The Climate Duties of Sub-National Political Communities
| Published date | 01 February 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321718819076 |
| Author | Lachlan Montgomery Umbers,Jeremy Moss |
| Date | 01 February 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321718819076
Political Studies
2020, Vol. 68(1) 20 –36
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321718819076
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The Climate Duties of
Sub-National Political
Communities
Lachlan Montgomery Umbers
and Jeremy Moss
Abstract
In recent years, several actors at the sub-national level (e.g. California, British Columbia, New York
City) have taken unilateral steps to mitigate climate change by reducing their emissions. These
developments have commanded considerable attention in the empirical literature. In this piece,
we consider the philosophical dimensions of climate action at the sub-national level. Specifically,
we argue that climate action at the sub-national level is an instance of a more general class of
cases in which the failure of some collective agent to discharge some duty to which it is subject
entails duties for the sub-collectives of which it is comprised to partially discharge that duty. We
begin, then, with a discussion of such cases, and a defence of the devolution principle, which sets
out conditions under which such duties arise. We then set out the argument with respect to
sub-national political communities’ duties to take action on climate change, specifically. The article
concludes by considering complications arising out of the inevitable fact of partial compliance,
drawing upon recent work in the literature on slack-taking duties.
Keywords
climate justice, collective duties, partial compliance, sub-national political communities, political
philosophy
Accepted: 22 November 2018
On 1 June 2017, President Trump announced his intention to withdraw the United States
from the Paris climate agreement. In response, the governors of California, New York and
Washington announced the formation of the United States Climate Alliance, which now
comprises 15 states committed to curbing their emissions in line with the Paris targets,
even in the absence of an adequate national-level climate policy. Many municipal govern-
ments followed suit.1 Mayor Peduto of Pittsburgh, for example, reaffirmed a commitment
to move the city to 100% renewable energy by 2035 (Hidalgo and Peduto, 2017).
Climate action at the sub-national level, often in the face of national-level intransi-
gence, is nothing new (Bulkeley, 2010). In 1990, for example, Toronto committed to
Practical Justice Initiative, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Corresponding author:
Lachlan Montgomery Umbers, Office 318, Morven Brown Building, University of New South Wales,
Kensington, NSW 2052, Australia.
Email: lachlan.umbers@unsw.edu.au
819076PSX0010.1177/0032321718819076Political StudiesUmbers and Moss
research-article2019
Article
Umbers and Moss 21
reducing the city’s net emissions to 20% below 1988 levels by 2005. British Columbia
introduced a carbon tax in 2008. Coming into effect in 2009, the Regional Greenhouse
Gas Initiative (RGGI) is a cap-and-trade system regulating CO2 emissions from power
plants in Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
New York, Rhode Island and Vermont. On the other hand, some sub-national political
communities have not merely failed to act, but have also sought to frustrate efforts to
address climate change. In 2015, for example, 27 US states sued the Federal Government
in an attempt to block the implementation of the Clean Power Plan, the centrepiece of the
Obama administration’s climate strategy.
The climate justice literature has thus far focused largely upon the duties of states (i.e.
of national political communities like the United States and Australia). That, perhaps, is
understandable. The ideal solution to the climate crisis would almost certainly involve a
global agreement to be worked out between states. Yet, with major industrialised nations
looking unlikely to meet their Paris commitments (Victor et al., 2017) – commitments
which are themselves looking increasingly inadequate (Rogelj et al., 2016: 631–636) –
there is a growing recognition in the empirical literature that sub-national political com-
munities may have a significant role to play in responding to climate change (e.g. Rogelj
et al., 2016: 636–637).
We think, then, that the time is right to consider the normative dimensions of climate
action at the sub-national level.2 We shall defend the following claim: where states fail to
satisfactorily discharge their duties to mitigate climate change by reducing their emis-
sions, the sub-national political communities of which they are comprised may have
duties to take such action unilaterally – that is, to reduce their emissions to help mitigate
the threat posed by climate change, even in the absence of an adequate national-level
climate policy.3 Climate action at the sub-national level, we think, is an instance of a more
general class of cases in which the failure of some collective agent to discharge some duty
to which it is subject entails duties for the sub-collectives of which it is comprised to
partially discharge that duty. Our argument, then, begins with a discussion of such cases,
and a defence of the devolution principle, which sets out conditions under which such
duties arise. The following sections then set out the argument with respect to sub-national
political communities’ duties to take action on climate change.
Before proceeding, two qualifying remarks are in order. First, our argument is intended
only to apply to sub-national political communities which have the legitimate constitu-
tional authority to take steps to mitigate the harms of climate change.4 Without such
authority, it would be impossible (or, at least, illegitimate) for such communities to act
upon duties of the sort we shall defend.5
Second, in this article, we shall argue that many sub-national political communities
have a special sort of collective duty to reduce their emissions to help to mitigate climate
change. A collective duty, in this sense, is a duty which applies to some collective qua
collective.6 Our argument, then, must necessarily presuppose that such communities are
collective agents. Moral duties are duties to act, something only agents can do. Several
authors have argued that states constitute collective agents, insofar as they have the fea-
tures generally thought essential to natural persons’ agency – a continuous identity over
time, and (through their legislative and executive organs) capacities to deliberate over,
adopt, revise and pursue particular goals and ends (Erskine, 2001; Goodin, 1995, ch. 2).
Sub-national political communities typically possess these same features. Although we
lack the space to explore such issues in depth, here, we take such arguments to apply
mutatis mutandis to such communities, also.
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