Private Law Theory

ABSTRACT
This paper addresses the question of whether agents have incurred duties of corrective justice to bear the costs of climate change in virtue of having produced historical emissions, or emissions produced when it was still reasonable to be ignorant of the causes and harmful consequences of climate change. It argues that it is likely that agents have incurred duties of corrective justice in virtue of having produced some of their historical emissions, given that it is likely that they would have produced these emissions had they known, when they produced them, that the emissions would contribute to harmful climate change.

Paul Bowman, Duties of Corrective Justice and Historical Emissions in Studies on Climate Ethics and Future Generations Volume 2 (Paul Bowman and Katharina Berndt eds) (Rasmussen Institute for Futures Studies Working Papers 2020:1-11) (Stockholm 2020).

First posted 2020-07-09 05:46:46