Social justice and climate change

Consider two population groups: a well-off urban majority burning fossil fuels, and a subsistence rural minority, in danger of losing access to food and water if the climate changes. There is a triple injustice in climate change:

• The rural minority has not been responsible for the greenhouse gas concentrations causing climate change, nor has it benefited from the comfort & power provided by fossil energy services.
• The rural minority will suffer the most from climate change because of droughts & floods, and it cannot buy its way out of the problem.
• The cost-benefit neoclassical approach to the problem sets aside the equity aspect and under-represents the harm caused to low-income subsistence minority in its proposed policies.