Hayward, Tim. "Human Rights Versus Emissions Rights: Climate Justice and the Equitable Distribution of Ecological Space". Ethics and International Affairs, Vol.21, No.4 (2007): 431-450.

Hayward, Tim. "Human Rights Versus Emissions Rights: Climate Justice and the Equitable Distribution of Ecological Space". Ethics and International Affairs, Vol.21, No.4 (2007): 431-450.

• Since the establishment of an international consensus on manmade climate change, the conversation has shifted towards responsibility for reducing emissions. This conversation has been dominated by figuring out the maximum amount of possible emissions and deciding who gets to pollute how much, essentially creating national 'rights' to certain amounts of carbon emissions (431).
• In the aftermath of the Kyoto Protocol, this has been institutionalized in a number of carbon trading schemes, transforming the 'right to pollute' into a tradable commodity distributed by national governments. It is likely that this conception of emissions will remain dominent (433).
• The focus on reduction of carbon emissions exacerbates historical inequalities between the global rich and the global poor, since this reduction will occur after the global rich have benefitted from unsustainably high levels of pollution without giving the global poor the opportunity to develop their own polluting industries or enrich themselves (433).
• Advocates of carbon trading systems for reducing emissions argue that it allows the market to decide the most useful distribution of polluting resources, both reducing emissions and encouraging the most economically efficient use of resources. This is sometimes supplemented with a 'carbon development mechanism' by which wealthy countries assist poorer countries in developing their own clean technologies and energy sources (434).
• Objections typically point to the difficulty of measuring emissions, reducing the effectness of the trading scheme (434).
• Some scholars also point to the perverse effects of carbon trading schemes on the global distribution of resources. It allows companies which already consume the majority of the world's natural resources to access even more disproportionate amounts by buying carbon credits (434).
• The authors argues that the goal for 'effeciency' in carbon trading schemes is ultimately opposed to environmentalism since it promotes a logic of economic efficiency, based on production, rather than the best possible use of resources for all of society. The goal of reducing emissions does not even play a significant part in the underlying logic (435-436).
• The current emissions reduction regime transfers the responsibilities for emissions reduction to states, each of which is given an emissions 'cap' which it cannot exceed. States then pass these responsibilities down to companies or other entities in their own territory. States are in control of this distribution and can organize it how they please (437).
• The author claims that the distribution of carbon credits among states raises questions of justice, since their distribution fundamentally affects national capacity to develop industry and wealth. An equal distribution would allow the more efficient rich countries to produce fewer emissions that the poor countries, thus furthering the disparity of wealth and development between rich and poor states (438-439).
• While the carbon trading system may compensate under-producing poor countries and penalize over-producing rich countries, this flow of wealth will not actually allow the poor countries to develop the economic infrastructure necessary to provide other aspects of development. It will only reinforce a dependency on cash-flows from the rich countries (439).
• The conception of a 'right to emissions' as a human rights, to be equally shared amongst all humans, has some basis since emissions are necessary for economic development, but is flawed because enjoyment of this right would infringe on the more essential human right to a healthy environment (440).
• The author argues that strictly speaking carbon emissions are not actually essential to human survival, only necessary for the maintainence of living standards existing since the Industrial Revolution (440-441).
• Henry Shue has argued that the involvement of all humans, including the global poor, in a globalized economy dependent on fossil fuels has made the right of carbon emissions essential to the global poor, since the products they depend on require carbon emissions to produce and transport (441).
• The author rebuts by agree that this is currently the case, but that this still makes rights to subsistence the core human rights, and carbon emissions only the method of securing this right. Therefore, there is no separate right to carbon emissions, only guarantee of carbon emissions because they are necessary for an actual right (441).
• The establishment of a 'right to emissions' would also totally undermine the entire project of reducing carbon emissions, since developing countries could then claim 'emission rights' equal with those of developed countries and release huge amounts of carbon emissions through inefficient development plans (441-442).
• Other scholars have suggested that a cap on finite carbon emissions combined with a global scheme of equal individual right to these emissions would result in a just distribution while encouraging reduction of emissions. The key problem with this is its dependence on inefficient markets, which grant no guarantee that the amount paid by the rich would for the carbon credits of the poor world would actually result in an equitable distribution of wealth (443-444).
• The author suggests replacing the concept of carbon credits with the broader issue of 'ecologic space', a conception of the total sum of Earth's resources that each individual is allowed to despoil for economic gain. Overuse of this space, present or historical, results in an 'ecological debt' to those who have used less, namely the global poor. This scheme would capture carbon emissions as one aspect of this debt (445-446).
• This approach in particular counters the current issue of over-dependence by the global rich on carbon emissions. While it is recognized that dramatic reductions in actual emissions would destroy the global economy, the ecologic space model would allow this overuse to continue, but establish redistributive penalties for both present and historical overuse, meaning that this reality of dependence does not have to undermine justice (449).