The UN Human Rights Committee added the right to clean, affordable water, and safety from climate damage, to its list of human rights.

I basically agree with this change, but we need to recognize that it is easier in principle to give people freedoms than to fill their material rights.

For instance, a government can respect freedom of speech by abolishing laws that infringe it. Giving people feasible access to clean water takes a lot of work, and that work may take years. It is shameful that the US has regressed in that department; I put it down to plutocracy.

As to climate damage, counteracting the effects of global heating will be totally hopeless in the long term. The only way civilization can protect itself from those effects is to prevent them.