Assessing Moral Claims in International Climate Change Negotiations

The paper explains the importance of narrowing the gap between developed and developing countries’ perceptions of justice in the climate change context and analyzes the two main ethical claims raised by the developing countries, exposing their major weaknesses and strengths. It then offers the adoption of harmonized carbon taxes and the rejection of Kyoto’s cap-and-trade mitigation scheme, as a way to avoid inevitably unresolved ethical issues.