States' Emissions
As we have said already, states are often assumed to be the main parties responsible for climate change. Commentators have cast states as players in a global “tragedy of the commons,” where their self-interest predicts increasing emissions, in tension with the reduced emissions that would be in the interest of all states taken together.
States are appropriate bearers of responsibility for climate change, because it is within their control to introduce policies that will restrict the emissions of the individuals and companies within their territories, like a carbon price or an emissions cap. On this understanding, we talk about “Australia’s” emissions, but we don’t really mean that these emissions come from the actions of the Australian government. The state is a proxy for the agents within its borders, in particular the companies and corporations that operate there, and to a lesser extent, the individual citizens who live emissions-intensive lifestyles there. This means that the actions performed by agents within the state territory are attributed to the state itself. But this way of conceiving of the state for the purpose of addressing the climate change problem sidesteps the question of whether states are culpable emitters in their own right. For them to be so the emissions need to be the result of the actions of the government, not merely of those agents who are active within the territory it governs.What’s at stake in this question? If states are culpable emitters, then their responsibility strengthens; no longer will they have a responsibility to mitigate as mere proxies for the emitters that lie within their territory and jurisdiction. Rather, they will have a responsibility to mitigate based on culpable involvement in creating climate change. What we want to do in this section is establish that states are culpable emitters, and argue that this further strengthens their obligation to take strong action on climate change, particularly in terms of mitigation.
We’ll run this discussion using the example of Australia, a representative high-emissions state. Let’s start with direct emissions.An important branch of any government is its military.5 The Australian Defence Force consists of the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force, and employs over 80,000 people. It is the largest government emitter, producing more emissions than Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Timor- Leste, Vanuatu, and Samoa combined; and about as many emissions as one of Australia’s large privately-owned corporations, Telstra, at 1.5 megatons (1 megaton = 1 million tons) of CO2-e (carbon dioxide equivalents) per year (Thomas 2017). To put this in perspective, it is still dwarfed by the emissions of Australia’s largest emitter in 2016—17, which was AGL Energy Ltd at 43.4 megatons. But it, in turn, dwarfs the emissions of Australian individuals, which vary between 3—30 tons of GHGs per year per person (Australian Greenhouse Calculator 2018). So even if we were only concerned with the GHGs of the military in thinking about the Australian state as a culpable emitter, the military would give us a solid foundation for thinking that it is.
Another important source of direct emissions for the state is those companies that are owned by Australia, either at the level of national government, or at the level of federated states (which have their own partially autonomous governments in Australia). These are so-called “government business enterprises,” or “state-owned enterprises.” Because we know (antecedently) that the energy, transport, and agricultural industries are large contributors to climate change, we’ll focus on mentioning companies involved in those sectors rather than giving an exhaustive list.
The Australian government’s enterprises include Airservices Australia (servicing the aviation industry), ASC Pty Ltd (building ships for the Navy), Australia Post (the main mail service), Australian Rail Track Corporation (managing Australia’s rail network), NBN Co (operating the national broadband network), and Snowy Hydro Ltd (an electricity provider).
Australia has eight semi-autonomous states, the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), New South Wales (NSW), Northern Territory (NT), Queensland (QLD), South Australia (SA), Tasmania (TAS), Victoria (VIC), and Western Australia (WA). We’ll just mention the four states with the highest populations, as representative: VIC (5.9 million), NSW (7.6 million), QLD (4.8 million), and WA (2.6 million) (World Atlas 2017). VIC’s government business enterprises include Port of Melbourne (the largest port in Australasia for containers and cargo) and Port of Hastings (another container port), as well as Snowy Hydro (an electricity company), and VicTrack (a rail track corporation). NSW’s government business enterprises include three energy companies (Ausgrid, Endeavour Energy, and Integral Energy); four transit companies (New South Wales Trains, RailCorp, Sydney Trains, and State Transit Authority); and three ports (Newcastle Port Corporation, Port Kembla Port Corporation, and Sydney Ports Corporation). QLD’s government business enterprises include six energy companies (CS Energy, Energex, Ergon Energy, Powerlink Queensland, Stanwell Corporation, and Tarong Energy) as well as three ports (Port of Brisbane, Port of Townsville, and Port of Mackay). Finally, WA’s government business enterprises include three energy companies (Horizon Power, Western Power, and Synergy) and two public transport companies (Transwa and Transperth).
It would be time-consuming indeed to work out all the government business enterprises for Australia, and track each of their annual emissions (including yearly historical emissions) to get an estimate of a total. But to give the flavor of an answer, in 2014—15 the total Scope 1 and 26 combined emissions of QLD’s CS Energy were 13,284,260 tons of CO2-e. NSW’s Ausgrid were 968,547 tons and Endeavour Energy were 613,072 tons; QLD’s Energex and Stanwell Corporation were 951,544 tons and 14,786,967 tons, respectively. This is already a total of 30,604,390 tons of CO2-e, and it’s not even close to a full accounting of all the government business enterprises of all eight states of Australia (Clean Energy Regulator 2017).
Two of the top ten corporate emitters in Australia in 2016—17 were government business enterprises: Stanwell Corporation at third place with 18.6 million tons (and that’s only Scope 1 emissions, so a significant increase from the 2014—15 reporting just mentioned), and CS Energy at fifth place with 14.1 million tons (also only Scope 1 emissions) (Clean Energy Regulator 2018). In other words, even this limited accounting puts government business enterprises between the highest and second-highest corporate emitters in Australia. Once we’d done the full accounting, it would not be surprising to see the Australian government overtake the top emitter (which is AGL Energy Ltd, with 43.5 million tons in 2016—17).An influential recent paper tracked 63 percent of cumulative global carbon and methane emissions across a 260-year period to just 90 entities referred to as “carbon majors” (Heede 2014). This might look like evidence that we should shift away from talking about states as culpable emitters and start talking about carbon majors instead. But as we’ve just shown, government business enterprises are among the big emitters. In fact, a breakdown of the 90 carbon majors that were the focus of Richard Heede’s analysis revealed 50 to be investor-owned, 31 to be state-owned, and 9 to be nation-states. That’s 44 percent of the carbon majors turning out to be not corporations but, ultimately, states.
Of course we could go on, but at this point it is more interesting to shift to indirect emissions. So far, we’ve been interested in the emissions of particular branches or organizations of the state, using Australia as a running example. But what is interesting about the state is the control that it exercises over the agents within its jurisdiction. We’re not going to make the familiar point that the state could introduce better climate change policy, and thereby reduce emissions. That is true, but we don’t think this omission—as egregious as it is—is sufficient to make the Australian state culpable for the emissions of all agents within its jurisdiction.
The high emissions lifestyles of individuals, and the huge emissions produced by companies and corporations, implicate the agents who produce them, and we’re happy enough for now to maintain that the buck stops there. But what about in industries where there is a minister, with a portfolio attaching to a government department, directly responsible for advising on policy related to that industry?For example, as of March 2018, the ministers for the Department of Infrastructure, Regional Development, and Cities were Michael McCormack, John McVeigh, Paul Fletcher, and Keith Pitt (the more specific Departments for Transport exist at the state level). Just as we might hold the Department of Immigration and Border Protection responsible for Australia’s shocking policy on asylum-seekers, we might also hold the Department of Infrastructure, Regional Development, and Cities responsible for Australia’s public transport infrastructure policy, particularly where this fails to be extensive enough to reduce the emissions from private car use. It seems to us that there are a number of government departments that have responsibility for policy that would affect the mitigation of GHGs one way or another, so that we can say that Australia’s emissions totals depend on what these departments (and perhaps ministers) do. That too implicates the Australian state as an emitter in its own right.
This should not be confused with the proxy view described above, according to which emissions in a particular territory are attributed to the state that governs it. Those emissions belong to other agents. In contrast, certain policies will allow or prohibit these emissions, as a direct result of decisions by government. While these emissions are indirect, they are thus nonetheless a product of the state’s own actions.
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