The desultory, almost leisurely approach of most of the world ’ s national states to climate change re fl ects no detectable sense of urgency. My question is what, if anything, is wrong with this persistent lack of urgency. My answer is that everything is wrong with it and, in particular, that it constitutes a violation of basic rights as well as a failure to seize a golden opportunity to protect rights. I criticized the outcome of the initial climate conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 , the Framework Convention on Climate Change, for establishing “ no dates and no dollars: no dates are speci fi ed by which emissions are to be reduced by the wealthy states and no dollars are speci fi ed with which the wealthy states will assist the poor states to avoid an environmentally dirty development like our own. The conven- tion is toothless. ” 1 The general response to such criticisms was that the convention outcome was a good start.