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Cosmopolitan Justice, Responsibility, and Global Climate Change
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Climate EthicsEngineeringMoral TheoryLawClimate CrisisClimate PolicyClimate Change RegulationGlobal StudiesEnvironmental PolicyClimate Change LawClimate ActionGlobal Climate ChangeClimate LawEarth System GovernanceClimate ChangePublic PolicyClimate CommunicationClimate EconomicsEnvironmental JusticeCosmopolitan JusticeClimate Justice‘ PolluterClimate GovernanceSocial ResponsibilityGlobal Justice
Climate change threatens vital human interests, raising the question of who should bear the burdens of addressing it. The paper seeks to answer who should bear climate‑change burdens by proposing three supplements to the polluter‑pays principle and comparing the resulting theory to common‑but‑differentiated responsibility. The authors examine the polluter‑pays principle, suggest three supplements, and evaluate it against common‑but‑differentiated responsibility. They conclude that the polluter‑pays principle alone is insufficient to fully determine climate‑change burden allocation.
It is widely recognized that changes are occurring to the earth's climate and, further, that these changes threaten important human interests. This raises the question of who should bear the burdens of addressing global climate change. This paper aims to provide an answer to this question. To do so it focuses on the principle that those who cause the problem are morally responsible for solving it (the ‘polluter pays’ principle). It argues that while this has considerable appeal it cannot provide a complete account of who should bear the burdens of global climate change. It proposes three ways in which this principle needs to be supplemented, and compares the resulting moral theory with the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibility’.