Sharing the Burden of Saving the Planet
Global Social Justice for Sustainable Development
- Overview
This paper focuses on one question which is critical to reaching a global agreement on emissions reductions: how the burden of saving the planet should be shared, between rich countries and poor. There is no question that there will have to be global reductions. That is not the question. The question is upon whom should the incidence of the cost of adjustment be imposed? Avoiding global warming is a global public good. Standard public finance theory provides clear guidance, both about how to achieve such reductions in the most efficient way, and how the burden should be shared. Clearly, the brunt of the burden (under virtually any welfare criterion) should lay with the advanced industrial countries. Indeed, these standard ideas suggest that even the approach often taken by developing countries—that there should be equal emissions permits per capita—puts an excessive burden on developing countries.
About the Author
Joseph Stiglitz
Co-President
Initiative for Policy Dialogue
Joseph E. Stiglitz is co-founder and Executive Director of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University, for which he also co-chairs the macroeconomics, Capital Market Liberalization, and Intellectual Property task forces. Dr. Stiglitz holds joint professorships at Columbia University's Economics Department and its Business School. From 1997 to 2000 he was the World Bank's Senior Vice President for Development Economics and Chief Economist. From 1995- 97 he served as Chairman of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers and as a member of President Clinton's cabinet. From 1993 to 1995 he was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers. He was previously a professor of economics at Stanford, Princeton, Yale, and All Souls College. Dr. Stiglitz is a leading scholar of the economics of the public sector and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001 in addition to the American Economic Association's biennial John Bates Clark Award in 1979. His work has been recognized through his election as a fellow to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society, and the British Academy.
Publication Information
| Type | Working Papers |
| Program | Environmental Economics, Climate Change |
| Download | 315kb pdf |
| Posted | 05/22/08 |
