What Does It Mean to Advocate a Market Solution to Climate Change?

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re: What Does It Mean to Advocate a Market Solution to Climate Change?

Donny with an A — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 05:36:14 GMT

Thanks for the thoughtful responses. I'd point out that generally, libertarian conceptions of justice deal with rights possessed by individuals. So in asking whether climate change represents an injustice, I'm not really focusing on any standard of efficiency, as the public goods approach suggests (though I will deal with the idea of efficiency and overall social wellbeing at the end of my thesis).

Remember, this post was the introduction to my thesis, not the thesis itself. In the next section, I'm going to discuss what it means to have a right, and what kinds of rights are infringed by climate change. Included will be discussions of the property rights of currently existing individuals, the concept of a statistical right to a certain level of risk, the idea of a right to inheritance (I'll argue this is not a right), the notion that we have a right to an opportunity to try to integrate ourselves into the culture of our upbringing (I'm not sure exactly how to handle this), the question of whether future people can have rights in light of the Non-Identity Problem (I'll argue that they can't), and the question of whether generations (as abstract entities) can have a right to inherit an unspoiled Earth (I'll argue that they can't).

So before getting too far ahead of yourselves (and me) by telling me the answers to these questions, perhaps you might find it worthwhile to check out the "Climate Change" label on the parent blog (there's more material there than on this blog):

libertarian-left.blogspot.com

The "Appropriation and Environmentalism" and "The Non-Identity Problem" labels also might be useful.

re: What Does It Mean to Advocate a Market Solution to Climate Change?

Solomon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 02:22:39 GMT

Atmosphere is a very abundant commodity, so it is "owned" communally by everyone who happens to live on the planet. That being said, it is naturally subject to the free-rider problem i.e. it is perfectly acceptable (however unfortunate the effects) for anyone with a smoke-spewing factory or SUV to abuse it. Therefore, if the polar ice caps should melt and flood all coastal residences, such a happening should be treated just like any other natural disaster: no one's fault, just the result of the risk people took when they decided to reside there.

So basically, even if all the fearmongering is true it really doesn't matter.

re: What Does It Mean to Advocate a Market Solution to Climate Change?

Grant — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:03:22 GMT

Danny,

The first step towards dealing with any problem is defining and recognizing it. In order to know how to "solve" climate change, we must quantify climate change. Given the complexity and vast scope of the problem, this is very difficult to do.

The only tool I know of which can significantly aid in this is a prediction futures market. Until such markets become legal and more widely used, I don't think we'll be any closer to arriving at a problem, let alone a solution.

I think you understate the dangers of government solutions. Its certainly true that global warming would be the single greatest public goods problem the world has faced, and so government seems to be the obvious solution. Whats rarely mentioned is that effective and just government policies are also public goods. Coordinating politics to produce effective and just policies regarding global warming is likely just as hard as dealing with global warming itself. I don't mean to say that government solutions will always fail to cure global warming, but just that they might have other, worse, effects, and much of their success would likely be based off of pre-existing cultural norms which are arising in response to global warming fears.

Of course, academics like to ponder thought experiments, so it might be useful to say "how would libertarianism deal with problem X, if it existed?". I certainly don't know. As I see it, the problem is basically how to get powerful, industrialized peoples to respect the rights of smaller, necessarily less-industrialized peoples. The incentives to respect those rights just don't seem to exist, regardless of the political philosophy in question.

Since I am skeptical that the above will happen regardless of the political philosophy adopted, let me point out a few ways in which libertarianism might deal with the effects of global warming irrespective of justice: 1) Open immigration for peoples negatively effected by global warming; 2) More private resources available in general, compared to government taxation and planning (so a higher likelihood of private-good solutions arising to combat global warming problems); 3) A significant likelihood that victimized peoples would simply prefer continued industrialization, trade and global warming to an alternative of state-smothered development and more poverty.