Climate Change, Intergenerational Justice and Development

The subject of this paper is the distributive justice in financing greenhouse gas abatement. After separating the various questions of distributive justice in climate change (section 1) and isolating the financing issue (section 2), it is explored whether there exist already any effective moral norms resolving this question. It is argued that such norms still have to be constructed. As a basis for the further discussion, a criterion for moral duties is proposed, progressive norm welfarism, which takes up the constructivist idea (section 3). This ethic, intuitive moral and political considerations finally converge in a proposal 'no harm to developing countries' (section 4).