10. “Free Markets, Property Rights and Climate Change: How to Privatize Climate Policy”
by Graham Dawson
Abstract: The goal has been to devise a strategy that protects as much as possible the rights and liberties of all agents, both users of fossil fuels and people whose livelihoods and territories are at risk if the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis is true. To achieve this goal the standard climate policy instruments, taxes and emissions trading, should be discontinued. There are weaknesses in the theoretical perspectives used to justify these policy instruments and climate science cannot provide the knowledge that would be needed to justify their implementation. In their place I propose a privatised policy, based on Austrian and libertarian frameworks of thought, which share an interpretation of climate change as a putative interpersonal conflict rather than market failure. The use of fossil fuels, like any other economic activity, should be subject to side-constraints designed to avoid the infringement of other people’s property rights. Tort litigation on the basis of strict liability would protect these rights, insofar as they need protecting. By providing a public arena for the competitive testing of scientific hypotheses concerning climate change, such litigation would also promote the public understanding and even the advancement of climate science.
![[RSS Feed]](http://libertarianpapers.org/wp-content/themes/journalist/images/rss.gif "Subscribe to the Libertarian Papers Site Feed")
![[iTunes]](http://libertarianpapers.org/wp-content/themes/journalist/images/itunes.png "Subscribe to the Libertarian Papers Podcast with iTunes")
![[CC Attribution 3.0]](http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/3.0/us/80x15.png)
Not having access to the entire article makes it highly likely that I have not understood the arguments nuances. My apologies if this is true.
HOGWASH!
If Anthropogenic Climate Change (ACC) is happening from fossil fuel use, then placing that economic activity on some holy altar that only allows remediation via the resolution of claims of property damage is principled stupidity.
From a moral perspective, how does financial restitution defray the suffering as habitat and the lives and cultures associated with that habitat, across the globe is diminished and lost?
What are the estimates of the economic damage of worst case scenarios of ACC? Tally up the costs of sea level rising to more than 10 meters, of major droughts? of loss of potable water over much of the African continent? From an economic perspective, which hydrocarbon related company, groups of companies, even industrial sectors could really offset through insurance, or through liquidation of assets the accumulated costs of ACC?
At what point do principled theoretical people of good intention leave their lofty theoretical chambers and climb down and join the rest of society in the muck of social compromise for the common good. Such compromise is usually not pretty or even particularly efficient. It takes us forward together, bickering and fighting the whole way.
ACC is a global problem. It requires all of us rich and poor to muster the political and moral courage to face it together.
How would WWII have come out if USSA and Britain chose to use entirely private means and totally respected private property in their fight against Naziism?
This is no less urgent a conflict.
If 26 pages is not enough… I don’t know what will be.
Or maybe just install Adobe Reader plug-in to open the whole article.