In The Journal, Prof. Shelley Welton argues for addressing “luxury emissions” to ignite a larger cultural shift against excessive carbon emissions.
In the Summer 2023 issue of The Journal, the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School’s alumni magazine, Shelley Welton, Presidential Distinguished Professor of Law and Energy Policy, discusses how attributing carbon emissions and climate change solely to sovereign states misses an important class-based dynamic.
From The Journal:
News reports of the world’s worst polluters often point to a specific handful of countries at fault. However, the focus on sovereign states as the underlying cause of carbon emissions and climate change misses an important class-based dynamic at work, says Shelley Welton, Presidential Distinguished Professor of Law and Energy Policy and Penn Carey Law’s new resident climate and energy law authority. Welton also holds an affiliation with the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy.
Addressing the problem of luxury emissions, she believes, could be one key to igniting a larger cultural shift against excessive carbon emissions. Welton is in the midst of a project examining the moral and social underpinnings of possible new climate policy and the political economy of passing laws addressing luxury emissions, which include the use of private yachts and jets, along with the ownership of multiple homes and cars.
“The top 10 percent of emitters have emitted half the carbon of the past 30 years, and carbon footprints at the top are 100 times bigger,” Welton said. “There’s been a lot of chatter and analysis exposing these numbers, but much less discussion about what law and policy should do about it.”