Climate ethics in Bali - the urgency of seeing climate change as an ethical and justice concern

Abstract

"Express ethical reflection on climate change issues is urgent for three reasons. First, climate change raises the most profound types of ethical questions, literally issues of life and death, and such questions as to how burdens of reducing the threat of climate changeh should be shared among people and nations throughout the world given that groups have different responsibilities for causing the problem and different vulnerabilities to climate change harms. These questions cannot be reduced to solely scientific or economic questions (although ethics needs to be informed by these disciplines). Such questions of responsibilities and damages are essentially questions of ethics, morality, and justice. Ethics is the domain of inquiry that rigorously examines claims about what is right or wrong, obligatory or non-obligatory, or when responsibility attaches to human actions. Second, unless people see that climate change creates ethics and justice concerns, they will not likely be motivated to do what is needed to protect those most vulnerable to climate change who include many of the world's poorest people and future generations. If citizens look only what is needed to protect themselves from harm, they are not likely to commit to the huge greenhouse gas reductions needed to protect those who will be most severly harmed by climate change. Third, unless developing nations believe that an international approach to climate change is just, they are not likely to join a global regime urgently needed to solve the problem. That is, the failure to consider just and ethical solutions to climate change has direct practical consequences. (p. 1).