Letting the ethical theory of utilitarianism guide our responses to greenhouse gas emissions would lead to better outcomes for human development, equity, and the climate, say researchers.

The study, published in Nature Climate Change, proposes a practical way of measuring how different nations should reduce carbon emissions in order to maximize well-being in the world, according to Mark Budolfson, a philosopher and assistant professor in the department of environmental and occupational health and justice at the Rutgers University School of Public Health.

“Utilitarianism tells us to care about everyone’s well-being, and to care just the same about each of us,” says Dean Spears, an economist at the University of Texas at Austin, a corresponding author along with Budolfson. “When we do that, we learn that tackling climate change requires different ambitions of different countries, because countries around the world start from different places with different resources.”

While nations pledged in the 2015 Paris Agreement to mitigate carbon emissions, governments have since failed to agree on their individual responsibility, partly due to the lack of an agreed method for measuring what emissions reductions should be expected from different nations with very different resources.

The study identifies a method of measuring equity that is simple, appealing, and transparent, where this method of assessing equity can be implemented in a wide range of climate policy assessment models and discussions.

Read the full article about cutting emissions by Michelle Edelstein at Futurity.