ARTICLES/ARTÍCULOS Divergent principles, development rights, and individualism in the Greenhouse Development Rights framework Kenneth Shockley Abstract: The likelihood that the poor will suffer disproportionately from the effects of climate change makes it necessary that any just scheme for addressing the costs and burdens of climate change integrate those disproportionate effects. The Greenhouse Development Rights (GDRs) framework aĴempts to do just this. The GDRs framework is a burden- sharing approach to climate change that assigns national obligations on the basis of historical emissions and current capacity to provide as- sistance. It does so by including only those emissions that correspond to income exceeding a development threshold. According to the GDR framework, this development threshold considers the right to develop to be held by individuals rather than the nations in which those individu- als find themselves. The article provides a critique of this framework, focusing on three concerns: First, in generating national obligations the GDRs framework collapses significantly different moral considerations into a single index, presenting both theoretical and practical problems. Second, the framework relies on a contentious and underdeveloped con- ception of the right to develop. Third, the framework’s exclusive focus on individual concerns systematically overlooks irreducibly social concerns. The article concludes by pointing to an alternative approach to balancing development against the burdens of climate change. Keywords: capabilities, climate change, equity, ethics, Greenhouse Devel- opment Rights, individualism, responsibility As a result of climate change people will suffer, their opportunities will be hampered, and their autonomy will be infringed upon. Whatever ethical framework is invoked, these all constitute potential ethical harm. More- Regions & Cohesion Volume 2, Issue 1, Spring 2012: 1–24 doi: 10.3167/reco.2012.020101 ISSN 2152-906X (Print), ISSN 2152-9078 (Online)