Tragedy of the Heavens

As President Obama and Congress struggle to pass new energy legislation, we should remember that climate change is more than just an economic issue. It’s one of the most challenging moral and cultural dilemmas of our time. Any discussion of cutting emissions involves considerations about entitlement and responsibility on our no-longer-inexhaustible Earth.

On the surface, it appears we are suffering from the classic “Ec10” problem known as the tragedy of the commons: Certain people’s self-interest is destroying collective and open resources. But it’s not that simple. What action is self-interested and what’s not is hard to identify when prosperity—albeit unequal prosperity—has historically relied on the use of what was once thought to be an endless resource: the atmosphere.

The fact is, the temperature is rising in our house, and not everyone is responsible for the heat wave to the same degree. Yet everyone must be involved in the solution. Furthermore, we cannot simply market-eer our way out of the maelstrom.

When discussing policy, both economic feasibility and a fair distribution of burdens should be considered as well as how a political action can imbue a spirit of collective responsibility and sacrifice for the environment. Hopefully large cap-and-trade schemes pass in Washington and the U.S. joins in at the U.N. Climate Conference in Copenhagen—grand-scale cap and trade is the best way to quickly reduce emissions. But we must be careful that the framework of any cap-and-trade scheme does not unfairly exonerate the responsibilities certain groups should have to face. More importantly, a cap-and-trade scheme must strengthen rather than harm communal obligation and aspiration.

The moral arguments against both cap-and-trade schemes are ubiquitous. A recent denunciation comes from Father Paul Mayer, co-founder of the Climate Crisis Coalition. Last month, he suggested that any continued pollution of the atmosphere is a sin: How can evil emitters be given the option of buying the right to sin from other groups—most likely struggling developing countries who bear little to no blame for the problem? Images of 16th-century Catholic indulgence policies come to mind.

It’s difficult to see greenhouse-gas emissions as sins, especially since they are beneficial to the environment under a certain level. Still, Father Mayer’s overall point about escaping direct responsibility for actions that cause collective harm (even if they also bring common benefits) is an important one. His concern is most relevant in considering the distribution of international burdens.

Any cap-and-trade scheme must reflect the reality that developing countries have contributed little to climate change yet stand to be hurt the most. Unjustifiably, many in developed countries claim they should be allowed to emit more per capita than developing countries because their economy has grown to rely on emissions. It is one thing to not punish developed countries for a history of irresponsibility on the basis that they were ignorant of the harmful effects, and it is another thing to reward harmful behavior. Instead, as many other have proposed, emission credits should be pegged to U.N. population size estimates for 2050 and then traded.

After the signing of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, Michael Sandel infamously voiced a challenging concern for any cap-and-trade scheme. In a New York Times op-ed, Dr. Sandel wrote that cap-and-trade policies at any level would “undermine the ethic we should be trying to foster on the environment.” Many of Sandel’s claims in the piece regarding the economic infeasibility of a cap-and-trade scheme are weak, but the argument that cap and trade could hinder the needed spirit of collective responsibility is no joke.

How would it appear if the U.S., the chief culprit of climate change, continued to emit and emit merely because it could financially afford to? It is a fact that the U.S. cannot trade away all of its emissions credits and will have to make cuts no matter what, but the point still stands. Although aggregate admissions rates would still fall, the sense of shared sacrifice would be lost. Sandel claims the commodification of emissions might remove the stigma associated with emissions. Paying for emissions could very well just become the price of doing business as usual.

But does the ability to buy credits really make emissions more culturally acceptable? More importantly, does the cap-and-trade scheme raise more cultural awareness about the issue or less? It may be the case that, under a cap-and-trade scheme, emissions will become more stigmatized in light of the existence a common venture to defeat global warming, regardless of its reliance on cold market logic. There are arguments on both sides, and it ultimately depends on how cap and trade is sold to and bought by the people. If a cap-and-trade scheme is spun in the rhetoric of shared sacrifice, rather than merely increasing efficiency, it could be effective in cultivating a cultural change.

Cap-and-trade schemes can do much to mitigate the short-term effects of climate change. But it should be remembered that, although the most salient concern of the legislation in the U.S. is to quickly lower the aggregate amount of emissions with hurting the economy, this should not be the only concern. The moral and cultural dimensions of climate change must be also addressed. The only way up from the global fall from grace is to work together and consider what’s fair and important in the long run.


Raúl A. Carrillo ’10, a Crimson editorial writer, is a social studies concentrator in Lowell House. His column appears regularly.