If you polluted, you’re included: the all-affected principle and carbon tax referenda

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we argue that the All Affected Principle generates a puzzle when applied to carbon tax referenda. According to recent versions of the All Affected Principle, people should have a say in a democratic decision in positive proportion to how much the decision affects them. Plausibly, one way of being affected by a carbon tax referendum is to bear the economic burden of paying the tax. On this metric of affectedness, then, people who pollute a lot are ceteris paribus more affected than people who do not, because the former stands to pay more in carbon taxes than the latter. Consequently, people who pollute a lot receive large voting power, while people who pollute a little receive little voting power. This is a puzzling distribution of voting power for several reasons. First, it is instrumentally counterproductive if the goal is to rectify damages to the climate. Second, it introduces prudential incentives for everyone to pollute more to gain voting power. Third, the relative difference in voting power between people who pollute a lot and people who do not is puzzling from a desert-based point of view, since the former often make a serious effort to avoid polluting, while the latter do not.

KEYWORDS:

• All-affected principle
• polluter pays principle
• democratic boundary problem
• carbon tax
• democracy

Acknowledgments

For helpful comments, we would like to thank Lauritz Aastrup Munch, Jørn Sønderholm and the journal’s referees.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. For a discussion of PPP, see Caney (2010); Duus-Otterström and Jagers (2011); Kingston (2014); Moellendorf (2012).

2. Throughout the paper, when we talk of pollution, we mean emissions of greenhouse gasses unless specified otherwise. Of course, there are many other types of pollution, but since we are primarily concerned with carbon tax referendums in this paper, we restrict our focus to pollution constituted by greenhouse gas emissions.

3. Usually, revenues from carbon taxes are either (1) allocated specifically to climate mitigation, adaptation, or compensation, (2) spent on reductions in income taxes, or (3) used to supplement general government budgets.

4. See https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/switzerland-votes-on-controversial-co2-law-/46695016.

5. See https://www.sos.wa.gov/_assets/elections/initiatives/finaltext_1482.pdf.

6. See https://www.carbontax.org/states-_-new/.

7. For a classic description of the boundary problem, see (Whelan, 1983). This problem is also sometimes referred to as the problem of constituting the demos (Arrhenius, 2005; Goodin, 2007) or the problem of inclusion (Dahl 1989).

8. The AAP and other proposed solutions to the boundary problem have produced an extensive body of literature in democratic theory. See for example Arrhenius (2005, 2018); Bengtson (2020); Bengtson and Lippert-Rasmussen (2021); Koenig-Archibugi (2020); Lippert-Rasmussen and Bengtson (2021); Maltais et al. (2019); Miller (2009, 2020); Owen (2012); Saunders (2012); Song (2012); Whelan (1983). As an alternative to the AAP, the All-Subjected Principle (ASP) has recently gained momentum as a solution to the boundary problem (Bengtson & Lippert-Rasmussen, 2021). In its generic version, the principle holds that everyone who will be subject to the laws enacted ought to have a say on them (Goodin, 2016, p. 368).

9. Robert Goodin, for instance, makes the relevant distinction between ‘all actually affected interests’, and ‘all possibly affected interests’ (Goodin, 2007, pp. 52–55). See also (Owen, 2012) and (Angell, 2020).

10. Plausibly, there are more than these two notions available, even when we focus exclusively on carbon tax referendums. However, we focus on these two for the sake of brevity, and because they seem to be the most obvious ones when it comes to carbon tax referendums in particular.

11. See (Räikkä 2014) for good discussions of the problems related to approximating practically infeasible ideals.

12. There exist many online carbon footprint calculators that individuals can use to get an approximate idea of what their individual carbon footprint is. We can imagine that the state used something similar to these calculators as part of the input when they determine how affected individual voters will be by having to pay a proportionate carbon tax. See e.g. https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/carbon-footprint-calculator/.

13. See Bengtson and Lippert-Rasmussen (2021) for a discussion of these three underlying reasons.

14. However, as Simon Caney has famously pointed out, if we strictly follow the PPP, it will likely worsen the poverty of those who are already poor and push others into poverty who are already at the brink of poverty. For example, strict compliance with the PPP at a global level will affect major developing countries, such as India, to bear an enormous burden of climate rectification. India’s per capita emissions in 2020 were 1.7 tonnes of CO2 as opposed to the US’s staggering 14.2 tonnes of CO2 emissions per capita (Ritchie & Roser, 2020). But since the standard of living is so low for many people living in India, imposing climate rectification duties on the citizens of India might prove to jeopardize their ability to secure a decent standard of living in the future. As a solution to this problem, Caney argues that the PPP should be supplemented with an addendum, stating that ‘Persons should bear the burden of climate change that they have caused so long as doing so does not push them beneath a decent standard of living’ (Caney, 2010, p. 218).

15. Note that in Family Dinner, we stipulated that Vera and Paul are equally well-off economically. We did so to sidestep the complicated questions of how to measure the relative economic affectedness of paying a proportionate carbon tax if Paul Vera and Paul were unequally well-off. For further discussion of this, see (Angell & Huseby, 2020, p. 372).

16. For theorists arguing that polluting more than one’s fair share indeed constitutes a wrong, see Baatz (2014); Bell (2011); Duus-Otterström (2014).

17. See https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/switzerland-votes-on-controversial-co2-law-/46695016.

18. At least in some countries, such as Japan and France, 100% of the revenue from carbon taxation is allocated to green investments (Carl & Fedor, 2016).

19. One might think that this rejoinder requires that the carbon tax revenue is spent on climate compensation (such as replanting rainforests), rather than climate adaptation (such as building sea walls or dams). If this is a deal breaker, then an easy solution would be to start spending the carbon tax money differently.

20. For examples, see https://earth.org/what-countries-have-a-carbon-tax/#:~:text=Carbon%20Tax%20Countries,%2C%20the%20UK%2C%20and%20Ukraine.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the Carlsberg Foundation Young Researcher Fellowship. Grant No. CF20-0257.

Notes on contributors

David Matias Paaske

David Matias Paaske is PhD Research Fellow in Philosophy at The Arctic University of Norway. His current research focuses on animal rights and democratic enfranchisement of those most affected by climate change. His work has been published in, among others, Springer Nature.

Jakob Thrane Mainz

Jakob Thrane Mainz holds a PhD in Applied Philosophy at Aalborg University. His research focuses on privacy and the ethics of AI. His work has been published in, among others, Res Publica and Journal of Moral Philosophy.