Negative effects a liability for green house gas emitters?

Question

If a business or individual pollutes a river and poisons or affects the livelyhood of people living downstream he is morally and legally liable. Those very significantly affected in an adverse way by global warming will have a large and significant claim on those responsible and who have built wealth relying on large emissions of CO2. Are you prepared to advocate doing the right thing as and when these circumstances occur?

Answer 1

in the market it already is.  I haven't been in an Exxon or Mobil station since I learned of their role in manufacturing and spreading misinformation.  

At the corporate scale I do feel that oil companies should not only have all subsidies taken away, but they should replace the U.S. mass transit that they paid to remove in the 1950's.  Their intentional misrepresentation amounts to causing willful harm.  So yes, companies such as ExxonMobil are very much analogous to the tobacco companies (they even use the same people to manufacture false information) knowingly misleading the public, so the deliberate nature of their actions amounts to premeditated damage and they should and probably will be liable for that.  In my opinion they should be liable up to and including complete liquidation of the company to pay damages and the jailing of their executives.  

If the executives also faced the possibility extradition and even execution under foreign laws if they could be proven to have intentionally lied and caused many deaths, the noise about global warming would clean up in a hurry.  We're basically using our laws and our armed forces to harbor people who may be equivalent to major war criminals.

If you're referring to a global scale, no, if the cuts are not made across the board, if developing countries such as China and India are not on board for emissions curbs, then they should have no unique right to seek damages.  Every population, every country, will struggle with this burden.  Hindering the developed countries' ability to invest in developing technologies (by uniquely and punitively damaging their economies for example) may seem righteous to some people, but that could erase our best shot at finding replacement technologies to help humanity survive and thrive.  

Like it or not, there may not be room for everyone to survive on a warmer, struggling earth.  Some estimates run as high as 90% human mortality by the end of this century.  In a struggle for survival you don't hand your resources to the weakest of your species, or your whole species goes extinct.  Extinction (mass suicide) is too high a price to pay to embrace morality.  Our species is pretty unique in that we're the only one that has the idle time to pontificate about it, but our focus may shift back towards survival as we get a tough lesson in cause and effect over the coming decades.

Answer 2

Sure - no one has a right to cause monetary damage to others.

Just try to find one SUV that has caused harm to someone else, or an incandescent light bulb that reduced a neighbors home value.

Remember we're talking about just 0.6 degrees over the last 100 years.

[Edit] Morality should not be judged by the gvmt.  Gvmt should protect individual rights, preachers should enforce morality.

But then, global warming is more a religious issue than a scientific one.

Answer 3

I think you should read a book on torts, how they arise and on duties of care. There is a chapter on reasonable foreseeability, one on remoteness of loss that you may find useful.

xxFJ

Answer 4

All the people above are right about forseeability, standard of proof, etc.

And some insurance companies consider (given the scientific proof) global warming to be a forseeable risk, and will not cover liability from those who ignore it and take no action.

"The doctrine of “expected or intended losses” allows an insurer to demonstrate it is not responsible for indemnifying for harm intentionally or knowingly brought about by the insured. In many states insurers need not indemnify that which is not “unexpected, unusual, and unforeseen,” including intentional pollution even though the insured’s acts “may well have been lawful and socially acceptable at the time they were taken . . . .”

"Global Warming Litigation and Insurance

Coverage: Emerging Issues"

http://www.stblaw.com/content/publicatio...

Also see:

"New combatant against global warming: insurance industry"

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1013/p01s0...

Answer 5

The evidence would be circumstantial at best to what caused the warming in the first place. And criminals have walked due to the prosecution not being able to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the criminal did in fact commit the crime.

Civil cases are the same way.

It is also far easier to prove where the pollutant in the water came from than it is the air. Since wind effects where any given air pollutant will end up.

Also since CO2 comes from a lot of places you'd have to prove that the CO2 in the atmosphere came from a specific source, which no matter what anyone on here tries to claim, can't be done.

Edit: How would Anthropogenic Global Warming be a Moral issue? And if it is you should be looking at the bigger offenders. The ones on their soap boxes telling us our lifestyles need to change, but their still living in 1 million to 1 billion dollar homes.

I doubt any of us here on Yahoo! Answers is extremely wealthy and I also would bet most of our Personal Carbon Footprints are well below the national average of 7.4. Mine is about 2.4. And until I can move out of the apartment I live in, it's the best I can do.

So to me it's not a moral issue either. It's a Scientific issue. But so many people have made it a Political issue.