Ideal carbon tax policy is internationally coordinated, fully internalizes externalities, redistributes revenues to those harmed, and is politically acceptable, generating predictable market signals. Since nonideal circumstances rarely allow all these conditions to be met, moral issues arise. This paper surveys some of the work in moral philosophy responding to several of these issues. First, it discusses the moral drivers for estimates of the social cost of carbon. Second, it explains how national self-interest can block climate action and suggests international policies—carbon (...) border tax adjustments and carbon clubs—that can help address these concerns. Third, it introduces some of the social science literature about the political acceptability of carbon taxes before addressing a couple common public concerns about carbon taxes. Finally, it introduces four carbon revenue usage options, arguing that redistributive and climate compensation measures are most morally justified. [Open access]. (shrink)

This chapter introduces several distinctions relevant to what is called the “discounting problem”, since the issue is how (future) costs and benefits are discounted to make them comparable in present terms. The author defends the claim that there are good reasons to adopt Ramsey-style discounting in the context of climate change: the Ramsey rule is robust, flexible, and well-understood. An important distinction involved in discounting—“descriptivism” and “prescriptivism”—is discussed. It is argued that, even if we adopt prescriptivism, and accept that this (...) means there is need for moral experts in parameter assignments, there is a significant issue. The type of moral expertise required for the discounting problem will not involve knowledge of moral theory—thus making moral philosophy unhelpful in terms of making particular parameter assignments, despite these being substantive moral judgments. (shrink)

Why, if at all, should we object to economic inequality? Some central arguments – the argument from decreasing marginal utility for example – invoke instrumental reasons and object to inequality because of its effects. Such instrumental arguments, however, often concern only the static effects of inequality and neglect its intertemporal consequences. In this article, we address this striking gap and investigate income inequality's intertemporal consequences, including its potential effects on humanity's (very) long-term future. Following recent arguments around future generations and (...) so-called longtermism, those effects might arguably matter more than inequality's short-term consequences. We assess whether we have instrumental reason to reduce economic inequality based on its intertemporal effects in the short, medium, and the very long term. We find a good short and medium-term instrumental case for lower economic inequality. We then argue, somewhat speculatively, that we have instrumental reasons for inequality reduction from a longtermist perspective too, primarily because greater inequality could increase existential risk. We thus have instrumental reasons to reduce inequality, regardless of which time-horizon we take. We then argue that from most consequentialist perspectives, this pro tanto reason also gives us all-things-considered reason. And even across most non-consequentialist views in philosophy, this argument gives us either an all-things-considered or at least weighty pro tanto reason against inequality. (shrink)

Utility discounting in intertemporal economic modelling has been viewed as problematic, both for descriptive and normative reasons. However, positive utility discount rates can be defended normatively; in particular, it is rational for future utility to be discounted to take into account model-independent outcomes when decision-making under risk. The resultant values will tend to be smaller than descriptive rates under most probability assignments. This also allows us to address some objections that intertemporal considerations will be overdemanding. A principle for utility discount (...) rates is suggested which is rooted in probability discounting. Utility discounting is defended against objections from Parfit (1984) and Broome (2005); Broome (2012). A sample utility discount rate is estimated. [Open access]. (shrink)

We set out longtermist political philosophy as a research field by exploring the case for, and the implications of, ‘institutional longtermism’: the view that, when evaluating institutions, we should give significant weight to their very long-term effects. We begin by arguing that the standard case for longtermism may be more robust when applied to institutions than to individual actions or policies, both because institutions have large, broad, and long-term effects, and because institutional longtermism can plausibly sidestep various objections to individual (...) longtermism. We then address points of contact between longtermism and some central values of mainstream political philosophy, focusing on justice, equality, freedom, legitimacy, and democracy. While each value initially seems to conflict with institutional longtermism, we find that these conflicts are less clear-cut upon closer inspection, and that some political values might even provide independent support for institutional longtermism. We end with a grab bag of related questions that we lack space to explore here. (shrink)

I argue that the use of a social discount rate to assess the consequences of climate policy is unhelpful and misleading. I consider two lines of justification for discounting: (i) ethical arguments for a "pure rate of time preference" and (ii) economic arguments that take time as a proxy for economic growth and the diminishing marginal utility of consumption. In both cases I conclude that, given the long time horizons, distinctive uncertainties, and particular costs and benefits at stake in the (...) climate context, discount rates are at best a poor proxy for the normative considerations they are meant to represent. (shrink)

This paper defends the claim that mere temporal proximity always and without exception strengthens certain moral duties, including the duty to save – call this view Robust Temporalism. Although almost all other moral philosophers dismiss Robust Temporalism out of hand, I argue that it is prima facie intuitively plausible, and that it is analogous to a view about special obligations that many philosophers already accept. I also defend Robust Temporalism against several common objections, and I highlight its relevance to a (...) number of practical policy debates, including longtermism. My conclusion is that Robust Temporalism is a moral live option, that deserves to be taken much more seriously in the future. (shrink)

Why, if at all, should we object to economic inequality? Some central arguments – the argument from decreasing marginal utility for example – invoke instrumental reasons and object to inequality because of its effects. Such instrumental arguments, however, often concern only the static effects of inequality and neglect its intertemporal conse- quences. In this article, we address this striking gap and investigate income inequality’s intertemporal consequences, including its potential effects on humanity’s (very) long-term future. Following recent arguments around future generations (...) and so-called longtermism, those effects might arguably matter more than inequality’s short-term con- sequences. We assess whether we have instrumental reason to reduce economic inequality based on its intertemporal effects in the short, medium, and the very long term. We find a good short and medium-term instrumental case for lower economic inequality. We then argue, somewhat speculatively, that we have instrumental reasons for inequality reduction from a longtermist perspective too, primarily because greater inequality could increase existential risk. We thus have instrumental reasons to reduce inequality, regardless of which time-horizon we take. We then argue that from most consequentialist perspectives, this pro tanto reason also gives us all-things-considered reason. And even across most non-consequentialist views in philosophy, this argument gives us either an all-things-considered or at least weighty pro tanto reason against inequality. (shrink)

Pigovian policy is developed in economic theory as an efficient resolution to externality problems. The use of this type of policy to resolve real-world externality problems, including climate change in the form of carbon taxes, assumes that the Pigovian policy result derived in theory holds in the real world. By examining the bridging conditions from theory to the real world, I argue that this assumption holds only in an ambiguously defined subset of externalities. It is thus unclear when Pigovian policy (...) could be coherently applied, which is problematic given its widespread use in critical policy contexts. (shrink)

People seem to have pure time preferences about trade-offs concerning their own pleasures and pains, and such preferences contribute to estimates of people's individual time discount rate. Do pure time preferences also matter to interpersonal welfare trade-offs, including those concerning the welfare of future generations? Most importantly, should the intergenerational time discount rate include a pure time preference? Descriptivists claim that the intergenerational discount rate should reflect actual people's revealed preferences, and thus it should include a pure time preference. Prescriptivists (...) claim that the intergenerational discount rate should be based on moral analysis, and thus they (often) claim that the rate of pure time preference should be zero. I argue that regardless of which view is correct, a focus on pure time preference is misplaced. First, the most plausible interpretation of descriptive preferences for intergenerational trade-offs is that people are socially biased and not time biased. Second, social bias is superior to time bias as a prescriptive reason to discount the welfare of future people. Third, recent advances in measuring social bias as a social discount rate make social bias a viable replacement for time bias in economic analyses of intergenerational welfare trade-offs. (shrink)