Miklos Zala
“Climate Justice and the Polluter Pays Principle: A Tort Law Perspective“
Climate change is arguably humanity’s most pressing problem today and raises many justice-related issues. One such issue is who should pay to mitigate the harmful effects of climate change and on what grounds.
One candidate among the principles that aim to provide an answer to this question is ‘the polluter pays principle (PPP), according to which the burdens of mitigating the bad effects of climate change should be borne in proportion to how much a given agent has emitted. This research project aims to vindicate the polluter pays principle by responding to two of the principle’s most critical challenges, such as the ‘excusable ignorance’ and ‘the wrongdoers are no longer alive’ objections.
My project hypothesizes that chief polluting countries bear strict liability for environmental damages they predominantly contributed to and that they bear corporate (and not individual) liability here and now to rectify those ecological harms. In addition, the project will suggest different ways to compensate for caused environmental damages, such as rectification, financial compensation, and non-financial compensation.
Miklos Zala received his Ph.D. in Political Theory from Central European University. His research focuses on political philosophy and applied ethics. During his doctoral studies, he was a visiting researcher at Aarhus University, Roskilde University, and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Before joining CAS SEE, he was affiliated with the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Tel Aviv University, where his work focused on the question of what makes gentrification unjust. Before being a Safra fellow, he was a member of the Center for European Union Research (CEUR) at Central European University, working on the European Commission-supported H2020 project ETHOS—a theory of European justice and the Centre for Social Sciences-Institution for Political Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre of Excellence.