Introduction

What will become of Homo ferendum? Ferendum is a future passive participle of fero - to carry, to endure, to bear. In the singular neuter nominative and vocative cases, Homo ferendum means something like “the human which is to be tolerated.” This is appropriate if the subject is Earth whose current ecological systems stand in disarray (which is momentous for humanity and momentary for Earth). Supposing the subject is the human trying to envision intergenerational justice and transtemporal equity from behind a Rawlsian veil of ignorance, Homo ferendum might be more akin to “the human who is to be born.” It seems appropriate that the scientific name of the human would be future-oriented yet self-referential. Setting terrestrial accusation and ontological passivity aside, perhaps an appropriate translation for this inbreaking age is rendered by Google Translate: Homo ferendum - a vote. 

The Issue 

The question is whether property rules and liability rules will provide useful tools in combating ecosystem collapse and cultivating environmental sustainability. This sounds academic, theoretical and innocuous. To render the issue in more concrete historical terms, the environmental crisis presents opportunities for beneficial recruitment, or challenges of costly diaspora; movement to new frontiers, or dissolution of broken communities. As human population continues to press against the hard limits of Earth’s carrying capacities, conflict and collapse loom imminent. Creativity, technology, aid, unsustainable short-term remedies, and (sometimes) compassion all rush to the places where the effects of climate change cause the grand human family to suffer. Who is rushing to the places where the causes of climate change keep new problems coming?  

Nations tasked with securing maximum benefits for themselves and their constituents do not appear to have adequate incentive structures to provoke them to effectively communicate about climate change. The global scientific consensus clearly demonstrates the dangers of continued environmental degradation, and the need for immediate remediative efforts and regenerative systems. Yet as recent political maneuvers on the world stage demonstrate, neither scientific data nor impending scarcity provide adequate motivation for nationalists hoping to make their countries great. Dreams of a global organized cooperative polity are obfuscated by reports of entire regions facing water shortages and inadequate access to clean water; human rights violations intentionally perpetrated against children; energy crises; entrenched sectarian violence and domestic terrorism; inadequate environmental protection and ensuing public health risks; ethnic, gender-identity, and religious intolerance; routine disregard for international agreements and norms; destructive agricultural practices; crippling poverty; degradation of political institutions and the rule of law; predatory financing practices; as well as issues faced outside the United States. Visions of a global polity are further clouded out by evil empire dystopian admonitions from the likes of George Lucas, Suzanne Collins, Pussy Riot, Pope Francis, and Rage Against The Machine. 

Individually, humans do not possess the senses, skill sets, information, capacity, or incentives necessary to mount an effective counter to climate change either. If neither the individual nor the nation-state has adequate incentive to protect the common resource called “biosphere,” and if imposition of normative governance structures upon existing sovereigns is so costly as to be inefficient and untimely, the way forward must be illuminated from beyond existing realities. The future is collaborative, or it does not exist. Complex problems will require engaging complex systems to generate complex solutions. Respecting the autonomy of existing and future bodies requires movement from management models that suppress toward engagement models that summon. This calls for a new creation. 

A Philosophy for the Future 

Survival of the climate crisis will require a transformation that renews the collective mind. Don’t fight against the natural momentum of nations to maximize profits. Capture and redirect the momentum by joining them in the venture. Moving from Foucault’s Newtonian mechanical framework toward Ostrum’s socio-ecological systems will facilitate this transition. In systems thinking, inhuman destructive machines are recast into careless offspring in need of guidance and corrective instruction. The necessarily adversarial competitor in the market becomes familiar, recognizable as a provider. The nations are transformed from obstacles to be overpowered or avoided, to members of the biological community with whom we are symbiotically coevolving. 

Order without law works with the momentum of capitalist markets, rather than impeding them. The environmental crisis begins to feel like a single-use litmus test for a survival of the most fitting socio-ecological system. In socio-ecological systems, the institutions of Law and Economics are transformed into a double-helix that aspires to reprint human destiny. If Law is about mitigating failure and loss, Economics is about generating positive outcomes. They are not so much mechanical institutions in conflict as contrapuntal movements of a loving body. Coevolving throughout human history, the legal “no to death” is an intertwining melody, unintelligible without its partner, the economic “yes to life.” 

In attempting to construct a philosophy of transtemporal equity from behind a veil of ignorance, each participant must inspect linguistic hurdles that tacitly or explicitly reinforce problematic norms, notions, and trends. One such linguistic obstacle is the term, “developing country.” Disengaging “development” from public perception of socio-economic status is a crucial step toward more constructive speech. Rather than identifying wealthy countries as “developed” and poorer nations as “developing,” a more appropriate taxonomy is “developing” and “non-developing,” respectively. As will be made clear below, this language disengages “developed” from socio-economic status, instead relegating the term to the realm of an emergent functioning. Perhaps being from a non-developing country will become a luxury, where folks grow up with a backyard filled with the natural wonders of Earth. 

Rubber Meets the Road (before both are recycled) 

In order to combat climate changing trends, the World Trade Organization should cap and commodify real estate development, then create a tradable development market. Once the global development quota is capped, WTO creates credits to allow development according to geographical proximity and footprint, proposed emissions and pollution from use, disruption of biological services at proposed site, transportation costs, etc. In order to generate incentives for joining, the development market should include a trade agreement wherein club members guarantee free trade among members in good-standing. 

These club members vote according to an initial credit distribution on the tariff rate for non-member nations. If the primary obstacle to climate coalition is free-riders, make it profitable for would-be-riders to participate. Unusually high multilateral tariffs pressure non-members to join and induce members to stay, in effect creating self-enforcing agreements. Participation in this market requires consent to observation of contribution to ambient standards and goals, but efficient zoning and mitigation requirements are left to national organizations. This localizes and internalizes incentives for nationals to cultivate environmental governance methodologies consistent with local custom and trend. It also maximizes the benefits of existing infrastructure across the board by engaging local memory and self-determination, while minimizing artificial imperial transaction costs of importing infrastructure across philosophies, cultures, and systems of governance. Diverse systems of government are converted from obstacles, to the laboratories of administration and growth. Rather than imposing a regulatory duty, a development market incentivizes cultivation of an ambient rule of law. 

Credits in this development market are distributed freely among nations according to human population. According to Coase, the development credits flow to the most efficient location through transfer. These compensating transfers allow developing nations like the United States, Russia, and China to compete with one another to find an efficient location for development. This competition further incentivizes efficiency gains in pollution control and environmental impact, because each unit of development increases the marginal costs of regulation and compliance. From a global perspective, the efficiency gains from consolidating regulatory efforts as location dictates appropriate causes all boats to rise. This harnesses the inclinations of firms to perform optimization procedures, utilizing rather than obstructing the movement of capitalism. 

Meanwhile, nations retaining undeveloped regions benefit from sale of development credits, which has inflated due to active use values elsewhere. Non-developing countries like Madagascar, Costa Rica, and Thailand are compensated for their non-development. Decisions regarding distribution of rents from sale of development credits are left to member nations, respecting governing traditions and political autonomy while activating a laboratory of governance. This alleviates political pressures in the form of job- and income-demand, which have historically conspired (or perhaps complied) to incentivize lower environmental standards. Going further, it internalizes incentive in the local population to ensure compliance. These are both strengthened by external observation and market pressure. 

On a global level, stabilizing wealth in the form of profit flows from developing regions to non-developing regions. Because new development is negatively discounted, investment in infrastructure is hyper-focused geographically and naturally flows to improving or repurposing existing development. By zero-rating redevelopment of existing infrastructure and negatively discounting transportation products that use non-renewable fuel sources, urban sprawl will become less attractive (read: less profitable) than sticking close to the center. 

Rather than creating economic diaspora, the market promotes retention of local identities, place, customs. Education and technology advances induce innovation from communities, languages, and philosophies that have yet to debut upon the modern world stage, while decreasing the cost of asymmetry (which feels increasingly vestigial in this age). Education and infrastructure advances stabilize or decrease birth rates. Infrastructure and technology advances decrease pollution and increase socio-ecological valuation among non-developing nations. 

Additionally, market members may opt to apply a negative discount rate to sales from developing nations. This would work to dissuade inefficient development. While one might suspect a pollution-forcing regime, the same market mechanisms that bring each member in also cause all boats to fall, when the cost of inefficiency from hyper-focusing polluting sources trickles into the economy in the form of tariffs. Extending producer responsibility to mandate products be recycled or otherwise disposed of in the nation in which they were produced harnesses the existing political power of NIMBYism to generate positive environmental regulation. This causes the firm to internalize many of the environmental externalities associated with e-waste, and eliminates the transaction costs associated with transportation and asymmetry. In a development market with a common destiny, producer liability receives a market value. 

This sword would not only cut in the direction of economic balance, but also toward raising standards for human development. Scarcity and waste transformed as the development market determines efficient allocations of signaling. Actors engaging in universally deplorable behavior begin to receive signals from a unified market. The development market begins observing and discounting a dynamic human development market. Social justice becomes profitable. 

Valuing credits according to geographical footprint and transportation criteria creates a positive discount for repurposing, maintaining, improving, and corralling existing developed infrastructure in both developing and non-developing nations. It also encouraging stacking functions on developed properties. Single-family dwellings go out of fashion as condominiums and apartments become more economically attractive. Rooftops are transformed into solar gardens, vegetable patches, and common yards. 

On the world stage, the human who is to be born benefits from a bolstered WTO, whose legitimacy and executive function have necessarily grown over time. Infrastructure is in place to positively discount voluntary population shift and undevelopment. This sets the stage to fulfill EO Wilson’s prophetic vision of a human that sets aside half the earth to act as stabilizing filtration system mitigating socio-ecological waste and as engineering evolution system generating biological technology. These skies are blue. Beyond the dark gates of Earth, an infinite space-time marches in eternal procession, blasting trumpets and shouting, “Enough!” The reign of scarcity is soon coming to a close, and the walls of this great city begin to shake. Our labor pains have only just begun.