Developing nations justify rising emissions by invoking developed countries’ historic responsibility.

Evidence

Millions of people in India have no access to electricity. The country has embarked on a national development program requiring huge increases in energy production. The nation’s environment minister, Prakash Javadekar, explained that India’s top priority is to eradicate poverty and improve its economy (Davenport, 2014b). He estimates that this massive national development, which depends heavily on coal-fired energy, will double carbon emissions, moving them beyond those of the United States and China. The country will make efforts to reduce the rate of increase but, in his view, it will take decades before a decline in emissions can be achieved. He argues that developed countries spent a century polluting the atmosphere, so they now bear the responsibility of making large cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. “The moral principle of historic responsibility cannot be washed away,” he said (Davenport, 2014b). Some Indian megacities are among the most highly polluted in the world. A massive coal-fueled economy foretells a severely polluted future in which people’s standard of living is raised, but at the cost of a less livable environment and a heavy toll on public health. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2935

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘historic responsibility’ argument is a documented form of moral disengagement — displacement of responsibility / moral justification — echoing earlier chapters of this same book. — connects to: Historic emitters must bear climate burdens regardless of current emissions — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 974
• SEED: Angles: the moral-disengagement framing of climate negotiations — how both polluters and developing nations deploy exculpatory rhetoric.