Climate Change and Getting Out of the Way
[Cross-posted on the parent blog]
Imagine for a moment that you are Abdul, a Bangladeshi rice farmer. You
have farmed rice your entire adult life, and you plan to continue into
the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, Bangladesh is an extremely
low-lying nation; almost all of the country's land lies below 10m above
sea level, and your farm is no exception. As global temperatures rise
and progressively less ice covers the Earth's surface, the sea level
will predictably rise slowly over the next century.
Fortunately, Bangladesh already has a system of dykes,
originally built to withstand storm surges in harsh weather, which can
be bolstered to hold back the rising ocean. Your land will likely avoid
becoming permanently submerged. But as sea water mixes with the water
table, your rice crops could end up unable to survive the increase in
salinity.
Now let's say that we were able to satisfactorily
trace the rising sea levels to global climate change, and were able to
trace the changes in salinity directly to the rise in sea level, so
that we knew that the impacts
on your land were the result of climate change. Would there be any
injustice here, and if so, what kind of injustice would it be?
On
one hand, it does seem like you could reasonably object to any damage
directly caused by the increase in sality. Clearly we would have a
problem with a group of people directly dumping a bunch of salt on your
land and killing your rice crop. It seems that the problem would
persist if, using underground piping, they pumped salty water into the
water table under your land, even if they never left their own
property. I don't see why the injustice would disappear if, using a
giant oceanic turbine, the individuals propelled ocean water towards
the Bangladeshi dike system, resulting in the salinization of your
land. If this would be a problem, then it seems odd to say that there
would be no wrong done if, using a giant furnace, the individuals
melted away Arctic ice until the sea level rose, sending ocean water
into your water table. Finally, then, it seems odd to think that it
would be acceptable if the group of individuals released a gas into the
atmosphere which would predictably result in ice melting and sea level
rise, which would in turn result in ocean water entering your water
table. Accordingly, it seems that if we could establish a causal link
between the emitters' actions and the salinization of your land, then
you would be entitled to compensation.
An important question, though, is what exactly you should be compensated for. For example, what if there were a salt-resistant
variety of rice that you could use instead of the kind you had been
using? Or what if you could sell your land to prawn farmers, for whom
the saltier conditions were ideal? Would these alternatives lessen the
injustice done to you? As Nozick writes in Anarchy, State, and Utopia, "Does the compensation to X for Y's actions take into account X's best response to these actions, or not? If X responded by rearranging his other activities and assets to limit his losses (or if he made prior provision to limit them), should this benefit Y by lessening the compensation he must pay? Alternatively, if X makes no attempt to rearrange his activities to cope with what Y has done, must Y compensate X for the full damage X
suffers?" Nozick doesn't provide an answer, but it's clear that this is
a question that will need to be dealt with in any conversation like
this one.
Do we have an obligation to "get out of the way" of
damage? Do boundary crossers have an obligation to compensate us for
the inconvenience of getting out of the way, and any residual damage?
Or do boundary crossers have an obligation to compensate us for the
damage that would have occurred if we didn't get out of the way,
regardless of what we do? This is no trivial matter. Let's say that you
anticipated the sea level rise, and purchased salt-resistant rice in
order to be ready. If the salt-resistant rice worked as advertised, and
you could continue to farm your rice, would that be the end of the
discussion? Could the emitters simply say that you adapted, and
therefore they were freed from responsibility? It seems clear to me
that you could still reasonably demand compensation for the
inconvenience of having to switch crop varieties. And if the
genetically modified rice were more expensive, or more difficult to
farm, I think you could fairly demand compensation for those things as
well.
But would that be the end of it? I think that on some
level, this is reasonable. I could see how someone might take the
alternative view, and say that you were entitled to compensation for
the damage that would have occurred in the absence of adaptive
behavior, and that your adaptation should benefit you, and not the
boundary crosser. However, I think that perhaps we might placate the
holder of this view by conceding that perhaps you are not obligated
to adapt, and if you don't, you might be entitled to compensation for
the damage that is done, even if you could have prevented it. This too
will be objectionable, but it at least offers a starting point for
debate.
There is another reason we might want to say that you
should only be entitled to compensation for the inconvenience of
adapting and for any residual damage: such a policy would be more efficient.
Efficiency is certainly not an overriding concern in matters of
justice, but that doesn't mean it is unimportant. By compensating for
the inconvenience of adaptation and any residual damage, the boundary
crosser would be paying for all of the actual external costs produced
by her actions. Making her pay for damages which never actualize would
seem to mean that we would be, in a sense, "overcharging." For boundary
crossings that we don't think are worthy of prohibition, we would
effectively rule out an entire class of actually net beneficial actions
which, if adaptive measures were not taken, would not be net beneficial.
In
the preceding discussion, however, we have implied that by switching to
salt-resistant rice, you avoided more costs than you incurred during
the switch. In other words, we have assumed that in the absence of
compensation, it was profitable for you to switch. Given the fact that
in our story you switched, it seems pretty clear that you believed
it would be profitable to do so. But what if you were wrong? What if
the salt-resistant rice was not a worthwhile investment? Could you
reasonably demand compensation for the additional
costs produced by your bad decision? On one hand, it seems like you
should be held responsible, since it was your choice to try the
salt-resistant rice. But on the other hand, it seems like the only
reason you bought the salt-resistant rice in the first place was
because you knew your land was going to be, essentially, "invaded" by
salt "sent" by the emitters. I'm not completely sure what to say about
this.
So where do we stand? It seems like we can legitimately
say that you have reason to object to the salinization of your land,
and that if you could demonstrate a causal link, you could reasonably
demand compensation from those responsible. But from there, things get
a little less clear. I think I'm comfortable with the idea that you are
entitled to compensation for the costs of adaptation, and for any
residual damage. I'm less comfortable with the idea that someone should
be responsible for "adaptation" costs that actually increased the total
costs of the incident (we might make the case that such behavior isn't
even properly considered "adaptive"). So I guess I've arrived somewhat
short of a firm conclusion. But I hope this will be a good starting
point for future discussion.