Philosopher’s Corner: The Justice of Carbon Taxes/Permits

Posted by Alex Harris

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, my academic background is in political philosophy and I tend to approach policy issues from a rights-based perspective. Though OpenMarket - and CEI in general - tend to focus on the consequences of policies, I think it’s useful to take some time to explore whether policies are just or unjust, not simply whether they are prudent or not. So, in these (few) posts that I will call “Philosopher’s Corner,” I will direct my remarks to those who are concerned with rights, not just consequences.

Today, I will look at solutions to global warming. As Reason Magazine recently pointed out, different libertarians endorse one of three different approaches: subsidizing technology, cap-and-trade/carbon tax, or doing nothing.

Let’s start with subsidies. From a libertarian perspective, taking innocent people’s money to give to others is wrong. (For a more detailed explanation, see Part II of the magnum opus of libertarian philosophy, Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia.) Subsidies are a form of transfer - albeit targeted at people who make particular goods, not at people with a particular level of income. They are thus unjust.

Now, the question is whether carbon taxes and/or carbon permits are just. On the one hand, they seem like other taxes: the government taking people’s money and spending it. But there is one case in which libertarians agree it is just for the government to take someone’s money: when that person has violated another’s rights and owes her compensation. If I dump toxic chemicals onto my colleague Courtney Long’s lawn, I owe her compensation. The government may take money from me and give it to Courtney - a typical tort action.

Carbon taxes are like this, on a larger scale. The air, I contend, should be viewed as commonly-owned property. Air is fundamentally non-excludable. The air molecules in my room now will shortly leave and be replaced by new ones; I can’t need to make contracts with individual molecule owners every time I breathe in and out. (Note that my view of common ownership requires a principle of initial acquisition very different than the traditional Lockean version.) Since everyone owns the air, everyone’s rights are violated when someone dumps a pollutant into the air. Since carbon dioxide is a pollutant, carbon emiters violate rights.

But of course, individual victims cannot sue individual tortfeasors; the transaction costs are far too vast. Carbon taxes get around this problem by in essence functioning as a giant class action tort suit. Carbon taxes make everyone pay for every bit of pollutant they emit into common property. Carbon permits do this too, though they allow for trading and they require the government to set a permissible level of caron dioxide rather than a flat price for carbon emissions. The government should take the proceeds of either the carbon tax or the permit auction and distribute them equally, since all have an equal property right in the air.

Such an action would be just, but it may not be prudent. Exactly how bad carbon dioxide is - and thus, how high the tax or the cap should be - is not totally clear. New technologies might substantially reduce the bad impacts of carbon. It may well be that carbon taxes at any level would do more harm to the economy than would warming. So, though taxes or cap-and-trade policies may not be unjust, they may result in bad consequences nonetheless.

Related posts
  • No related posts.
Email This Post Email This Post  Print This Post Print This Post

07/16/2008 @ 11:39 am | Global Warming | Comments

Viewing 4 Comments

    • ^
    • v
    I strongly oppose subsidizing specific technologies, and I'd argue that all libertarians who care about the environment ought to be - even if they weren't already opposed to legalized theft.

    Pouring time, money and research into something we're not sure will succeed, like ethanol, could be at the expense of something much better that could have been developed with those resources, like an effective solar cell or some sort of technology no one has even thought of.

    Besides, government is never ahead of the curve when it comes to new technology - they're always scrambling to try to catch up and regulate after the fact. Do we really want to rely on them for innovation in any field?
    • ^
    • v
    "Since carbon dioxide is a pollutant, carbon emiters violate rights."

    Since when did anyone actually prove that C02 is any more of a "pollutant" than O2 or H20? Heck, even years and years after we had our big save O3 round of regulations scientists are questioning if anything humans did before or after is having much of an affect on O3 levels.
    • ^
    • v
    Alex--
    You note that libertarians usually endorse one of three approaches to dealing with climate change. There is another option not mentioned: resiliency and adaptation, as noted in this 1997 quote from Fred at a CEI conference:

    "Should we be considering a prevention strategy or should we be considering an adaptation strategy? In the face of change, should we try freeze the world and make nothing change? Or should we be trying to adapt to a world where there will be risks in the future but we are not exactly sure what those risks are likely to be? Should we try to prevent the one possible risk of global warming? Or should we try to become smarter and wealthier so that we can adapt ourselves to whatever risks occur, whether it be warming or cooling, or drier or hotter, or maybe an asteroid or a disease, or many other risks that the world will certainly face in the 21st Century? As we learn more, we can gradually reduce the uncertainties associated with those. And we'll be able to know more. And do we have to act today or do we have to act in December in Kyoto? There are risks in both directions."
    • ^
    • v
    You all make excellent points. Fran, I was summarizing the resiliency strategy as the government doing nothing about warming, though perhaps that's not wholly accurate.
 
close Reblog this comment
Powered by Disqus · Learn more
blog comments powered by Disqus