ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that a rights-centered approach provides a fruitful way of thinking about climate change. Climate change has been analyzed using a variety of different frameworks. Anthropogenic climate change jeopardizes fundamental human rights. This prompts the question "who is duty-bound to uphold these rights?" Anthropogenic climate change arbitrarily deprives people of their life and thereby undermines the human right to life. The responsibility to uphold the human rights jeopardized by climate change should be determined by a hybrid approach which combines a version of the Contribution Principle with a version of the Ability to Pay Principle. The chapter provides an account of the responsibilities generated by the rights, contrasting the author's account with that defended by Henry Shue. Shue argues in Basic Rights that persons have a basic right to "minimal economic security", which he defines as involving "unpolluted air, unpolluted water, adequate food, adequate clothing, adequate shelter, and minimal preventive public health care.".
