State Responsibility for Climate Change Damages

State responsibility and compensation for climate change damages—a legal and economic assessment

Customary international law has that countries may do each other no harm. A country violates this rule if an activity under its control does damage to another country, and if this is done on purpose or due to carelessness. Impacts of climate change fall under this rule, which is reinforced by many declarations and treaties, including the UNFCCC. Compensation for the harm done depends on many pa...

Climate Change, Responsibility, and Justice

In this paper I make the following claims. In order to see anthropogenic climate change as clearly involving moral wrongs and global injustices, we will have to revise some central concepts in these domains. Moreover, climate change threatens another value ("respect for nature") that cannot easily be taken up by concerns of global justice or moral responsibility.

Climate Change and Collective Responsibility

Can persons be held morally responsible for harmful consequences that result from the acts or omissions of their nation or society, even if they conscientiously avoid contributing toward those consequences qua individuals?What if those acts and omissions, together with a great many other similar ones committed against the backdrop of social norms that tolerate and even encourage such harmful be...

Will Climate Change Spark More Wildfire Damages?

Discounting climate change damages: Working note for the Stern review

This working note provides a basic overview of discounting in the context of climate change policy. After defining the social discount factor and social discount rate in terms of shadow prices (section 2), and noting the limitations of cost-benefit analysis for climate change (section 3), the determination of efficient social discount rates is discussed given: the impact of uncertainty about fu...