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What part (if any) do you think is correct?
Climate change "damage" vastly overestimated; higher rates make far-off damages way less concerning; we have bigger problems; and externalities are overblown economics phenomena
I can see a world where people aren't going to argue about water rights along a river as long as there is plenty of water. However, once the water starts to not be enough, they decide who has rights to what.
This happens often enough that I'd guess most river systems have water rights clearly worked out. But this may not have been the case two centuries ago.
The question I'm trying to figure out is whether we are on a trajectory to where (for whatever reason) the atmosphere is going to be treated in a similar manner to water rights.
There's not necessarily a reason to think that the atmosphere is different than the surface of the earth or the oceans: given enough people, we end up negotiating usage rights to everything.
It's possible but excess CO2 won't be the offender and neither will excess temperature. That's the silliest part of this. Both CO2 (plant food) and temperature (energy) are harvestable commodities that technology will take advantage of.
We already have legal mechanisms in place to stop people from pumping actual toxic (or otherwise damaging) substances into the atmosphere.
What part (if any) do you think is correct?
I'd rephrase this as: "People do not have to pay to deal with greenhouse gasses they produce. People often do have to pay to deal with other waste products they produce, so why are greenhouse gasses different?"