It has sometimes been claimed (usually without evidence) that the harm caused by an individual's participation in a greenhouse-gas-intensive economy is negligible. Using data from several contemporary sources, this paper attempts to estimate the harm done by an average American. This estimate is crude, and further refinements are surely needed. But the upshot is that the average American is responsible, through his/her greenhouse gas emissions, for the suffering and/or deaths of one or two future people.

In ‘How harmful are the average American's greenhouse gas emissions?’ John Nolt correctly points out that the claim that an individual's contribution to total atmospheric greenhouse gas leve...

I am grateful to all the respondents to ‘How harmful are the average American's greenhouse gas emissions?’. Their comments were individually and collectively very rich. Since there is...