JOHN BROOME: WRITINGS ON CLIMATE CHANGE TO 21 FEBRUARY 2026


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Philosophy protects the climate
In The Point Is To Change It, edited by David Archard and Matt Davies, Nuffield Foundation, 2025, pp. 127–35.
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The value of life in the social cost of carbon: a critique and a proposal
Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, 15 S1 (2025), pp. 101–26.
 In its 2023 revision of the social cost of carbon, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency values people’s lives on the basis of their willingness to pay for them, without applying any distributional weights. It justifies this proposal on grounds of the Kaldor–Hicks criterion, which avoids interpersonal comparisons of wellbeing. But this criterion was discredited 70 years ago. Interpersonal comparisons of wellbeing cannot truly be avoided, and they should be used to determine distributional weights. One way of doing so is to identify as a numeraire a good that brings equal wellbeing to each person. A healthy life year is a reasonable, though only approximate, candidate for such a good. This article presents the point of view of a philosopher, regarding the practice of economists from outside the discipline.
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Utilitarianism and climate change
A guest essay in Introduction to Utilitarianism: An Online Textbook, by Richard Chappell, Darius Messner and William MacKaskill, 2023.
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Why not a carbon tax?
Revista de Ciencia Política, 44 (2024), pp. 523–36.
 If the world is to overcome the threat of climate change, a price must be set on carbon. A carbon tax is a means of creating a carbon price, and it is an ideal tax in that, unlike most taxes, it promotes economic efficiency. Yet many countries have no carbon tax. The reason is that there are strong political interests opposed to taxing carbon. I shall argue that these interests need to be appeased by fully compensating anyone who would otherwise be harmed by a carbon tax. This includes the owners and workers in the fossil fuel industries. If a carbon tax is to be successful, it needs to be introduced alongside an appropriate system of compensation. Some of the compensation will need to be paid out of public debt, and this will be feasible for many countries only if they are supported by a new financial institution: a World Climate Bank.
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A World Climate Bank
Report published by the Global Challenges Foundation, 2022. Written with Duncan Foley.
Link to the full report

Review of: Greta Thunberg, No One is Too Small to Make a Difference
Society, 58 (2021).
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Climate change and population ethics
In The Oxford Handbook of Population Ethics, edited by Gustaf Arrhenius, Krister Bykvist, Tim Campbell, and Elizabeth Finneron-Burns, Oxford University Press, 2022, pp. 393–406.
We cannot make good decisions about climate change without taking account of population ethics.
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How much harm does each of us do?
In Philosophy and Climate Change, edited by Mark Budolfson, David Plunkett, and Tristram McPherson, Oxford University Press, 2021, pp. 281–91.
This paper attempts to estimate the amount of harm an average American does by her emissions of greenhouse gas, on the basis of recent very detailed statistical analysis being done by a group of economists. It concentrates on the particular harm of shortening people’s lives. My estimate is very tentative, and it varies greatly according to how effectively the world responds to climate change. If the response is very weak, I estimate that an average American’s emissions shorten lives by six or seven years in total. If the response is moderately strong, my figure is about half a year.
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Self-interest against climate change
Lecture given at Stanford University in 2020. Swedish translation in Klimat och Moral: Nio Tankar om Hetten, edited by Magnus Linton, Natur & Kultur, 2021.
For more than three decades, the international community has been trying to bring climate change under control. In effect, it has been trying to get presently-living people to sacrifice some of their standard of living for the sake of people in the future. This effort has failed: emissions of greenhouse gas are still rising. People seem unwilling to make sacrifices, and the fossil fuel industry has used its immense power to prevent governments from taking the necessary actions. We need a new approach that harnesses people’s self-interest. Economic theory tells us that, because emissions of greenhouse gas are an externality, they cause economic inefficiency. This means it is possible to improve future lives without demanding any sacrifice from present people. This result can be achieved by setting a price on carbon in order to internalize the externality, and using redistributive financial transfers to compensate people for paying the carbon price. Owners of fossil fuels can be bought out so that it is no longer in their interests to prevent action on climate change. That is the theory. To put it into effect, the cost of decarbonization will have to be paid for partly by public borrowing, which is a way of redistributing resources from the future people who will benefit from decarbonization to the present people who have to bear the costs. Undoubtedly some injustice and maldistribution will result, but for the sake of controlling climate change it must be tolerated.
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Philosophy in the IPCC
In Philosophy for the Real World: An Introduction to Field Philosophy with Case Studies and Practical Strategies, edited by Evelyn Brister and Robert Frodeman, Routledge, 2019, pp. 95–110.
An account of my work as an author – one of two philosophers – for the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
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Against denialism
The Monist, 102 (2019)
This paper opposes individualism denialism, which is the view that an individual does no harm by her emissions of greenhouse gas. The argument is that science has shown that on a large scale there is an increasing linear relationship between emissions and global average temperature, and increasing temperature does harm. Because at a small scale the climate system contains a lot of randomness, not all emissions do harm, but each emission leads to an increase in expected harm. This paper reviews a number of contrary arguments. Among them is the argument that the effect of climate change is overdetermined; it is caused by the actions of everyone together, and one person’s refraining from emitting would make no difference. Another is an argument that the effect of an individual is imperceptible, and there can be no imperceptible harm. The paper answers all these arguments.
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A challenge for the world: take notice of economics
In a Festschrift for Ottmar Edenhofer, 2018.
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Efficiency and future generations
Economics and Philosophy, 34 (2018), pp. 221–41.
Standard lessons from economics tell us that an externality creates inefficiency, and that this inefficiency can be removed by internalizing the externality. This paper considers how successfully these lessons can be extended to intergenerational externalities such as emissions of greenhouse gas. For intergenerational externalities, the standard lessons involve comparisons between states whose populations of people differ, either in their identities or their numbers. Common notions of efficiency break down in these comparisons. This paper supplies a new notion of efficiency that allows the lessons to survive, but at the cost of reducing their practical significance.
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Trump and climate change
The Philosophers' Magazine, 76 (2017)
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A World Climate Bank
In Institutions for Future Generations, edited by Axel Gosseries and Iñigo González-Ricoy, Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 156-69
Written with Duncan Foley
Because greenhouse gas is an externality, it creates Pareto inefficiency. It is therefore possible to respond to climate change in a way that is a Pareeto improvement, requiring no sacrifice from anyone in any generation. A great deal of benefit can be achieved by doing so. However, making a Pareto improvement in practice requires a new international financial institution. We need a World Climate Bank, which will allow investments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to be financed by public debt.
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Do not ask for morality
In The Ethical Underpinnings of Climate Economics, edited by Adrian Walsh, Säde Hormio and Duncan Purves, Routledge, 2016, pp. 9-21.
Experience has shown that governments cannot be motivated by morality to make sufficient investments to bring climate change under control. They therefore must be motivated by self interest. It is possible to respond adequately to climate change without asking for a sacrifice from anyone in any generation.
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A reply to my critics
Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 40 (2016), pp. 158-171
A response to three comments on my Climate Matters. In responding to Elizabeth Cripps, I argue that each individual’s emissions do harm because the harm done by cumulative emissions is roughly proportional to their quantity. Each rich person’s emissions are therefore an injustice. In responding to Holly Lawford-Smith, I point out that the harm done by each tonne of a person’s emissions is very much greater than the cost to the person of avoiding that emission, so very few among the rich have any excuse for making emissions. In response to Paul Bou-Habib, I argue that the morality of climate change has no need for a ‘person-affecting’ notion of improvement, and that notion is in any case defective because it can be cyclical.
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Climate change and the ethics of population
In Demography and Climate Change, edited by Franz Prettenthaler, Lukas Meyer and Wolfgang Polt, Joanneum Research, 2015, pp. 37-43
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Climate change: life and death
In Climate Change and Justice, edited by Jeremy Moss, Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 184-200
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A philosopher at the IPCC
The Philosophers' Magazine, 66 (2014), pp. 10-16
A shorter version appears on the blog of The London Review of Books
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The public and private morality of climate change
The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, 32, (2013), pp. 3-20
Translation in Foreign Theoretical Trends (China), forthcoming 
Full text (including the diagram, which was omitted from printed version)

A small chance of disaster
European Review, 21 (2013), pp. S27-S31
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Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming World
Norton, 2012
Description: A vital new moral perspective on the climate change debate. Esteemed philosopher John Broome avoids the familiar ideological stances on climate change policy and examines the issue through an invigorating new lens. As he considers the moral dimensions of climate change, he reasons clearly through what universal standards of goodness and justice require of us, both as citizens and as governments. His conclusions—some as demanding as they are logical—will challenge and enlighten. Eco-conscious readers may be surprised to hear they have a duty to offset all their carbon emissions, while policy makers will grapple with Broome’s analysis of what if anything is owed to future generations. From the science of greenhouse gases to the intricate logic of cap and trade, Broome reveals how the principles that underlie everyday decision making also provide simple and effective ideas for confronting climate change. Climate Matters is an essential contribution to one of the paramount issues of our time.
Information from publisher

The most important thing about climate change
In Public Policy: Why Ethics Matters, edited by Jonathan Boston, Andrew Bradstock and David Eng, ANU E Press, 2010, pp. 101-16
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Should we value population?
Journal of Political Philosophy, 13 (2005), pp. 399-413
Reprinted in Population and Political Theory: Philosophy, Politics and Society 8th Series, edited by James Fishkin and Robert Goodin, Wiley-Blackwell 2010
Reprinted in The Study of Ethics, Southeast University Press, 2007, pp. 3-21
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The ethics of climate change
Scientific American, June 2008, pp 69-73
Reprinted in The Best American Science and Nature Writing, 2008, edited by Tim Folger and Elizabeth Kolbert, Houghton Mifflin, 2009, pp. 11-18
Reprinted in Research Ethics: A Philosophical Approach to Responsible Conduct of Research, edited by Gary Comstock, Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 265-9
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Valuing policies in response to climate change: some ethical issues
(Report written for the Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change, 2006) 
Published on the UK Treasury website. 
Reprinted in Global Justice, edited by Christian Barry and Holly Lawford-Smith, Ashgate Publishing, 2012
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Counting the Cost of Global Warming
White Horse Press, 1992
Full text of book


Writing for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Contributions to the Fifth Assessment Report:

Chapter 3: Social, economic and ethical concepts and methods   (Lead Author)   Link
Technical Summary    (Lead Author)   Link
Summary for Policymakers    (Drafting Author)   Link
All in Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, 2014. (The report of Working Group III.)

Synthesis Report, IPCC, 2014   (Member of the Core Writing Team)   Link