Climate policy underestimates moral responsibility of polluters

Moral responsibility plays a more important role in environmental policy than previously thought, according to a new study by the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) and the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB). Environmental and climate policy tends to overlook that people are not just goal-orientated, but also driven by moral responsibility, the institutions say in a press release. In an experiment performed as part of the study, most participants preferred to clean up a “mess” which they caused themselves rather than having this task done by a partner—even if that would have been much more profitable for both of them. “The results from the MCC and the WZB are highly relevant for the design of climate policy instruments, such as a possible reform of the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS),” the press release says. The study's authors say that because of moral attitudes, a carbon tax might be easier to communicate than emissions trading.

Read the press release in English here and find the article in English here.