Climate Change, by Anda Stancu Climate Change-1 | Page 6

Furthermore, Caney discusses about a policy that would justify for the future
generations to pay, thinking that future generations will be wealthier, thus
having more effective technology, making them more able to tackle climate
change than the present generation. This suggests that the policy would be to do
absolutely nothing about climate change in the present, relying only on the
future generations. This however, this is unjust and unreasonable, because
future generations might be worse off than the present generations, resulting
from the ignorance of not taking any action. In this case, present generations
should take actions in both prevention and adaptation. By applying the Hybrid
view, Caney states that the world’s poor should not bear the cost of climate
change because of the Poverty-Sensitive Polluter Pays Principle. The best
solution is a global adaptation fund by the wealthiest and by those who emitted
high amounts of GHGs. (ibid.).
Contrary to Caney’s ‘hybrid view’, Knight (2011) presents a ‘pluralistic
approach’, as he believes Caney’s approach is inconsistent with some aspects of
the distribution of responsibilities, thus Knight finds three objections: (1) the
‘hybrid view’ does not differentiate between hard to avoid and easy to avoid
emissions; (2) it cannot provide a full account of climate justice; and (3) the
poor have little duties when it comes to climate change, which could potentially
make them to increase their emissions. (ibid., p.1). Knight argues that the
‘pluralistic approach’ is focused more distributive justice which “(a) increases
overall levels of advantage, (b) increases the levels of advantage of the
worst off, and (c) increases the extent to which levels of advantage
correspond to responsible action, in the sense that, the more (morally or
prudentially) praiseworthy a choice is, the greater are the benefits associated