title: Central banks and climate justice: the case for green quantitative easing and its justification
Creators: name: Ferret Mas, Josep
Publisher: name: University of Reading
Year: 2023

description: This thesis makes two distinct contributions to the debates on climate 
justice. First, it offers a range of policy proposals that central banks can 
implement to make a faster transition to a sustainable or ‘green’ energy 
system. Second, it addresses the normative issues raised by some of these 
green monetary policy proposals, which involve shifting part of the costs of 
climate change mitigation and adaptation onto future generations. The 
project draws together debates from climate justice, intergenerational 
justice, and the politics of central banking. By taking an interdisciplinary 
perspective on the problems created by climate change it aims at proposing 
policy options for the central bank to combat the effects of global warming, 
and it defends them from the perspective of moral and political philosophy. 
The argument starts from a distinction between two kinds of 
principles of intergenerational climate justice. There are principles that tell 
us to mitigate climate change in order to protect future generations, and 
principles that tell us how to share mitigation costs fairly across 
generations. I will present the case for Green Quantitative Easing or green 
central banking as a range of policies to serve both kinds of principles of 
intergenerational climate justice. First, I show that central banks can, and 
should, serve intergenerational climate justice by implementing policies 
that cut emissions and thereby reduce the climate burden on future 
generations. Second, I argue that some of these policies justly shift part of 
the financial costs of mitigation onto future people, promoting a fairer 
distribution of mitigation costs between the present and future generations. 
 The thesis presents a range of policy options that a green central 
bank can implement to meet the two principles of climate justice. I start 
with milder proposals and end with more radical but still realistic ones that 
are intergenerational in scope. These more radical proposals can be seen 
as instances of 'borrowing from the future': This is the idea that we need 
to take climate action now, but we can shift some of the costs onto future 
generations. Given the power of central banks to create money and buy 
bonds that can be kept on their balance sheet, Green Quantitative Easing 
is superior to alternative strategies, such as a global carbon tax or the 
World Climate Bank envisaged by Broome and Foley. Moreover, unlike 
Broome and Foley, I suggest that policies that ‘make the grandchildren 
pay’ for mitigation are not justified only due to the present generation’s 
unwillingness to bear the costs of urgent climate action. I also defend cost-shifting in enthusiastic terms: as a means to promote intergenerational 
distributive justice. 
8 
The justice-based defense of Borrowing from the Future is grounded 
in the Intergenerational Ability to Pay Principle (IGAPP) as a guiding 
principle to share the burden of climate change mitigation and adaptation 
across generations. I draw from Caney’s well-known pluralistic account for 
the intragenerational case and offer a pluralistic account of burden-sharing 
principles for the intergenerational case. However, I depart from Caney by 
arguing that the IGAPP should apply to a broader set of costs. Finally, I 
respond to one important objection raised by Gardiner: that making our 
grandchildren pay is a case of intergenerational extortion. I conclude that 
Green Quantitative Easing is a superior strategy to the alternatives 
proposed: a strategy that promotes urgent climate action now, whilst fairly 
sharing the costs with future generations.