From legal responsibility of states to their ethical responsibility in the context of climate change

Climate change is one of the problems resulting from increasing greenhouse gas emissions. To solve this problem, the climate change regime, including Framework Convention (1992), Kyoto Protocol (1997) and Paris Agreement (2015) with obligations to the gradual decrease of greenhouse gas emissions have been created. Due to lack of lex Specialis on international responsibility inthe matters of climate change, general rules of international responsibility are applicable to any international wrongful acts of states and compensation for damages suffered by victim states. However this study indicates the system cannnot prove the element of due to uncertainty in causality. Therefore, it faces a challenge in regard to breach of obligation element, because of lack of unconditional obligation in prohibition of emissions; and finally the system faces ambiguity in compensation, because of subjective excluding of compensation especially in Paris Agreement. Consequently, state responsibility is inefficient in the context of climate change and recent developments in this area emphasie ethical responsibility in energy consumption to rectify the relative inefficiency of legal responsibility.