A Critical Conversation on Climate Change ... - Green Choices

lessons unlearned 131But how much has the South benefited from the North’s overuse ofthe global carbon dump? Most people would argue the benefits havebeen relatively small and uneven, compared to the harm the Southhas absorbed in the past and is likely to suffer in the future. As PeterSinger puts it, ‘many of the world’s poorest people, whose shares ofthe atmosphere have been appropriated by the industrialised nations,are not able to partake in the benefits of [the resulting] increased productivityin the industrialised nations – they cannot afford to buy itsproducts – and if rising sea levels inundate their farmlands, or cyclonesdestroy their homes, they will be much worse off than theywould otherwise have been’. 240Fixing the market?But maybe the market can be made fairer. The government could allocate emissionsrights to itself and then auction them off to the highest bidders.They would still end up in the hands of big polluters.Or fees or profi ts from the sale or lease of emissions rights could be distributedthrough a trust to ordinary citizens, or communities, or producers of renewableenergy. 241 Or, better, they could be distributed directly to individuals or nations,eventually on a basis of per capita equality. 242 Each Southerner would ultimatelyget the same assets as everybody else, solving the justice problem at a stroke.This is the popular ‘Contraction and Convergence’ proposal put forwardby the Global Commons Institute. Property rights in globalcarbon-cycling capacity would be distributed to nation-states andtheir distribution gradually equalised so that, by a certain date, everycountry would hold an amount corresponding to its population, or,alternatively, every individual would hold an equal amount.These rights would be traded either by individuals themselves or bythe state apparatuses of the countries in which the individuals lived.At the same time, the global ‘cap’ on emissions would shrink drasticallyto a level deemed sustainable by the international community.Today’s large-emitting countries, after being granted the lion’sshare of newly-created assets, would thus find their property holdingsdwindling over time, as they were redistributed to the world’s poorand the total amount of rights was reduced.Various versions of Contraction and Convergence already have thebacking of most governments in the South and many non-governmentorganisations, prominent public figures and political parties inthe North. 243