Polluter Pays Principle Argument

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Maya Kendall PHIL 9.02 24 5/19/2024 Who Pays for Climate Change? Since the beginning of human existence, anthropogenic changes and industrialization have resulted in climate changes and detrimental effects to the environment. Climate change is the largest collective action problem as it spans all time, past and future, and affects all of human existence on Earth. In order to attempt to create a standard for climate policy and action, many environmental philosophers have conceptualized ways to divide up the costs and efforts needed to mitigate climate change. In Henry Shue’s Global Environment and International Inequality, he puts forth an argument that asserts that since the United States is a wealthy industrialized nation and has significantly …show more content…
In this paper I will argue that Shue’s argument in favor of the US shouldering an unequal share of the cost by using the Polluter Pays Principle is only successful if combined with another principle such as the Beneficiary Pays Principle. Presentation of the Argument: Shue’s Polluter Pays Principle The Polluter Pays Principle states that if A has in the past taken an unfair advantage of B by imposing cost upon B without B’s consent (and thereby put B at a disadvantage), then A ought to shoulder an unequal share of the cost involved in responding to the resulting inequality. If the Polluter Pays Principle is true, the US ought to shoulder a large and unequal share of the cost in dealing with climate change. It is the right and fair thing for us to …show more content…
The Polluter Pays Principle only answers the “here and now” part of climate change, which is entirely dependent on the temporal scale of one's lifetime. However, climate change is a problem that has spanned hundreds of years, so this principle does not create a framework for the entire problem. This is why I believe that Shue’s argument cannot solely rely on the Polluter Pays Principle, and must invoke the Beneficiary Pays Principle as well. In Shue’s paper, he acknowledges three objections. One of them is that it is not fair to hold someone responsible for something that he did not do himself. His example shows that it is not fair for a grandson to be responsible for the damage done by his grandfather, similar to what is currently happening with previous generations’ carbon emissions. Shue attempts to counter this objection by asserting that holding unconnected people responsible would be unfair, but we are not unconnected. He states that, “It is indeed not fair to hold someone responsible for what has been done by someone else. Yet that principle is largely irrelevant to the case at hand, because one generation of a rich industrial
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