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19 Can. J. L. & Jurisprudence 255 (2006)
Cosmopolitan Justice, Rights and Global Climate Change

handle is hein.journals/caljp19 and id is 257 raw text is: Cosmopolitan Justice, Rights and Global Climate Change Simon Caney It is now widely accepted that the world's climate is undergoing some profound and longstanding changes.1 One of the most authoritative sources of information about global climate change is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC was created in 1988 by the United Nations Environmental Programme and the World Meteorological Organization. It has now produced three comprehensive analyses of the causes of global climate change, its impacts, and the different ways of preventing further changes and adapting to those changes which are likely to occur. These analyses (the Assessment Reports) maintain that temperatures have risen recently and can be predicted to rise further over the next century. The rate of increase is not certain but the estimated increase is between 1.4 and 5.80 Celsius from 1990 to 2100. In the same period sea levels are predicted to rise between 0.09 and 0.88 metres.2 These changes pose considerable ethical challenges. Do future generations have a right not to suffer the ill effects of global climate change? What rights do people have to consume fossil fuels? How much carbon dioxide are people entitled to emit? In this paper, I wish to argue that the current consumption of fossil fuels is unjust because it generates outcomes in which people's fundamental interests are unpro- tected and, as such, undermines certain key rights. I further argue that this is unjust whether those whose interests are unprotected are fellow citizens or foreigners and whether they are currently alive or are as yet not alive. Finally, I argue that whilst the interest based approach applied here can generate international and inter-gen- erational principles of environmental justice, other prevailing approaches are less able to cope with the inter-generational and international challenges raised by global climate change. The paper has the following structure. In Section 1, 1 introduce some important methodological preliminaries. Section II introduces the key normative argument-it argues that global climate change damages some fundamental human interests and results in a state of affairs in which the rights of many are unprotected: as such it is unjust. Section III addresses the complexities that arise from the fact that some of the ill effects of global climate change will fall on the members of future gen- erations. Section IV shows that some prevailing approaches are unable to deal sat- isfactorily with the challenges posed by global climate change. 1. 1 thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council for supporting this research. I am grateful also to Edward Page for illuminating discussions on issues examined here. 2. Q.K. Ahmad et al., 'Summary for Policymakers' in McCarthy, Canziani, Leary, Dokken & White, eds., Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability-Contribution of Working Group 11 to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) at 3. Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence Vol. XIX, No.2 (July 2006)

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