Edward Page 2024
In: Mosquera, J. & O. Torpman (ed.), Studies on Climate Ethics and Future Generations vol. 6. Working Paper Series 2024:10–17
‘For this by nature is equitable, that no one be made richer through another’s loss.’[1]
‘One cleans another’s shoes; what can the other do but put them on?’[2]
This paper discusses the problem of what to do, if anything, about the profits of activities that drive climate change. Should benefits created ‘at the expense of’ climate change be ‘disgorged’ to those who missed out and now face the adverse costs of the activities from which these benefits were created? The paper sets out to clarify the basis for disgorgement duties in private law and normative ethics and, in doing so, distinguishes between ‘unjust enrichment’ and ‘wrongful enrichment.’ It argues that the existence of the two tracks of unjustified enrichment is an established insight in the legal and ethical theory, but the significance of the distinction has yet to be fully explored in climate change justice. It is argued that neither approach generates a plausible case for legal recovery of unjust enrichments arising from climate change, but the wrongful enrichment track nonetheless serves as the basis of a powerful normative account of duties to disgorge profitable exploitations of the atmospheric commons.
[1] Pomponius, cited in Gergen 2001: 1927.
[2] Baron Pollock, cited in Ripstein 2007: 1994n.
