96. Shue, H. 1999. Global Environment and International Inequality. International Affairs, 75, 531–45. Singer, P. 1972. Famine, Affluence, and Morality. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 1, 229–43. Smith, J. B., Schneider, S. H., Oppenheimer, M., Yohe, G. W., Hare, W., Mastrandrea, M. D., Patwardhan, A., Burton, I., Corfee-Morlot, J., Magadza, C. H. D., Füssel, H.-M., Pittock, A. B., Rahman, A., Suarez, A. & Ypersele, J.-P. V. 2009. Assessing Dangerous Climate Change Through an Update of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) ‘Reasons for Concern’. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106, 4133–7. Stern, N. 2009. A Blueprint for a Safer Planet, London, UK, The Bodley Head. Toronto, City of Toronto Environment and Energy Division. 2017. TransformTO Implementation Update, Toronto, CA, City of Toronto, Environment and Energy Division. Umbers, L. M. 2020. Sub-National Climate Duties: Addressing Three Challenges. In: Moss, J. & Umbers, L. (eds.) Climate Justice and Non-State Actors: Corporations, Regions, Cities, Individuals, Abingdon, UK, Routledge.

Climate duties of sub-national communities 53 Umbers, L. M. & Moss, J. 2018. Going It Alone: Cities and States for Climate Action. Ethics, Policy & Environment, 21, 56–9. Umbers, L. M. & Moss, J. 2020. The Climate Duties of Sub-National Political Communities. Political Studies, 68, 20–36. Victor, D. G., Akimoto, K., Kaya, Y., Yamaguchi, M., Cullenward, D. & Hepburn, C. 2017. Prove Paris Was More Than Paper Promises. Nature, 548, 25–7. Volden, C. 2006. States as Policy Laboratories: Emulating Success in the Children’s Health Insurance Programme. American Journal of Political Science, 50, 294–312. WRI, World Resources Institute. 2019. CAIT: Historical Emissions Data (Countries, U.S. States, UNFCCC) [Online]. Available: www.wri.org/resources/data-sets/cait-historicalemissions-data-countries-us-states-unfccc [Accessed 26/9/2019].

2

The climate duties of corporations

The previous chapter argued that states have contribution- and capacity-based duties to take steps to aggressively reduce their emissions to help mitigate climate change. The failure of states to take adequate steps to discharge these duties, we claimed, entails that many sub-national political communities have devolved duties to take steps to help at least partially discharge the climate duties of the states to which they belong. In this chapter we will argue that similar considerations apply to many corporations, focusing particularly upon the duties of large fossil fuel producers; the so-called ‘carbon majors’. We focus upon the carbon majors, in particular, principally because of the enormous contribution their activities have made to the phenomenon of climate change and its attendant harms.1 Richard Heede (2014), for instance, has found that around 63% of global emissions over the period 1854–2010 are traceable to the activities of just 90 large corporations – mostly oil, gas, and coal companies, together with 7 cement producers.2 Recent research has, in turn, suggested that these emissions alone caused around 50% of the global warming (around 0.4°C) and around 32% of the global average sea-level increases (around 5.7cm), which occurred over the period 1880–2010 (Ekwurzel et al., 2017, pp. 584–6). Such corporations have also made significant efforts to thwart governmental action on climate change – funding conservative think-tanks and contrarian scientists in an attempt to fuel climate scepticism (Dunlap and McCright, 2011, p. 148) and lobbying powerfully against efforts to implement environmental regulations (Perrow and Pulver, 2015, pp. 72–4) and in support of costly subsidies that make their businesses more competitive (Rich, 2018). Any remotely adequate national-level response to the problem of climate change, then, would surely involve the imposition of heavy regulations upon the activities of the carbon majors, with which they would be obliged to comply. Clearly, however, such policies have (largely) not been forthcoming. On the contrary – governmental support for the fossil fuel industry continues apace. Research conducted by the International Monetary Fund, for example, has found that subsidies for the production and consumption of fossil fuels amounted to a staggering 4.7 trillion USD globally in 2015 and 5.2 trillion USD in 2017, largely due to the failure of governments around the world to tax the associated negative externalities (Coady et al., 2019).

The climate duties of corporations 55 The central question which animates this chapter, then, is simple: what are the duties of the carbon majors, given the failure of national-level governments around the world to take steps to adequately regulate their activities?3 The answer we shall defend is that the carbon majors have demanding contribution- and capacity-based devolved duties to take steps to help mitigate the harms of climate change. Much of the chapter will be devoted to establishing that this is so. Yet we also have an important secondary aim. There already exists a vast literature concerning the policies governments ought to adopt in pursuit of emission-reductions (carbon taxes, emissions trading schemes, renewable energy subsidies, border adjustment taxes, and so on). Yet scant attention has been paid to this issue in the case of corporations. Climate activists, of course, have demanded that carbon majors cease their exploration for new reserves, stop their extensive lobbying of all levels of government, and, of course, phase out the production of fossil fuels. Yet academic attention to the issue – particularly in the philosophical literature – is lacking. In this chapter, then, we shall also consider the ways in which corporations ought to discharge the duties we shall ascribe to them. Before proceeding, we should issue a number of caveats. First, though (for the reasons just outlined) we shall principally be focused upon the duties of the carbon majors here, we certainly do not wish to deny that other corporations might also have devolved duties to help mitigate climate change. We shall briefly consider the matter in the conclusion. Nor do we wish to deny that many corporations (whether carbon majors or otherwise) may have climate duties aside from those we shall defend in this chapter. Second, as with the case of sub-national political communities, it is important to clarify that our aim, here, is only to defend the claim that many corporations have weighty pro tanto duties to take steps to reduce their emissions. At least in principle, however, these duties might be outweighed in particular cases by other considerations, all things considered. In our discussion of the ways in which corporations ought to go about discharging their devolved duties, we shall partially address this issue. Necessarily, however, what each corporation morally ought to do, all things considered, will be particular to its unique circumstances, though we think that the duties of the carbon majors to alter their behaviour are particularly strong. Finally, we shall appeal in this chapter, once again, to the devolution principle. However, for reasons outlined in the previous chapter, the devolution principle applies only to collectives that amount to agents. It is an important presupposition of our argument, then, that corporations do indeed constitute collective agents. We think that this ought to be largely uncontroversial. Just as in the case of states, corporations, too, possess the characteristic features of natural persons’ agency – a continuous identity over time, and the ability to deliberate over, adopt, revise, and pursue particular goals and ends. Certainly, the idea is widely accepted in the group agency literature, and several philosophers have argued powerfully in defence of the idea (see e.g. Pettit, 2017). We shall simply assume in what follows, then, that their arguments are sound. Also, in keeping with the previous chapter, we shall have little to say concerning the deontic implications of corporations’

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climate duties for the individual members of such corporations qua individuals. We shall take up this issue in the following chapter, and in the conclusion. These clarifications in hand, we can proceed to the substantive arguments. The aim of the first half of the chapter is to, once again, appeal to the devolution principle, arguing that the carbon majors have duties to take unilateral steps to mitigate climate change where the nations to which they belong fail to implement adequate policies for the discharge of their climate duties. The principle, recall, is as follows: Devolution Principle: If there is some duty, D, which applies to some collective, C, some sub-collective, S, belonging to C will have a pro tanto duty to act unilaterally so as to at least partially discharge D if (1) S is an agent, (2) the considerations which give rise to D also apply to S, (3) those considerations would have given rise to a duty on the part of S to contribute to C’s efforts to discharge D had C been sufficiently likely to act so as to discharge D, and (4) C has either failed to discharge D or is insufficiently likely to act so as to discharge D. For the devolution principle to apply in the case of corporations, then, four conditions must be satisfied: corporations must be agents, the considerations which underwrite national-level duties to mitigate climate change must also apply to corporations, it must be the case that those considerations would have given rise to a duty on the part of corporations to conform to adequate national-level climate policies had they been implemented, and, finally, such policies must not have been implemented. Now, as we have already made clear, we shall simply assume that corporations do, indeed, amount to agents. And we have already argued at length in the introduction and chapter one that states have by and large failed to introduce adequate climate policies. The other two claims stand in need of more careful defence, and will be the focus of the first section of this chapter. National-level duties to mitigate climate change may be grounded in contribution- and capacity-based considerations. In the first section, then, we shall argue that such considerations also apply to the carbon majors. We shall also argue that, had adequate climate policies been imposed, these considerations would have given rise to duties on the part of corporations to conform to their requirements. Since such policies have not been imposed, however, we conclude that such corporations have duties to take steps unilaterally to help mitigate the threat posed by climate change. Having established this, in the second section, we shall raise a number of considerations relevant to the various ways in which these duties ought to be discharged. There is also a brief conclusion.

The contributions and capacities of the carbon majors Our first order of business for this section is to argue that the carbon majors have contributed significantly to the harms of climate change – and that, as such, they

The climate duties of corporations 57 have contribution-based devolved duties to take steps to help mitigate climate change, where the states to which they belong fail to implement adequate climate policies. This might seem to be so obviously true as to be barely worth discussing. Climate change, after all, has been caused by a build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, largely as a result of the combustion of fossil fuels, which the carbon majors are responsible for producing. Yet the matter is more complex than it initially appears. As discussed in the previous chapter, contribution-based duties to help mitigate harms arise only where, and in proportion to the degree to which, an agent has contributed to those harms in a manner for which they are morally responsible. It is far from obvious that the carbon majors are morally responsible for all – or even a significant proportion of – the emissions that are produced from the fossil fuels that they extract and sell. After all, CO2 is released into the atmosphere via the burning of fossil fuels at the point of consumption – not (by and large) by the process of their extraction from the earth. The distinction between producers and consumers, and its moral significance, seems largely to have escaped attention in the philosophical literature on corporate responsibility for climate change.4 Arnold and Bustos (2005), for instance, discuss the duties of fossil fuel consumers at length, maintaining that they have contribution-based duties to help mitigate climate change, but do not engage with the responsibilities of producers. Schwenkenbecher (2018, pp. 62–4) argues convincingly that corporations have contribution-based duties to help mitigate climate change in virtue of their “emissions-producing activities” but fails to discuss how responsibility for those emissions is to be shared between producers and consumers. In perhaps the best-known article on the carbon majors’ responsibility for climate change, Frumhoff et al. (2015) acknowledge that fossil fuel producers, governments and emitting industries (i.e. fossil fuel consumers) all bear “significant responsibility for climate change”. They do not discuss, however, how we ought to conceive of the responsibility of each of these kinds of actors and how mitigation costs ought to be divided among them. And though Shue (2017, p. 594) accuses the carbon majors of “50 years of flagrant disregard of their simple negative responsibility to do no harm”, he too fails to engage with the issue. In our view, it cannot reasonably be denied that the carbon majors are, indeed, responsible for making an enormously significant contribution to the problem of climate change. We simply need to do a bit of ‘moral mathematics’ if we are to understand how this is so. The difficulty lies in the fact that the harms of climate change are the product of the actions of a very large set of agents, of which the carbon majors are merely one proper subset. The solution, we think, lies in recognising that there are several ways in which agents can make wrongful contributions to harm. In particular, we think that the notion of complicity constitutes a helpful framework for thinking through agents’ duties in cases of this kind. Complicity At its most general, the notion of complicity is the idea that “one can do wrong by being associated, in some way, with the wrongdoing of other individuals or of

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a collective one is part of” (Devolder, 2017, p. 1). Suppose, for instance, that A murders B by shooting them with a pistol. There are a range of ways in which C might be complicit in A’s act of wrongdoing.5 C might have supplied A with the pistol, for instance, in the knowledge that A’s intention was to commit murder. Alternatively, C might have told A of B’s whereabouts. C might have encouraged A to murder B. And so on. Our contention is that the actions of the carbon majors constitute acts of complicity in the wrongful harm of climate change. Setting out this argument will require us to get more precise as to the notion of complicity to which we shall appeal. There are a range of accounts available in the literature.6 The best workedout (and, we think, most compelling) of these is that developed by Lepora and Goodin (2013).7 As such, we shall largely follow their account in what follows. Consider, then, the following definition of complicity: Complicity: An agent A’s ɸing will constitute an act of complicity with respect to some other act of wrongful harm if and only if (1) A’s ɸing causally contributes to that harm, and (2) A knows, or ought to know, that their ɸing constitutes such a contribution.8 Two ideas, here, stand in need of further explication. First, the notion of causal contribution. Suppose that A, above, would have been unable to murder B had C not supplied them with the pistol. There is an obvious sense, here, in which C causally contributes to A’s murdering B. Ex hypothesi, A’s doing so counterfactually depends upon C’s actions. In other cases, however, the relationship between acts of complicity and acts of wrongful harm will be much more complex. The pilots and crews that participated in the firebombing of Dresden in World War II, for instance, were clearly complicit in that act of wrongdoing. Yet, for any given individual participant, it is almost certainly false that the amount of harm inflicted by the firebombing counterfactually depended upon their individual actions. Given the sheer scale of the campaign, the harm inflicted is likely to have been thoroughly overdetermined. We shall need to be precise, then, as to the notion of causal contribution to which we shall appeal. Following Lepora and Goodin (2013, pp. 60–5), we hold that an agent A’s ɸing will count as a causal contribution to some act of wrongful harm Ψ committed by some other agent B if and only if A’s ɸing is a necessary condition of B’s Ψing. Suppose, for instance, that D breaks into a safe and steals the contents. And suppose, further, that they were able to do so only because E deliberately revealed the location of the safe to them. E’s actions, here, are a necessary condition of D’s wrongdoing. But for E’s supplying D with the relevant information, D would have been unable to commit the robbery. Thus, E causally contributes to D’s act of wrongdoing. Now, as Lepora and Goodin emphasise, there are often many possible ‘paths’ by which the same act of wrongdoing might take place. In the robbery case, for instance, we might suppose that the location of the safe was known to both (and only) E and F. Thus, there are two possible paths by which D might have been

The climate duties of corporations 59 able to commit the robbery: with information from E or with information from F. As such, there are nearby possible worlds wherein D completes the robbery without assistance from E (i.e. all those in which F divulges the location of the safe). In that case, it seems as though E’s revealing the location of the safe to D is not a necessary condition of D’s wrongdoing. Yet we should surely not thereby wish to be committed to the claim that E’s deliberately revealing the location of the safe to D does not thereby contribute to D’s wrongdoing (and, as such, does not constitute complicity in D’s wrongdoing). For this reason, then, it is important to be clear that it is sufficient for A’s ɸing to constitute a causal contribution to wrongdoing where it “is a necessary condition of the wrong occurring along some (but not all) possible paths by which the wrong might occur” (Lepora and Goodin, 2013, p. 61). In the robbery case, for example, there are some possible paths in which E’s revealing the location of the safe is not necessary for D’s wrongdoing (i.e. all those paths in which D is able to obtain that information from F, instead). But there are many paths upon which it is such a condition (all those in which F refuses to divulge the location of the safe, for instance). Thus, on this account, E’s revealing the location of the safe to D does, indeed, count as a causal contribution to wrongful harm.9 The second notion calling for clarification is the idea that for A’s ɸing to constitute an act of complicity, A must either know or have sufficient evidence available to them such that they ought to know that their ɸing constitutes a contribution to wrongdoing. The idea, here, is straightforward. Complicity in wrongdoing is, in itself, wrongful. Yet, as discussed in the previous chapter, actions are only plausibly wrongful (or, at least, wrongful in virtue of harm-based considerations) where individuals are in a position to have been aware of the harmful character of their actions. Consider the robbery case, again. Suppose that E has no reason to believe that D would attempt to break into the safe. In that case, despite the fact that E contributes to D’s wrongdoing, we can hardly regard E as culpably complicit in the wrongdoing, so long as E has made appropriate efforts to inform himself about the situation. For this reason, then, we hold that where an agent contributes to harm, their doing so will only constitute an act of complicity where the agent in question has sufficient reason to believe that their doing so will constitute a contribution to wrongful harm. Complicity, then, is a forward-looking matter. That is to say, when we are considering whether a given agent’s actions amounted to complicity with respect to some act of harm, we are to look (1) to the possible paths along which the wrongdoing might have occurred and (2) to the evidence available to the agent at the time concerning the potential effects of their actions, and (as such) the probability that their actions would be necessary for the harm in question – not whether, as a matter of fact to be ascertained retrospectively, their actions were or were not essential for the harm in question. We think, moreover, that this is a valuable feature of the account. As we have already argued in the previous chapter, decision-making in the real world is shot through with uncertainty. Morality, moreover, is supposed to be action-guiding – i.e. it is supposed to help agents determine what they ought to do. As such, we must assess the morality of agents’ actions by what they could have known at

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the time. And, from that perspective, in the context of complicity, all that can be known of a given act is that it “. . . might potentially, with a certain probability, prove essential to the outcome in view. Morally, actions should be assessed on the basis of what consequences might reasonable have been expected at the time of the action, not on the basis of what actually resulted in the end” (Lepora and Goodin, 2013, pp. 61–2). Having defined the notion of complicity, it will be helpful to briefly introduce some terminology before proceeding. It is standard in the complicity literature to distinguish between primary (or principal) and secondary agents. Secondary agents are accomplices – i.e. those whose actions causally contribute to acts of wrongful harm committed by others. Primary agents are those whose actions, in themselves, constitute acts of wrongful harm. D is the primary agent of the wrongful harm in the robbery case, above, for instance, whereas E (assuming the knowledge condition is satisfied) is a secondary agent. Importantly, we should also note that both primary and secondary agents can have contribution-based duties to help mitigate harms for which they are responsible. Suppose, for instance, that G dumps a barrel of toxic waste into a river, causing children downstream to develop a severe illness. G is obviously the principal agent, here, and would clearly have contribution-based duties to mitigate the damage his actions will cause. Yet suppose that G dumped the waste in the river only because H paid them to do so. H is not the principal agent of the harm, here. Yet it is nevertheless intuitively clear that H, too, has duties to help mitigate the harm brought about by G’s actions in virtue of her causal contribution. The complicity of the carbon majors Having set out the notion of complicity, we must now establish that the carbon majors are, indeed, complicit in the wrongful harm with which climate change is and will be associated. There can surely be little doubt that the knowledge condition is satisfied – i.e. that the carbon majors were and are aware of the link between fossil fuels and climate change. There is evidence that many individual carbon majors, and the industry as a whole, had access to research about climate change well before it was widely available to the public. A report by the Centre for International Environmental Law, for example, outlines how scientists at Humble Oil (now ExxonMobil) were conducting research into climate change and its relation to CO2 emissions as early as 1957 (CIEL, 2017, p. 8). The same report notes that by 1958, the American oil industry – via the industry’s peak body, the American Petroleum Institute (API) – “were collaborating in and through API to investigate carbon dioxide as an atmospheric pollutant”. In 1968, a report from the Stanford Research Institute (itself closely linked to the petroleum industry) was delivered to the API. The report cautioned that rising levels of CO2 were likely to cause an increase in global temperatures and that the burning fossil fuels was likely the best explanation for rising atmospheric levels of CO2 (CIEL, 2017, p. 12). Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, some oil companies were actively managing their own

The climate duties of corporations 61 assets to take into account climate risks (e.g. modifying oil rig design to account for potential sea-level rises) while at the same time downplaying those risks in public (CIEL, 2017, pp. 15–17). In 1990, the IPCC published its landmark First Assessment Report, after which time there could presumably be no excuse, whatever, for ignorance as to the harmful effects of the greenhouse gases with which fossil fuels are associated.10 There can be no question, then, that the carbon majors were and are aware that their activities are associated with phenomenon of climate change and, by extension, the wrongful harms it entails. The causal contributions of the carbon majors to the wrongful harms of climate change are (at least) twofold. First, and most obviously, the very many token acts of supplying fossil fuels to large consumers (e.g. power stations) that form the core of the carbon majors’ businesses. Fossil fuel consumers contribute to the wrongful harms of climate change by producing greenhouse gases via the combustion of fossil fuels. An obvious necessary condition of their doing so is their being supplied with such fuels – fuels which they purchase in extremely large volumes from the carbon majors. Second, and much more importantly, the failure of states to respond adequately to the threat posed by climate change is attributable, in large part, to a failure to transition rapidly enough to less emissions-intensive technologies and practices (e.g. to renewable energy). The carbon majors have played an essential causal role in this failure, in at least two respects. First, by continuing to supply fossil fuels on the open market in great quantities (and failing to take significant steps to offset their harmful effects), the carbon majors have played an enormously significant role in ensuring the ongoing viability of emissions-intensive industries and practices (e.g. coal-fired electricity generation) and delayed the uptake of more climate-friendly alternatives. This effect is often understood under the rubric of so-called ‘carbon lock-in’, a dynamic “whereby prior decisions relating to GHG-emitting technologies, infrastructure, practices, and their supporting networks constrain future paths, making it more challenging, even impossible, to subsequently pursue more optimal paths toward low-carbon objectives” (Erickson et al., 2015, p. 1). This effect has been noted in a wide range of contexts – from gas and LNG infrastructure (see e.g. Caldecott et al., 2016) to coal-fired electricity generation (see e.g. Davis and Socolow, 2014). Carbon lock-in occurs for a range of interrelated reasons – social, political, technological, and so on (Unruh, 2000). But the ongoing availability of ‘cheap’ fossil fuels is surely among the most important. So long as fossil fuels are still available, and it remains cheaper to continue to operate existing emissions-intensive forms of electricity generation than to establish and maintain the infrastructure necessary for renewable energy, for example, the rapid, large-scale transition to renewable energy that is essential for addressing climate change will remain unlikely. Of course, in reality, fossil fuels are not ‘cheap’. Their production and consumption entail significant negative externalities – including, but not limited to, their role in climate change, the costs of which are (mostly) borne by society at large. As noted previously, the failure of governments around the world to force

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the carbon majors to pay these costs (e.g. via a carbon tax of some sort) amounts to a highly significant subsidy for these industries. Ending this subsidy would require significant political action. The carbon majors have expended enormous resources fighting against this possibility. And this constitutes the second respect in which the activities of the carbon majors have causally contributed to the wrongful failure of states to take adequate steps to address climate change. The carbon majors have deployed a wide variety of strategies to this end. For instance, they have had a highly significant impact via framing issues surrounding climate change in ways that influence which issues are discussed and the terms of public debate – casting doubt on climate science or the cost of renewables, attacking the credibility of climate scientists, and so on. One example of this was the involvement of several carbon majors in the Global Climate Coalition (GCC). Founded in 1989 by (among others) Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP, before being wound up in 2001, the GCC’s purpose was to undermine the prospects for collective action on climate change by (among other things) lobbying members of US congress against taking serious action on climate change (CIEL, 2017, p. 16; Oreskes and Conway, 2010, pp. 205–8). Alternatively, consider the activities of the API. In 1998, for example, the API prepared an internal ‘Global Climate Science Communications Plan’, setting out the industry’s strategy for its public engagement with climate science. The plan states that “Victory Will Be Achieved When . . . Average citizens ‘understand’ (recognise) uncertainties in climate science; recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the ‘conventional wisdom,’” and “[t]hose promoting the Kyoto treaty on the basis of extant science appear to be out of touch with reality” (quoted in CIEL, 2017, p. 17). Further, one recent analysis of lobbying data in US congress over the period 2006–2009 estimates that over 1 billion USD was spent lobbying on climate-related issues and bills. The biggest spender during that period was ExxonMobil (Delmas et al., 2016). And, according to a report prepared by Greenpeace, Koch Family foundations spent over 127 USD million over the period 1997–2017 supporting groups that have attacked climate science (Greenpeace, 2011). To put all this into perspective, the total annual budget for the IPCC is typically between 6 and 10 million USD (Robert, 2017). Now, whether an agent’s actions constitute an act of complicity will frequently be controversial. It would be difficult to determine whether – say – I’s encouraging J to commit tax evasion constitutes complicity. Perhaps I’s encouragement was not necessary for J’s actions. Or perhaps I reasonably believed that the actions they were encouraging J to perform were not wrongful. But the complicity of the carbon majors is at the other end of the spectrum, given the crucial role that their products play in the production of greenhouse gases and their explicit knowledge concerning that fact. We cannot discuss the particular contributions of each carbon major in detail. But one example is illustrative. BHP ranks in the top 20 carbon majors, worldwide (Griffin, 2017). In 2018, the emissions associated with the consumption of BHP’s products totalled 596 megatonnes CO2e (BHP, 2018) – greater than the total projected domestic emissions (533.7 megatonnes CO2e) for the entire nation of Australia in 2018 (Australia, 2019, p. 5).

The climate duties of corporations 63 The carbon majors, then, have made an enormously significant contribution to the wrongful harms of climate change. This, combined with their knowledge of the character and consequences of their actions, renders them clearly complicit in many of the actions in virtue of which those harms have occurred and will continue to occur in future. We conclude, then, that contribution-based considerations do, indeed, apply to them. Notice, moreover, that the same body of evidence to which we have appealed, here, supports the claim that capacity-based considerations also apply to the carbon majors. As discussed in the previous chapter, proponents of capacity-based duties to mitigate climate change (e.g. Page, 2011, pp. 417–20) appeal to the fundamental idea that an agent, merely in virtue of their capacity to help prevent some serious harm from occurring without unacceptable cost, may thereby have a duty to do so. It is surely uncontroversial that many of the carbon majors do, indeed, possess such capacities, given the causal role their activities have played and continue to play in the problem of climate change. The carbon majors could, and surely should, cease their extensive and destructive lobbying and public relations efforts without incurring unreasonable costs of any sort. Coal companies could – at the very least – commit to not opening any new mines and thereby help to hasten the transition to renewable energy. Both oil and coal companies could commit to offsetting some or all of the emissions associated with their products. And so on. The carbon majors, moreover, are amongst the most profitable corporations in the world, with enormous resources at their disposal. For example, ExxonMobil earned profits of 20.8 billion USD in 2018, while BP reported a profit of 12.7 billion USD, and Royal Dutch Shell 21.4 billion USD. Their devoting just a small fraction of those resources to mitigation efforts could make an enormous difference to such efforts’ prospects of success. Given the gravity of the harms at stake with respect to climate change, demanding that they do so, even at some significant cost, is hardly unreasonable. For these reasons, then, we think that capacitybased considerations also apply to the carbon majors (and, surely, to many other corporations besides). There can surely be little doubt that had adequate climate policies been imposed by states, the carbon majors would have been obliged to comply with them in virtue of these contribution- and capacity-based considerations. There are a range of respects in which state-led action would likely be superior, from a moral point of view, to corporations acting unilaterally. For one thing, industry-wide policies imposed by government are likely to be more effective at achieving emissionsreductions than voluntary action taken by corporations, insofar as governments can demand universal compliance with regulations, backed by the threat of criminal sanction. It is also likely to be fairer, given that – to put the point mildly – not all of the carbon majors are willing to take unilateral steps to help mitigate climate change voluntarily. Unilateral action on climate change, then, will inevitably give rise to problems of partial compliance and issues of unfairness (an issue we discuss further, below). The lack of adequate national-level climate policies, then, is much to be regretted. In the absence of such policies, however, we conclude that

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the carbon majors do, indeed, have devolved duties to take unilateral action to help mitigate the threat posed by climate change. Three objections suggest themselves to our arguments, here. First, in an article published in the New York Times Magazine in September 1970, the economist Milton Friedman memorably insisted that “there is only one social responsibility of business – to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game – which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud” (Friedman, 1970). The more general idea here is straightforward: provided corporations act within the bounds of the law, their sole moral duty is to maximise shareholder return – which, the carbon majors might argue, has been the fundamental objective of their activities. The extraction and sale of fossil fuels has been an extremely lucrative enterprise. It is also, along with their political campaigns, perfectly legal. Friedman’s doctrine doubtless commands many adherents in the corporate world. Yet, nevertheless, it is profoundly implausible. Surely no one accepts that individuals’ sole moral responsibilities are to conform to the law, for instance. There are a wide range of actions individuals can perform that, though they are within the bounds of the law, are nevertheless morally wrongful. It is hard to see why the situation should be any different for corporations. It is surely morally wrong (in the vast majority of cases) for corporations to violate the law. But there are a very wide range of actions it would be morally wrong for corporations to perform that are permissible under present legal arrangements – including, we contend, their ongoing contributions to the harms of climate change. National and international law simply fails to reflect the extent of the constraints that carbon majors might be under if an adequate set of measures were in place to address climate change. The second objection to our arguments would appeal to the possibility of unfairness arising out of partial compliance. For any given fossil fuel producer, any reduction in their carbon footprint will inevitably be costly. This will put them at a disadvantage relative to their competitors who fail to take such steps. Thus, it might be argued, requiring any fossil fuel producer to take steps to stop contributing to the harms of climate change (or, at least, significantly reduce their contribution) is unfair. Without substantially repeating the discussion of the previous chapter, we would simply reiterate that situations of partial compliance with duties held by several agents do not extinguish those duties. Perhaps it would indeed be unfair for some carbon majors to take on costs to aid in the mitigation of climate change while others culpably refuse to do so. However, what follows from that fact is simply that carbon majors who fail to discharge their devolved duties will have fairness-based duties to compensate those who do not fail to do so – not that all the carbon majors are off the hook, entirely. Finally, then, the carbon majors might appeal to the so-called ‘arms-dealer’s defence’.11 Fossil fuel producers (with some plausibility) might point out that, for any token act of supplying some quantity of fossil fuel to some consumer, there will be (or would have been) many other producers willing and able to do so,

The climate duties of corporations 65 also. The harm with which the combustion of the fossil fuels they supplied will be associated, then, does not counterfactually depend upon their activities. Consumers could have simply sourced fossil fuels from elsewhere. That being the case, it cannot reasonably be claimed that they have causally contributed to the harms of climate change in the relevant sense since, in their end, their particular actions will have made no difference to the severity of climate change. We have two responses to this objection. The first is simply to point out that this wrongly presupposes simple counterfactual dependence to be the correct account of ‘causal contribution’. Whatever its merits as an account of the metaphysics of causation (Lewis, 1973), for the reasons laid out previously, simple counterfactual dependence clearly cannot serve as an appropriate account of causal contribution for the purposes of determining whether an agent’s actions amount to complicity in wrongdoing. Instead, we should favour a more expansive view, upon which an agent’s actions will count as a contribution to wrongdoing where they are a necessary condition of that wrongdoing’s occurring on any of the possible paths by which the wrongdoing might have occurred. In very many cases, that will be sufficient to render fossil fuel producers complicit in the harms with which the combustion of their products will be associated, because there will be many paths upon which their supplying fossil fuels was necessary – i.e. all those upon which their withdrawing their products from the marketplace (or, at least, refusing to sell to some consumer) causes some emissions-producing act on the part of the consumer in question not to be performed (e.g. by reducing overall supply and driving up the price of fossil fuels). We note, moreover, that cases where one carbon major’s reducing supply leads to another carbon major immediately taking over their market share are likely to be quite uncommon, especially in the case of exported coal. The seaborne coal trade requires expensive and complex infrastructure that takes time to establish and that must be financed. Many (but by no means all) global banks no longer fund coal power projects. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, for instance, has ceased funding coal plants (Kynge, 2018). Recall also that the account of complicity to which we have appealed is a forward-looking account. As such, our goal is to establish a framework that guides corporations in their assessment of what they ought to do prospectively, rather than merely assesses, retrospectively, what they ought to have done. On this account, a carbon major’s actions therefore ought to be judged on what they should have done at the time. So the question we must ask is: were the actions of the carbon majors likely to contribute to harm? Given the detailed and long-standing knowledge that the carbon majors had concerning the likely impacts of their activities, they ought to have been aware that what they were doing would contribute to the wrongful harms of climate change. Second, it is misleading to understand the contributions to the wrongful harm of climate change made by the carbon majors solely in terms of the actions of each taken in isolation from one another. For the carbon majors, we contend, have often engaged in acts of joint wrongdoing with regard to their advocacy and support for fossil fuel production. As discussed in chapter one, we can understand

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joint wrongdoing as any act of wrongdoing constituted by the intentional individual actions of two or more agents who share a common goal or end. For a given act of joint wrongdoing, we shall term any agent whose actions partially constitute that wrongdoing a ‘co-principal’. It is important to distinguish between secondary agents and co-principals. Secondary agents (i.e. accomplices) are those whose actions causally contribute to some wrongdoing but do not constitute the wrongdoing in question. In the robbery case, earlier, for example, E’s revealing the location of the safe causally contributes to D’s wrongdoing. Yet it can hardly be seen as constitutive of D’s wrongdoing. D and E do not rob the safe ‘together’. The actions of John and James in Weakening the Bridge, by contrast, constitute the wrongdoing in question. Now, acts of joint wrongdoing can also be acts of complicity. This will occur where some joint action is a necessary condition of some other act of wrongdoing (and the knowledge condition is satisfied). Suppose, for instance, that K is trying to murder L. L, however, is behind a heavy door that can only be opened by the combined efforts of two people. Suppose M and N would be happy to see K murder L, and thus act together to open the door, thereby allowing the murder to take place. The act of opening the door is not constitutive of K’s wrongdoing. Yet it is clearly an act of complicity, insofar as it is a necessary condition of K’s wrongdoing, committed in that knowledge by M and N. Yet it is also an act of joint wrongdoing. For the action of opening the door can only be accomplished by M and N acting together. Further, M and N do so with the shared end of causally contributing to K’s wrongful killing of L. The actions of M and N, then, together constitute an act of joint wrongdoing – i.e. complicity in K’s murder of L. This does not render M and N fully responsible for K’s killing of L. But it does render M and N fully individually responsible for their joint act of complicity in K’s killing of L. We think that this captures many of the activities of the carbon majors, who have in many cases engaged in acts of joint wrongdoing, acting co-operatively with one another in ways that have causally contributed to the wrongful failure of states to take adequate steps to address climate change. This seems particularly to have been the case with respect to the efforts of the carbon majors to influence public debate and policy on climate change. Consider the Global Climate Coalition and the American Petroleum Institute, whose roles in promoting climate change denial and delaying the transition to renewable energy we have already discussed. Both these bodies constitute collective ventures funded by several large fossil fuel producers, each of which (apparently) shares the end of delaying action on climate change in order to maximise the profitability of the fossil fuel industry. As such, they represent a joint effort (one which, on its face, seems to have been highly effective) to delay action on climate change and protect the commercial interests of fossil fuel producers. They have made a highly significant causal contribution to the wrongful failure of states (the United States, in particular) to take adequate steps to address climate change. The carbon majors simply cannot argue, then, that their activities have ‘made no difference’ to the climate. On the contrary, in the case of many fossil fuel producers, their actions have formed part of a co-ordinated effort to engage in joint

The climate duties of corporations 67 wrongdoing – i.e. to act collectively to undermine the prospects for collective action on climate change and thereby to causally contribute to the wrongful failure of states to take adequate steps to discharge their climate duties. Each of the carbon majors is responsible for the outcome of such collective endeavours, whatever the marginal difference their individual contributions to such ventures might have made. We think, then, that this final line of objection fails. And, as such, we conclude that both contribution- and capacity-based considerations do, indeed, apply to the carbon majors in virtue of the considerations to which we have appealed.

The duties of the carbon majors in practice The theoretical implications of the previous section are clear enough. The carbon majors, in virtue of both their historical contributions to the harms of climate change, and their capacities to help address the issue, have devolved duties to take steps to help mitigate climate change, where the states to which they belong fail to implement adequate policies to that effect. In practice, however, the situation is very complex. Because of lock-in effects, we cannot demand that all the carbon majors simply stop producing and supplying fossil fuels immediately. While the global economy remains dependent upon fossil fuels, production must continue until a transition to renewable energy consistent with the scope and timing of plausible emissions-reduction targets is complete (IPCC, 2018). There are also subtler, non-consequentialist considerations at work, too. For, consider that where agents wrongfully contribute to harms, we typically insist that they have duties to both mitigate those harms and to compensate the victims of those harms. To return to our hackneyed example, a corporation that dumps toxic waste into a river and causes the people downstream to develop severe illnesses would have duties to mitigate the harms for which they are responsible (presumably by cleaning up the river and covering the medical expenses of the victims) but would also have duties to compensate the victims of their activities for the losses they will have incurred (lost earnings, for example). As major contributors to climate change, the carbon majors will certainly have duties of compensation to the victims of climate change – both present and future – in addition to their devolved duties of mitigation. Discharging those duties will require a significant transfer of resources from the carbon majors to these victims. Yet it may be the case that, in practice, the steps necessary to discharge these duties of compensation will conflict with the steps necessary to discharge their duties of mitigation – the resources necessary for effective compensation may need to be raised by the ongoing sale and production of fossil fuels, after all. This is a significant concern. If we accept anything close to the doctrine of the ‘separateness of persons’ (c.f. Rawls, 1971, pp. 22–7), then we must surely think it impermissible for agents to impose new (or further) equivalently bad harms upon third parties in order to discharge duties of compensation incurred in virtue of harmful actions performed in the past. So, the fact that the carbon majors have devolved duties to help mitigate climate change cannot, by itself, determine what they morally ought to do, all things

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considered. We, of course, cannot hope to settle the matter, here, given the vast range of considerations at play. Our aims are more modest – to provide a (partial) typology of actions the carbon majors might perform in an attempt to discharge their duties to help mitigate climate change and to discuss the general considerations that might militate for and against each. We can divide the kinds of actions open to the carbon majors into four broad types. First, the carbon majors might engage in disgorgement. That is to say, they might use profits, proceeds, or assets from the production and sale of fossil fuels to discharge their climate-related moral duties. The carbon majors, for instance, might use their (enormous) resources to help fund mitigation projects in developing countries. Or, alternatively, they might use those funds to compensate the victims of climate change. Second, they might engage in divestment – i.e. they might sell their fossil-fuel-producing assets to other actors. Third, they might attempt to transform their activities. The idea, here, is that the carbon majors might continue to extract and sell fossil fuels, themselves, but take steps to reduce or eliminate their harmful climatic effects. For instance, they might undertake to offset some or all of the emissions associated with the combustion of their products. Finally, the carbon majors might phase out the production and sale of fossil fuels (i.e. retire their fossil-fuel-producing assets) and those activities which support them (e.g. lobbying, public relations campaigns, exploration for new sources of fossil fuels, and so on). As the name suggests, phase-outs can occur over time and need not be immediate (indeed, in many cases, they are highly unlikely to be). Now, some of these strategies are complementary. Yet others are likely to conflict with one another. It is important, then, to consider the merits of each of these strategies more closely, beginning with disgorgement. Disgorgement Disgorgement, in this context, would involve the carbon majors taking their accumulated profits (which might otherwise be paid out to shareholders or management, or reinvested in the carbon majors’ operations) and using them to discharge their climate duties. Corporations might transfer resources to the victims of climate change to help discharge their duties of compensation. Or, alternatively, they might use those resources to help fund projects that help mitigate climate change, thereby discharging (or, at least, partially discharging) their devolved duties to do so. It is hard to deny that disgorgement is going to be required, to at least some degree, for the discharge of such corporations’ climate duties. If such corporations have duties of compensation, for instance, then it seems virtually inevitable that some proportion of their earnings are going to have to be disgorged to the victims of climate change. Yet the merits of any particular programme of disgorgement, in our view, will depend heavily upon the other policies with which it is coupled. One could imagine, for instance, a corporation adopting a policy according to which it undertakes to continue to extract and sell fossil fuels in large quantities, while paying compensation to the victims of climate change. There are strong considerations which militate

The climate duties of corporations 69 against such arrangements, in our view. As discussed earlier, it is clearly impermissible for agents to rectify past harms via the infliction of equivalently bad, or worse, harms upon others. There are obvious concerns of this sort, here – the carbon majors may pay compensation to the present victims of climate change using the proceeds of the sale of fossil fuels implicated in even more severe climate harms to future generations. Such an arrangement might even give rise to perverse incentives to further increase the production of fossil fuels in order to cover the (presumably extensive) costs of compensation. On the other hand, were such disgorgement to be coupled with a wholesale and rapid phasing out of the company’s fossil fuel operations, there would seem to be little to object to. The fundamental issues, then, seem to us to lie in the possibilities of divestment, transformation, and phasing out. Divestment The divestment movement has grown rapidly in recent years and seeks to pressure governments and corporations to rid themselves of fossil-fuel-related investments (e.g. stock held in the carbon majors) (Bratman et al., 2016).12 At issue here, however, is the matter of whether the carbon majors ought to divest themselves of – i.e. sell – their own fossil fuel assets as a means of discharging their devolved duties to help mitigate climate change. We are sceptical of the value of (this sort of) divestment. The fundamental issue is that it seems doubtful that selling fossil fuel assets – e.g. mines and mining rights – to other corporations that will continue to use those assets to extract and sell fossil fuels is sufficient for corporations to discharge their devolved duties to help mitigate climate change. After all, selling a fossil fuel production asset as an ongoing concern does not reduce the harms that asset creates. It merely transfers its operations to some other company. One might argue, of course, that divestment would at least render the carbon majors no longer complicit in the wrongful harm of climate change. It would no longer be their assets implicated in those harms. Even if divestment is not sufficient for the discharge of the carbon majors’ duties of mitigation in virtue of their past contributions to climate change, it does at least ensure that they would no longer be contributing to such harms. Yet we are sceptical even of this. To see why, consider an analogous case. Arms manufacturers are clearly complicit in the infliction of a great deal of wrongful harm. By knowingly supplying weaponry to governments and private actors, they causally enable the infliction of vast amounts of unjustified harm. Such complicity is clearly wrongful.13 Yet now consider the position of steel manufacturers who supply materials to arms companies, without which the production of weaponry would be impossible. Such corporations are plausibly also complicit in the wrongful violence with which the activities of arms manufacturers are associated. It is implausible that such companies are not in a position to know the kinds of products arms manufacturers produce with the raw materials they supply, nor the kinds of purposes for which those products are often deployed. Steel manufacturers also plausibly causally contribute to such harms. But for their supply of

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raw materials, arms manufacturers would be unable to produce the weapons they then go on to sell, and which governments and private agencies use to perpetrate wrongful harms. Of course, we do not mean to suggest that the activities of steel manufacturers are as wrongful as those of arms manufacturers. Nevertheless, supplying materials necessary for arms manufacturers to engage in the production of weaponry that will then go on to be used by others in the perpetration of wrongful harm seems to us to be a clear case of wrongful complicity. Steel manufacturers are implicated in, and bear some responsibility for, wrongful harm. We think that the carbon majors divesting themselves of their fossil fuel assets would be problematic for analogous reasons. In selling on their existing fossil fuel assets, the carbon majors would still be complicit in the wrongful harms of climate change, but in a different way. Rather than supplying fossil fuels to consumers that then go on to release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by burning them, the carbon majors would be selling assets to other corporations that would then use those assets to extract and sell fossil fuels, the emissions from which would continue to contribute to the wrongful harms of climate change. Either way, however, the conditions for complicity will be satisfied. Plainly, the sale of fossil fuel assets can make no difference to the knowledge possessed by the carbon majors. And, just as a necessary condition of fossil fuel consumers’ contributions to climate change is the supply of fossil fuels to those consumers by fossil fuel producers, a necessary condition of fossil fuel producers having the capacity to sell those fuels to consumers is their possessing the assets necessary to extract and produce fossil fuels in the first place. Agents that supply them with such assets, then, would remain complicit in the wrongful harms with which the fossil fuel products extracted from or produced by those assets would eventually be associated. Plausibly, as in the case of steel manufacturers and the arms industry, the sale of such assets renders the carbon majors less complicit in, and thus less responsible for, the wrongful harms of climate change. Still, wrongfully complicit they would remain. A rejoinder to this might point out that corporations might use the proceeds from the sale of such assets to compensate the victims of climate change or fund mitigation efforts and that such actions might counterbalance the harm caused by their ongoing complicity in (and, thus, causal contributions to) the wrongful harms of climate change. Yet we are sceptical of this, too. We do not deny, of course, that this would be a better use of the funds than – say – simply distributing the proceeds of the sale of the assets to shareholders, for example. Yet, in our view, it still cannot fully justify this strategy – for, either way, the infliction of wrongful harms would continue, and the carbon majors would continue to be complicit. In particular, if the resources were to be used to fund compensation efforts, this looks to be problematic in the manner discussed earlier, insofar as the proceeds of the sale of the carbon majors’ assets, which would then be associated with harms to third parties, would be used to compensate for harms done to other agents by the past actions of the carbon majors. In conclusion, then, we are very sceptical of the divestment strategy. Let us, then, consider the possibility of transformation.

The climate duties of corporations 71 Transformation In contrast to divestment, transformational strategies involve the carbon majors continuing to produce fossil fuels while simultaneously attempting to reduce or eliminate their harmful climatic effects. We cannot, of course, hope to cover all the potential ways in which the carbon majors might transform their operations in this way. Yet there seem to us to be at least two salient possibilities. First, the carbon majors might invest in technologies such as carbon capture and storage that might allow for the continued use of fossil fuels as a source of energy but minimise the volume of greenhouse gas emissions that enter the atmosphere as a result of their combustion. The second possible strategy, in this respect, involves offsetting. The carbon majors might continue to extract and sell fossil fuels while, simultaneously, funding projects (e.g. reforestation efforts) that remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere to offset the emissions with which the combustion of those fuels will be associated. The carbon majors, themselves, have shown some interest in both these possibilities. In April 2020, for instance, Royal Dutch Shell announced a commitment to become a ‘net-zero company’ by 2050. Its envisioned strategy involves both investing in carbon capture and storage technology and using profits from the sale of fossil fuels to fund offsetting projects such as reforestation efforts (Ambrose, 2020). Given the history of the fossil fuel industry, we should, of course, treat such commitments with scepticism. Still, noting this concern, it is very hard to deny that it would clearly be better (at least, from a short-term climatic point of view) if the carbon majors were to seriously pursue either or both of these strategies than either continue on their present course or simply divest themselves of their fossil-fuel-producing assets in ways that allow those assets to continue producing fossil fuels. Yet we do not think that either strategy is ultimately satisfactory, for two reasons. First, the value of such strategies with respect to the goal of climate change mitigation is uncertain. There are, for instance, concerns as to the efficacy of technologies such as carbon capture and storage. The IPCC (2005, pp. 4–5), for example, reports that carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology might reduce emissions from power plants by 85–90%. The same report also notes, however, that CCS is itself rather energy-intensive, with power plants fitted with CCS needing to use 10–40% more energy than plants without CCS to maintain an equivalent output, thereby diminishing the climatic benefits of the technology. Most of the carbon majors are also producers, rather than generators, of energy – so CCS would not capture the emissions from the fossil fuels they sell (unless they were also to supply CCS technology to large-scale consumers). Or consider offsetting.14 One typical offsetting strategy (though by no means the only possible strategy) involves planting trees which absorb carbon dioxide, for instance. Yet trees can burn in bushfires, releasing carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. Or they can be removed in land-clearing for agriculture. Continuing to produce fossil fuels while offsetting, thus, carries the risk that the offsetting project will extract less emissions from the atmosphere than planned. While offsetting projects and

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investment in CCS will not necessarily fail, it is important to judge the desirability of each of these strategies in terms of their likelihood of success. Transformational strategies, it seems to us, carry significant risks of failure that, as we shall discuss shortly, do not attend phase-outs. Second, the extraction, production, and combustion of fossil fuels entails a range of non-climatic costs that CCS technology and/or offsetting would not necessarily address. Consider the coal industry, for example. Individuals who work in coal mines, for example, are exposed to a range of significant health risks. Castleden et al. (2011, p. 333), for example, report that coalminers “die and suffer more lost time than all other miners, most often from fires and structural instability of underground mines.” Persons who live in areas near coal mines also often suffer adverse health effects. Fitzpatrick (2018, p. 1109), for example, finds that around 13% of all hospitalisations for asthma in West Virginia over the period 2005–2010 were due to surface coal mining. Similarly, in a survey of 16,493 adults in West Virginia, Hendryx and Ahern (2008, p. 670) found that “residential proximity to heavy coal production was associated with poorer health status and with higher risk for cardiopulmonary disease, chronic lung disease, hypertension, and kidney disease”. And there is a well-established link between the burning of coal for electricity generation and a range of negative health effects. In a review of the relevant epidemiological literature, for instance, Amster (2019) finds evidence linking air pollution from coal-fired power plants to negative effects as diverse as asthma and decreased pulmonary function, lung cancer, neurodevelopmental issues, and premature death, among others. A carbon major’s offsetting the carbon emissions associated with the combustion of their products by (for example) purchasing more fuel-efficient stoves for citizens of developing nations would do nothing to address harms of this sort. And, indeed, there are also concerns that some such strategies, themselves, might come with important side-costs. Concerning cases have been documented of indigenous peoples being moved off their land or having their access to forests curtailed to make room for offsetting projects, for example (Bayakola and Lang, 2006; Grainger and Geary, 2011). It is important not to overstate the point, here. As we have said, the extraction and production of fossil fuels will (regrettably) have to continue in the short term – though, as the IPCC (2018) has recently made clear, the time available for the world to effect substantial emissions-reductions is very limited if global warming is to be contained to no more than 1.5°C. The transition to renewable energy cannot be expected to occur overnight. Some of these strategies may be required in the short term – but only as an intermediate, temporary measure to help minimise the climatic costs of fossil fuels for the period during which we must continue to rely upon them. Phasing out, as we shall argue momentarily, must be the ultimate goal. Phase-outs Phase-outs involve shutting down the fossil fuel operations of the carbon majors and those activities intended to promote the interests of the industry. It is important

The climate duties of corporations 73 to distinguish this from transformation and divestment. These latter are compatible with the ongoing extraction and sale of fossil fuels – either by the carbon majors themselves in the case of transformation, or by others in the case of divestment. Phase-outs, on the other hand, involve retiring fossil fuel assets as part of an eventual move towards ceasing the extraction and sale of fossil fuels, entirely. Now, from the narrow perspective of the carbon majors’ duties to help mitigate climate change, phase-outs seem to be clearly the best option. As we have seen, offsetting and decarbonisation projects carry significant risks. Phase-outs carry no such risk. If fossil fuels are not being extracted, they cannot be burnt, and the emissions with which doing so might have been associated will never enter the atmosphere to contribute to the process of climate change. The quicker industrywide phase-outs are implemented, the better the outcome for the climate will be – and, for that reason, we think that phasing out must be a real and urgent goal. There are some aspects of the carbon majors’ operations that could, and should, be stopped (virtually) overnight. The carbon majors’ extensive lobbying and public relations campaigns, for example, ought to be immediately wound up. This, of course, would not be sufficient for the discharge of any of the carbon majors’ climate duties. Still, efforts of this kind have, plausibly, causally contributed to states’ failures to take action on climate change – and it would clearly be better were they to cease. Much more difficult, however, is the matter of the ongoing extraction, production, and sale of fossil fuels, themselves. We cannot reasonably demand that all the carbon majors immediately cease all fossil fuel production. The consequences of their doing so would be morally catastrophic, given the degree to which the global economy depends upon the availability of fossil fuels. Some fossil fuel production is essential, and likely to remain so in the short term. Moreover, not all fossil fuels are equally harmful. The combustion of coal, for example, produces significantly more CO2 per million British thermal units of energy than natural gas (EIA, 2019). And the burning of coal also produces a significantly higher percentage of global emissions than either oil or gas. To be clear – the point here is not necessarily that gas, specifically, should replace coal or that coal-fired power stations ought to be retired ahead of gas-fired power stations. There is significant controversy as to how much better natural gas is from a climatic point of view than coal. Howarth (2014), for instance, has argued that (once life-cycle effects have been fully accounted for), natural gas is actually more emissions-intensive than coal. The point, rather, is simply that we should prioritise the phasing out of the most emissions-intensive fossil fuels – whatever they turn out to be. So, though phase-outs must be the ultimate end-point of the carbon majors’ discharge of their duties to help mitigate climate change, what’s needed is a framework to determine which fossil fuel operations might be phased out immediately, and which might be phased out more gradually. There are many complex issues at play. We cannot hope to develop a comprehensive framework, here. However, any such approach (we think) ought to prioritise stopping those operations which do the most harm to the climate ahead of those which do less harm, while nevertheless ensuring that countries have sufficient energy to meet their needs. Though,

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doubtless, there are many other considerations that would also need to be factored in (e.g. the interests of the workers in industries that would be disrupted by phaseouts, fairness in the distribution of costs between the different carbon majors, etc.). Of more interest, for us, is the fact that since we cannot immediately phase out the extraction and production of fossil fuels, the carbon majors’ discharge of their devolved duties to help mitigate climate change is necessarily going to have to involve a combination of three of the strategies we have considered, thus far. Those carbon majors whose operations ought to continue, at least for a time, ought to undertake to offset some substantial proportion of the emissions with which the combustion of the fossil fuels they produce will be associated and/ or invest in the technology necessary to minimise the climatic impact of their operations, to the extent that this is possible. And this will need to be combined with some disgorgement, to ensure that corporations meet their liabilities to those to whom they owe compensatory duties. In the end, however, it seems to us that phasing out – consistent with robust emissions-reduction targets – will be the only fully satisfactory way in which the carbon majors can discharge their devolved duties to help mitigate climate change. Before concluding this chapter, it is worth considering an important objection that might be raised to the position we have adopted, here: namely, that the duties we are ascribing to the carbon majors are too demanding. The eventual retirement of their fossil fuel assets would amount to an enormous cost in terms of foregone revenue. And these costs would be bound to have serious negative implications for others. Closing down coal mines, for instance, would leave thousands of workers unemployed. In response to the first concern, we would simply deny that the costs are too high to reasonably require corporations to bear. Were capacity-based considerations all that was in play, this argument would be more plausible. Capacity-based considerations do not give rise to duties to take on ‘unreasonable’ costs. In the ‘child in the pond’ case, discussed in the previous chapter, one does not, intuitively, have a duty to rescue the child if doing so would require one to sacrifice both arms, for instance. Yet the carbon majors have also made simply enormous contributions to the harms of climate change, and it is widely accepted that contribution-based duties are significantly more demanding than capacity-based duties.15 Agents have duties to mitigate those harms for which they are responsible – and the carbon majors’ complicity in, and thus their responsibility for, the harms of climate change is extensive. The carbon majors surely cannot with any plausibility argue that the costs to themselves are too high, when what is being demanded of them is that they take steps to remediate the costs their activities have imposed, and continue to impose, upon others. The second concern raises complex issues concerning the character of the socalled ‘just transition’ away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy. We cannot explore such issues in depth, here. We would simply point out that just as corporations may owe duties of compensation to the victims of climate change, they may also owe duties of compensation to many other stakeholders in their activities, such as their employees. It may be, for instance, that corporations have

The climate duties of corporations 75 duties to provide ‘transitional assistance’ for at least some proportion of their workforce and aid them in finding alternative forms of employment.

Conclusion The scale of the contributions of the carbon majors to climate harms is and has been immense. Given this, together with their capacities to help address the problem, we contend that they have weighty devolved duties to take steps to help mitigate climate change, where the states to which they belong fail to adopt adequate policies to that effect. We should be clear, however, that our focus upon the carbon majors is not meant to suggest that other corporations, both large and small, do not also have devolved duties to help mitigate climate change. Many such corporations have large carbon footprints that have contributed significantly to climate change and which they have the capacity to reduce via direct mechanisms. Possible mechanisms include switching to renewable energy, funding offsetting or sequestration projects, investing in the development of low-emission technologies, switching to lower-emission supply chains, or divesting themselves from the fossil fuel industry (Moss, 2017). We should treat commitments of this sort with caution, but some corporations do appear to be moving down this path. Microsoft, for instance, has pledged to go ‘carbon negative’ – i.e. to remove more greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than are produced by their operations and to remove all the carbon from the atmosphere that their operations have produced since 1975 (BBC, 2020). Nevertheless, the carbon majors nonetheless occupy a unique place in the corporate landscape with respect to climate change, given the scale of their contribution. Through supplying fossil fuels on a huge scale and securing fossil-fuel-friendly policies, the carbon majors have played a major role in ensuring modern societies are dependent on greenhouse gas-emitting practices that far exceeds that played by most other corporations. As recognition of the role that carbon majors have played has increased, so have the calls for them to mitigate the harms for which they are responsible. In this chapter, we have sought to provide a philosophical basis for such demands. We have also argued that, in meeting those demands, while the ultimate objective must be for fossil fuel production to be phased out, it is likely that this will need to be combined with transformational and disgorgement strategies, in the interim.

Notes This chapter is partially derived from a previously published paper: Moss, J. (2020). ‘Carbon Majors and Corporate Responsibility for Climate Change’, in Climate Justice and Non-State Actors: Corporations, Regions, Cities, Individuals, J. Moss and L. Umbers (eds.). Abingdon, UK, Routledge: 45–60. We gratefully acknowledge permission to reproduce some of its contents, here. 1 They are also the most closely studied group of corporations in relation to climate change, which gives us a richer body of empirical evidence to draw upon.

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2 Of these corporations, 50 are investor-owned, 31 are state-owned, and 9 are nation state producers of fossil fuels. The three different groups each share roughly one-third of the emissions, with the state-owned group accounting for slightly less. 3 Given corporations’ enormous contributions to the harms of climate change, one might naturally have expected them to have attracted significant attention in the climate justice literature. Surprisingly, however, relatively few authors have discussed the issue. Those who have done so include Arnold (2016), Arnold and Bustos (2005), Collins (2020), Frumhoff et al. (2015), Hormio (2017), Moss (2020), Schwenkenbecher (2018), and Shue (2017). 4 For an exception, see Collins (2020, pp. 92–3). 5 There are many different ways in which agents might contribute to harm, and thus many different kinds of complicity. See Lepora and Goodin (2013, ch. 3) for an excellent overview. 6 For a helpful overview, see Devolder (2017). 7 Their account is similar to those defended by other proponents of ‘causal’ accounts of complicity. See e.g. Gardner (2007) and Petersson (2013). 8 In adopting this view, we set ourselves against ‘non-causal’ accounts of complicity (see esp. Kutz, 2000, 2007). On such accounts, complicity is to be understood in terms of intentional participation in collective wrongdoing. Such participation might make a causal contribution to wrongful harm – but need not. We are sceptical of such accounts. As Lepora and Goodin (2013, p. 80) point out, for instance, such accounts seem to collapse the distinction between acting as a co-principal in some joint act of wrongdoing and acting as an accomplice. We note, however, that the actions of the carbon majors would clearly qualify as acts of complicity on any plausible non-causal account, also. In supplying fossil fuels to consumers for profit, they are clearly intentionally participating in a collective endeavour, the outcome of which is the production of a significant amount of wrongful harm. 9 This interpretation is, broadly speaking, shared by some other accounts of complicity. Kadish (1985, p. 359), for instance, allows that an action might satisfy the contribution condition in legal contexts if it “could have contributed to the criminal action of the principal.” And similar conditions have been adopted for similar purposes by others. Barry and Øverland (2015, p. 177) write that the wrongness of contributing to harm in cases of causal overdetermination will be a matter of the “possibility that some agent will become a necessary element of the set of actual conditions that actually brings about the overdetermined outcome.” 10 It is worth noting that even if we suppose that the carbon majors were excusably ignorant of the harmful climatic effects of their activities until 1990, they would still be liable for an enormous contribution to the harms of climate change. For example, of all the carbon emitted by fossil fuel use and cement production over the period 1751–2014 (around 451 gigatonnes), almost half was produced after 1990 (over 200 gigatonnes) (Boden et al., 2016). 11 For discussion, see Glover (1975, pp. 176–90). 12 For a discussion of the morality of divestment, see Moss (2017). 13 Though, of course, we do not think that all acts of supplying weaponry are wrongful. Some violence is justified, as is the supply of the weaponry necessary to conduct it. 14 There is a lively debate as to the ethics of offsetting. Important contributions include Anderson (2012), Broome (2012, pp. 84–95), and Spiekermann (2014). 15 Sometimes this point is expressed in terms of the distinction between negative and positive duties.

Bibliography Ambrose, J. 2020. Shell Unveils Plans to Become Net-Zero Carbon Company by 2050. The Guardian, 16 April.

The climate duties of corporations 77 Amster, E. 2019. Public Health Impact of Coal-Fired Power Plants: A Critical Systematic Review of the Epidemiological Literature. International Journal of Environmental Health Research, 16, 1–23. Anderson, K. 2012. The Inconvenient Truth of Carbon Offsets. Nature, 484. Arnold, D. G. 2016. Corporate Responsibility, Democracy, and Climate Change. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 40, 252–61. Arnold, D. G. & Bustos, K. 2005. Business Ethics, and Global Climate Change. Business & Professional Ethics Journal, 24, 103–30. Australia, Commonwealth of Australia. 2019. Australia’s Emissions Projections 2019, Department of the Environment and Energy, Australian Government, Australia. Barry, C. & Øverland, G. 2015. Individual Responsibility for Carbon Emissions: Is There Anything Wrong with Overdetermining Harm? In: Moss, J. (ed.) Climate Change and Justice, Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press. Bayakola, T. & Lang, C. 2006. ‘A Funny Place to Store Carbon’: UWA-FACE Foundation’s Tree-Planting Project in Mount Elgon National Park, World Rainforest Movement, Uganda. BBC, British Broadcasting Corporation. 2020. Microsoft Makes ‘Carbon Negative’ Pledge [Online]. UK. Available: www.bbc.com/news/technology-51133811 [Accessed 6/7/2020]. BHP. 2018. Scope 3 Emissions Calculation Methodology 2018 [Online]. Available: www. bhp.com/-/media/documents/investors/annual-reports/2018/bhpscoper3emissions calculationmethodology2018.pdf?la=en [Accessed 12/11/2019]. Boden, T. A., Marland, G. & Andres, R. J. 2016. Global, Region, and National FossilFuel CO2 Emissions, Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Centre, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, TN. Bratman, E., Brunette, K., Shelly, D. C. & Nicholson, S. 2016. Justice Is the Goal: Divestment as Climate Change Resistance. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 6, 677–90. Broome, J. 2012. Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming World, New York, NY, W.W. Norton & Company. Caldecott, B., Harnett, E., Cojianu, T., Kok, I. & Pfeiffer, A. 2016. Stranded Assets: A Climate Risk Challenge, Washington, DC, Inter-American Development Bank (IADB). Castleden, W. M., Shearman, D., Crisp, G. & Finch, P. 2011. The Mining and Burning of Coal: Effects on Health and the Environment. The Medical Journal of Australia, 195, 333–5. CIEL, Centre for International Environmental Law. 2017. Smoke and Fumes: The Legal and Evidentiary Basis for Holding Big Oil Accountable for the Climate Crisis, Washington, DC, Centre for International Environmental Law. Coady, D., Parry, I., Le, N.-P. & Shang, B. 2019. Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies Remain Large: An Update Based on Country-Level Estimates, Washington, DC, International Monetary Fund. Collins, S. 2020. Corporations’ Duties in a Changing Climate. In: Moss, J. & Umbers, L. (eds.) Climate Justice and Non-State Actors: Corporations, Regions, Cities, Individuals, Abingdon, UK, Routledge. Davis, S. J. & Socolow, R. H. 2014. Commitment Accounting of CO2 Emissions. Environmental Research Letters, 9, 1–9. Delmas, M., Lim, J. & Nairn-Birch, N. 2016. Corporate Environmental Performance and Lobbying. Academy of Management Discoveries, 2, 1–23. Devolder, K. 2017. Complicity. In: Lafollette, H. (ed.) International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Chichester, John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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Dunlap, R. E. & McCright, A. M. 2011. Organised Climate Change Denial. In: Dryzek, J. S., Norgaard, R. B. & Schlosberg, D. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society, Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press. EIA, United States Energy Information Administration. 2019. How Much Carbon Dioxide Is Produced When Different Fuels Are Burned? [Online]. United States Energy Information Administration, USA. Available: www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=73&t=11 [Accessed 2/6/2020]. Ekwurzel, B., Boneham, J., Dalton, M. W., Heede, R., Mera, R. J., Allen, M. R. & Frumhoff, P. C. 2017. The Rise in Global Atmospheric CO2, Surface Temperature, and Sea Level from Emissions Traced to Major Carbon Producers. Climatic Change, 144, 579–90. Erickson, P., Kartha, S., Lazarus, M. & Tempest, K. 2015. Assessing Carbon Lock-In. Environmental Research Letters, 10, 1–7. Fitzpatrick, L. G. 2018. Surface Coal Mining and Human Health: Evidence from West Virginia. Southern Economic Journal, 84, 1109–28. Friedman, M. 1970. The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits. The New York Times Magazine, 13 September, New York, NY. Frumhoff, P. C., Heede, R. & Oreskes, N. 2015. The Climatic Responsibilities of Industrial Carbon Producers. Climatic Change, 132, 157–71. Gardner, J. 2007. Complicity and Causality. Criminal Law and Philosophy, 1, 127–41. Glover, J. 1975. It Makes No Difference Whether or Not I Do It. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, 49, 171–90. Grainger, M. & Geary, K. 2011. The New Forests Company and Its Uganda Plantations, Oxfam International. Greenpeace. 2011. Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine, 2011 Update, Washington, DC, Greenpeace. Griffin, P. 2017. The Carbon Majors Database: CDP Carbon Majors Report 2017, Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). Heede, R. 2014. Tracing Athropogenic Carbon Dioxide and Methane Emissions to Fossil Fuel and Cement Producers, 1854–2010. Climatic Change, 122, 229–41. Hendryx, M. & Ahern, M. M. 2008. Relations Between Health Indicators and Residential Proximity to Coal Mining in West Virginia. American Journal of Public Health, 98, 669–71. Hormio, S. 2017. Can Corporations Have (Moral) Responsibility Regarding Climate Change Mitigation? Ethics, Policy & Environment, 20, 314–32. Howarth, R. W. 2014. A Bridge to Nowhere: Methane Emissions and the Greenhouse Gas Footprint of Natural Gas. Energy Science & Engineering, 2, 47–60. IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2005. Special Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage, Cambridge, UK. IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2018. Global Warming of 1.5°C: An IPCC Special Report on the Impacts of Global Warming of 1.5°C above Pre-Industrial Levels and Related Global Greenhouse Gas Emission Pathways, in the Context of Strengthening the Global Response to the Threat of Climate Change, Sustainable Development, and Efforts to Eradicate Poverty, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Kadish, S. H. 1985. Complicity, Cause and Blame: A Study in the Interpretation of Doctrine. California Law Review, 73, 323–410. Kutz, C. 2000. Complicity: Ethics and Law for a Collective Age, Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press. Kutz, C. 2007. Causeless Complicity. Criminal Law and Philosophy, 1, 289–305. Kynge, J. 2018. Development Bank Halts Coal Financing to Combat Climate Change. The Financial Times, 12 December.

The climate duties of corporations 79 Lepora, C. & Goodin, R. E. 2013. On Complicity and Compromise, Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press. Lewis, D. 1973. Causation. The Journal of Philosophy, 70, 556–67. Moss, J. 2017. The Morality of Divestment. Law & Policy, 39, 412–28. Moss, J. 2020. Carbon Majors and Corporate Responsibility for Climate Change. In: Moss, J. & Umbers, L. (eds.) Climate Justice and Non-State Actors: Corporations, Regions, Cities, and Individuals, Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Oreskes, N. & Conway, E. M. 2010. Merchants of Doubt, London, UK, Bloomsbury. Page, E. A. 2011. Climatic Justice and the Fair Distribution of Atmospheric Burdens: A Conjunctive Account. The Monist, 94, 412–32. Perrow, C. & Pulver, S. 2015. Organizations and Markets. In: Dunlap, R. E. & Brulle, R. J. (eds.) Climate Change and Society: Sociological Perspectives, Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press. Petersson, B. 2013. Co-Responsibility and Causal Involvement. Philosophy, 41, 847–66. Pettit, P. 2017. The Conversable, Responsible Corporation. In: Orts, E. & Smith, C. (eds.) The Moral Responsibility of Firms, Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press. Rawls, J. 1971. A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, MA, Belknap. Rich, N. 2018. Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change. New York Times Magazine, New York, NY. Robert, A. 2017. Financing the IPCC: How Macron Got Away with Spending So Little[Online]. Available: https://www.euractiv.com/section/climate-environment/news/financing-the-ipcchow-macron-got-away-with-spending-so-little/ [Accessed 20/10/2020]. Schwenkenbecher, A. 2018. Why Business Firms Have Moral Obligations to Mitigate Climate Change. In: Brueckner, M., Spencer, R. & Paull, M. (eds.) Disciplining the Undisciplined? Perspectives from Business, Society and Politics on Responsible Citizenship, Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability, Cham, Switzerland, Springer International. Shue, H. 2017. Responsible for What? Carbon Producer CO2 Contributions and the Energy Transition. Climatic Change, 144, 591–6. Spiekermann, K. 2014. Buying Low, Flying High: Carbon Offsets and Partial Compliance. Political Studies, 62, 913–29. Unruh, G. C. 2000. Understanding Carbon Lock-In. Energy Policy, 28, 817–30.

3

The climate duties of individuals

In this chapter, we consider the deontic implications of states’ failures to take adequate steps to address climate change for individuals. It is tempting to think that an appeal to the devolution principle might also be appropriate, here. After all, the greenhouse gas emissions which constitute states’ contributions to the problem of anthropogenic climate change ultimately enter the atmosphere in virtue of actions performed by individual human agents. Moreover, whatever capacities states have to address climate change must ultimately derive from the capacities of the individuals of which they are comprised. Perhaps, then, individuals have devolved duties to reduce their emissions to help mitigate climate change, where the states to which they belong fail to implement adequate emissions-reduction policies. Yet such an approach is bound to be controversial. The phenomenon of climate change is occurring in virtue of the build-up of large quantities of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. With the exception of a very small number of persons (e.g. senior managers in high-emitting corporations), the greenhouse gas emissions for which any individual is personally responsible will constitute a tiny fraction of the total volume in the atmosphere. Some have argued that this fact means that no ordinary individual can plausibly have contribution-based duties to reduce their emissions (see esp. Sinnott-Armstrong, 2005). An obvious corollary of that view would hold that no ordinary individual can have capacity-based duties to do so either, insofar as any individual’s reducing their personal emissions is extremely unlikely to make any difference to the harms with which climate change is associated. On this view, then, the devolution principle will not entail duties of any sort for the majority of ordinary individuals with respect to climate change.1 The considerations that ground national-level duties to mitigate climate change would not apply to any non-trivial degree to the vast majority of the individuals (qua individuals) of which nations are comprised. Arguments of this kind have provoked a number of responses.2 Broome (2019, pp. 110–15), for example, has argued that – the complex and chaotic nature of the climate system notwithstanding – since an increasing volume of emissions in the atmosphere is correlated with increasingly severe climate change, each individual’s emissions must necessarily create an expectation of harm. Arguments of this form have, themselves, prompted a number of replies. Collins (2020, p. 87),

The climate duties of individuals 81 for instance, has pointed out that even if this is right, each (ordinary) individual’s emissions plausibly have quite low expected disvalue – too low, perhaps, to trigger contribution-based duties to reduce one’s personal carbon footprint.3 We, ourselves, are inclined to think that the issues, here, are largely empirical and, as such, not apt to be settled by philosophical argument. As such, we simply do not think that we are in a position to know whether the devolution principle does or does not give rise to an individual-level duty to reduce one’s emissions to help mitigate climate change. For this reason, then, we shall have little further to say on the matter. Yet devolved duties are far from the only duties individuals might have in virtue of the failure of states to respond adequately to climate change. One important possibility, discussed in recent work by Elizabeth Cripps (2013), Aaron Maltais (2013), and Kok-Chor Tan (2015), is that individuals may have duties to help promote collective action on climate change.4 We shall argue that many individuals do, indeed, have such duties. However, explaining why such duties arise turns out to be surprisingly difficult. In this chapter, we shall consider several possible accounts, ultimately arguing that such duties (at least for the vast majority of citizens) must ultimately be grounded in considerations of fairness. We must make four clarificatory points before we begin. First, our analysis shall focus chiefly upon the duties of citizens to promote collective action by the states to which they belong. We certainly do not wish to deny that individuals may have duties to promote collective action by other collective agents to which they belong. Employees and shareholders may have duties to promote collective action by corporations, for example. The arguments we shall offer will, in some cases, generalise to other instances. For the sake of clarity, however, we shall defer discussion of these to the conclusion. Second, we shall also focus exclusively upon the duties of citizens of affluent Western liberal democracies. Again, we do not deny that citizens of other states might also have duties to promote collective action. Our arguments may well generalise to at least some such cases. Yet the matter is far from clear. For instance, there is far more controversy as to whether many developing nations have duties to take collective action to address climate change, in the first place, let alone whether their citizens have duties to seek to bring such collective action about. For this reason, we shall simply remain neutral on such cases, in what follows. Third, though we shall defend the idea that individuals have duties to promote collective action on climate change, we certainly do not wish to deny that individuals may well have other climate-related duties. Significantly, for our purposes, they may also have duties to play their part in schemes of collective action sufficient to address climate change, where the collectives to which they belong (states, sub-national political communities, or corporations) adopt such schemes. We shall discuss duties of this sort in the following chapter. Finally, we shall argue that the majority of citizens of affluent Western liberal democracies have duties to help promote collective action on climate change. We do not think, however, that such duties will plausibly have overriding force for all agents in all situations. The position we shall take in this chapter, then, is that such

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duties do arise but that they are susceptible to being outweighed by competing considerations (i.e. are merely pro tanto).

Duties to promote collective action Duties to promote collective action, as we shall understand them, are duties on the part of some individual to take steps which, either individually or as part of some larger effort, raise the probability of some collective to which that individual belongs discharging some duty which properly applies to that collective.5 Let us, for convenience, refer to these as ‘promotional duties’.6 Such duties have been little-discussed by philosophers. Nevertheless, there can surely be little doubt that such duties do sometimes arise. Consider the following case, for example; Eleven on the Shore: A company of eleven people is holding its Christmas party down at the seaside. During the party, they see a dinghy capsize, plunging three victims into the water. There is one boat on the shore which requires eleven people to row and could easily carry all three victims to safety. Five members of the company initially refuse to participate in any rescue attempt. One member of the company, George, is a brilliant orator. If he tried to persuade the others to join in, he would certainly succeed, as would the subsequent rescue attempt. Setting aside the possibility of competing considerations (e.g. unacceptable risk), there is clearly a collective duty on the part of the company to affect a rescue. The company will fail to discharge that duty if the five refuse to participate. It also seems clear that, in virtue of that fact, George has a duty to attempt to change their minds. After all, ex hypothesi, by doing so he can guarantee that three lives which would otherwise have been needlessly lost can be saved by the company’s collective efforts. George, then, has a duty to promote collective action – i.e. a duty to take steps to increase the probability that the company will discharge its collective duty. However, the fact that duties to promote collective action sometimes arise does not show that there are duties to help promote collective action on climate change, specifically. One might think, however, that little needs to be said. Individual-level duties to promote collective action on climate change, perhaps, can be straightforwardly derived from collective duties to take action on climate change. As Cripps (2013, ch. 6) argues, if individuals belonging to groups with collective duties to take action on climate change did not have duties to take steps to promote the collective action necessary to discharge the collective duty, that collective duty would be rendered “meaningless, because doomed to remain unfulfilled” (Cripps, 2013, p. 141).7 The idea, in effect, is that unless individuals take steps to see to it that collective action takes place, no such collective action will be forthcoming. The former, in effect, is a necessary condition of the latter. As such, we can “reason backwards from what is needed for the collective duty to be fulfillable. [We can] make sense of the demands on individuals as derivative of a primarily

The climate duties of individuals 83 collective duty: what I should do follows from what we owe the victims of climate change” (Cripps, 2013, p. 145).8 This, however, is too quick. It is certainly true that, in general, if some agent A has a duty to , and ing is necessary for A to , A thereby has a duty to . If A has a duty to pay B $500, for example, and going to the bank is necessary for A to acquire the funds to give to B, A has a duty to go to the bank, straightforwardly derived from their duty to B. Yet no such derivation is possible in the case at hand. This is because duties on the part of the state to address climate change are collective duties – that is to say, duties which apply at the level of the collective qua collective (i.e. state qua state). This, in turn, presupposes that the state constitutes a collective agent. Duties, after all, are duties to act, something only agents can do. However, though the agency of such collectives is supervenient upon the agency of the individuals of which they are comprised, it is not identical to the agency of those individuals (List and Pettit, 2011, pp. 64–78). There are, for example, actions states are able to perform collectively, which no individual can perform (e.g. waging war), even if states perform those actions only in virtue of the individuals of which they are comprised taking the requisite steps. Now, Cripps’ argument appears to rest upon the idea that individual-level duties to promote collective action on climate change can be derived from collectivelevel duties to take action on climate change, in virtue of the fact that individuallevel efforts to promote such action are a necessary condition of the collective discharging such duties. But that simply does not follow. It is not generally the case that if some agent A has a duty to ϕ and C’s γing is necessary for A to ϕ, C thereby has a duty to γ.9 If A has a duty to pay B $500, for example, and the only way in which they can get the money is if C gives it to them, it obviously does not follow that C thereby has a duty to hand the money over. C may, of course, have such a duty. But this will be for reasons beyond the mere fact of their doing so being a necessary condition of A’s discharging their duty. Likewise, then, individuals may have duties to promote collective action on climate change on the part of the state. But if they do, such duties will not follow automatically from national-level collective duties to take such action. If individuals have duties to help promote collective action on climate change, then, we do not think those duties can be derived in any straightforward way from the duties of the collectives to which they belong. Rather, what’s needed is (a) an account of the basis of individuals’ duties to promote collective action, generally, and (b) an explanation of why this account entails that individuals have duties in the climate case, in particular. Let us, then, consider some possible accounts of the basis of such duties.10

The act-consequentialist approach The most straightforward approach would seek to ground such duties in actconsequentialist considerations. Sometimes, taking steps to promote collective action will be an effective means of realising some valuable state of affairs (or else preventing some disvaluable state of affairs from being realised). This, for

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instance, is surely what explains George’s duties to attempt to persuade the others to act in Eleven on the Shore. The fact that his doing so will lead to three lives being saved is reason enough to think George has a duty to make such an attempt. Johnson (2003, p. 283) has suggested, in this vein, that duties to promote collective action, generally, may be grounded in our duties to promote valuable states of affairs.11 Perhaps, then, duties to promote collective action on climate change can be defended on such grounds. States’ acting so as to discharge their duties to take action on climate change would obviously be of great value. Individuals, having general duties to promote valuable states of affairs, then, may have duties to promote collective action on climate change. We do not deny that some individuals, in some cases, may well have duties of this sort. For the vast majority of individuals in the vast majority of cases, however, this simply will not be so. Any account grounded in our duties to promote valuable states of affairs must (by ought-implies-can) presuppose that individuals have the capacity to bring about the valuable state of affairs in question. Unfortunately, in the climate case, most individuals simply do not have any such capacity. Adequate collective action on climate change by the state will require serious political change. Yet bringing about political change itself requires collective action.12 In democratic societies, at least, political outcomes are not generally the result of the efforts of any single individual. The electorate as a whole must vote out governments with poor environmental policies. Large numbers of people must sign petitions or attend rallies for governments to have incentive to take notice. And so on. The political case, then, is very different to Eleven on the Shore. In that case, whether the group will act so as to rescue the three victims (ex hypothesi) counterfactually depends upon George’s actions. In the political case, it is virtually certain that nothing will counterfactually depend upon the contributions of any ordinary individual. Take voting, for example. The outcome of a vote will counterfactually depend upon how one casts one’s ballot if and only if there is a tie between two or more options on the agenda and one’s vote breaks the tie. Yet the probability of any individual ever being in such a position is asymptotically close to zero. Geoffrey Brennan and Loren Lomasky (1993, p. 57), for example, estimate the probability of some individual’s vote being decisive in an election between parties A and B with 200,001 voters with an average probability of voting for A of just 0.51, at a very slight 1 in 12.3 million. Wider margins and larger electorates see that probability fall dramatically. Gelman et al. (2012) estimate that the average voter in the 2008 US Presidential Election had a probability of around 1 in 60 million of being decisive, for example. Such worries generalise. Consider signing a petition. One makes a difference, here, only if one’s individual signature causes the government of the day to adopt climate policies different to those they would have adopted (or persisted with) had one not signed the petition. Yet political parties, knowing that individuals qua individuals almost never exert decisive influence over any aspect of the political process, only plausibly have incentives to respond to the preferences of large groups of individuals qua groups, not to individuals qua individuals. For that

The climate duties of individuals 85 reason, the chance of any individual signature making a difference is extremely slight. It is hardly as though a petition with 123,452 signatures is likely to be any more politically impactful than a petition with 123,451 signatures. Similar considerations plausibly apply in the case of attending rallies, donating money to campaigns, and so on. One might object that what matters is not the actual impact of one’s contribution to the political process, but rather the expected impact. In Eleven on the Shore, if George had only a 50% chance of persuading the others to co-operate, we should still certainly think him obliged to try, given the stakes involved. Perhaps something similar applies here. The chance of anyone making a difference to the prospects for collective action on climate change by (for example) voting for the Greens might be very slight. But the value of the end-state which potentially might be realised by one’s doing so – i.e. causing the election of a candidate that might bring about action on climate change – is such that the expected value of voting Green might still be very substantial.13 We are very sympathetic, in general, to the claim that duties arising out of actconsequentialist considerations are best thought of in expectational terms, given the ubiquitous uncertainty individuals confront in real-world decision-making.14 It is unclear whether this strategy gets us very far, here, however. At virtually every point in our lives, there will be some action we could perform with some positive probability of bringing about some valuable state of affairs. Yet we are surely not always obliged to perform such actions. Often, the expected value of doing so is insufficiently great. Suppose, for instance, that the probability of the rescue succeeding in Eleven on the Shore was 1 in 100,000. In that case, it seems much harder to argue that George has a duty to attempt to persuade the others to participate. The stakes (three lives) are just as high, but the expected value of his attempting to persuade the others to participate is simply too low to give rise to a duty to make any such attempt. The difficulty for the case in hand is that the expected value of contributions (or, at least, contributions of the kind it is reasonable to demand of typical individuals) to efforts to promote collective action on climate change are likely to be very slight, indeed. This is for two principal reasons. First, given just how small the probability of any individual’s contribution making a difference is likely to be, the expected value of any ordinary individual’s contribution is likely to be extremely minimal. Second, this problem is compounded by the fact that the expected value of contributions to promoting collective action on climate change must be further discounted by the many other uncertainties that plague political action. Politicians often fail to follow through with their campaign promises. Parties promising climate action might end up neglecting the issue. Other election results may make it impossible for motivated politicians to act. Barrack Obama’s efforts to pass national climate legislation in 2009–2010 were scuppered by insufficient support in the US Senate, for example (Davenport and Samuelsohn, 2010). Policies with apparently good prospects of making a positive difference might have less impact than might have been hoped. Consider the disappointment of the early stages of the EU’s emissions trading scheme, for example (Martin et al., 2016). Climate

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policies introduced after one election may be repealed after subsequent elections. The national carbon tax introduced by the Australian Labor party, which took effect in 2012, was repealed following Labor’s loss in the 2013 federal election, for example. ‘Exogenous variables’ like pandemics, wars, and natural disasters might impact the political system, undermining the ability of politicians to take action. And so on. For that reason, act-consequentialist considerations (even when conceived of in expectational terms) will rarely yield duties to contribute to such efforts – at least in the case of typical individuals of ordinary means and abilities. Cripps (2013, pp. 147–50) offers a number of responses to the charge that individuals are unable to make any difference to the prospects for collective action on climate change.15 She (2013, p. 148) writes, first, that: Promotional actions . . . are not throw-away acts: one-off bets, the consequences of which, win or lose, are to be assessed in isolation. Even if they don’t succeed straight off, they can still contribute to a stockpile of impetus for collective change. However, many promotional actions do not ‘stockpile’ over time in the manner Cripps suggests. My voting for the Greens in some election does not ordinarily make it any more likely that the Greens will prevail in some subsequent election, for example. Later elections, after all, will be decided by new rounds of voting. Cripps’ claim is more plausible in the case of other kinds of contributions – monetary donations, for example. The Greens, presumably, will have a much better chance of influencing political outcomes at t2 with $5 million in campaign funds than they did at t1 with $1 million. That, however, will be of little help to proponents of the act-consequentialist account, because it fails to show that there is any non-trivial consequential significance to be attached to any particular individual’s contribution to that stockpile. The contributions most ordinary individuals can reasonably afford to make will simply be too insignificant to make any substantial difference to the Greens’ capacities to achieve policy change. No doubt there are individuals with very deep pockets whose accumulated contributions might make a serious difference. For the vast majority of us, however, this seems very unlikely. Cripps’ (2013, p. 148) second line of defence appeals to the idea that some individuals really can exert an influence over the prospects for collective action on climate change. Individuals, she writes, “do change history: often, admittedly, for the bad, but sometimes also for the good.” This is surely right. Yet it is hard to see how this is supposed to offer anything like a general defence of the idea that all but a very small number of individuals have the capacity to make a difference to the prospects of collective action on climate change. Figures with enormous public credibility and influence (David Attenborough, for example), perhaps, have duties of this kind. The idea that the vast majority of ordinary persons who do not occupy such positions will have the capacity to exert any non-trivial influence over such matters, however, is implausible.16 With something like this reply in mind, however, Cripps (2013, p. 148) goes on to say:

The climate duties of individuals 87 Imagine if the young Barack Obama or Nelson Mandela had reasoned thus! . . . If bringing about change requires so-called ordinary individuals to seek such extraordinary roles, then promotional duties could be fulfilled by trying to achieve this. Yet, again, it is hard to see how this is supposed to offer any general defence of the idea that individuals have the ability to make some non-trivial difference to the prospects for collective action on climate change.17 There are very few ‘extraordinary’ positions of power and influence available. Even if individuals had equal opportunities to access those positions, their chances of gaining them (and thereby of wielding the power attached to them) would be very slight. Moreover, opportunities to access such positions are distributed very unequally, in reality. Running for office, for example, typically requires very substantial financial resources few persons have access to (Carnes, 2018). Finally, seeking such office is very costly. Individuals surely have general positive duties to promote valuable states of affairs. Yet such duties cannot plausibly require individuals to set aside the rest of their projects in an attempt to become political representatives or leaders of activist movements. Any account which entailed as much would obviously be overly demanding. In response to this final concern, Cripps (2013, p. 149) writes: I do not claim that all individuals are duty-bound to try to hold public office and implement green policies. Promotional duties could be fulfilled by promoting or aiding the election of those who will use their position to promote action on climate change. Nor are we all required to devote our lives, as some have done, to climate action. So long as there are some who are ready, willing, and appropriately motivated to take up such roles (within or beyond existing institutions), for most of us it will be sufficient to support them. To be fair, we do not think Cripps herself is seeking to defend the act-consequentialist account. We read her as offering a defence of the more general idea that individuals have the capacity to make some non-trivial difference to the prospects for collective action on climate change. Still, a response of this sort will clearly be of no help to those who do wish to defend the act-consequentialist account. The point of the criticisms advanced thus far is that contributions to efforts to promote collective action on climate change – including attempts to assist individuals looking to take on extraordinary roles – are almost certain to be consequentially insignificant. Duties to make such contributions, then, simply cannot be grounded in actconsequentialist considerations. None of these defences, then, seems to us to be successful. Two points bear emphasising, however. The first, simply, is that our account is in no way meant to undercut the idea that the efforts of collectives can make a non-trivial difference to the prospects for collective action on climate change. Indeed, it may well be that such agents (certain civil society groups, for example) have duties to help promote collective action on act-consequentialist grounds. Our claim is simply

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that the duties of individuals, qua individuals, cannot (typically) be justified by appeal to such considerations. Second, the case we have offered against the act-consequentialist account, here, does not rule out the possibility that some individuals on some occasions might have duties arising out of act-consequentialist considerations to promote collective action. Individuals with very deep pockets or substantial public sway likely have duties of this sort, for example. Perhaps there will be some (very) rare instances where ordinary individuals have a sufficiently good chance of making a difference for act-consequentialist considerations to give rise to duties of the kind we are discussing. Nothing in the account of such duties we offer in what follows is inconsistent with the idea that act-consequentialist considerations might also, sometimes, give rise to such duties. Our charge is simply that, for the vast majority of individuals, the vast majority of the time, act-consequentialist considerations will be unable to explain why they have duties to help promote collective action on climate change. For that reason, then, we must look elsewhere.

Free-riding The difficulty for the act-consequentialist account is ultimately rooted in the collective character of political action, in consequence of which the expected value of each individual’s contribution to the political process is (setting aside certain unusual cases) likely to be negligible. Yet cases involving collective action are very familiar, as is the idea that individuals may have duties to contribute to collective efforts, the causal inconsequentiality of their contributions notwithstanding. A familiar strategy for grounding such duties appeals to the wrongness of free-riding, standardly defined as the consumption of (i.e. benefiting from) some collectively produced public good without making appropriate contribution to the process by which that good is produced.18 Free-riding, thus defined, is generally thought to be wrongful because, and where, it is unfair.19 Free-riders arrogate certain preferential advantages to themselves, while depending upon others declining to afford themselves those same advantages (Cullity, 1995, 22–32). Fare-evaders on public transport, for example, afford themselves the privilege of free travel, while depending upon others’ failing to exercise that same privilege. The benefits of public transport would not exist at all if no one paid the fare, after all. Crucially, duties not to free-ride are not typically thought to depend upon the actual or expected impact of one’s actions upon others’ interests. If David fareevades on a public bus with plenty of empty seats, he treats his fellow passengers unfairly, though they would be no better or worse off had he paid his fare to the conductor.20 Nor do David’s actions plausibly impact the interests of anyone else – a single bus fare is obviously far too trivial to make any difference to the government’s capacity to operate programmes for the benefit of its citizens, for example. The complaint against David is, simply, that he treats others unfairly by failing to make appropriate contribution to the public good he is consuming – i.e. public transport.

The climate duties of individuals 89 Now, no one could sensibly deny that states taking adequate steps to respond to climate change would constitute a highly significant public good. Moreover, there is presently an enormous activist effort underway on the part of a great many individuals to see to it that collective action on climate change takes place (Caniglia et al., 2015). Perhaps, then, individuals who fail to contribute to such efforts are free-riders and, as such, have duties of fairness to make appropriate contributions to such efforts – i.e. to help promote collective action. Such duties (as we have just seen) would not be contingent upon the actual or expected effects of individuals’ contributions, thus avoiding the concerns which attend the act-consequentialist account. This, of course, would hardly constitute the first attempt to ground climate duties in the wrongness of free-riding. Several figures have appealed to such considerations as a basis for duties of various sorts – e.g. for individuals to reduce their personal emissions (Vanderheiden, 2016), or for nations to contribute to the protection of global carbon sinks (Armstrong, 2016). Unfortunately, however, there are powerful reasons to be sceptical of any such approach, here. First, as standardly defined, free-riding involves benefiting from others’ efforts to produce some public good. Without in the least diminishing the enormous moral value of such persons’ efforts, nor the significance of the sacrifices many such persons have made, climate activists have thus far enjoyed relatively little success in bringing about serious and timely governmental action on climate change, at least at the national level in most countries. Their principal achievements – both of which, we wish to emphasise, are very significant – have, rather, been (a) to render it more likely that significant action on climate change will eventually be taken and (b) to forestall policies that might have been even worse for the climate than those which obtain in the majority of countries around the world. The obvious concern with this line of argument, then, is that many people simply will not count as free-riders. One way of making this argument would be to point out that insofar as climate activists’ policy successes have been relatively limited, many persons’ interests will have been simply unaffected by their activities. This invites an obvious response. Namely, that the notion of ‘affecting’ upon which it relies is too narrow. Plausibly, if A’s ing prevents B from suffering some setback to their interests they would have suffered had A failed to , A has thereby benefited B (insofar as A’s ing leaves B better off than they would otherwise have been). If Caroline, for example, pushes Luke out of the way of a speeding bus that would otherwise have killed him, Caroline, clearly, has a profound effect upon Luke’s interests (i.e. will benefit him). Moreover, if A’s ing renders it more likely that B’s interests will be promoted, A’s ing, in itself, affects B’s interests. If Luke, for example, buys Caroline a ticket in a lottery with a 1/100 chance of winning $10 000, Luke clearly affects Caroline by conferring a significant benefit upon her, even if she fails to win. So, perhaps, the majority of people have been affected – and, indeed, benefited – by the efforts of climate activists, after all. The trouble with this, however, is that it ignores the fact that the policy changes climate activists’ efforts have rendered more likely would impose costs upon

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many citizens. Most serious figures in the literature agree that taking adequate steps to address climate change will be costly in the short-term (this, presumably, at least partially explains why states have been reluctant to take such steps). Stern (2009, pp. 48–55), for example, estimates the costs of ensuring that atmospheric levels of CO2e do not exceed 500ppm (a very modest goal) at around 2% of global GDP, annually, over the next half-century. The principal beneficiaries of serious efforts to address climate change will be members of future generations, and citizens of developing nations. They will not, in the main, be current citizens of affluent, Western liberal democracies. Yet it is precisely this group whose duties to help promote collective action we are attempting to justify. Again, this is not to downplay the value of activists’ efforts to bring such policy changes about. It is simply to point out that there are many people who, were climate activists to achieve major policy gains, could not plausibly be described as beneficiaries of their efforts and, therefore, will not count as free-riders. This, in turn, invites two further responses. First, and obviously, many current citizens of affluent liberal democracies surely do benefit from the efforts of climate activists. Climate activists have rendered it significantly more likely that those who would prefer to see more aggressive action on climate change will have those preferences satisfied, for example. Second, it might also be argued that this line of objection presupposes an overly narrow view of citizens’ interests. One might appeal to a moralised conception of individuals’ interests, according to which individuals would be personally benefited just in virtue of their membership in a society that had taken adequate steps to discharge its collective obligations to help address climate change, for instance. Doubtless, other similar argumentative moves are possible. We, ourselves, find both replies intuitively attractive. Yet, we think, neither can rescue the free-riding account. For the fundamental problem with the free-riding account, in our view, is that even if it is able to deliver the desired conclusion with respect to citizens’ duties to help promote collective action on climate change, it does so at the cost of rendering such duties objectionably contingent upon citizens being the beneficiaries of climate activists’ efforts. Our collective duties to address climate change are – as we have argued in previous chapters – grounded in the interests of the victims of climate change (our contributions to the harms they have suffered and will suffer, and our capacity to help mitigate them). It would be very odd, then, if it turned out that whether we have duties to contribute to efforts to see to it that such collective duties are discharged should depend upon whether such efforts are in our interests, rather than in the interests of the principal victims of climate change. Even with respect to those citizens for whom the free-riding account is able to give the right answer, then, it seems to us to do so for the wrong reasons.

Moral free-riding The deficiencies of the free-riding account notwithstanding, the idea that duties to contribute to efforts to promote collective action on climate change may be

The climate duties of individuals 91 grounded in considerations of fairness, more generally, seems to us to be worthy of further exploration. Just as there are duties of fairness to contribute to collectively produced public goods from which we benefit, there are also duties of a very similar character to contribute to efforts to discharge moral duties properly applying to the collectives to which we belong. Consider, for example: Coastal Town: Robert lives in a remote coastal town. The town’s coastline is very treacherous. Passing ships – even those whose crews take reasonable precautions – often strike underwater rocks. Because of the area’s remoteness, ships are unable to call for help, themselves. Instead, they must rely upon the townsfolk seeing them from shore and calling a rescue helicopter by landline. In order to prevent drownings, five townspeople each day attend a monitoring station from which they can survey the coastline and call the helicopter, if necessary. There are enough people living in the town that each person only has to attend once a year. When his assigned day comes around, Robert refuses to attend and goes to the beach instead. In this case, at least two points seem intuitively clear. First, provided shipping accidents occur frequently enough, the town has a collective duty to establish and maintain a system of the kind described, in order to prevent unnecessary deaths (other things being equal). Second, and more importantly, Robert’s refusal to play his part in the collective effort to discharge that duty is clearly unfair. The unfairness his conduct exhibits, moreover, is of a very similar kind to that exhibited by conventional free-riders. Robert arrogates to himself the preferential advantage of an indulgent day on the beach while simultaneously depending upon others declining to arrogate that same privilege to themselves. After all, if the others assigned to attend the monitoring station that day also failed to show up, the town’s collective duty to maintain a watch on the coastline would fail to be discharged. Importantly, our intuitions on this second point seem to be robust over two further specifications of the case. First, even if we specify that four people can monitor the coastline virtually as effectively as five, such that Robert’s absence makes no non-trivial difference to the safety of passing ships, his refusal to participate nevertheless seems wrongful. Second, even if we specify that Robert’s absence makes no non-trivial difference to the costs the others manning the station are required to take on the monitor the coastline, Robert’s refusal to participate also nevertheless seems wrongful. Certainly, if Robert’s failure to attend meant a heightened risk of accident for passing ships or an increase in the work others were required to do, this would make his conduct worse. Yet the fundamental complaint against Robert cannot be reduced to either of these considerations. His conduct is, simply, wrongfully unfair. We shall refer to conduct of this kind as moral free-riding – failing to make appropriate contribution to efforts to see to it that duties properly applying to some collective to which one belongs are discharged. The claim we shall defend over the following two sub-sections is that individuals who fail to contribute to

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efforts to promote collective action on climate change are moral free-riders. For that reason, individuals have duties of fairness to contribute to such efforts. Our argument proceeds in two steps. First, we offer a defence of the Moral Free-Riding Principle, which sets out the conditions under which we take moral free-riding to be unfair, and thus wrongful. Second, we shall argue that this principle entails that individuals have duties of fairness to contribute to efforts to promote collective action on climate change. The moral free-riding principle Though there can surely be little doubt that there are duties not to engage in moral free-riding, they have received relatively little attention from philosophers. In the fairness literature, for example, almost all of the most prominent ‘principles of fairness’, which aim to codify the conditions under which free-riding is objectionable, apply only to agents that are the beneficiaries of some co-operative scheme for the production of some good(s) or other, and not in the context of the collective discharge of moral duties (c.f. Arneson, 1982, pp. 621–3; Hart, 1955, p. 185; Klosko, 1987; Rawls, 1971, pp. 108–14). An important exception is Cullity (2008), to whose approach we are heavily indebted, in what follows. In order to get to grips with the conditions under which moral free-riding is wrongfully unfair, then, we would do well to consider the nature of unfairness, more generally. Following Cullity (2008), we hold that actions are unfair where they fail to exhibit the form of impartiality appropriate in the relevant context. Suppose that Laura is judging a violin-playing competition, for example. It would clearly be unfair for Laura to award first-place to Stephen on the basis that he was the most physically attractive of the contestants. The form of impartiality appropriate to violin-playing competitions requires abstracting from such considerations and discriminating between contestants solely on the basis of their proficiency at the violin. Alternatively, suppose that Geraldine is a public administrator who must decide whether a new hospital is to be built in town A or town B. Clearly, it would be unfair for Geraldine to decide that the hospital should be constructed in town B on the basis that her family live there. The form of impartiality appropriate in such contexts requires decision-makers to set aside private considerations of this kind. As this pair of examples illustrates, the forms of impartiality appropriate in various contexts are multifarious. So too, therefore, are the requirements of fairness. What, then, is the form of impartiality appropriate to the discharge of collective duties? By way of an answer, notice that the discharge of collective duties typically requires co-operation among the members of the collective to which the duty applies.21 Only by working together to monitor the coastline can the townsfolk ensure that ships’ crews do not needlessly drown at sea in Coastal Town, for example. Typically, unless enough persons contribute, such duties will not be discharged. Contributing to such efforts, then, is simply “what must be done by individuals if the group is to do what it ought” (Cullity, 2008, p. 10). To refuse to contribute in such circumstances, then, is to exhibit a form of objectionable partiality towards oneself. In such circumstances, each is a member of a group

The climate duties of individuals 93 to whom some collective duty applies. The collective duty will not be discharged unless a sufficient number of group members contribute. To treat group members with appropriate impartiality, then, each is required to contribute. To fail to do so is to unfairly arrogate to oneself the special, preferential advantage of failing to contribute to the discharge of the relevant collective duty, while at the same time depending upon others not arrogating that same advantage to themselves. Where individuals’ failures to contribute to the discharge of some collective duty can be appropriately described as failures of appropriate impartiality of this kind, such failures will be unfair. For such failures to be appropriately described as such, we think three conditions must be satisfied. First, there must in fact be some effort underway to see to it that the collective duty in question is discharged. To see this, suppose that none of the other townsfolk ever bothers to turn up to the monitoring station in Coastal Town. In that case, Robert’s refusal to contribute can hardly be thought to involve any objectionable partiality towards himself. His fellows, after all, have all asserted the same privilege as he. We might criticise Robert’s failure to attend on other grounds (perhaps he, along with all the other townsfolk, expresses an unacceptably callous attitude towards potential victims of shipping accidents, for example). But we could hardly criticise his conduct as unfair.22 Second, it must be the case that the agent in question is either capable, or culpably incapable, of contributing. Conventional free-riding by persons incapable of making appropriate contribution to processes by which the public goods from which they benefit are produced is not generally wrongful. Individuals with severe disabilities, for example, often consume public goods (e.g. public healthcare) without contributing to the processes by which those goods are produced. As standardly defined, such persons constitute free-riders. Yet it is not remotely plausible to think that such persons thereby act unfairly. Persons incapable of contributing to efforts to produce public goods cannot usually be described as arrogating some illicit privilege to themselves over others, and thereby cannot reasonably be regarded as failing to conform to the requirements of appropriate impartiality. Any theory which required that agents contribute in such cases would seem obviously to conflict with the doctrine of ought-implies-can. The same holds with respect to moral free-riding. In Coastal Town, if Robert is severely disabled such that he is physically unable to leave his house, there would clearly be nothing at all unfair in his failing to attend the monitoring station. Here, too, any verdict to the contrary would seem obviously to conflict with ought-implies-can. Yet, as is well-recognised in the ought-implies-can literature, not all forms of ‘incapacity’ are equal.23 Suppose Harold has left his wallet at home. He borrows $10 from his co-worker Harriett for a bus fare and promises to pay her back at 11 o’clock next morning. At 9 o’clock next morning, he goes to the casino and loses everything. He no longer has the capacity to pay Harriett back. Yet it seems clear that at 11 o’clock, (i.e. after he has become incapable of fulfilling his obligation to Harriet), he will nevertheless violate an obligation to pay her back, despite his inability to do so. Clearly, Harold cannot evade his responsibilities by deliberately or negligently undermining his own capacity to discharge them.24

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Such considerations are plainly relevant to the case of moral free-riding. Suppose that on the morning he is supposed to attend the monitoring station, Robert deliberately takes a drug that renders him insensible for the next 24 hours, in order to ensure that he will be unable to do so. His incapacity notwithstanding, Robert’s failure to contribute will clearly be unfair, insofar as it arises out of objectionable conduct (i.e. an attempt to avoid having to contribute), for which Robert is morally responsible. For this reason, then, we hold that duties of fairness to contribute to the collective discharge of moral duties apply both to persons who are capable of contributing and to persons who are culpably incapable of doing so. Third, failures to contribute are not unfair where those contributions would be unacceptably costly in the circumstances. Suppose that in Coastal Town, for instance, the monitoring station is at the top of a very tall tower that the townsfolk can only access by climbing a ladder. Robert’s limbs (through, let us suppose, no fault of his own) are very weak, such that if he attempted to climb the ladder, there is a 95% chance he would lose his grip and fall to his death. In this case, there does not seem to be anything at all unfair in Robert’s refusing to contribute, given the risks involved. Unfairness involves failures of appropriate impartiality, rather than failures of impartiality, simpliciter. Though we can sometimes be required to make substantial sacrifices to treat others impartially, the amount we may be required to sacrifice is not typically unlimited. In most cases, it will be permissible to give some weight to our own interests, also. In cases where contributing would be unacceptably costly, then, failing to contribute will not constitute a failure of appropriate impartiality. All this in hand, we are now in a position to set out the conditions under which moral free-riding is objectionably unfair, as follows. Moral Free-Riding Principle: If there is some duty, D, which applies to some collective, C, an individual, I, belonging to C will have a duty of fairness to make appropriate contribution to the discharge of D if and only if (1) there is some effort underway on the part of some of the members of C to see to it that D is discharged, (2) I is either capable or culpably incapable of contributing to this effort, and (3) I’s doing so would not be unacceptably costly.25 Before proceeding, we should offer a final point of clarification over the notion of ‘appropriate contribution’. In some cases, there will be little ambiguity as to what such contributions consist in. In Coastal Town, for example, if the only way citizens of the town can aid in the discharge of the town’s collective duty to monitor the coastline is to attend the monitoring station and gaze out to sea, the appropriate contribution for Philip, one of the townsfolk, will be to attend the monitoring station. Yet, appropriate contributions are not always identical contributions. Suppose, for instance, that the monitoring station is in constant need of maintenance. Jenny gives up three hours every second weekend to conduct that maintenance – repainting the outside, replacing worn-out equipment, and so on. We should hardly regard a state of affairs in which she was exempted from the requirement to attend the monitoring station to help watch for accidents as unfair. On the other hand, not

The climate duties of individuals 95 just any ‘contribution’ will do. If Robert arranges for beers to be delivered to the others in the monitoring station while he suns himself on the sand, for example, he is clearly making a contribution of some kind to their efforts. Yet this clearly does not offset his failure to attend the monitoring station, to any degree. How, then, are we to determine which contributions are appropriate, in the relevant sense? The answer, we think, is reasonably straightforward. For notice that both Jenny and Philip’s contributions are plausibly necessary for the collective to successfully discharge its ongoing duty to monitor the coastline. Someone has to ensure that the monitoring station is serviceable, and many need to actually attend the station to watch for passing shipping. A supply of beer, welcome though it might be, is clearly not necessary for the town to successfully discharge its duty to monitor the coastline. These considerations suggest the following: for an action ɸ to amount to an appropriate contribution to the collective discharge of some duty, D, which applies to some group, G, it must be the case that ɸing is among the actions some proportion of G must perform if it is to successfully discharge D in the circumstances in question.26 Jenny and Philip’s efforts will clearly count as appropriate contributions on this score. Robert’s, however, will not. This clarification in hand, we can proceed to the climate case, specifically. Climate apathy as moral free-riding The thesis we wish to defend is that the majority of citizens of affluent Western liberal democracies who fail to contribute to efforts to promote collective action on climate change are morally free-riding upon those who do make such contributions. In order to demonstrate this, we must first identify some collective duty the discharge of which such persons fail to contribute to. One possibility, here, would be to simply appeal to states’ collective duties to mitigate climate change by reducing their emissions. Yet it is at least unclear whether the appropriate individual-level contributions to the discharge of that duty would involve engaging in efforts to promote collective action on climate change, rather than simply reducing one’s personal carbon footprint. For that reason, we shall instead appeal to the claim that states have collective duties to make appropriate policy changes in response to climate change. The basis for such duties is obvious. If states are going to take adequate steps to discharge their duties to mitigate climate change, they must necessarily make serious changes to a wide range of policies (especially, of course, with respect to the consumption of fossil fuels and support for the fossil fuel industry).27 For this reason, collective duties to mitigate climate change entail collective duties to make such changes. The next-most obvious step, then, involves demonstrating that states have not already discharged their duties in this respect. This is easy to show. Appropriate policy changes in response to climate change would be those which brought about emissions-reductions in line with states’ duties to effect such reductions. The vast majority of states have simply failed to effect such reductions. As we have now pointed out numerous times, credible recent estimates suggest that global temperatures are presently on track to rise by somewhere between 2°C and 4.9°C

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by 2100 (Raftery et al., 2017), risking very many serious harms – a clear and egregious failure on the part of states to discharge their moral duties with respect to climate change. There is, moreover, an enormous effort presently underway to see to it that states do discharge their duties to make appropriate policy changes. The chief actors, in this respect, are activists, who have sought to both pressure and persuade governments to adopt adequate climate policies (Caniglia et al., 2015). The scale of such efforts is impressive. Consider just a couple of examples. In October 2009, 5245 separate acts of protest took place in 181 countries in the run-up to the COP15 conference in Copenhagen (Jervey, 2009). In 2010, there were 467 separate NGOs devoted to promoting climate action in the United States, alone (Brulle, 2014). The BBC (2014) reports that over 600,000 people marched in several cities around the world on September 21, 2014, in the lead-up to the United Nations’ Climate Summit held two days later. The divestment movement is now active in around 80 countries and has been instrumental in persuading many large companies, universities, and even some governments to divest billions of dollars in assets from the fossil fuel industry (Gunningham, 2017). Since 2018, thousands of individuals have carried out acts of civil disobedience as a part of the Extinction Rebellion movement. On March 15, 2019, an estimated 1.6 million students from 125 countries around the world went on strike to demand climate action (BBC, 2019). And so on. There is a multiplicity of actions citizens might perform which could plausibly constitute appropriate contributions to such efforts. Bringing about appropriate policy changes in response to climate change will require political change. Appropriate contributions to efforts to bring policy change about, then, will by and large involve contributing to political processes. Such contributions may be direct, wherein the agent in question exercises whatever political power they personally possess in favour of better climate outcomes (e.g. by voting for climatefriendly policies or candidates). Or they may be indirect, wherein the agent in question seeks to influence others’ political behaviour to promote the prospects for climate action (e.g. by signing petitions, posting on Facebook, donating to climate-friendly political parties, persuading others of the need for action on climate change, attending demonstrations, etc.). Efforts of both kinds are, plausibly, necessary for bringing about policy change. Some combination thereof, then, might plausibly amount to an appropriate contribution. The vast majority of individuals, moreover, are capable of contributing in one or more of these ways (almost all adult citizens have the vote in affluent Western liberal democracies, for example). For some people (e.g. persons with highly extensive caring responsibilities), of course, the costs of making contributions of these kinds may be unacceptable. But, for the majority of citizens, this simply will not be the case. Voting, signing petitions, donating modest amounts of money to political campaigns – all of these are well within the means of most citizens of affluent Western liberal democracies. For this reason, then, the vast majority of citizens will not plausibly be able to claim that contributing is unacceptably costly.

The climate duties of individuals 97 The core argument for individuals’ duties to help promote collective action on climate change, then, turns out to be surprisingly straightforward. Individuals have duties of fairness to contribute to efforts to discharge duties properly applying to the collectives to which they belong, provided that the individual is capable of making some appropriate contribution, and doing so would not be unacceptably costly. We have argued that there is a collective duty to adopt appropriate policy changes in response to climate change, and that there is an enormous effort on the part of activists presently underway to see to it that that duty is discharged. There is a multiplicity of ways in which individuals might contribute to such efforts, most of which are well within most individuals’ capabilities, and some of which, at least, are unlikely to be unacceptably costly for most persons. In virtue of these facts, we claim, the vast majority of citizens of affluent Western liberal democracies have duties to contribute to efforts to help promote collective action on climate change.

Objections There are four lines of objection to our argument worth considering. Demandingness First, one might argue that the moral free-riding principle is false because overly demanding. Each of us belongs to several collectives, each of which is subject to many collective duties. Under the moral free-riding principle, each of us would be required to make some contribution to efforts to discharge each of these duties. That, perhaps, is asking too much. We simply deny that this is the case, however. Notice that, in the real world, individuals already contribute to collective efforts to discharge a great many collective duties. Namely, those which apply to the state and whose discharge is handled by government. States have a wide range of duties – to establish and maintain public order, to see to it that children are educated, to provide an efficient and fair system of criminal justice, and so on. And the vast majority of individuals contribute to the state’s discharge of each of those duties by paying tax. The state acts as a kind of ‘middle-man’ – collecting each person’s contributions and distributing them to those responsible for discharging each of these collective duties. Most of us do not regard requirements to contribute in this way (provided such arrangements are reasonably just) as overly demanding. It is hard to see, then, why we should regard the moral free-riding principle as excessively demanding, either. A more refined version of the objection, taking some inspiration from Jason Brennan (2014, pp. 79–82), might proceed as follows. Suppose that there is some collective, C, which has a collective duty to ϕ, and a collective duty to γ. For C to discharge these duties, members of C must each contribute $250 to the collective effort to ϕ, and $250 to the collective effort to γ. A and B are members of C. They have come to the following arrangement: to save administrative hassle, A will contribute $500 to the collective effort to ϕ, while B will contribute $500 to the

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collective effort to γ. The net effect is the same as if A and B had each contributed $250 to both causes, and A and B have both incurred the same net costs that they would have incurred had they done so. Still, by the moral free-riding principle, A and B fail to discharge their duties of fairness. Each has, themselves, failed to contribute to efforts to discharge some duty properly applying to C. That is deeply counterintuitive. There is clearly nothing objectionable about a division of labour of this kind. It is absurd to hold that A and B are moral free-riders. It is important to look hard at such cases, however. For there is an important sense in which A has contributed to the collective effort to , and B has contributed to the collective effort to . A, in agreeing to take on B’s share of the costs associated with seeing to it that C s makes it the case that B agrees to take on A’s share of the costs associated with seeing to it that C s. Even if A does not personally contribute $250 to the effort to  and B does not personally contribute $250 to the effort to , each brings about a contribution of that magnitude by agreeing to co-operate with the other. To respond to this objection, then, we need only make clear that the idea of ‘making appropriate contribution’ is to be read expansively, so as to include both contributing to the relevant efforts oneself, and seeing to it that such contributions are made. This first line of objection, then, is unsuccessful. Foisting A closely related objection to the moral free-riding principle might take some inspiration from Robert Nozick’s (1974, pp. 90–6) classic objection to HLA Hart’s principle of ‘fair-play’. Nozick points out that if we were required to contribute to just any efforts undertaken by others from which we benefit, that would allow others to ‘foist’ benefits upon us and demand some contribution from us in return. That, however, seems wildly counterintuitive. Suppose Gregory’s neighbours, without anyone asking them to do so, set up a public address system for the street, which plays music he enjoys. We should hardly think Gregory obliged to take on costs to help maintain the system, benefit from it though he might. Perhaps a similar concern attends the moral free-riding principle. Under the principle, others could take steps to see to it that some collective duty was discharged, without our asking them to, and then simply demand that we contribute to their efforts, foisting contributory obligations upon us. In response, it is helpful to reflect first upon conventional free-riding cases. As many have pointed out, Nozick’s argument seems most plausible in cases where the goods ‘foisted’ upon us by others are of only trivial importance.28 Where the goods in question are more significant, however, the objection loses its intuitive force. Suppose, for instance, that Gregory’s neighbours were digging a well to provide safe drinking water to the street that would otherwise have been unavailable. Even if no one has asked them to produce that good, there does not seem to be anything counterintuitive about the idea that others would have duties of fairness to contribute to their efforts. As Cullity (2008, pp. 13–14) puts the matter, Nozick’s objection seems plausible only in cases where the good in question is not such that we, collectively, have reason to produce it. The complaint against

The climate duties of individuals 99 ‘conventional’ free-riders is that they arrogate special preferential advantages to themselves while simultaneously relying upon others not to do so, for the group to do as it ought (i.e. produce some public good that the group, together, has reason to produce). In the case of the public address system, then, there is no sense in which a failure to contribute constitutes a failure of appropriate impartiality because there is no sense in which the group will fail to do as it ought if individuals fail to contribute. This, in turn, yields a straightforward response to the ‘foisting’ objection as applied to the moral free-riding principle. The goods which we have collective duties to produce are, by definition, such that we collectively have reason to produce them. Failures to contribute to efforts to produce such goods, then, constitute failures of appropriate impartiality. If a sufficient number of individuals fail to contribute, the group will fail to do what it, collectively, has reason to do. This, what’s more, seems perfectly correct. The other townsfolk in Coastal Town might be thought to ‘foist’ obligations upon Robert (suppose, for instance, that he is opposed to the town’s making efforts to monitor the coastline out of an indifference to the potential victims of shipping accidents) – but that hardly undermines the idea that he treats the other townsfolk unfairly by failing to contribute. This second line of objection, then, also seems unsuccessful. Wrong kind of explanation Even if the moral free-riding principle is true, perhaps the account is problematic for some other reason. One way in which this might be so is that it gives the wrong kind of explanation for individuals’ duties to promote collective action. The proponent of this objection might argue, plausibly, that our duties to address climate change must fundamentally be grounded in the interests of the victims of climate change. Our account, however, grounds duties to promote collective action in the interests of climate activists in not being treated unfairly. Perhaps, then, our account – like the conventional free-riding approach – delivers the right answer, for the wrong reasons. In response, we would simply point out that the interests of the victims of climate change have a crucial role to play in our account. Individuals do not have duties of fairness to contribute to collective efforts of just any kind. Rather, we have argued that they have duties to contribute to collective efforts to see to it that the duties of the collectives to which they belong are discharged. We have reason to produce the good of policy change on climate change because there is a collective duty to take action on climate change. And, as we have argued at length in chapter one, our collective duties to take action on climate change arise both in virtue of our collective capacity to avert harms that the victims of climate change might otherwise suffer and in virtue of our historical responsibility for the harms such persons will suffer. The interests of the victims of climate change, then, are in fact central to our account. No question of unfairness would arise at all, were it not for our collective duties to address climate change, which themselves arise in virtue of the interests of climate change’s present and future victims.

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‘Normative peculiarity’ A final line of objection would point out that while our account can explain why it is that individuals have duties to contribute to existing efforts to see to it that collective action on climate change is taken, it cannot explain why it is that individuals morally ought to take steps to establish such efforts in the first place. After all, if there was no collective effort underway to see to it that states adopted appropriate climate policies, there could be no duties of fairness for individuals to contribute to such efforts. Perhaps there is something peculiar, and problematic, in that fact. Yet there is simply nothing peculiar at all in this feature of our account. It is often the case that individuals have duties in virtue of some pre-existing object or institution, without having any duty to bring that object or institution into existence. Individuals do not plausibly have duties to bring children into existence, for example. Yet there is nothing peculiar at all in the idea that, once a child exists, its parents (in the vast majority of cases) will have stringent moral duties to love, protect, and nurture it. Similarly, I generally will not have any duty to promise to meet you for lunch tomorrow. Nevertheless, having made such a promise, I will have a duty to turn up at the appointed time. There is simply nothing peculiar, then, in the idea that individuals might have fairness-based duties to contribute to efforts to promote collective action on climate change without having fairnessbased duties to take steps to establish such efforts, in the first place. One might respond, here, that there is an important distinction between having children or making minor promises, and working towards better climate policies. Namely, that future generations would have an important complaint against us were we to fail to establish efforts to see to it that such policies were adopted.29 We think, however, that the apparent plausibility of this response rests upon an equivocation over the agents involved. Ours is a claim about the conditions under which individuals have duties to help promote collective action on climate change. It is certainly plausible that future generations would have some complaint against us, considered collectively, were we to fail to establish such efforts. Yet it is far less clear that they would have such a complaint against any individual qua individual, for failing to do so. After all, at least in the vast majority of cases, most of us qua individuals simply do not have the capacity to establish such organisations (at least, on the scale that might plausibly make a difference with respect to the prospects for collective action on climate change). Even if that were not so, establishing and leading such institutions is enormously demanding. More importantly, however, nothing on our account excludes the possibility that there might be such duties. All we maintain is that if such duties arise, they arise for non-fairness-based reasons. None of these objections, then, succeeds. And, in the absence of some further objection, we conclude that the moral free-riding account is sound.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have argued that the failure of the state to adopt adequate climate policies gives rise to duties on the part of individuals to take steps to help

The climate duties of individuals 101 promote collective action on climate change. By way of a conclusion, we want to briefly discuss three issues related to the arguments we have discussed in this chapter. The first concerns the issue with which we began: whether individuals have duties to reduce their personal carbon footprint. Whether individuals have duties to do so arising out of the impact their personal emissions have upon the climate is, as we have noted, highly contentious. We should like tentatively to suggest an alternative basis for such duties, following similar suggestions from Cripps (2013, ch. 6) and Schwenkenbecher (2014, pp. 178–9). As we have argued, effective collective action on climate change requires political change. Amongst the ways in which agents can help promote political change is to help promote alternative norms. And, as Bicchieri (2017) has forcefully argued, one of the ways in which individuals can contribute to the promotion of new norms is to model behaviour consistent with the new norms in question. Individuals taking steps to reduce their carbon emissions, then, may help promote norms according to which status quo emissions levels are unacceptable. At least in certain circumstances, then, one way in which individuals may be able to discharge their promotional duties is to adopt a less emissions-intensive lifestyle. The considerations to which we have appealed, then, potentially also constitute a basis for individual-level duties to reduce one’s carbon footprint. The second issue concerns whether individuals might have duties to promote collective action on the part of other significant collective agents. We have argued that both sub-national political communities and corporations can and often do have duties to take steps to reduce their emissions to mitigate the threat posed by climate change. Does our account entail that the members of such collectives have duties to promote collective action by these collectives? The matter is most straightforward, we think, with respect to sub-national political communities wherein, by and large, the same considerations apply mutatis mutandis as apply in the case of states. If sub-national political communities are going to take adequate steps to discharge their climate duties, it is going to be essential that they make serious policy changes. As such, they have duties to adopt such changes. Sub-national political communities have also often been the target of activist efforts. In Washington State, for example, several climate activist groups co-operated to promote ballot measure I-732 in 2016, which would have established an ambitious carbon tax in the state (the measure failed to secure majority support).30 Though, as discussed extensively in chapter one, several sub-national political communities have taken impressive steps to help address climate change, very many have not done so. And, just as in the case of states, there are many relatively low-cost actions many ordinary individuals could take to help promote collective action on climate change by contributing to activist efforts. To be clear, not all persons will have such duties. Some such communities, for reasons discussed in chapter one, will not have devolved duties to take steps to address climate change. Our account applies only to members of collectives that do have such duties. In some sub-national political communities, there will not

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be activist efforts presently underway to which individuals might have duties of fairness to contribute. Contributing will be unacceptably costly for some citizens. And so on. Nevertheless, we think that many citizens will, indeed, have duties to help promote collective action by the sub-national political communities to which they belong, grounded in the same kinds of considerations to which we have appealed in this chapter. The case of corporations is more complex.31 As we have argued, many corporations also have collective duties to reduce their emissions to help mitigate the threat posed by climate change. And there are, indeed, activist efforts presently underway on the part of the members of such corporations – shareholders and employees – to promote collective action on climate change by such corporations. On April 11, 2019, for example, an open letter from the group Amazon Employees for Climate Justice was published on the website Medium (AEFCJ, 2019), demanding that the corporation take stronger action on climate change. At the time of writing, the letter has over 8,700 signatories. Shareholder activism on climate change has been widely documented (though, for obvious reasons, we might well be sceptical as to its likely efficacy). Many individuals are capable of contributing to such efforts. Lending one’s signature to an open letter, for example, is well within most persons’ capabilities. More difficult, however, are the costs that such actions might entail. The costs to shareholders, presumably, are likely to be relatively low. Matters may well be very different for employees, however. The Washington Post, for instance, reports that two Amazon employees quoted in an October 2019 story criticising the corporation’s conduct on climate change were threatened with dismissal for violating the company’s communications policy (Greene, 2020). We have no clear intuitions about whether costs of this magnitude are unacceptable. Much, presumably, will depend upon the particular circumstances that obtain for each employee. For an affluent, highly skilled worker with good job mobility and no dependents, the risk of dismissal, perhaps, would not constitute an unacceptable cost. For a struggling single parent with low job mobility and few assets, matters may well be different. The picture that our account entails with respect to duties to promote collective action by corporations, then, is mixed. Some individuals will indeed have such duties. For others, however, the costs are likely to be simply too high. The final issue we wish briefly to address concerns the agents that might plausibly count as moral free-riders with respect to climate change. We have argued that individual agents that fail to contribute to efforts to promote collective action on climate change are moral free-riders. But it may well be that there are other agents to whom parallel considerations might apply. Sub-national political communities who fail to discharge their devolved duties to mitigate climate change might also be thought to be morally free-riding upon the efforts of other sub-national communities to see to it that the broader nation to which they belong discharges its duties to mitigate climate change. Similar arguments might well apply in the case of corporations. Whether this really is the case, however, is a matter for future research.

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Notes 1 This, of course, leaves open the possibility that individuals may have duties to reduce their emissions for other reasons (e.g. fairness-based reasons – c.f. Cullity, 2015; Vanderheiden, 2016). 2 Other relevant contributions would include Cripps (2013, ch. 5), Cullity (2019), Lawford-Smith (2016), and Schwenkenbecher (2014), among many others. 3 Though Collins herself expresses some uncertainty on this point (c.f. Collins, 2020, p. 88). 4 See also Fahlquist (2009), Goodin (1985), and Johnson (2003). 5 It is, of course, also possible that individuals might have duties to help promote collective action on the part of collectives (e.g. corporations) to which they do not belong. The account we shall offer is silent concerning such cases – though we suspect that similar kinds of considerations might well be adduced in defence of duties to contribute to such efforts. 6 We borrow the term from Cripps (2013, ch. 6). 7 See also Cripps (2013, p. 144). 8 Importantly, this is not Cripps’ only argument in defence of such duties. 9 Of course, the case at hand is not exactly like this. Collectives are comprised by the individuals whose duties in relation to the actions of the collective are in question. This, it might be suggested, must make an important difference. We agree. The argument we shall present for such duties, later on, will rely heavily upon the idea that individuals have significant duties to co-members of the collectives to which they belong, partially arising out of the duties of the collectives to which they belong. Our thanks to Elizabeth Cripps for pushing us to address this. 10 The two other chief advocates of such duties have surprisingly little to say on their normative foundations. Maltais (2013) says little on the point, concentrating upon such duties’ implications (c.f. Maltais, 2013, pp. 601–3). Tan (2015, p. 142), taking inspiration from Rawls, holds that such duties are grounded upon individuals’ duties to “assist in the establishment of just arrangements when they do not exist”. Yet it is unclear from Tan’s discussion precisely what ‘assistance’ is supposed to amount to and why it is that individuals have duties to provide it. 11 Fahlquist (2009, p. 121), though a little vague, appears to suggest something similar. This would also be one way of interpreting Tan’s (2015, p. 142) notion that such duties arise out of our natural duties to assist in the establishment of just arrangements. 12 This general point is very familiar to social scientists. See esp. Olson (1965). 13 Arguments of this form have occasionally been presented in defence of a duty to vote – notably in Barry (1978, p. 39) and Parfit (1984, pp. 73–5). Brennan and Lomasky (2000, pp. 67–74) offer a devastating critique of such arguments, to which we are indebted in what follows. 14 See also the general considerations advanced by Jackson (1991). 15 In addition to the responses detailed in this section, Cripps (2013, p. 147) also appeals to the idea that contributions to efforts to promote collective action might nevertheless have substantial expected value, given the “small chance of making a big difference”. We have already responded to this line of argument. Given just how tiny the chance of making a difference is, together with the uncertainty for which a heavy discount rate must be applied, it is unlikely that in any but a very small set of cases individual contributions to efforts to promote collective action will have any substantial expected value. 16 There are, of course, certain very rare exceptions – Greta Thunberg, for instance. 17 Perhaps Cripps might be read, here, as asserting that reasoning in accordance with the considerations to which we have appealed will cause individuals to become less effective climate activists. Individuals who might otherwise have made some difference, convinced of the futility of their attempts, may sit idle in consequence. That may be right.

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However it fails to undermine our thesis. That the wide dissemination of evidence for some proposition (P) might have unfortunate consequences hardly shows P to be false. Goods are public, in the sense invoked here, where they exhibit jointness in supply and jointness in consumption (Cullity, 2008, p. 9). A good exhibits jointness in supply if supplying the good to one member of a group means supplying it to all members of that group. A good exhibits jointness in consumption where one group member’s consumption of that good does not undermine others’ consumption of that good. For careful defences of this claim, see Cullity (1995, 2008). Ex hypothesi, David is not consuming any resources (i.e. seats on the bus) that paying customers might otherwise have consumed. We are deeply indebted here, too, to Cullity (2008, pp. 9–12). This condition entails that the collective effort to discharge the duty must not have already been successful. If such duties have already been discharged, individuals logically cannot have duties to contribute to efforts to discharge such duties. Individuals who fail to contribute to efforts that then go on to succeed, however, may have other duties in virtue of their failure to contribute (e.g. compensatory duties to contributors). See e.g. Stocker (1971) and King (2019). Many philosophers have developed more sophisticated forms of ought-implies-can to accommodate these cases (e.g. Sinnott-Armstrong, 1984). We shall set aside, for present purposes, the important question as to the necessary and sufficient conditions for an agent to ‘belong’ to some collective or other. Our only goal here is to defend the idea that citizens of affluent Western liberal democracies have duties to contribute to efforts to promote collective action by the states to which they belong, and it is uncontroversial that such citizens belong to the state in the sense required here – namely, they are members of the state as a collective agent. The specification ‘in the circumstances’ is crucial here to deal with cases of ‘overflow’. Suppose all the townsfolk tried to discharge their duties by helping to maintain the station, rather than actually monitoring the coastline. This, in our view, would fail to constitute a contribution of the relevant kind for the simple reason that the relevant circumstances are such that it is no longer necessary for a subset of the town to perform that task – Jenny’s efforts are already sufficient. So the townsfolk must contribute in other ways – ideally, monitoring the coastline – if they are to discharge their duties of fairness. See Tan (2015, pp. 142–6). See especially Klosko (1987, pp. 246–53). Our thanks to Christian Barry for pushing us on this point. See Roberts (2016). For another defence of individuals’ duties to promote collective action on the part of corporations, see Collins (2020, pp. 90–7).

Bibliography AEFCJ, Amazon Employees for Climate Justice. 2019. Open Letter to Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Board of Directors [Online]. Medium: Medium. Available: https://medium. com/@amazonemployeesclimatejustice/public-letter-to-jeff-bezos-and-the-amazonboard-of-directors-82a8405f5e38 [Accessed 8/4/2020]. Armstrong, C. 2016. Fairness, Free-Riding, and Rainforest Protection. Political Theory, 44, 106–30. Arneson, R. J. 1982. The Principle of Fairness and Free-Rider Problems. Ethics, 92, 616–33. Barry, B. 1978. Comment. In: Benn, S. (ed.) Political Participation, Canberra, ACT, Australian National University Press. BBC, British Broadcasting Corporation. 2014. Climate Change Summit: Global Rallies Demand Action. BBC News, 21 September.

The climate duties of individuals 105 BBC, British Broadcasting Corporation. 2019. School Strike for Climate: Protests Staged Around the World [Online]. Available: www.bbc.com/news/world-48392551 [Accessed 24/9/2019]. Bicchieri, C. 2017. Norms in the Wild: How to Diagnose, Measure, and Change Social Norms, Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press. Brennan, G. & Lomasky, L. E. 1993. Democracy and Decision: The Pure Theory of Electoral Preference, Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press. Brennan, G. & Lomasky, L. E. 2000. Is There a Duty to Vote? Social Philosophy and Policy, 17, 62–86. Brennan, J. 2014. Medicine Worse Than the Disease? Against Compulsory Voting. In: Brennan, J. & Hill, L. (eds.) Compulsory Voting: For and Against, Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press. Broome, J. 2019. Against Denialism. The Monist, 102, 110–29. Brulle, R. J. 2014. Environmentalisms in the United States. In: Doyle, T. & MacGregor, S. (eds.) Global Perspectives on Environmentalism, New York, USA, Praeger. Caniglia, B. S., Brulle, R. J. & Szasz, A. 2015. Civil Society, Social Movements, and Climate Change. In: Dunlap, R. E. & Brulle, R. J. (eds.) Climate Change and Society: Sociological Perspectives, Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press. Carnes, N. 2018. The Cash Ceiling: Why Only the Rich Run for Office: And What We Can Do About It, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press. Collins, S. 2020. Corporations’ Duties in a Changing Climate. In: Moss, J. & Umbers, L. (eds.) Climate Justice and Non-State Actors: Corporations, Regions, Cities, Individuals, Abingdon, UK, Routledge. Cripps, E. 2013. Climate Change and the Moral Agent: Individual Duties in an Interdependent World, Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press. Cullity, G. 1995. Moral Free-Riding. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 24, 3–34. Cullity, G. 2008. Public Goods and Fairness. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 86, 1–21. Cullity, G. 2015. Acts, Omissions, Emissions. In: Moss, J. (ed.) Climate Change and Justice, Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press. Cullity, G. 2019. Climate Harms. The Monist, 102, 22–41. Davenport, C. & Samuelsohn, D. 2010. Dems Pull Plug on Climate Bill. Politico, 22 July. Fahlquist, J. N. 2009. Moral Responsibility for Environmental Problems: Individual or Institutional? Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 22, 109–24. Gelman, A., Silver, N. & Edlin, A. 2012. What Is the Probability Your Vote Will Make a Difference? Economic Inquiry, 50, 321–6. Goodin, R. E. 1985. Protecting the Vulnerable: A Re-Analysis of Our Social Responsibilities, Chicago, IL, The University of Chicago Press. Greene, J. 2020. Amazon Threatens to Fire Critics Who Are Outspoken on Its Environmental Policies. The Washington Post, 2 January. Gunningham, N. 2017. Review Essay: Divestment, Nonstate Governance, and Climate Change. Law & Policy, 39, 309–24. Hart, H. L. A. 1955. Are There Any Natural Rights? Philosophical Review, 64, 175–91. Jackson, F. 1991. Decision-Theoretic Consequentialism and the Nearest and Dearest Objection. Ethics, 101, 461–82. Jervey, B. 2009. The Global Climate Movement Comes of Age [Online]. Good. Available: www.good.is/articles/the-global-climate-movement-comes-of-age [Accessed 24/5/2018]. Johnson, B. L. 2003. Ethical Obligations in a Tragedy of the Commons. Environmental Values, 12, 271–87.

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King, A. 2019. The Culpable Inability Problem for Synchronic and Diachronic ‘Ought Implies Can’. Journal of Moral Philosophy, 16, 50–62. Klosko, G. 1987. Presumptive Benefit, Fairness, and Political Obligation. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 16, 241–59. Lawford-Smith, H. 2016. Difference-Making and Individuals’ Climate-Related Obligations. In: Hayward, C. & Roser, D. (eds.) Climate Justice in a Non-Ideal World, Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press. List, C. & Pettit P. 2011. Group Agency: The Possibility, Design, and Status of Corporate Agents, Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press. Maltais, A. 2013. Radically Non-Ideal Climate Politics and the Obligation to at Least Vote Green. Environmental Values, 22, 589–608. Martin, R., Muûls, M. & Wagner, U. J. 2016. The Impact of the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme on Regulated Firms: What Is the Evidence After Ten Years? Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, 10, 129–48. Nozick, R. 1974. Anarchy, State, and Utopia, New York, Basic Books. Olson, M. 1965. The Logic of Collective Action, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. Parfit, D. 1984. Reasons and Persons, Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press. Raftery, A. E., Zimmer, A., Frierson, D. M. W., Startz, R. & Liu, P. 2017. Less Than 2 °C Warming by 2100 Unlikely. Nature Climate Change, 7. Rawls, J. 1971. A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, MA, Belknap. Roberts, D. 2016. The Left vs. a Carbon Tax [Online]. Vox: Vox. Available: www.vox. com/2016/10/18/13012394/i-732-carbon-tax-washington [Accessed 8/4/2020]. Schwenkenbecher, A. 2014. Is There an Obligation to Reduce One’s Individual Carbon Footprint? Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 14, 168–88. Sinnott-Armstrong, W. 1984. ‘Ought’ Conversationally Implies ‘Can’. The Philosophical Review, 93, 249–61. Sinnott-Armstrong, W. 2005. It’s Not My Fault: Global Warming and Individual Moral Obligations. Advances in the Economics of Environmental Research, 5, 293–315. Stern, N. 2009. A Blueprint for a Safer Planet, London, UK, The Bodley Head. Stocker, M. 1971. ‘Ought’ and ‘Can’. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 49, 303–16. Tan, K.-C. 2015. Individual Duties of Climate Justice Under Non-Ideal Conditions. In: Moss, J. (ed.) Climate Change and Justice, Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press. Vanderheiden, S. 2016. Climate Change and Free Riding. Journal of Moral Philosophy, 13, 1–27.

Conclusion

The arguments advanced in the previous chapters raise a number of wider issues. We wish to examine four of these. The first two take the form of objections. The first contends that our arguments fail because it is infeasible to expect the agents with which we have been concerned to discharge the duties we have attributed to them. The second, contrary to the arguments we set out in chapters one and two, contends that unilateralism is undesirable with respect to climate change. Having addressed these objections, we consider two further issues. First, we consider the kinds of institutional arrangements that might be appropriate for corporations and sub-national political communities to implement for the discharge of their devolved duties. And, second, we consider what the deontic implications of our arguments in chapters one and two might be for individuals (beyond their promotional duties discussed in chapter three).

Motivational concerns The most obvious challenge to the arguments raised in the preceding chapters points out that many of the actors to whom our arguments apply are unlikely to be sufficiently motivated to conform to the duties we have defended, here. For instance, whilst impressive steps have been taken by some sub-national political communities to address climate change, others are apparently indifferent. For example, in June 2019, the state government of Queensland gave final approval to the Adani Carmichael coal mine – set to be one of the largest ever constructed (ABC, 2019). Reporting suggests that the project will receive around 4.4 billion AUD in government subsidies, around $900 million of which is set to come in the form of a seven-year ‘royalty deferral’ from the Queensland state government (IEEFA, 2019). On the other hand, though some corporations have taken nontrivial steps to help address climate change, many remain utterly intransigent on the issue. As discussed in chapter two, the ‘carbon majors’ have a long history of lobbying against climate action, for instance. By and large, these efforts continue unabated. One recent analysis found, for example, that in the three years following the Paris agreement, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, BP, and Total collectively invested over 1 billion USD in a range of efforts designed to frustrate action on climate change (InfluenceMap, 2019). And though the scale of recent

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demonstrations has been impressive, there is little indication that anywhere close to a majority of individuals are likely to take to the streets to demand action on climate change. In light of all this, it is tempting to conclude that our project is fatally misguided. The most natural way of explicating this concern holds, simply, that expecting the majority of such agents to discharge the climate duties we have attributed to them is hopelessly infeasible. As such, the conclusions for which we have argued must necessarily be false. This line of objection appeals to the following principle; Ought Implies Feasible (OF): an agent, A, ought to realise some state of affairs, X, only if is feasible for A to realise X.1 OF is attractive. Arguments purporting to establish duties for agents to do the infeasible often seem problematic just in virtue of that fact. Political societies, for instance, do not have duties to ensure that no citizen ever suffers any adverse consequences from extreme weather events.2 Doing so would require resources no political society possesses. Any argument purporting to establish such a duty would clearly be problematic, as such. Now, it seems obviously within the capacities of the sub-national political communities, corporations, and individuals to which our arguments are intended to apply to act so as to discharge the duties we have attributed to them. Yet, perhaps, the fact that many of them are very unlikely to be motivated to so act renders expecting them to do so infeasible. If this is the case, then the conclusions we have defended in earlier chapters will be false by OF. This line of objection clearly poses a significant challenge for our arguments. Nevertheless, we think that it can be resisted. One possible response, of course, would be to simply reject OF, as some have done (see e.g. Gheaus, 2013). Yet it is by no means clear whether decisive arguments have been offered against OF – or, at least, against the more plausible interpretations of OF (c.f. Southwood, 2016). The matter, as such, is far from settled. Instead, then, we argue that the requirements we have defended, here, do not require agents to do the infeasible. For it to be feasible for an agent to realise some state of affairs, it must be the case that realising that state of affairs is something that agent can actually achieve. What an agent can achieve, in turn, is a matter of the constraints to which that agent is subject. The charge that some agent, A’s, realising some state of affairs is infeasible, then, amounts to the claim that A faces some constraint in virtue of which A cannot reasonably be expected to achieve the realisation of that state of affairs (Gilabert and Lawford-Smith, 2012; LawfordSmith, 2013). Jumping 40 feet in the air unassisted is infeasible for any human being, given the constraints imposed by the laws of physics, for instance. The key question, then, is whether individuals’ motivations constitute a constraint of the relevant kind, such that the fact that some agent, A, is unlikely to be motivated to act so as to realise some state of affairs shows that the realisation of that state of affairs is infeasible for A. There are powerful reasons to answer in the

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negative. For notice that, were we to accept that this is the case, by OF, individuals would be released from obligations they surely do have, simply in virtue of their own defective motivations.3 Estlund (2011, pp. 219–20), for instance, asks us to imagine an agent Bill, who is simply too selfish to be motivated to refrain from dumping their household garbage on the street outside. That fact, surely, cannot establish that Bill has no duty to refrain from doing so. Selfishness of that kind is, itself, morally criticisable.4 Likewise, then, we simply should not accept that the fact that many of the agents whose duties we have been concerned with in the foregoing chapters are very unlikely to be motivated to act goes any distance to showing that the arguments we have offered in defence of those duties are problematic on feasibility grounds. Taking the requisite steps may be costly, difficult, and controversial. These are challenging motivational obstacles – and surely help explain why many such agents have failed (and are likely to continue to fail) to take adequate steps to address climate change. That, however, simply fails to show that they do not have duties to take such steps, regardless. There is also, however, a second possible interpretation of the motivational objection worth considering. Criticising certain demanding approaches to distributive justice, Philip Pettit (2012, p. 126) writes that such theories “often seem like moral fantasies: manuals for how God ought to have ordained the order of things . . . rather than real-world manifestos for what the state should do in regulating the affairs of its citizens”. Pettit’s objection, here, is not that such theories are false – or even that they demand the infeasible. The complaint, rather, seems to be that such theories are problematically unrealistic – insensitive to elementary facts of social and political life. Such theories (it might be argued) are pointless. Moral and political philosophy, after all, is supposed to be actionguiding – i.e. to help agents determine what they ought to do. Yet, perhaps, there are some theories whose demands are at such odds with the typical motivations of the agents to whom they are supposed to apply that they cannot reasonably be expected to play this role. Even if, in principle, such theories could be actionguiding, we can be very confident that they will not be. Perhaps this criticism applies to our project. It may well be true that many sub-national political communities and corporations have duties to aggressively reduce their carbon footprints and that individuals have duties to engage in political activism. But – for the reasons we’ve outlined – it is simply not realistic to expect the majority of such actors to be motivated to discharge those duties. Perhaps, then, the arguments we have offered concerning such agents’ duties represent wasted effort. We deny that this criticism is appropriately levelled at any part of our project. First, it is far too pessimistic with respect to the prospects of (at least many of) the agents we have discussed discharging their climate duties. As discussed in chapter one, for example, many sub-national political communities have taken non-trivial steps in response to climate change, and there are good reasons to believe that more may do so as the costs of taking such steps fall and ‘normative’ pressure to do so intensifies. As noted earlier, many corporations remain intransigent on the

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issue of climate change. Yet many others are proving increasingly progressive. Recent reports suggest that 23% of Fortune 500 companies have now established ‘ambitious climate targets’ of various kinds, which represents a four-fold increase over the last four years, for example (Domonoske, 2020).5 And, as discussed in chapter three, the scale of climate activism has grown dramatically in recent years. More generally, agents’ motivations can evolve over time. There is significant evidence that individuals are generally motivated to conform to the social norms they take to apply to members of the group(s) to which they belong. Yet social norms can, and often do, change (Bicchieri, 2017). Many groups are presently engaged in efforts to promote norms according to which status quo emission rates are unacceptable. This is among the principal goals of the divestment movement, for example (Gunningham, 2017). Evidence suggests that at least some of these campaigns are growing increasingly successful (Blondeel et al., 2019). We should not be overly sanguine as to the prospects for positive change, of course. But nor does it seem to us that abject pessimism is justified, either. Second, moral and political philosophy has important roles to play beyond offering action-guidance of the sort envisioned by (would-be) proponents of this objection. Most obviously, moral and political philosophy has a crucial role to play in guiding practices of moral criticism. Even if many corporations, for instance, are unlikely to discharge the duties we have attributed to them, it is important to understand the character of the moral failure this will amount to, and therefore to be clear as to the basis for the moral criticism to which they will be liable. Moreover, theories whose direct function is to provide action-guidance to some class of agents can also be informative for the actions of other agents. Sub-national political communities and corporations, for instance, are often the target of activist efforts with respect to climate change. In January 2020, for example, over 340 employees of Amazon issued co-ordinated public statements (in defiance of company policy) demanding that the corporation take stronger action on climate change and criticising its willingness to work with fossil fuel companies (Paul, 2020). Arguments establishing that steps of the sort demanded by such activists are not merely morally desirable but morally required lend support to such actions (insofar as they suggest that such actors are, indeed, appropriate targets for such efforts). Similar considerations apply with respect to activism directed towards governments. For these reasons, then, we reject both interpretations of this criticism. Motivational considerations of the sort discussed in this section fail to establish that the conclusions for which we have argued are infeasible. Nor, we have argued, do such considerations establish that the arguments we have developed are pointless.

Unilateralism Another family of objections to our discussion of sub-national political communities and corporations, in particular, appeals to the potential problems associated with unilateral action on climate change. We have already addressed two concerns of this sort. In chapter one, we addressed concerns surrounding carbon leakage

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with respect to unilateral action on climate change by sub-national political communities. In chapters one and two, we addressed concerns arising out of the potential unfairness associated with taking unilateral steps to address climate change. Nevertheless, there are two more general concerns on a similar theme that merit discussion, here. Procedural objections It is common to distinguish between procedural- and outcome-based considerations with respect to decision-making processes – and to point out that the implications of each might easily come apart. Ideally fair and inclusive democratic decision-procedures might yield decisions which produce disastrous outcomes. Conversely, exclusive and unjust autocratic decision-procedures might (at least in principle) produce high-quality outcomes. Climate justice scholars have largely confined their attention to outcome-based considerations.6 Nevertheless, an important potential line of objection to our claim that corporations and subnational political communities have duties to take unilateral steps to help address climate change appeals to procedural considerations. Many philosophers in recent years have endorsed variants of the following principle (see e.g. Goodin, 2007); All Affected Interests (AAI): For some decision, D, all those whose interests stand to be affected by D have the right to exercise some degree of power over the process according to which D is to be made. AAI is intuitively appealing. Where others make unilateral decisions which affect our interests, we often take ourselves to have justified complaint against them – even where their doing so leaves us better off than we would otherwise have been. It has often been pointed out that AAI has important implications for how political power ought to be distributed, globally (see e.g. Valentini, 2014). Decisions taken by or within one country can, and often do, have significant implications for the interests of citizens of other countries. According to some proponents of AAI, this shows that – at least with respect to sufficiently important policy areas with global implications – unilateral decision-making is procedurally unjust. Decisions with respect to such matters, ideally at least, ought to be made according to processes wherein all those who stand to be affected have some degree of power, regardless of the country/jurisdiction in which they reside. Now, climate change is clearly a global problem that is liable to affect the interests of very many persons in some way or other. Accordingly, then, one might appeal to AAI in defence of the idea that the only procedurally just approach to the climate crisis is one in which climate policies are made according to a process in which all states are represented. Unilateral action on climate change might have desirable effects. Nevertheless, insofar as unilateral action will impact the interests of persons beyond those belonging to the collectives taking such steps, unilateral climate action will be procedurally unjust.

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We have two responses to this line of objection.7 First, there are powerful reasons to be sceptical of AAI.8 For one thing, the principle overgenerates. Agents clearly do not have claims to exercise influence over any and all decisions that affect their interests. Nozick (1974, p. 269), for instance, asks us to imagine a scenario in which four men each propose marriage to the same woman. Her decision will profoundly affect the interests of each. Yet it is clearly not the case that any has the right to exercise power over her decision. The decision as to which (willing) partner to marry is hers, and hers alone.9 AAI seems also to allow an objectionable form of bootstrapping, wherein agents who wish to exercise power over a decision to be taken by some other agent can acquire the right to do so by deliberately exposing their interests to that decision. Suppose Harold wishes to exercise power over Cynthia’s decision as to where she will eat lunch. AAI entails that if Harold makes a bet with Edward as to where she will eat – thus exposing Harold’s interests to her decision – Harold will gain some legitimate claim to exercise some degree of influence over her decision. That seems obviously absurd. From the mere fact that unilateral climate action will affect the interests of other agents, then, it does not follow that unilateral climate action is procedurally objectionable.10 Second, even if we should accept AAI (or some similar principle), it does not decisively tell against unilateral action on climate change. For decisions not to take unilateral action on climate change (at least on the part of sufficiently impactful actors) also significantly affect others’ interests. The ongoing release of large quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is liable to have adverse effects upon the interests of many persons, worldwide. And it is hardly as though the decisions in virtue of which these emissions will continue to be produced have been authorised by processes in which all those who stand to be affected exercised some degree of power. For those who accept AAI and similar principles, then, failing to take steps to respond to climate change should also be regarded as procedurally unjust. As Thomas Christiano (2015, p. 29) puts the point: The imposition of pollution by one country on another without consultation or negotiation is a kind of illegitimate exercise of power of one over the other. Even if we ought to accept AAI, then, it does not decisively favour unilateral action or inaction. Both will be problematic to some degree. Yet, in the absence of some sufficiently inclusive, adequate global decision-making process with respect to climate change, sub-national political communities and corporations must necessarily choose one or the other. Importantly, however, there are at least two good reasons to think that unilateral action on climate change will be superior to inaction. First, it is clearly less morally problematic to unilaterally advance others’ interests than to set them back. You might plausibly have some complaint against me if I perform some action which leaves you $500 better off than you would otherwise have been without consulting you, beforehand. Yet, surely, you would have a much stronger complaint against me had I unilaterally performed some

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action that had left you $500 worse off.11 Unilateral action on climate change will often be likely to have adverse effects upon the interests of at least some subset of the agents whose interests will be affected. Yet, at least where such policies are sensibly designed, the benefits of such policies over the long run in terms of the social costs such policies might reasonably avert are likely to outstrip these costs (particularly where emissions-reduction policies are coupled with policies to compensate those whose interests will be adversely affected, where appropriate). Second, and more generally, if both inaction and unilateral action are procedurally problematic, the decision as to which course of action is preferable, all things considered, must presumably be (partially) made by appeal to the other non-procedural considerations at stake. The fact that sub-national political communities and corporations have duties to affect emissions-reductions must surely be a very weighty consideration in this respect. For these reasons, then, we think that procedural concerns with respect to unilateral action on climate change can largely be set aside. Diminishing the prospects of national-level action on climate change As we have repeatedly made clear throughout the book, we think that the optimal response to the climate crisis would likely involve the adoption of appropriate national-level climate policies – ideally as part of an adequate, enforceable global agreement. One potential concern with respect to unilateral action on climate change by non-state actors like sub-national political communities and corporations, then, is that it might potentially make it less likely that such policies will be adopted at the national level. In political contexts, social scientists sometimes refer to this as the ‘pressure-valve’ effect (Shipan and Volden, 2006, p. 827). Policies adopted by some government sometimes ‘relieve the pressure’ on other governments to adopt similar policies, thereby rendering it less likely that they will do so. Perhaps such effects will occur in the climate case: action on climate change by some sub-national political communities or corporations might relieve the pressure on national-level governments to take such steps. If so, this would constitute a powerful objection to unilateral climate action. We have several points to make in response. First, as discussed in chapter one, several studies have found evidence of policy diffusion with respect to climate action – i.e. evidence that action at the state and municipal level on climate change makes it more likely that similar policies will be enacted by other state and municipal governments (Bromley-Trujillo et al., 2016; Chandler, 2009; Krause, 2010). Even if unilateral action by sub-national political communities and corporations does render action on climate change at the national level less likely, then, this cost is likely to be at least partially offset by the possibility that such actions might increase the probability of other such actors taking similar steps. Several figures, moreover, have pointed out that ‘polycentric’ approaches to climate governance have a range of important benefits – e.g. better allowing for experimentation and innovation (see e.g. Ostrom, 2010, pp. 555–6). And we should also note that there is (obviously) no guarantee that national-level climate policies will be anywhere

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close to adequate. Most national governments’ records on climate change, after all, are rather poor (Victor et al., 2017). Second, and more importantly, there seems to be little evidence that unilateral climate action by such actors is having, or is likely to have, a stymying effect upon national-level climate policy. To the best of our knowledge, no study has found any evidence of this phenomenon. On the other hand, at least one study has found evidence that efforts by sub-national political communities have played important roles in pushing national-level governments to adopt or strengthen climate policies.12 Qualitative evidence presented by Fisher (2013) suggests that the adoption of climate protection measures by municipal governments in the United States played a crucial role in the federal government’s decision to establish the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Programme in 2007, which provides funds to cities, counties, and states to help improve energy efficiency.13 We must be cautious, here. Scholars often complain that the mechanisms of policy diffusion have received significantly more attention than those of nondiffusion. And it has often been noted that such research, more generally, is significantly more difficult in the national case (there is only a single national government, which hampers researchers’ ability to perform comparative analyses). We are not in a position to definitively rule out the possibility that unilateral action on climate change might plausibly have such an effect. At least at present, however, the evidential case for this objection seems limited at best. Finally, we should note that even if future empirical investigation validates this concern, it fails to undermine the arguments we have advanced in previous chapters. We have sought only to defend the claim that corporations and sub-national political communities have pro tanto duties to take unilateral steps to help address climate change. The fact that their doing so might undermine the prospects for national-level action on climate change is an important consideration that might weigh against their taking steps to discharge such duties, all things considered. But there seems to be little reason to think that such considerations show that such duties do not arise, in the first place. *** Having addressed these two objections, we now turn to consideration of two wider issues raised by the arguments we have offered, thus far. The first of these concerns the institutions sub-national political communities and corporations ought to adopt to see to it that their devolved duties are discharged. The second concerns the deontic implications for individuals of the arguments we have advanced, thus far.

Institution-level implications In chapters one and two, we argued that many sub-national political communities and corporations have devolved duties to take unilateral steps to help mitigate climate change, where the states to which they belong fail to implement adequate climate policies. In chapter two, we discussed in some detail the various sorts

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of steps corporations, in particular, might take to discharge these duties. Yet significant questions remain concerning how such actors ought to go about doing so and which kinds of considerations ought to factor in to their decision-making. Naturally, we cannot hope to give anything like a complete inventory of these, here. We should like, however, to briefly gesture towards some that are likely to be relevant in many cases. First, we think that any plausible approach on the part of either sub-national political communities or corporations must begin with an assessment (a) of the persons presently impacted by their existing climate-relevant policies and activities, (b) of the persons likely to be impacted by climate-relevant policies and actions they might take, and (c) the moral duties owed to each of these groups. Clearly, we should wish to ensure not merely that sub-national political communities and corporations discharge their devolved duties to help mitigate climate change, but also that in doing so they do not violate duties owed to others whom their decisions might impact. As we have already gestured towards in the previous chapter, coal companies (for example) plausibly have duties to afford assistance to workers lacking in transferable skills to find alternative forms of employment in the event of their retiring a coal mine, for example. Sub-national political communities will certainly have duties to afford transitional assistance to many of their citizens impacted by their climate policies. And so on. It is essential, then, that the climate policies of such actors be suitably sensitive to the moral duties owed to all persons whom their actions might affect – not only their climate duties. In many cases, ensuring this will be very complex. The carbon majors, for instance, have operations all over the world. Their decisions can have enormously significant global consequences. Still, it is essential that a good-faith attempt of this sort be made, nevertheless. Second, we think that – in many cases – it will be relevant for sub-national political communities and corporations to explore opportunities for co-ordination with one another. This will be particularly relevant for sub-national political communities. Obviously, other things being equal, we should wish policies for the discharge of such actors’ climate duties to be as effective as possible. And there are a variety of reasons why a co-ordinated approach is likely to be superior. The risk of carbon leakage, for instance, would be lower were several sub-national political communities to act together to impose a common set of climate regulations, for instance. It also seems likely that such communities would be more effective ‘norm entrepreneurs’ were they to act in concert. This, presumably, is part of the motivation behind the formation of transnational networks of such communities like the C40 group. Third, it will be important for such agents to ensure that there is sufficient buyin with respect to their climate policies from relevant stakeholders. Governments, for instance, will not long be able to sustain efforts for the discharge of their devolved duties to help mitigate climate change without sufficient popular support from the electorate. Similar considerations apply to corporations with respect to employees, shareholders, and customers. There are many possible strategies such actors might adopt along these lines. One which particularly interests us,

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however, is the possibility of deliberative democracy. Bruce Ackerman and James Fishkin (2004, ch. 3), for instance, recount that in the 1990s, a number of Texas utility companies were required by the state to undertake public consultation as to the sources of energy they ought to invest in. The utility companies opted to conduct this consultation via ‘Deliberative Polling’ – a process wherein relatively small groups of randomly selected citizens are assembled to discuss, debate, and deliberate over possible policy alternatives, typically with some assistance from experts. Eight separate deliberative polls were conducted. And, on average, “the percentage of participants who were willing to pay more each month for renewable energy rose from 52 to 84 percent at the end of the poll” (Ackerman and Fishkin, 2004, p. 55). Impressive results of this kind seem, to us, to indicate that this strategy is at the very least worth exploring. Finally, we think it essential for such actors, once they have determined that they wish to discharge their devolved duties, to take steps to help ensure that they (a) establish adequate policies for the discharge of those duties and (b) continue to discharge such duties, over time. It is a commonplace that individuals often fail to act on the basis of reasons they recognise themselves to have. Addicted smokers, for instance, often recognise that they have reason to quit but find themselves unable to do so. In such cases, individuals often reach for precommitment devices. Pre-commitment devices are mechanisms by which agents take steps at some time, t1, to limit or condition their options at some later time, t2, with the object of raising the probability of their performing some action they recognise themselves at t1 as having reason to perform at t2.14 Consider the story of Ulysses and the Sirens from the Odyssey. Ulysses knows that if he hears the Sirens’ song, he will develop an insane desire to jump into the sea, where he will drown. He therefore orders his crew to bind him to the mast – thereby ensuring that he acts on the reasons he recognises himself to have not to jump into the sea. Now, it is clear that similar problems can attend collectives such as political communities and corporations. Sub-national political communities that recognise their duties to take steps to help mitigate climate change may nevertheless find it difficult to bring to an end policies at odds with climate change mitigation (fossil fuel subsidies, support for the extraction and export of fossil fuels, and so on). Similarly, they may baulk at the costs that fully adequate climate policies might entail and thereby impose less costly, inadequate policies instead. Even if such obstacles can be overcome and adequate climate policies are imposed, a change in government might see such policies wound back.15 Corporations, of course, face similar challenges. We have argued, for instance, that the only way that the carbon majors will be able to discharge their climate duties is, ultimately, to phase out their operations. Yet even if the leadership of such corporations came to genuinely accept that this is the case, they would presumably find it enormously difficult to bring themselves to implement any sustained effort to do so, given the enormous costs that this would impose upon the business and shareholders in terms of foregone earnings.16 Our suggestion, then, is that governments and corporations that recognise their duties to help mitigate climate change might avail themselves of similar

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pre-commitment devices to those employed by individuals, to help guard against motivational challenges of these kinds. This is hardly a new idea. Samuel Freeman (1990), for instance, has argued that political communities can ‘precommit’ to upholding individual rights in the face of pressure from the electorate by giving such rights constitutional status and establishing mechanisms of judicial review. It is unclear whether constitutional mechanisms of this sort would be appropriate in the climate case. Even scholars strongly supportive of judicial review tend to think that such devices are appropriate only for ensuring the integrity of the democratic process and that individuals’ fundamental rights are adequately protected.17 Yet there are many other devices that both sub-national political communities and corporations might reach for to help ensure compliance with their climate duties, over time. We shall discuss just one realistic possibility here – oversight mechanisms. Both corporations and sub-national political communities might establish independent oversight mechanisms, whose role would be to monitor and publicise their performance with respect to the discharge of their climate duties. Governments, for example, might establish independent climate commissions whose roles might include (a) tracking their progress in meeting appropriate climate goals, (b) providing expert advice to government on climate policy, and (c) issuing regular public reports concerning such governments’ performance. Such efforts are not without precedent. In 2008, for instance, the government of the United Kingdom established the Committee on Climate Change. In 2011, the Australian federal government established the Climate Commission. There is no reason why sub-national political communities might not take similar steps. Corporations, of course, lack the authority to establish statutory bodies of this sort. Yet they might easily take analogous steps – e.g. by providing funds sufficient to establish and run an independent non-governmental body whose role would be to oversee their efforts to discharge their climate duties. Establishing such bodies, of course, is no guarantee of success. The UK’s record on climate change, though much better than many comparable countries, is far from perfect. Australia’s record, particularly once the country’s coal exports are taken into account, is shameful. Indeed, the Australian Climate Commission was abolished in 2013 by the newly elected Liberal government as part of a wider effort to wind back the previous Labor government’s efforts to address climate change. And it is not hard to imagine that any body established by corporations would be unlikely to provide a genuinely independent assessment of such corporations’ performance (though much, here, would depend upon the ongoing character of the relationship between the oversight body and the corporation in question). Nevertheless, we think that oversight bodies of this kind might help ensure an ongoing commitment to climate action on the part of sub-national political communities and corporations in at least two ways. First, and most obviously, such commissions might provide expert advice and recommendations to corporations and governments concerning the policies necessary for the discharge of their climate duties, and their likely effects. There is, of course, no guarantee that governments and corporations will take such advice and recommendations seriously.

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But having such recommendations available obviously improves the prospects of adequate steps on climate change being taken, insofar as, at the very least, it helps to ensure that leaders are aware of the various possible steps they might take. And, once such bodies take steps to help address climate change, such advice may also help leaders ensure their ongoing effectiveness. Second, and perhaps even more importantly, in publicly reporting on the performance of such collectives, oversight bodies of this sort can help lend legitimacy to climate activists’ efforts to keep public pressure on such actors to adequately discharge their climate duties. As we say, oversight bodies of this kind are no guarantee of success. But, for motivated corporations and sub-national political communities, they offer one ready way in which they can take steps, now, to improve the prospects of their making an effort to discharge their climate duties and ensuring that those efforts persist over time.

Individual-level implications The final issue we wish to take up concerns the deontic implications for individuals of the arguments we have advanced in the previous chapters. We have already partially addressed the duties of individuals in chapter three, arguing that the failure of the state to take adequate steps in response to climate change gives rise to duties to help promote collective action. But there are other issues raised by the arguments advanced in chapters one and two. For despite the fact that we have argued that the devolved duties of sub-national political communities and corporations are collective duties, in the sense that they apply to sub-national political communities and corporations qua collectives, rather than the individual agents of which they are comprised qua individuals, collective duties do have important deontic implications for individuals.18 It is important to consider, then, what the individual-level deontic implications of sub-national political communities and corporations’ devolved duties might be. These, we shall argue, are of two kinds: participatory duties and duties of persuasion.19 Participatory duties Generally, where a collective has some duty, its discharging that duty will require a scheme of collective action.20 Such schemes – whether formally or informally – assign roles to members of the collective in question that such individuals (or, at least, a sufficient number of such individuals) must perform if the collective is to discharge its duty. In Ten on the Shore, for example, for the company to discharge its collective duty to rescue all three victims, each member of the company would have been required to (among other things) help row the larger boat. Moreover, individuals can clearly have duties to play their assigned roles in such schemes. In Ten on the Shore, the individual members of the service team clearly act wrongly in virtue of their refusal to help the company discharge its collective duty of rescue, for instance. Participatory duties, then, are simply duties on the part of individuals to play their assigned roles in schemes of collective action necessary for

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the discharge of some duty which applies to a collective of which they are a member (note that these are distinct from promotional duties, which are duties to help promote the prospects for collective action). Individuals might have participatory duties for many different reasons. In some cases, for example, playing our assigned role in a scheme of collective action will be the most efficient means available to us of promoting the good. In other cases, individuals will have fairness-based duties similar to those discussed in the previous chapter to do so. Many other bases might be found. For this reason, then, we do not intend to give a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of such duties. For our purposes, it will be enough to offer a set of sufficient conditions for the existence of such duties and to argue that these conditions are satisfied with respect to the individual members of sub-national political communities and corporations of the kind under discussion. Our account begins with the idea that legitimate authority is an important source of participatory duties. Let us suppose, for instance, that the United States has a collective duty to establish and maintain a public healthcare system. Suppose that the government decides to take steps to see to it that this duty is discharged. In order to raise the funds necessary, the government issues a legal directive ordering every American citizen earning over $50,000 per year to surrender 0.5% of their income to the state annually to support the system. It would seem to the vast majority of us that those to whom this directive applies have duties to comply (other things being equal). There might be many bases for such a duty. But surely among them would be the simple fact that the federal government of the United States constitutes a legitimate authority. That is to say, individuals have duties to comply with governmental directives (typically, laws) simply in virtue of the fact that they are governmental directives.21 And, insofar as governments often direct citizens to play their assigned roles in schemes of collective action necessary for the discharge of collective duties, legitimate authority is an important basis for participatory duties. The idea we wish to defend, then, is that corporations and sub-national political communities constitute legitimate authorities over their employees and citizens. On that basis, such individuals may have moral duties to participate in schemes of collective action necessary for the discharge of such bodies’ climate duties. To set out the argument for this claim, we will need to get more precise. Consider the following principle: Legitimate Authority: If there is some duty, D, which applies to some collective, C, and some scheme of collective action, S, has been devised sufficient for the discharge of D, an individual, I, will have a moral duty to play their assigned role, R in S if (1) I is a member of C, (2) an agent, L, with legitimate authority over C has issued a valid directive requiring I to R, and (3) it is within L’s sphere of legitimate authority to direct I to R.22 Three aspects of this principle call for clarification. Most importantly, the notion of legitimate authority, itself. Following Raz (1986, pp. 35–7), we define the

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notion of legitimate authority in terms of content-independent reasons. These are reasons whose normative force does not depend upon the merits of the action they are supposed to constitute a reason to perform. Promissory reasons, for example, are content-independent. We have reason to do what we promise, independent of the merits of the actions we have promised to perform. The fact that we have promised to ɸ is, in itself, a reason for us to ɸ. For Amy to have authority over Ben, then, is for Amy’s directives with respect to some domain to constitute content-independent reasons for Ben. Suppose Amy is a sergeant and Ben is a soldier in her squadron, for example. Amy’s directing Ben to stand to attention constitutes a reason for Ben to stand to attention, independent of the merits of his doing so. Thus defined, of course, not all authorities are legitimate. Agents can occupy positions of authority without proper justification. Suppose Charlie orders Denise to ɸ and credibly threatens that, if she fails to ɸ, he will severely and wrongfully harm her. Charlie’s directive constitutes a content-independent reason for Denise to ɸ (Denise ought to ɸ not in virtue of the merits of ɸing, but rather in order to avert the threat to her interests). Charlie, thus, is in a position of authority over Denise. Yet, clearly, this state of affairs is unjustified. Relations of authority are legitimate, then, where there is some appropriate moral justification for one agent’s having authority over another. There are many possible justifications for legitimate authority (on which we shall say more, momentarily). But, where such a justification holds, individuals who are subject to legitimate authority will not merely have content-independent reason to conform to such authoritative directives, but content-independent moral duties to do so. It is for this reason, presumably, that most of us have the intuition that we have moral duties to obey the law, for example. Governments (or, at least, democratic governments) are legitimate authorities whose position as such admits of appropriate justification. For that reason, citizens have duties to conform to valid governmental directives. The second point of clarification concerns the rationale for condition (1). Legitimate authority is a relation which arises in virtue of special considerations (e.g. consent, democratic authorisation) that obtain between certain agents and not others. Sergeant Amy, for example, will have legitimate authority over Ben in virtue of his belonging to her squadron. If Delia is not a member of Amy’s squadron, however, Amy will not have any legitimate authority over her. More generally, then, if an agent enjoys legitimate authority over some collective, C, its directives will give rise to content-independent moral duties only for the members of C (over whom their authority is justified).23 If we accept that the head of Bank of America enjoys legitimate authority over their employees, their directives will constitute content-independent moral duties for the employees of Bank of America, but not for the employees of Chevron. The directives of a legitimate authority have normative force only for members of the groups over which the agent in question is such an authority. Condition (1) simply embodies this fact. Finally, we also ought to briefly clarify the rationale for condition (3). Legitimate authority is, typically, domain-specific. Many would hold that democratically

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elected governments, for instance, have legitimate authority to determine tax policy but not to regulate harmless religious practices. Condition (3) simply embodies this fact. Individuals will have authority-based reasons to conform to legitimate authorities’ directives only where they direct individuals to perform actions that are within the authority in question’s appropriate sphere of legitimate authority. Now, we think that since (in the vast majority of cases) the leaders of the subnational political communities and corporations upon whom we have concentrated enjoy legitimate authority over their citizens and employees, where the leaders of sub-national political communities and corporations implement schemes of collective action for the discharge of their climate duties, their citizens and employees will have participatory duties to play their assigned roles in those schemes. To establish this, we must show (1) that the leaders of sub-national political communities and corporations of the kind we are discussing do indeed constitute legitimate authorities, and (2) that their directing their citizens and employees to aid in discharging their climate duties falls within the scope of their legitimate authority. Matters are most straightforward with respect to corporations. Authority in corporations is exercised by managers, the legitimacy of which derives from consent. It is virtually uncontroversial that consent is a basis for legitimate authority.24 In voluntarily agreeing to place ourselves under the authority of another agent with respect to some domain, we thereby make it the case that that agent’s directives constitute content-independent moral reasons for us with respect to that domain. If Andy agrees to do what Brenda says while they are out yachting together, for example, Andy’s consenting to Brenda’s authority gives her legitimate authority over him. Now, on the most influential view of the nature of commercial firms, firms partly consist in relations of authority between managers and workers, whose purpose is to minimise transaction costs to more efficiently and profitably coordinate production (see esp. Coase, 1937). These authority relations, in turn, are established by contracts setting out the terms of the relationship between employers and employees. In voluntarily entering into employment contracts, then, employees give their express consent to place themselves under the authority of the managers of the corporations by which they are employed. Thus, corporations – and the managers thereof – typically enjoy legitimate authority over their employees.25 No doubt, we could imagine corporations devising emissions-reduction schemes that would be beyond the limits of their legitimate authority over their employees (e.g. attempting to regulate their employees’ household energy use). Yet there is no reason to think that this will generally be the case. The domain of employers’ legitimate authority over employees is largely defined by the terms of the employment contract in virtue of which such relations obtain, in the first place.26 Employment contracts typically assign very broad discretionary powers to managers over workers to allow firms to re-organise their labour force in response to changes in the market, without the need to continually re-negotiate the terms of their workers’ employment (Grossman and Hart, 1986). It is unlikely, then, that the steps required for the implementation of any reasonable scheme of collective

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action sufficient for the discharge of any given corporations’ climate duties, then, will exceed the legitimate authority afforded them under the employment contract. Thus, at least with respect to plausible, reasonable schemes corporations might adopt, employees will have participatory duties to play their assigned roles in schemes of collective action enacted by the corporations in which they are employed for the discharge of their climate duties. Sub-national political communities raise a more complex set of issues. The basis of the state’s legitimate authority (if any) is one of the oldest debates in political philosophy and remains heavily contested.27 Sub-national political communities are not states, of course. But they possess many of the same features that have rendered them difficult to offer a fully satisfactory account of the basis of the state’s legitimate authority. Sub-national political communities typically claim the right to subject their citizens to coercion for various purposes, for example (something corporations, for instance, do not do). As such, a complete treatment of the legitimate authority of sub-national political communities is well beyond our scope, here. The most we can hope to do is to briefly sketch the kind of approach we find plausible. We stress, however, that one need not be persuaded by this approach. Provided readers are willing to grant that the governments of sub-national political communities constitute legitimate political authorities for some reason, that will be sufficient for our purposes. These caveats notwithstanding, in our view, the legitimate authority of subnational political communities of the kind we have focused upon most plausibly rests upon their democratic character.28 There are many competing accounts of the nature of democratic authority.29 On the approach we favour, the authority of democratic governments arises out of their egalitarian nature. The general idea is that where collective decisions must be taken, in the absence of unanimous agreement, citizens have claims that such decisions be made according to processes which afford all citizens – to the greatest extent possible – equal opportunities to exercise influence over the outcome. Compliance with democratic decisions is necessary if citizens are to be afforded such opportunities on an equal basis. After all, were citizens free to disobey democratic decisions, it could hardly be said that citizens enjoyed influence over collective decision-making at all – let alone equal opportunities to exercise influence over such decisions (Kolodny, 2014b, pp. 314–17; Shapiro, 2004, pp. 435–9). The legitimate authority of democratic decision-procedures, then, arises out of citizens’ claims to be afforded equal opportunities to influence political outcomes and their duties not to undermine others’ such opportunities by failing to comply. And to the extent that sub-national political communities are, themselves, governed democratically, decisions made by the governments of such communities will constitute content-independent moral obligations for the citizens of such communities.30 Now, the domain of each sub-national political community’s legitimate authority will (largely) be a matter of the constitutional arrangements which obtain in the country in which they are located. Thus, some sub-national political communities will have a highly expansive sphere of legitimate authority. Others will be more limited. For this reason, the argument set out in chapter one was restricted

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only to sub-national political communities with the constitutional authority necessary to implement the necessary policies. Effectively by stipulation, then, the governments of the sub-national political communities we have focused upon will, indeed, have the legitimate authority necessary to direct citizens to play their roles in co-operative schemes for the discharge of their climate duties. As such, the citizens of such communities will, indeed, have participatory duties to do so. Duties of persuasion Now, we think that where individuals belong to collectives that take steps to implement a scheme of collective action for the discharge of their climate duties, individuals’ principal duties will be their participatory duties. Yet these duties, themselves, may give rise to important secondary duties: duties of persuasion. These, simply, are duties to attempt to persuade others to conform to their own duties. Duties of persuasion, in general, are a familiar part of commonsense morality. Suppose, for instance, that Jane will cause serious, unjustified harm to Matthew unless Cathryn persuades her against doing so. Suppose that Cathryn could easily do so at no great cost. In this case, it certainly seems intuitive that Cathryn would, indeed, have a duty to do so. Now, in the contexts at hand, we think that individuals may have duties of persuasion with respect to other individuals’ participatory duties. Such duties may arise for two principal reasons. First, duties to persuade others to conform to their participatory duties may be constitutive of at least some individuals’ own participatory duties. In many schemes of collective action, certain agents will be assigned roles which involve ensuring that other members of the collective carry out the roles assigned to them. Middle-level managers in corporations, for instance, are often tasked with ensuring that workers discharge the responsibilities assigned to them. Where workers fall short, managers have the role of remedying this – in effect, of persuading them to discharge the responsibilities assigned to them by the corporation. In such cases, seeing to it that workers discharge their own participatory duties will, itself, form part of the participatory duties of such workers’ managers. Alternatively, such duties may arise in virtue of general, consequentialist considerations. Each of us, plausibly, has a general duty to promote valuable states of affairs – at least where we can do so without unacceptable moral cost. Sometimes, persuasion will be an efficient means of doing so. Considerations of this kind, presumably, are what explain Cathryn’s duty to persuade Jane against visiting wrongful harm upon Matthew. Such considerations will also sometimes give rise to duties of persuasion with respect to others’ participatory duties. This, first, is because individuals discharging their moral duties is plausibly valuable, in itself. If persuasion is an effective means of seeing to it that individuals discharge such duties, it will by definition be an effective means of promoting valuable states of affairs. Second, and more importantly, sub-national political communities and corporations discharging their climate duties would also, clearly, be valuable from a moral point of view. Yet their doing so depends crucially upon the individuals

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of which they are comprised performing their assigned roles in schemes sufficient for the discharge of such duties. Taking steps to persuade others to do so, then, helps ensure the success of such schemes and thereby (again) helps promote valuable states of affairs. *** It may be helpful at this point to take stock of the position we have arrived at. In our view, individuals will have different sorts of climate duties with respect to the collectives to which they belong, depending on the conduct of the collective in question. Where the collective has failed to implement a scheme of collective action sufficient for the discharge of its collective climate duties, individuals (provided the conditions set out in chapter three are satisfied) will have duties to help promote collective action by that collective, grounded in considerations of fairness. Where the collective has adopted such a scheme, individuals will have authority-based participatory duties to perform the roles assigned to them under that scheme. And they may also have secondary duties to persuade other members of the collective to which they belong to discharge their own participatory duties. We should note two things before concluding. First, since all individuals belong to several different collectives, they will often have a combination of these duties. If the city to which one belongs has adopted an adequate scheme for the discharge of its climate duties but the nation in which the city is located has not, one will have authority-based participatory duties (and possibly duties of persuasion) with respect to the city, and fairness-based promotional duties with respect to the nation (presupposing that there is some activist effort underway targeting the national government). Second, individuals may also have a combination of such duties with respect to the same collective. This will be the case where the collectives to which they belong adopt inadequate schemes for the discharge of their climate duties. In that case, individuals may have both participatory and promotional duties with respect to that collective. Suppose the city in which we reside adopts an emissions-reduction policy likely to be effective in reducing emissions to only 50% of the extent required by their devolved duties. Suppose, also, that there is an activist effort underway attempting to pressure the city’s government to adopt more ambitious targets. In this case, citizens will have both authority-based participatory duties to conform to whatever (reasonable) directives are issued by the city in pursuit of their existing emissions-reduction policies and fairnessbased participatory duties to help promote the prospects for more aggressive collective action on climate change.

Final thoughts Between November 2019 and February 2020, bushfires ravaged the East coast of Australia. The fires, partially brought on by prolonged drought and record temperatures associated with climate change, are estimated to have burnt at least 6.8 million hectares of land in New South Wales and Victoria alone, much of it in

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valuable national parks (RFS, 2020; Noble, 2020). Preliminary estimates suggest that a staggering 1 billion animals (excluding invertebrates) were killed (ABC, 2020), and around 30 people. The Insurance Council of Australia estimates insured losses arising from the fires at around 1.9 billion AUD (Sheehan, 2020). The cities of Sydney and Canberra were blanketed in carcinogenic bushfire smoke for weeks on end. Hospital admissions for respiratory problems spiked dramatically over the period, with longer-term health effects, as yet, unknown (Clun, 2020). A total of 2439 homes were destroyed by fire in New South Wales, with nearly 400 further homes destroyed in Victoria (RFS, 2020; Ilanbey, 2020). And experts suggest that highly intense fire events of this kind are likely to increase in frequency and severity as global warming intensifies (see e.g. Sharples et al., 2016).31 As the Australian bushfires make clear, the threat posed by climate change is growing. It is increasingly important, then, that nations take steps to aggressively reduce their emissions. Yet current trends are largely unpromising. Global emissions rates have continued to rise in recent years. In 2019, for instance, global energy-related CO2 emissions totalled 33.3 gigatonnes, up around 16% from 28.7 gigatonnes a decade earlier (IEA, 2020). Some progress is being made. Relative to 2018, for instance, energy-related CO2 emissions declined in developed nations in 2019 and remained constant overall. Nevertheless, if we are to avoid even the rather conservative target of containing global warming to 1.5°C, major reductions in global emissions are going to be needed. The IPCC (2018, ch. 2), for instance, suggests that doing so will require reducing global greenhouse emissions by around 45% (compared to 2010 levels) by 2030. The failure of the states of which the global community is comprised to establish a fair, enforceable global agreement that responds adequately to the threat posed by climate change amounts to a colossal moral failure. The central argument of this book has been that this has serious, under-appreciated deontic implications for the principal agents of which states are comprised – sub-national political communities, corporations, and individuals. We have tried to set out what at least some of these might be. As the planet continues to warm, it is to be hoped that states will start, finally, to take the threat posed by climate change sufficiently seriously. Until that time, however, we think it imperative that others step into the breach.

Notes 1 See Southwood (2016, p. 9). 2 Though, of course, political societies might have a number of closely related duties – e.g. to compensate (some) victims of extreme weather events for (some of) their losses. 3 There may be certain pathological motivational deficits (e.g. those arising out of addiction) that it may be appropriate to treat as constraints for the purposes of feasibility. We shall not explore this issue in depth. Clearly, the unwillingness of major corporations, for instance, to affect emissions-reduction is not caused by any pathology on the part of those corporations or those in charge of them. 4 For this reason, the notion of feasibility is often defined in terms of what agents could achieve were they motivated to try (see e.g. Brennan and Southwood, 2007, pp. 9–10). 5 Though, of course, we should treat such commitments with caution. 6 Though for an important exception, see Brandstedt and Brülde (2019).

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7 We should also note that any such concern ought to be at least partially mitigated by the fact that unilateral action, as we have defined it, simply means taking steps to address climate change in the absence of adequate national-level climate policies. This is perfectly compatible with sub-national political communities and corporations acting in concert with one another. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, for example, is an agreement between several North-Eastern US states to regulate power plant emissions. 8 For some other objections, see Miklosi (2012) and Saunders (2011). 9 See also Kolodny (2014a, pp. 222–3). 10 Though, of course, proponents of this objection might appeal to principles other than AAI. 11 This, plausibly, is because at least part of our intuitive attraction to AAI lies in the fact that giving individuals some degree of influence over decisions in which their interests are at stake will, in general, be an efficient means of protecting and promoting such individuals’ interests. See Goodin (2007, p. 50). 12 It is also worth noting that Shipan and Volden (2006) have found that pressure-valve effects are more likely to occur where the legislatures in question is less professionalised, and diffusion effects are more likely to occur where legislatures are more professionalised. National governments, of course, tend to be highly professionalised. 13 Though funding for the programme was not appropriated until 2009. 14 The canonical discussion of such devices is Elster (1979). 15 Both Australia and the United States have seen this occur at the national level in recent years, for instance. 16 Something very like this posture is arguably on display, at present. Several of the carbon majors have outwardly acknowledged the need for action on climate change – and yet have failed to take serious steps to scale back those aspects of their operations that are harmful to the climate. 17 Arguments of this sort are also highly controversial for other reasons. See esp. Waldron (1999, ch. 12). 18 For an incisive general discussion of these issues, see Collins (2019). 19 Of course, individuals may also have other climate duties. Our intention is just to lay out the individual-level duties that follow from the particular considerations we have discussed in the preceding chapters. 20 In some cases, collective action will not be necessary to see to it that collective duties are discharged. If a company has a duty to transfer $5000 to some individual, and the CEO has sole charge of the company’s finances, the CEO (we can suppose) is the only person who need to act to see to it that the duty is discharged. We shall set such cases aside, here. Clearly, the duties of sub-national political communities and corporations will require significant collective efforts to discharge. 21 Clearly, such duties are not unlimited. Some laws, for instance, fall beyond the scope of the state’s legitimate authority. Individuals clearly would have no duty to conform to laws prohibiting consensual sexual relations between partners of the same sex, for instance – such laws being an obvious breach of individuals’ fundamental liberties. 22 We do not mean to suggest that individuals only have authority-based duties to conform to such directives where their doing so is pursuant to some scheme of collective action for the discharge of some duty or other. It is for this reason that Legitimate Authority is framed as a mere sufficient condition for such duties. 23 Setting aside the possibility that the same agent might enjoy legitimate authority over other agents, also. 24 The most famous exponent of the idea is John Locke (1690). Consent theory, of course, has many critics. Yet these do not usually deny that consent is a basis for legitimate authority, generally. Rather, they typically argue that the vast majority of citizens do not plausibly give consent to the state, specifically (see esp. Simmons, 1979, chs. 3–4). 25 Though there is significant debate over how extensive that authority ought to be (see esp. Anderson, 2017).

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26 There will be other limits, of course. No corporation has the legitimate authority to direct their employees to perform actions that are seriously wrongful, for example. Yet such considerations are, again, highly unlikely to be at issue, here. 27 One of the earliest contributions is Plato’s remarkably prescient Crito (Plato, 2008). Some have argued that there is no satisfactory basis for the state’s legitimate authority. See esp. Simmons (1979). 28 The legitimate authority of democratic procedures has recently been called into question by Brennan (2011, 2016). For a response to Brennan’s criticisms, see Umbers (2019). 29 Compare, for example, Beitz (1989), Christiano (2008), Cohen (1989), Estlund (2008), Kolodny (2014b), and Pettit (2012). 30 For a full defence of this kind of approach, see Kolodny (2014a, 2014b). 31 Strikingly, a major report into climate change commissioned by the Australian Federal Government in 2008 found that longer and more intense fire seasons as a result of climate change “should be directly observable by 2020” (Garnaut, 2008, ch. 5.3.3).

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Index

act-consequentialism 83–8 all affected interests principle 111–12 American Petroleum Institute 60, 62; joint wrongful action of 66 arms-dealer’s defence 64–7 Australia 62, 117, 124–5 beneficiary-based duties 90, 92 Broome, John 37, 80 capacity-based duties: and carbon leakage 41–2; of carbon majors 56–67; of individuals 80, 84; national level 26–9; and slack-taking 39–42; of states 5–6; sub-national level 36–7 capacity to pay 93–4 carbon capture and storage 71–2 carbon leakage 42–5, 115 carbon lock-in 61 carbon majors: contributions and capacities of 56–67; duties in practice of 67–74; duties of 54–79; institutional implications for 114–18; motivational concerns of 107–10 carbon tax 86 causal contribution 58–60; of carbon majors 61–7, 73 causal responsibility, relationship to moral responsibility 43–4; see also causal contribution climate activism: contributing to efforts of 96–7; and free-riding 88–90; motivational obstacles to 107–10; of shareholders 102 climate justice, literature on 4–10 coal industry 65, 72, 73 co-benefits 30, 36 collective action, duties to promote 81–92, 95, 101–2, 118–19, 123–4

collective agency 20, 22–3, 83 collective duties 20, 82–3, 92–5, 102, 118 Collins, Stephanie 46n9, 46n11, 80–1, 126n18 compensation: of corporations 64, 67–70, 74–5; sub-national level 39, 42 complicity 57–60; of carbon majors 60–2, 66, 69–70 contribution-based duties: of carbon majors 56–67; and slack-taking 39–42; of states 24–6; sub-national level 32–3 corporations 7–8, 54–79, 102, 114–18; see also carbon majors Cripps, Elizabeth 81–3, 86–7, 103n9 Cullity, Garrett 88, 92, 98, 104n21 deliberative polling 115–16 demandingness: of carbon majors’ duties 74–5; of individual duties 97–8 democracy: authority of 122–3; deliberative 115–16; duties of citizens of 81, 84, 95–7 devolution principle 20–2, 56, 80–1 difference-making 23; of corporations 65–7; of individuals 84–8; of sub-national communities 32–3 disgorgement 68–9 divestment, carbon majors’ duties of 69–70; goals of 110 European Union 4, 85 expected value 80–1, 85, 103n15 fairness 37–9, 89–94, 99–100 feasibility 108–9 foisting 98–9 fossil fuels, production and consumption of 65, 67, 73; supply of 61, 64–5 free-riding 88–90

144

Index

Global Climate Coalition 62, 66 Goodin, Robert 20, 58–60 group agency see collective agency

Obama, Barack 31, 85 offsetting 45, 71–5, 76n14 oversight mechanisms 117–18

Heede, Richard 8, 54 historical responsibility 46n16; states’ 51; see also contribution-based duties

Paris climate agreement 1 partial compliance, and contribution-based duties 37–9 participatory duties 118–23 persuasion, duties of 85, 123–4 policy diffusion 34–6, 113–14 polluter-pays principle see contributionbased duties

impacts of climate change 2–3 impartiality 92–4, 99 individuals: climate actions of 8; duties of 80–100; emissions attributable to 8 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2, 25, 61, 62 joint wrongdoing 33, 40–1, 48n47, 65–6 legitimate authority 20, 119–23 Lepora, Chiara 58–60 lobbying, of carbon majors 62–3, 73 moral free-riding 90–7; climate apathy as 95–7; objections to 97–100; principle of 92–5; see also free-riding motivation 107–10 national-level action on climate change 3–4, 31 national-level duties 23–31 norms 35–6, 101

Shue, Henry 57 Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter 80 slack-taking duties, conditions of 41–3 social cost of carbon 26, 29, 33–4 Stern, Nicholas 2, 30, 90 Texas, emissions of 32, 33 transformation, of carbon majors 71–2 Trump, Donald 1, 7, 31 unacceptable cost 26–7 uncertainty 28 unilateral action on climate change 35–7, 110–14 United States of America 1, 5, 7, 18–19, 26, 31