Climate Change, Catholic Social Teaching, and Human Rights

The development of human rights thinking in the United Nations and the Catholic Church has operated on a separate track from the development of thinking regarding environmental concerns. This paper traces this historical divergence and some factors contributing to this divergence. It argues that climate stability is the most pressing earth system problem and not only should not be neglected by human rights thinkers (as in Catholic circles) or actively resisted in human rights circles (as argued by a prominent academic human rights lawyer); rather, a stable climate system should be considered a basic human right.