In order to decide whether a comprehensive treaty covering all greenhouse gases is the best next step after UNCED, one needs to distinguish among the four questions about the international justice of such international arrangements: (1) What is a fair allocation of the costs of preventing the global warming that is still avoidable?; (2) What is a fair allocation of the costs of coping with the social consequences of the global warming that will not in fact be avoided?; (3) What (...) background allocation of wealth would allow international bargaining (about issues like 1 and 2) to be a fair process?; and (4) What is a fair allocation of emissions of greenhouse gases (over the long-term and during the transition to the long-term allocation)? In answering each question we must specify from whom any transfers should come and to whom any transfers should go. As the grounds for the answers we usually face a choice between fault-based principles and no-fault principles. (shrink)

The following response to the essays by Dietrich, Kesselring and Schefczyk discusses impartiality and foundations of special duties; utilitarianism, foreign aid, NGOs and human rights; and ethical aspects of free trade and the World Trade Organization.

Climate change ethics is an emerging field of applied ethics that examines the ethical implications entailed in the various climate change effects on people around the world, future generations, an...