5 state of the climate system.13 Extremely little has been invested by the carbon majors in technologies like Carbon Capture and Storage [CCS], so the techniques remain radically under-developed and nowhere deployed at scale. This month’s Special Report from the IPCC observes: "The technological maturity of CO2 capture options in the power sectors has improved considerably, but costs have not come down between 2005 and 2015 due to limited learning in commercial settings and increased energy and resources costs”.14 The “limited learning in commercial settings” is the result of the failure of the carbon majors to invest significant resources in implementing ways for their product to be used safely, that is, without harming humans by undercutting the climate dynamics that underlie our economies and societies. It is morally wrong for the carbon majors to continue knowingly to inflict severe harms on the vulnerable people on this planet, especially rights-violating harms. The firms must either cease to provide their dangerous product, fossil fuels, and develop non-harmful alternative sources of energy, or develop and disseminate methods by which their product can be used safely, such as methods of carbon capture. As already indicated, the firms are free to choose among substitution of a climate-safe product for their unsafe product, or modification of how their product is used so that it can be used safely, or any combination of substitution and modification. What they are not free to do is to continue to cause unprecedented harm by further disrupting the fundamental conditions of life on this planet by business-as-usual for themselves while everyone else must adjust to a shifting climate.15 2.6 Enforcement mechanisms and corporate evasion The prohibition on inflicting avoidable harm made it the moral responsibility of the carbon majors to adopt substitution or modification decades ago. That corporate responsibility continues in full force. Since these firms have persistently and blatantly failed even to attempt to fulfil their responsibility on their own, however, it has now become the duty of governments and non-governmental representatives of society like the Philippine Commission on Human Rights to hold them accountable and, to the fullest extent possible, to enforce responsible non-harmful conduct upon them. Widespread agreement exists among economists that to drive action a price needs to be placed on carbon emissions through either carbon taxes or some version of cap and trade.16 My understanding is that carbon taxes are preferable, but I leave the choice of pricing mechanism to economists. Sufficiently high prices on carbon emissions might push carbon majors toward either substitution or modification. However, some of the carbon majors are currently engaged in an attempt to manipulate the issue of carbon taxes in order completely to escape accountability for the damage done by their decades of business-as-usual ignoring scientific findings. The massive misinformation campaign funded over past decades by ———————————— 13 Carbon removal as an alternative to carbon capture is very briefly discussed below. de Coninck and Aromar Revi, “Strengthening and implementing the global response” (Chapter 4), para. 4.3.1.6, in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Global Warming of 1.5°C (2018). 15See Julie Rozenberg and Stéphane Hallegatte, ‘Poor People on the Front Line: The Impacts of Climate Change on Poverty in 2030’, in Ravi Kanbur and Henry Shue (eds.), Climate Justice: Integrating Economics and Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 24-42. 16See, for example, William Nordhaus, ‘Projections and Uncertainties about Climate Change in an Era of Minimal Climate Policies’, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 2018, 10, 333 - 360. doi:10.1257/pol.20170046. Also see Michael Jakob, Ottmar Edenhofer, Ulrike Kornek, Dominic Lenzi, and Jan Minx, ‘Governing the Commons to Promote Global Justice: Climate Change Mitigation and Rent Taxation’, in Kanbur and Shue, Climate Justice, 43-62. 14Heleen