Replies to “Can Consumption-Based Emissions Accounting Solve the Problem of Historical Emissions? Some Skeptical Remarks”

Abstract

In ‘Consumption-Based Emissions Accounting and Historical Emissions’ (Torpman 2022), I argued that a move from production-based emissions accounting (PBEA) to consumption-based emissions accounting (CBEA) would contribute to solving the problem of historical emissions. More precisely, the argument is that CBEA can assign currently living people remedial responsibility for historical emissions to the extent that they consume goods and services that embody historical emissions, which PBEA cannot. This argument has recently received some criticism, to which I aim to respond here. In particular, I will respond to the following two objections raised by Laura GarcíaPortela (2022): (1) the common causation-based justificatory rationale for CBEA cannot ground the application of CBEA to historical emissions if ‘consumption’ is interpreted as ‘use’ because users (qua users) are not causal inputs for emissions; and (2) it is unclear whether CBEA can cover more overall emissions than PBEA, since the former cannot account for recent past and contemporary emissions, which is covered by the latter. I will spell out these arguments and reply to them in turn. Starting with (1), García-Portela argues that the common justificatory rationale for CBEA is that consumers’ demand is an essential causal input for emissions. In my original paper, however, I argued that ‘consumption’ should be interpreted as ‘use’ rather than as ‘purchase’. This interpretation, García-Portela claims, cannot ground the application of CBEA to historical emissions, since users (qua users) do not provide any causal input to those emissions. García-Portela asks: ‘If they have not caused those emissions, why should they be allocated those emissions and the remedial responsibility that comes with them?’ Moreover, the argument goes, if ‘consumption’ would hence be interpreted as ‘purchase’ in order to avoid this, then CBEA cannot cover historical emissions because initial purchasers of historically produced goods and services are typically dead. My answer to this objection goes as follows. The point that consumer demand is often a causal input for emissions is certainly one potential reason for adopting CBEA. In my article, however, I mentioned it merely as a quick response to the claim that PBEA should be adopted for its capacity to assign responsibility to those who contribute causally to emissions. In addition, I brought up reasons related to CBEA’s capacity to deal with carbon leakage, as well as issues of fairness. For instance, unlike PBEA, CBEA does not assign