ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the ways that human rights motivated widespread respect in order to consider the prospects for accomplishing the same result for climate ethics principles. It suggested that for climate ethics much philosophical attention has focused on the objective moral perspective, and most practical efforts have aimed at the consensual and procedural outcomes. Human rights enjoy a long pedigree. The norm's antecedents date back through the Early Enlightenment theories of natural rights and threads of their moral claims can be found at least as far back as the ancient Greeks. The ethical theories can fail to link up with human emotion and imagination in such a way as to drive personal and political action. The practical policy agenda for climate mitigation focuses on trying to achieve binding multilateral agreements. The pragmatic success of human rights should also remind that initially strategic endorsements of a norm can over time acquire institutional presence and genuine effect.
