Are "We" Responsible for Protecting Future People from Climate Change?

 In the article "Cosmopolitan Justice, Responsibility, and Global Climate Change" Simon Caney discusses climate change and the difficulties we face with how to prevent it and who has to pay for it. I believe that this is a very difficult problem that has to be solved sooner rather than later. But how do we do it and who is responsible for doing it? Caney talks about a couple ways to make people pay for polluting and the first is the "Polluter Pays Principle" and the second is "Beneficiary Pays Principle." These two principles are ways to make people pay for the pollution that happens. The "Polluter Pays Principle" is exactly how it sounds, if you pollute you pay for the damages caused by the pollution on the other hand the "Beneficiary Pays Principle" refers to pollution from past generations needs to be payed for by the current generation that benefited from the rewards that caused the damage. These principles are very simple and I agree with both of them to an extent. My belief is that we are responsible for reversing the affects of climate change but nobody has to "pay" for it. We just need to work together to find ways to prevent it in the future and to repair the damages caused. It makes sense to me that if you litter a piece of garbage that you should be held responsible to take care of your mess but how could someone be responsible for repairing the ozone layer which has been damaged over hundreds of years just because their vehicle emits fumes that are toxic to the ozone? It is impossible to punish someone for this action and that is why I believe people should not have to "pay" for the damages they caused. Instead I believe that we as individuals should work on cutting back on things like driving and using fossil fuels. I also believe that people today can not be held responsible for people that polluted in the past just because we benefited from their wrongdoing, we did not have any role to play in their pollution. It is very important that today's people make better decisions to prevent climate change and continue to come up with new ways to make the world a cleaner place for our future generations. This starts everyone as individuals but the biggest change will come from large corporations that have the ability to reduce the largest amounts of toxic emissions. Everybody is responsible for making the world a better place but nobody is responsible for "paying" for it. We just have to make better decisions.