Climate change and political compromise

Parties that promote policies against climate change often need to negotiate with other political forces and make compromises. In general, these compromises are not very significant, but in some cases they can end up infringing basic rights such as the right to democracy, asylum, or freedom of religion. In this paper I argue that justifying such concessions is very difficult, except in rare cases. It is true that refraining from promoting policies against climate change also violates basic rights. Climate change threatens the survival of hundreds of millions of people, whereas the concessions in question infringe on the rights of relatively few. However, in almost all cases, the climate measures that a single jurisdiction can unilaterally adopt can only reduce the global problem of climate change to a small extent.

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