Reconceptualising climate responsibility - from theory to practice.

The history of climate negotiations is a history of debates about climate responsibility in general
and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR) in particular. The international community disagrees about the equitable distribution of costs and benefits in global environmental governance. These disagreements reinforce divisions between developed and developing, importoriented and export-oriented, richer and poorer countries, all of which are detrimental to more ambitious climate action. A normatively convincing, politically feasible, and empirically measurable concept of climate responsibility could help decrease divisions and foster ambitious international and domestic climate policies.
This essay reconceptualises and systematises climate responsibility to offer a normatively
convincing and empirically measurable alternative to the principle of CBDR. It discusses the Polluter Pays Principle, Ability to Pay Principle, and Beneficiary Pays Principle as prominent bases of climate responsibility in the literature and demonstrates how they can be combined and translated into a measurable systematisation. The economic activity principle presented here rests agents’ climate responsibility on the economic link between the polluter-pays, beneficiary-pays, and ability-to-pay principles. It argues that agents’ climate responsibility should be based progressively on the emissions intensity of their income and expenditures above an ability-to-pay threshold and after an excusable ignorance threshold. The economic activity principle proposed here can help address some of the problems stemming from the current lack of conceptual clarity and empirical measurability surrounding CBDR.