Carbon Majors and Corporate Responsibility for Climate Change

Much of the discussion of the responsibility for addressing climate change centres on the duties of states, and for good reason. But attention is increasingly turning to the contribution that corporations make to climate change and what this ought to mean for how we divide the burdens of responding to climate change. This is particularly the case for major fossil fuel producing corporations or ‘carbon majors’ (CMs) who contribute to climate change in two key ways: by directly producing the fossil fuels that create emissions and by influencing the climate related policies and actions that states and other actors adopt. This project considers the level of responsibility that CMs have for climate harms.The project also assesses the responses that carbon majors ought to make. There are three broad types of action that corporations ought to take: disgorging their profits, lowering their direct carbon emissions and phasing out their fossil fuel related activities.

A Just Climate Transition

Australia's climate transition will have to drastically cut our national emissions. Yet our transition also needs to be fair. This project will develop a social justice framework for the implementation of a zero net emissions climate transition for rural Victoria. This will be the first comprehensive incorporation of social justice framework with detailed mitigation strategies in rural Australia. The research will combine insights from leading Australian and international energy groups and current research to produce valuable inputs into a national just transitions strategy and provide benefits to Industry partners and the sector. The project will significantly contribute to our understanding of a just climate transition.

Research Duration: 2020 - 2024

Lead Researcher: Jeremy Moss

Partners/Collaborators ARC Linkage: University of Queensland, Hepburn Wind, Samso Energy Academy (Denmark), Renew, Little Sketches, Central Victorian GHG Alliance

Funding Agency: Australian Research Council

Associated School: Practical Justice Initiative

Research Area: Philosophy

Ethics, Responsibility and the Carbon Budget

The aim of this project will be to provide a rigorous ethical framework for dividing the world’s remaining ‘carbon budget’ (CB). The project will develop a new analysis of how our assumptions concerning risk and harm shape our conception of the CB. It will also provide a new understanding of how future emission rights should be allocated given that countries have emitted vastly different quantities of GHGs in the past. Crucially, the project will analyse how the CB will impact the climate transition plans of countries such as Australia.

This project will address key issues for thinking about the carbon budget including: Is offsetting acceptable, what are the duties of sub state agents (state governments, corporations) and who should bear the costs of transition. The project will also provide innovative solutions to likely obstacles to the implementation of such an account. It will engage with end-users through policy briefs and stakeholder workshops.

Research Duration: 2018 – 2023

Lead Researcher: Jeremy Moss

Partners/Collaborators ARC Discovery: Prof Christian Barry (ANU), Prof John Broom (Oxford), Prof Garrett Cullity (Adelaide)

Funding Agency: Australian Research Council

Associated School: Practical Justice Initiative

Research Area: Philosophy

Major Funding

$547,374 ARC funding awarded to develop a social justice framework for the implementation of a zero net emissions climate transition and Australia’s carbon budget.

https://climatejustice.co/