Main moments
This text is originally published in the book “What Do We Do Now? Short and long thoughts on the climate crisis and Norway's wealth”. Order the book here.
Climate change is harming current and future generations and we are complicit. Norwegian residents have high CO2 emissions compared to other countries. We have also earned a lot from producing fossil fuels that accelerate climate change. Apparently, therefore, we have a special responsibility to prevent the damage from climate change.
Still, more questions are popping up. How far do Norway's commitments extend? And what should we choose when our climate commitments come at the expense of other commitments, like helping fight extreme poverty? And when there is conflict between current generations and future generations, who are we going to help?
In the following, I will explore several reasons why we in Norway need to do more to combat climate change. There are many ways to combat climate change. The measures I will focus on in this chapter are financing more renewable energy in poor countries to replace fossil fuels, such as coal, firewood, and oil and gas.
Where is the limit of our moral obligation?
One reason to fund climate action in poor countries is that we can afford it. By virtue of our wealth, we have the ability to help those who have less than us. Norway is richer than most countries in the world and, in addition, we have an oil fund that, at the start of 2025, was approximately NOK 20,000 billion. Poor countries will be hardest hit by climate change, largely because they have fewer resources to deal with it. [1] In addition, more investment in renewable energy could provide a much-needed economic boost to poor countries and prevent local pollution, which kills millions of people annually [2]. Air pollution from fossil fuels kills many more people than murder, war and terrorist attacks combined [3].
That poor countries have a greater need for additional resources than rich countries seems like a good reason for rich countries to help. But if we follow a principle that Norwegian money should always be used to help those in greatest need, it has extreme consequences. It will imply that we will have to keep sending money out of the country long after the Oil Fund has been used up. Yes, we must continue to give until it is we who need the money more than others, that is, until no one is worse off than us. This is what utilitarians like Peter Singer believe that morality demands of us [4]. It would, in that case, involve a radical break with our moral obligations, as we usually understand them.
Norway should help the poor
A better principle is that by virtue of our wealth we have significant commitments to better the lives of those who have much less than us. Just how much we have to give is hard to determine, but a common answer among many philosophers of morality is that rich countries should spend in all cases 10 percent of their income on aid. I'm among them.
If the entire rich world had given away 10 percent of its wealth, we could eradicate extreme poverty, saving tens of millions of people annually from premature death [5]. But neither country lives up to those commitments. Today, Norway is the cleverest in its class by spending one per cent of our annual income to help people in poorer countries, but this first prize helps little when the whole class gives too little.
Imagine, however, that we were to live up to our moral obligations. Then there is apparently great scope to spend more money on climate finance.
However, it is not that simple. If we have a duty to satisfy the needs of the poor, we need to ask whether the best thing we can do for them is to help them readjust to the renewable society. And it probably isn't.
Although poor countries are adversely affected by climate change, and would benefit from financing that prevents climate damage, economic calculations show that it is far from the most important for the world's poorest [6]. If the choice is between funding a green transition on the one hand, and eliminating tuberculosis and malaria, providing vaccines for children, improving maternal and newborn health, strengthening primary education and better nutrition for children on the other, the latter choice is better for the poorest. If we spend the money on climate action instead, it will primarily be future generations who benefit from it, not those living in extreme poverty today. If our obligations are to today's poor, we should prioritise things other than green transition.
Should we prioritize tomorrow's poor over today's?
But perhaps it is precisely the consideration of those people who have not yet been born that should be given preference? It is future generations who will have to live with the lion's share of the damage from climate change, and they are helpless in the face of the choices we make today.
As Gro Harlem Brundtland put it in the 1987 Brundtland Commission: “Future generations do not have the right to vote in our elections; they have no political or economic power; they cannot go against our decisions... We act as we do because we can get away with impunity.”
Usually we think that we have special obligations to those who cannot stand up for themselves, such as children. It is therefore perhaps even more important that we safeguard the interests of future generations than to help those who are poor and need help today.
While climate change will have significant negative consequences for future generations, they are not helpless. In fact, future generations will, with a high chance, be better off than us. Economic calculations predict that by 2100, generations will be 450 percent wealthier than we are today — if we do not take into account the negative impacts of climate change [8]. Wealth does not guarantee that you are well off, but it is an important contributor. The welfare of future generations will admittedly decrease as a result of climate change, but they will be no worse off than current generations.
Nobel laureate William Nordhaus reckons that a temperature increase of four degrees would reduce prosperity by less than four percent [9]. The United Nations Climate Change Panel has reached similar conclusions [10]. That means future generations will be more than five times as rich as we are today, even when we take climate change into account. However, there is considerable uncertainty surrounding these estimates, and other scientists have come to far higher estimates of what climate change will cost [11]. There is also a lot that is not being sufficiently captured in the economic valuations. Yet there is no evidence to assume that future generations will live worse lives than ours, even if climate change makes it worse than it could have been.
If we have the choice between helping today's poor and tomorrow's poor, we should help today's poor. If we prioritise climate action over measures that make the situation better for the very worst off today, there will be a transfer from the poorest to someone who is expected to be significantly wealthier - and thus have less need of the money. It's wrong no matter what moral view you base on. It increases inequalities between generations, it makes it worse for the worst-off and it reduces overall welfare because money is worth more to those who have the least.
One objection might be that it doesn't help to be rich if the basis of subsistence disappears. When floods and hurricanes come, money can't save you. But that doesn't add up. In recent years, we have seen a dramatic decline in deaths due to climate-related disasters such as floods, droughts, storms, wildfires and extreme temperatures. The reason is that the richer we get, the better we become at protecting people and property. This also applies to the world's poorest. Wealth makes it possible to build levees that prevent damage from the water surface increasing, and to install air conditioning that protects against heat. That wealth protects against climate change clearly finds support in the statistics. The probability of dying from climate-related disasters has decreased by 99 percent since the 1920s [12].
We shall not hurt
A more promising argument for financing the green energy transition in poorer countries is that Norwegian citizens have a duty not to harm others. A fundamental principle in all moral views is that we have an obligation to avoid inflicting harm on others. It applies even if the person you hurt is better off than you. It is not acceptable to do vandalism against the houses of the upper class, even if one lives in a cramped apartment. And we cannot allow ourselves to make future generations worse off by emitting huge amounts of greenhouse gases, just because they will be richer than us.
The damage that comes from climate change is, correctly, not as concentrated and easy to spot as a broken house. Temperature rise has negative consequences distributed to many people over a long period of time. But when we look at the damage an average citizen in rich countries causes, we see that they are significant. Oxford philosopher John Broome calculates that the damage each of us is responsible for is equivalent to shortening a person's life by half a year.
It can still be tempting to ignore the harms because they are distributed among many people. But it will be unsustainable. Imagine a thousand people torturing a group of a thousand victims. [14] Each torturer has a fine-tuned switch that increases the pain of the victims so little that it is not noticeable. Each of them then turns the switch up a little. Despite the fact that each torturer does not inflict significant pain on the victims, the result, when all the torturers have finished turning on the switches, is that a thousand victims are tortured. The example shows that even if the individual's behavior has little effect, one must inwardly examine how the actions work with others. It also applies to damage from greenhouse gas emissions.
If we are responsible for all the damage we inflict on others and greenhouse gas emissions harm others, then do we have an absolute obligation to cease all activity that produces greenhouse gases? No, that would be a disproportionately large sacrifice. For example: Burning oil and gas releases harmful greenhouse gases, but it also provides energy that saves lives and makes lives livable. Flying less and eating less meat may be a burden it's reasonable to impose on rich people, but energy is vital. It cannot possibly be the case that people who need energy to survive, or get out of extreme poverty, have a duty to cut their greenhouse gas emissions to zero.
I also think that there is something fundamentally problematic about placing all the burden on whoever is doing harm, in a case like greenhouse gas emissions. The moral responsibility for domestic violence is obviously borne solely by the perpetrator of the violence, but harm through greenhouse gas emissions is not like exercising violence. Greenhouse gases are an undesirable side effect of activities that are okay to do, such as eating food, going to work, and going on vacation. Rather than banning all activity that inflicts an injury on others, we should rather consider what harms we must accept.
Economists, such as Nordhaus, have come up with a proposal for what harms we must accept. They propose imposing on climate-damaging activity a carbon tax equivalent to the economic damage inflicted on third parties. In other words, the price those affected by climate change would demand for voluntarily being subjected to them, had they been given the chance. This is often called the social costs from carbon.
The carbon tax is intended to make up for the fact that those affected by the carbon emissions do not have a voice. In a normal market transaction, people will say yes or no to whether they want to take on a burden, whether it be a job or to give up something they own. And they will usually only do so if they are better off — that is, the money they get feels worth more than the burden of the job or giving up ownership. When humans are adversely affected by climate change, the carbon price can represent their interests in trade. It is as if they were sitting at the negotiating table and saying 'you are allowed to pollute, but only if you compensate me and others affected'.
It sounds great, but the solution is not as good as it seems at first glance. The carbon price Norwegian businesses and customers pay to emit greenhouse gases goes to the Norwegian state, not those affected by climate change. For a carbon price to be a satisfactory alternative for a trade between equal parties, at least the revenue from the levy must go to compensating the losers.
There are two ways to do this: One is to transfer money to people in poorer countries who will bear most of the damage from climate change. The second is to cut in greenhouse gas emissions to reduce the damage itself.
The best way to cut greenhouse gas emissions is to fund climate action in low- and middle-income countries. As a general rule, it is more efficient to cut greenhouse gas emissions abroad than in Norway.
In our interest
One last reason to fund climate change is because it helps ourselves. Many private investors choose not to invest money in poor countries because they are afraid of the risks. Since Norway is so rich, we can afford to take greater risks and thus also make good money on risky but profitable projects. At present, the Oil Fund cannot take on these projects, given its mandate to have the highest possible returns within a moderate level of risk. The fact that it is possible to make money from climate finance has been proven by the fact that the state investment company Norfund's investments in low- and middle-income countries have over time had better returns than the Oil Fund.
More speculatively, more climate finance abroad could reduce the chance of Norway being exposed to lawsuits. Norway is the world's seventh largest exporter of CO2 through sales of oil and gas. We have also had a high consumption of CO2 per capita for an extended period of time. That makes us a suitable country for lawsuits from groups that consider themselves damaged by the temperature increases. If, on the other hand, Norway has taken a leadership jersey in reducing climate emissions abroad by preventing greenhouse gas emissions in an effective way, we have a better case. If Norway has taken action to reduce CO2 emissions that are many times greater than our own emissions, a lawsuit could fall on its own unreasonableness.
A third way it could help us is that we have committed ourselves through international agreements to cut our own emissions. If this is done in Norway, it will quickly become very expensive. If Norway is to cut emissions first, funding climate change in poorer countries is a cheap and efficient way to do so. If the agreements can be adapted so that Norway can reach parts of our climate commitments in this way, it will free up resources that we can spend on other things, such as satisfying our moral obligations over those who have the very least. This can be done by ensuring the poor part of the world access to vaccines, basic health care and education, and not least cheap energy that makes it possible to free themselves from physical labor.
Conclusion
To recap, it looks like we have good reasons to spend some of our wealth on helping poorer countries with climate transition. The two main arguments for this, in my opinion, are that we should avoid inflicting harm on others, and that a more effective climate policy is actually in our own interest as well.
When we look at the poorest countries, these are the ones that will notice climate change the hardest. Helping them adapt and reduce emissions is one way to prevent the situation from getting worse for them. At the same time, having a more sustainable global climate would also benefit us all, because climate change affects us across borders.
On the other hand, I believe that we should not spend aid funds on financing climate action in these countries. Instead, we should focus on helping those who are suffering the most right now, without having to wait for climate change to become even more dramatic in the future. Consideration for the poorest today should simply be more important than prioritising action for those living in the future.
Aksel Braanen Sterri (1987) is a philosopher and social debater with a strong interest in how we can use our resources in a fair and smart way. He is the head of science in the think-tank Langand also researches ethical issues at the intersection of economics and philosophy. Among other things, he is interested in how the Oil Fund can ensure a good future for both today's young and future generations, and likes to ask the big questions: How can we use community money to fight the climate crisis? How do we ensure that young people today inherit a world that is better than the one we grew up in?
Sources
[1] Robert Mendelsohn, Ariel Dinar & Larry Williams (2006). “The Distributional Impact of Climate Change on Rich and Poor Countries.” Economia dell'ambiente e developmento 11 (2): 159—78.
[2] Hannah Ritchie & Max Roser (2021) - “Air Pollution” Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/air-pollution
[3] Max Roser (2020) - “Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?” Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
[4] Singer, Peter (1972). “Famine, Affluence, and Morality.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 1 (3): 229—43.
[5] See e.g. Moorhouse, F., Harris, R., John, T., Harris, K., & Cargill, N. (2023). What if the 1% gave 10%?
How ambitious giving could begin to solve some of the world's biggest problems. Longview, Kentucky
Philanthropy and Copenhagen Consensus Center (no date). The 12 best investments for the world https://copenhagenconsensus.com/halftime-sustainable-development-goals-2016-2030/12-best-investments-world
[6] Copenhagen Consensus Center (no date).
[7] Gro Harlem Brundtland et al. (1987). Report of the World Commission on the Environment and
Development: Our Common Future. FN.
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/5987our-common-future.pdf
[8] Bjorn Lomborg (2020). Welfare in the 21st century: Increasing development, reducing inequality, the impact of climate change, and the cost of climate policies, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Volume 156,11998.
[9] William D. Nordhaus & Andrew Moffat (2017). A Survey of Global Impacts of Climate Change: Replication, Survey Methods, and a Statistical Analysis, National Bureau of Economic Research, NBER Working Papers Series number 23646.
[10] IPCC, Fourth Assessment Report, Impacts, 2007, Section 5.7.
[11] Matthew E. Kahn, Kamiar Mohaddes, Ryan N.C. Ng et al. (2021). 2Long-term macroeconomic effects of climate change: A cross-country analysis,” Energiekonomie 104, 105624; Nicholas Stern (2006). The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review. UK Government Report; Martin Blomhoff Holm and Jonas Hjorth (2024, 19 June). How costly will the temperature rise be? Today's Business https://www.dn.no/innlegg/klima/okonomi/klimapolitikk/hvor-kostbar-blir-temperaturstigningen/2-1-1657622
[12] The calculation is based on the numerical data from Lomborg (2020, 16).
[13] John Broome (2012), Climate Matters, Chapter 5.
[14] The example is from Derek Parfit (1984) Reasons and Persons. Oxford University Press, p. 80. Available here: https://www.stafforini.com/docs/Parfit%20-%20Five%20mistakes%20in%20moral%20mathematics.pdf
