Rights and climate change mitigation - why the individual rights approach to climate change mitigation is not the right approach

This dissertation examines the arguments of rights recently invoked in lawsuits addressing duties to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. It asks whether these arguments correspond to how rights are typically understood in terms of philosophical ideas of rights. This question is not examined from a doctrinal but rather a philosophical lens: do the traditional philosophical ideas of rights extend to climate change mitigation? The dissertation analyses this question in the light of three philosophical theories of rights: (1) analytical theories of rights, (2) moral theories of rights, and (3) political theories of justice. The dissertation argues that duties to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions do not correspond, either conceptually or morally, to ideas of individual rights. An individual experiencing the detrimental effects of global warming does not hold a claim-right correlative to a duty to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, and an individual’s fundamental interest in avoiding these detriments does not justify the imposition of this duty. Instead, both the abstract duty to mitigate climate change, and also the specific duties to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, concern the distribution of benefits and burdens of modern society. Distributional justice within and between political communities is a matter on which people legitimately disagree. The dissertation concludes that arguments claiming that there is only one “right” answer to climate justice are, at best, mistaken and, at worst, authoritarian.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Lindberg, Agnes Harriet

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Kramer, Matthew

• Analytical theories of rights
• Climate change mitigation
• Individual rights
• Moral theories of rights
• Political theories of justice
• Strategic litigation
• Theories of rights

Licence

• https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/6d20742a-9a09-490d-bd1c-acb0b8d0b077/download
• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.110889

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/371841