Developing countries use historical causation to justify their emissions

Evidence

Developing countries, in turn, rejected caps on their countries’ greenhouse gas emissions on the grounds that global warming is a problem that the rich, industrialized countries created, so they should be the ones to cut their emissions. They asked why countries striving to modernize should stifle their economic and industrial growth for a problem that was not of their making. From their perspective, they argued, they have the same right to modernize their societies and raise their people’s standard of living as did the rich, industrialized countries. They, too, want to live prosperously. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2661

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to other frameworks of moral licensing and burden-shifting in environmental justice literature. — connects to: Historic emitters must bear climate burdens regardless of current emissions — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 974