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Simon Caney Analysis

Decent Essays

This Thursday, I was asked to read and present on Humphreys' chapter 2. I hope to bring forth some things that were not said in discussion, but some repetition is necessary to recap the main argument. Essentially, Simon Caney, the author of this piece, argues that a human rights approach is a useful way to think about climate change, and that it covers territory that other approaches do not. He spends some time talking about what human rights are, defining them as: "moral thresholds to which all individuals are entitled, simply by virture of their humanity, and which override all other moral values." This is a satisfactory defintion, and fits what we have discussed in class. Caney also talks about positive vs negative rights. Negative means the government cannot infringe, positive means the …show more content…

Rising temperatures will lead to increased heat stroke and other health complications from heat. There are many other examples of how climate change affects these rights, but I believe the above to be sufficient to illustrate Caney's point. He proceeds to talk about the benefits of a human rights approach over security and cost-benefit analysis lenses. The main points of this is that mitigation arguments are stronger under human rights, no one can make an argument about less deaths coming from actively engaging in emissions, and that a human rights approach distinguishes between who emits and harms themselves vs emitting and harming others. The other general strengths of a human rights approach is that it weakens arguments that combating climate change is too expensive, since human rights should come at any cost, it demands mitigation, adaptation, and compensation efforts, that states will think twice about emissions and other factors to climate change if human rights are at stake, and that distribution of responsibility to combat is not on the

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