The concept of historical responsibility aims at attributing individual country burdens in mitigating climate change based on the relative levels of past emissions. Brazil presented the first comprehensive version of the concept of historical responsibility before the pre Kyoto climate change negotiations in 1997. The -Brazilian proposal- combined retributive and distributive as well as inter- and intra-generational justice. However, the issue of historical responsibility very soon turned technical and was referred to the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice. It illustrates how disparities in knowledge production influence the negotiations. The proposal was restrained in policy process due to lack of scientific expertise from Southern countries and due to non-inclusive discourse. The proposal stranded on problems of how to correctly represent physical nature in mathematical models, marginalising the original intentions of equity in relation to the North-South divide as well as to past and future generations thus undercutting a potential angle of approach for achieving good global governance.