110 Iowa L. Rev. 2015 (2025)
Abstract
In this Essay, I dispute the increasingly common claim that the pollution and other excesses from the developed nations of the Industrial West have, given their capitalist economies, forced global warming on the rest of the world, for which reparations are not only appropriate but also a moral imperative. But the counterarguments are decisive against these bold claims. First, the scientific evidence does not support that reparations claim, or indeed give, any estimate of what those amounts should be. Capitalist economies are in fact far more efficient both in reusing and in disposing of it. Local disasters in Maui and the Pacific Palisades were largely due to pervasive poor forest management, not climate change. The three major examples of those negative physical harms include the supposed sinking of the Pacific Islands, the decimation of the coral reef, and the decline in the polar bear population, all of which are either outright incorrect or subject to serious empirical doubt. The global warming models are overly pessimistic because they ignore the favorable effects of photosynthesis, the critical role of water vapor in determining global temperatures, and all the other possible explanations for the complex dynamics of climate change, given that vast changes in ice covering long preceded any human development. Their case for reparations flounders on the inability to identify unique causation from the Industrial West on which the claim rests. It also overlooks both natural causes and the dangerous activities undertaken by nations claiming reparations, while refusing to discuss the many ways that the Industrial West has provided benefits to less developed nations through direct investment and trade policies.