Abstract

People benefit from activities such as heating a home, flying a plane, or eating cheese. Given current technology, greenhouse gas emissions are a side effect of these activities. These emissions cause harmful climate change over the coming decades and centuries. An effort must therefore be made to limit them. This presents us with large-scale and novel issues of justice with two questions at the core. First, a question of intergenerational justice: How much effort does the present generation have to make to protect future generations from dangerous climate change? And second, a question of intragenerational justice: How must the effort to address climate change be distributed? As far as intergenerational justice is concerned, a minimal principle requires that the human rights of future generations are fulfilled. The fact that there is large scientific uncertainty about how precisely present actions affect future generations means that this translates into significant duties for the present generation. As far as intragenerational justice is concerned, a whole range of principles for the distribution of the various climate-related benefits and burdens have been proposed. The Polluter Pays Principle and the Ability to Pay Principle stand out as particularly plausible. Whatever principles are correct, there is also the question of implementation given that current political institutions – with their short-termist and national focus – are not well adapted to the intergenerational and global dimension of climate change.