numbers, not adjectives — D. J. C. MacKay
Equitable Atmosphere Declaration
Carl Edward Rasmussen, June 30 2025
Effectively addressing climate change probably requires international cooperation. Cooperation necessitates a common foundation for what is considered “fair”. One possible framework for this is given by this declaration:
Equitable Atmosphere Declaration
We, the undersigned, believe that:1) All people must share equal rights and responsibilities to Earth’s atmosphere.2) Failure to explicitly value atmospheric resources leads to overexploitation through accumulation of greenhouse gases; this failure is one of the root causes of climate change.
Therefore, to limit climate change, greenhouse gas emissions should be priced. Reflecting equity, larger than average per capita emitters should pay for using more than their fair share, and lower than average per capita emitters should be paid for using less. Pricing emissions will create economic pressure on everyone to reduce emissions.
Note, that the declaration isn’t proposing national carbon fee and dividend because its scope is global. It doesn’t include details of implementation; one possible option is the Themis Mechanism. See also the commentary below.
Signatories
Click to sign this declaration via email or email seperately to cer54 at cam.ac.uk (your email address won’t be published).
| name | role | location |
|---|---|---|
| Paul Aston | horticulturist, artist | Cambridge Botanic Garden |
| Annouchka Bayley | Associate Professor, Faculty of Education | Cambridge University |
| Erik Bodin | Research Associate | Cambridge University |
| Lucas Bordeaux | computer engineer | Cambridge, UK |
| Nigel Bowles | Graduate Tutor, Darwin College | Cambridge |
| John Bronskill | Research Associate | University of Cambridge |
| Roger Crisp | Director | Uehiro Oxford Institute |
| Carl Henrik Ek | professor | Cambridge University |
| Ahmad Elabbar | Assistant Professor | Cambridge University |
| Hong Ge | Senior Researcher | University of Cambridge |
| Janet Gibson | College admin | University of Cambridge |
| Marc Girona-Mata | father, student | Cambridge University |
| Julia Gschwind | Student | Cambridge |
| Søren Hauberg | professor | Technical University of Denmark |
| Philipp Hennig | father, professor | University of Tübingen, Germany |
| Isobel Henry | student | University of Strathclyde, Glasgow |
| José Miguel Hernández Lobato | father, professor | Cambridge University |
| Agnes Heydtmann | teacher | Cambridge, UK |
| Ezra Heydtmann | student | University of Strathclyde, Glasgow |
| Miro Heydtmann | student | University of Copenhagen |
| Yongchao Huang | lecturer | University of Aberdeen |
| Shrinivasan Keshav | Professor of Computer Science | University of Cambridge |
| Tiffany Ki | Research Fellow | University of Cambridge |
| Martin Kleppmann | Associate Professor | University of Cambridge |
| Hedda Kraker | mother, family and school doctor | Cambridge, UK |
| Fredrik Lindsten | father, professor | Linköping University, Sweden |
| Campbell Middleton | father, professor | Cambridge University |
| Youssef Moawad | Research Associate | Glasgow |
| Roderick Murray-Smith | professor | University of Glasgow |
| James Nurdin | Student | University of Glasgow |
| Aristeidis Panos | Research Associate | University of Cambridge |
| Carl Edward Rasmussen | father, professor | Cambridge University |
| Harry Roscoe | software engineer | London |
| Jonas Scholz | PhD student | Cambridge |
| Shoaib Ahmed Siddiqui | father, student | University of Cambridge |
| Silja Sormunen | PhD student | Aalto University |
| Geoff Stead | tech leader, father | Cambridge, UK |
| Christian Steinruecken | research associate | Cambridge University |
| Lauritz Thamsen | Academic and a dad | Glasgow |
| Orlando Timmerman | PhD Researcher | Cambridge |
| Richard E Turner | father, professor | Cambridge University |
| Wim Vanderbauwhede | professor | Glasgow |
| Max Welling | Prof. Mat Uni of Amsterdam, CTO & Co-Founder CuspAI | Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Mark van der Wilk | professor | Oxford University |
| Joseph Wilson | PhD student | University of Cambridge |
| Ave Wrigley | father, retired CTO | Cambridge, UK |
| Steve Young | Emeritus Professor | Cambridge, UK |
Commentary
The declaration says that all people must have equal rights and responsibilities towards our shared atmosphere, and that these rights and responsibilities should have material consequences.
What does this mean in practice?
Neither the current per capita emissions of greenhouse gases or the historical emissions have been distributed equally, so pricing of emissions will entail payments. Since it will be impractical to administer a system directly dealing with 8000 million people, a good implementation would allow countries to implement interactions between nations (reflecting the cumulative emissions of all their citizens), and national systems to interact directly with citizens (and these national systems would likely differ between countries to reflect different cultures, etc).
Current and future payments would firstly require a mechanism for setting a price, say per ton of CO2e. Countries would then report their per capita emissions, say for a year. The reported value could reasonably be the total CO2e emissions, adjusted for territorial sinks or sources, such as Land Use and Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF), divided by the nation’s population. Payments between countries will reflect the average per capita emissions. Larger per capita emitters will pay, smaller per capita emitters will be paid. Individual nations can internally implement payments to and from citizens in any way they wish.
Historic payments would seem reasonable since the wealth of many developed nations have relied on widespread use of fossil fuels, options which are no-longer available to developing nations, if we are to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
Although the issues of future and historic emissions are related, it may be pragmatic to seek solutions separately. That’s because we urgently need to reduce emissions, and a forward looking agreement may be less difficult to establish, than a historical one. Of course, this should be with the understanding that joining a forward agreement doesn’t absolve big historical emitters from their responsibilities. It’s in all nation’s favour to reach a forward looking agreement, also the less developed. Insisting on coupling the two, may result in no deals at all. We shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Alternatives: the CBDR-RC
A prominent example of an alternative to the Equitable Atmosphere Declaration (EAD) is the Common But Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC), adopted by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992 in article 3.1:
The Parties should protect the climate system for the benefit of present and future generations of humankind, on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. Accordingly, the developed country Parties should take the lead in combating climate change and the adverse effects thereof.
Interestingly, the EAD and CBDR-RC are almost opposites: EAD says that rights and responsibilities are equal, whereas the CBDR-RC says they are different. Although the CBDR-RC may sound reasonable on a first reading, the problem is that it is very hard to operationalise, because you need to agree what exactly the different responsibilities and capabilities really mean; a negotiation fraught with difficulties and potentially intractable. On the contrary, the EAD is clear, that rights and responsibilities are equal.