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ABSTRACT
I contend that to be politically feasible a global climate treaty must satisfy the International Paretian principle (IP). I begin by defending IP as a principle of instrumental rationality that reflects the fact of extremely limited altruism vis-à-vis foreigners. I then address two objections to my thesis. One holds that an IP treaty is either economically infeasible or, contrary to its proponents’ claim, does not require side payments from poor states to rich ones. The other holds poor states will reject any climate treaty that requires such side payments because it ignores or exacerbates their unjust treatment by rich states.
Acknowledgments
I wish to express my gratitude to Joshua Kassner, Claudio Lopez-Guerra, Jeppe von Platz, and an anonymous reviewer for this journal for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. This is an unfortunate name, as I explain below, but my interest is in the principle to which it refers, as set out in the main text.
2. Indeed, Weisbach writes that ‘in retrospect, using the word Paretianism was a mistake because of the lack of a clear correspondence between what we meant – things a nation would do – and the set of things that make the individuals in that nation better off’ (Weisbach, Citation2021, p. 115).
3. Thus, contra some critics’ assertion, there is no need to justify a substantive account of self-interest in order defend the conclusion that states will not agree to a treaty that violates IP. See, e.g. Stephen Gardiner’s contribution to Gardiner and Weisbach, Gardiner and Weisbach (Citation2016); Gardiner and Lawson (Citation2021).
4. See Caney (Citation2014, p. 131) and Roser (Citation2015, p. 79).
5. This is consistent with Posner and Weisbach’s (Citation2013) claim that ‘states (and not just the U.S.) define their self-interest in narrow terms, oriented mainly toward wealth and security’ (p. 357).
6. Indeed, Posner and Weisbach acknowledge that it is an open empirical question whether considerations of fairness might motivate some states to accept less of the surplus created by an IP global climate agreement than their relative bargaining power would enable them to secure. See Posner and Weisbach (Citation2013, p. 355).
7. If we adopt a broader characterization of states’ preference rankings, one that takes into account all of the values relevant to their ranking of outcomes, we can state this criticism thusly: If state R ranks lower than BAU any outcome that requires it to make greater sacrifices of its material well-being than it would make under BAU (i.e. the noncooperative outcome), and state P ranks lower than BAU any outcome that does not require state R to make greater sacrifices of its material well-being than it would make under BAU, because those sacrifices are required as a matter of compensatory or distributive justice, then no global climate agreement that satisfies IP is politically feasible.
8. IP ‘is a device to discipline our thinking to ensure that our recommendations can actually be implemented’ (Posner & Weisbach, Citation2013, p. 349).
9. The core idea of IP, Weisbach (Citation2021) writes, is that ‘there is a set of feasible climate treaties or other policies, and theories of justice that recommend policies outside of that set are not helpful in thinking about what should be done’ (p. 115). See also the description of IP as a participation constraint in Posner and Weisbach (Citation2013, pp. 349–350).
10. Insofar as an effective response to climate change requires global cooperation, unilateral policy changes that reduce climate change emissions will need to be judged worthwhile independent of their effects on climate change, as in the case of replacing coal-fired power plants with ones that burn less expensive natural gas.
11. Like Posner and Weisbach, I assume that the transaction costs involved in making side payments do not exceed the surplus generated by cooperation.
12. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that an IP treaty may produce a less unjust or morally horrifying world than the one we will realize under BAU, which is the outcome Posner and Weisbach suggest will obtain if we continue to pursue treaties that do not satisfy that standard.
13. It might be thought that the exploitative nature of an IP climate treaty threatens its feasibility because the political leaders and citizens of rich states will refuse to exploit poor states and their citizens. But in fact, the international legal regimes governing trade, finance, and the movement of people provide ample evidence that rich states and their citizens are quite comfortable exploiting poor states and their citizens (see, e.g. Bodea & Ye, Citation2018; Gathii, Citation2008; Kryvoi, Citation2020; Linarelli et al., Citation2018; Risse & Wollner, Citation2019; Weber & Tazreiter, Citation2021). Of course, they generally do not see themselves as doing so, and most may be morally committed to not exploiting others. Yet human beings have a well-documented ability to avoid acknowledging that they are engaging in wrongful conduct when it would be costly for them to change their behavior. Indeed, moral psychologists in the field of climate ethics have been at the forefront of recent efforts to model the human propensities to defensive motivated reasoning (Druckman & McGrath, Citation2019; Hart & Nisbet, Citation2012) as well as moral disengagement, i.e. ‘consciously or unconsciously convincing oneself and others that one’s reprehensible conduct still falls within moral standards through changing the perception of one’s actions or reconstructing the situation’ (Peeters et al., Citation2019, p. 430; see also Bandura, Citation2007, Citation2016; Stoll-Kleemann & O’Riordan, Citation2020). The question, then, is whether an IP climate treaty could be designed so that those it empowers to exploit others need not see themselves as doing so.
While it is impossible to provide a definitive answer in the abstract, existing international agreements governing trade and investment provide some reason to think such a treaty is possible. Consider, first, that most ordinary rich state citizens know little or nothing about these treaties, despite the critical role they play in structuring their economic relationships with citizens of poor states (and, for that matter, with their fellow rich state citizens). Moreover, insofar as rich state citizens are aware of international trade and investment law, they generally care only about the impact those treaties have on their own lives, not those of people living in poor countries. The recent populist backlash against free trade and migration in rich countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom illustrates the point, as it focuses on the (alleged) injustices to people living in rich states that international law enables (see, e.g. Dluhosch, Citation2021). In contrast, there is little domestic pressure on political officeholders and elites to refrain from pursuing international legal agreements that facilitate the exploitation of (people living in) poor states. This is so despite the fact that academics, journalists, and others are quite adept at describing how these treaties enable exploitation. Their efforts do sometimes lead to changes at the margins, but not to wholesale changes of the sort necessary to truly transform the global economy.
As for those who are more directly involved in the design and operation of exploitative international trade or investment regimes, some may be disposed to care little about exploiting others or be subject to institutional incentives that discourage them from doing so. They also have recourse to a number of familiar self-deceptions they can use to rationalize their conduct, not least that they would have advocated for treaty terms that were more generous or just than the ones they actually pushed, but that others would never have agreed to them. It seems plausible to think that the same human capacities for (willful) ignorance, denial, and rationalization that enable rich state officials, economic elites, and ordinary citizens to turn a blind eye to the exploitative nature of international economic law will enable them to do the same in the case of an IP climate treaty, should the opportunity to adopt one ever arise.
14. Weisbach (Citation2021) does so, stating that our children and grandchildren are the natural objects of our affection, and that therefore if we come to appreciate the costs that our current energy practices (land use practices, etc.) will have on them, we will be motivated to pursue a vastly more aggressive climate policy than the one we are currently pursuing (p. 118). Gardiner (Citation2021) rightly observe that Weisbach may be unduly optimistic; see (p. 105).
15. For a critique of Broome and Foley’s argument, see Lawlor (Citation2016).
16. I assume here that it is possible to realize the magnitude of intertemporal economic transfer necessary to perform the intra-temporal economic transfer from poor states to rich ones that is necessary to satisfy IP. I revisit this assumption below.
17. The picture is further complicated by the fact that how much people are willing to sacrifice for other members of the political community may depend on the degree of homogeneity the community displays across a range of factors including race, ethnicity, religion, and language. It may be, then, that the more members of the current generation anticipate that future citizens will differ from them along these dimensions, the less they will be willing to sacrifice their own material well-being in order to promote the material well-being of future members of their political community.
18. See Posner and Weisbach (Citation2010) chapters 4, 5, and 8.
19. See, e.g. Garcia (Citation2013, p. 245). Garcia also provides ample support for the claim that CAFTA’s negotiation, content, and implementation ignored or exacerbated the U.S.’s unjust treatment of several Central American countries. Yet they all agreed to the treaty.
20. See, e.g. Egas and Riedl (Citation2008).