The Climate Bargain Approach Towards A Sustainable Economy

If climate change is to be halted, our global economy will need to abandon fossil fuels and instead foster large investments in renewable energy sources.

Despite the urgency of the situation, most governments across the globe have failed to transition their economies towards renewable energy. Appeals to morality and justice have done little to change the situation.

In light of this, a number of famous climate ethicists propose an economics-based solution to resolve the political gridlock: The “climate bargain” approach.

The central idea behind this approach is to conjure up political support for the climate transition by letting future generations pay for present investments in renewables, such that both future and present generations benefit from these investments.

Because this general line of reasoning has been euphorically welcomed by international policy-guiding institutions around the world, including the UNFCCC, the IMF, and the World Bank, we should subject the “climate bargain” approach to severe critical scrutiny.

In this project, I highlight that various shortcomings of the approach are due to its heavy reliance on standard economic theory and weakly motivated normative background assumptions.

I propose an alternative approach, combining a wealth-based carbon tax with public ownership over renewable energy systems.

This alternative "democratized energy" approach respects justice- and fairness-related desiderata, while promising to garner broad political support.