Global climate change raises profound questions for normative ethics and political theory. The human impacts of climate change will be sufficiently broad and adverse to threaten the rights and freedoms of existing and future persons in all countries - and they will also predictably exacerbate inequalities between rich and poor countries in the future. Two novel approaches to the climate problem that seek to mitigate the risks of such adverse outcomes that have attracted significant academic and policymaker interest are (i) paying developing countries to protect and/or enhance natural processes, such as rainforests, that absorb greenhouse gases (natural greenhouse sink preservation and enhancement) and (ii) developing technologies that supplement natural processes by absorbing greenhouse gases (geo-engineering). In the paper, I investigate some of the normative challenges that stand in the way of using these two novel approaches to supplement traditional mitigation and adaptation policy.
