COWLES FOUNDATION FOR RESEARCH IN
ECONOMICS Box 208281
COWLES FOUNDATION DISCUSSION PAPER NO. 1693 THE ETHICS OF DISTRIBUTION IN A WARMING PLANET John E. Roemer Yale University April 2009 The discounted-utilitarian social welfare function (DU) is used by the great majority
of researchers studying intergenerational resource allocation in the presence of climate
change (e.g., W. Nordhaus, M. Weitzman, N. Stern, and P. Dasgupta). I present three
justifications for using DU: (1) the view that the first generation's preferences should
be hegemonic, (2) the viewpoint of a utilitarian Ethical Observer who maximizes
expected utility when the existence of future generations is uncertain, and (3) axiomatic
justifications (as in classical social-choice theory). I argue that only justification (2)
provides an ethically convincing justification, and that, only if one endorses
utilitarianism as a good ethic. Recent work by Llavador, Roemer and Silvestre challenges
the utilitarian assumption, and argues that sustaining human welfare at the highest
possible level forever, or sustaining the growth rate of human welfare (at a fixed
exogenous growth rate), are more attractive ethical choices. The work of these authors,
which studies the optimal intergenerational paths of resource allocatiobn under the
sustainabilitarian objectives, is briefly reviewed and contrasted with the
discounted-utilitarian approach. |
