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Global warming is expected to contribute to many human wrongs: disease, malnutrition, and flooding of coastal communities, to name a few.'But does every human wrong violate a human right? Should we conceptualize climate change not only as an environmental problem-the preeminent one of our time-but also as a human rights violation? Since climate change first emerged as an international issue in the mid-1980s, it has been addressed primarily through inter-state negotiations, aimed at reaching agreement on reciprocal cuts in national greenhouse gas emissions. In the 1990s, these negotiations seemed to be making progress. States adopted the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change2 (UNFCCC) in 1992 and the Kyoto Protocol3 five years later, which called for emission reductions by developed countries of roughly 5%, as the first of what was envisioned as a series of sequential cuts. But over the …