Should Natural Rights Libertarians Support Carbon Mitigation? The Answer May Surprise You - Niskanen Center - Kevin Vallier:
July 18,2017 - "Here are the conditions under which natural rights libertarians should support a carbon mitigation policy.
"Condition 2 is critical because the coercion involved in imposing a CMP can only be justified if it actually protects property rights. Condition 3 is critical because natural rights libertarians are not consequentialists. You cannot justify violating John’s property rights in order to protect Reba’s property rights more effectively.... Condition 4 is critical because if there is a non-coercive, non-governmental solution to a negative externality, the natural rights libertarian will hold that this solution is morally superior to a CMP.... .
"But how can ... anarchist natural rights libertarians, support governmental action to do anything? Well, in lieu of abolishing the state, presumably libertarians ... will insist that states be as just as possible. So if justice requires protecting people from negative externalities, then states should act to protect people from negative externalities....
"I fully acknowledge that a CMP will be imperfect. But the mere fact that it will be imperfect doesn’t mean we should forgo our libertarian duty to support policies that protect property rights, a duty we have even if the costs of protection are large....
"[A] CMP has to impose no greater burden on people, and on no more people, than is required to prevent the rights violation. And it is a virtual certainty that the CMP will be either too stringent or too lax. But that again is not a reason to not have a CMP, any more than the fact that the police are usually too stringent or too lax is a reason not to have them stop thieves and killers....
"However, there is an alternative to a CMP: geo-engineering, such as cloud-seeding with sulfuric compounds, diamond dust, or calcium carbonate, which can prevent rising sea levels by reflecting more sunlight from the Earth. These solutions are in principle far less economically costly than any proposed CMP and are much easier to coordinate (the US could do enough cloud seeding for the whole world all by itself). Moreover, while many climate change activists don’t take geo-engineering seriously and few support it, it is not obviously infeasible that the way in which Rothbardian mass-class-action lawsuits are. Most importantly, geo-engineering solutions appear to violate property rights less in comparison with CMPs....
"Geo-engineering is seriously problematic for lots of reasons. But there is nonetheless still some case for qualifying support for a CMP by making it conditional on the infeasibility or excessive risk of geo-engineering solutions that violate property rights less (if there are any)."
Read more: https://niskanencenter.org/blog/natural-rights-libertarians-support-carbon-mitigation-answer-may-surprise/
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July 18,2017 - "Here are the conditions under which natural rights libertarians should support a carbon mitigation policy.
- The actions of human beings generate carbon emissions significant enough to pose a non-trivial risk of violating property rights (in one’s body or external objects) of persons whom the state has a duty to protect.
- A carbon mitigation policy (CMP) will provide an effective protection against the risk.
- The CMP will not in itself violate property rights, or take an excessive risk of violating them, because it will generally be targeted at persons or groups that generate problematic carbon emissions (and persons don’t have rights against restraints upon their rights-violating actions), where: a. The CMP coerces the smallest number of people sufficient to deter the emissions; b. The CMP is the least coercive means of deterring the emissions.
- No non-governmental, non-rights violating alternative to CMP is socially or politically feasible....
"Condition 2 is critical because the coercion involved in imposing a CMP can only be justified if it actually protects property rights. Condition 3 is critical because natural rights libertarians are not consequentialists. You cannot justify violating John’s property rights in order to protect Reba’s property rights more effectively.... Condition 4 is critical because if there is a non-coercive, non-governmental solution to a negative externality, the natural rights libertarian will hold that this solution is morally superior to a CMP.... .
"But how can ... anarchist natural rights libertarians, support governmental action to do anything? Well, in lieu of abolishing the state, presumably libertarians ... will insist that states be as just as possible. So if justice requires protecting people from negative externalities, then states should act to protect people from negative externalities....
"I fully acknowledge that a CMP will be imperfect. But the mere fact that it will be imperfect doesn’t mean we should forgo our libertarian duty to support policies that protect property rights, a duty we have even if the costs of protection are large....
"[A] CMP has to impose no greater burden on people, and on no more people, than is required to prevent the rights violation. And it is a virtual certainty that the CMP will be either too stringent or too lax. But that again is not a reason to not have a CMP, any more than the fact that the police are usually too stringent or too lax is a reason not to have them stop thieves and killers....
"However, there is an alternative to a CMP: geo-engineering, such as cloud-seeding with sulfuric compounds, diamond dust, or calcium carbonate, which can prevent rising sea levels by reflecting more sunlight from the Earth. These solutions are in principle far less economically costly than any proposed CMP and are much easier to coordinate (the US could do enough cloud seeding for the whole world all by itself). Moreover, while many climate change activists don’t take geo-engineering seriously and few support it, it is not obviously infeasible that the way in which Rothbardian mass-class-action lawsuits are. Most importantly, geo-engineering solutions appear to violate property rights less in comparison with CMPs....
"Geo-engineering is seriously problematic for lots of reasons. But there is nonetheless still some case for qualifying support for a CMP by making it conditional on the infeasibility or excessive risk of geo-engineering solutions that violate property rights less (if there are any)."
Read more: https://niskanencenter.org/blog/natural-rights-libertarians-support-carbon-mitigation-answer-may-surprise/
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