ABSTRACT
Human rights are an expression of human solidarity; people commit themselves to each other to try to guarantee to all the urgent interests that some cannot provide for themselves. Climate change is such a deeply global problem that only coordinated international action could possibly deal with it. This chapter explores some questions as they arise in the context of climate change. It examines which features do rights-protecting institutions need to have and what specifically are the tasks that need to be performed to protect rights against the threat of rapid climate change. The chapter presents Beitz's primary emphasis on human rights as "matters of international concern.". It argues that any institutions to protect the rights threatened by climate change must be international; second, that they must also be intergenerational; and, third, that we must begin to build imaginative international intergenerational institutions immediately.
