CLIMATE CHANGE AND ITS ATTENDANT ISSUES

Ethics and Climate Change The year is 2050. An ecological disaster has devastated Earth. The planet is a shadow of its former grandeur. Water is the most valuable resource and is lacking. The 9.51 billion people who have survived the disaster are more divided economically than ever – developed and underdeveloped nations. The two factions continually fight against each other to gain control of the water, food supplies etc. Mankind is now at an intersection that will define its future for generations to come – survival or annihilation. " [W]e face the possibility that the global environment may be destroyed, yet no one will be responsible. " 2 Climate change is undeniably one of the most perplexing and controversial issues facing our global theatre in this 21st century. Starvation, poverty, flooding, droughts, war and disease are already leading to human catastrophes. They're to be expected as the world continues to warm from man-made climate change.3 Escalating global temperatures, principally owing to man-made greenhouse gases are that are at the epicenter of unique changes to the earth's growing sea levels, warming oceans and extreme weather occurrences. It entails not simply social and economic fluctuations, but also raises serious ethical dilemmas. Mounting temperatures will bring closure to much of our coral reefs and rainforests releasing hundreds of billions of tons of methane gas. The magnitude will be the mass extinction of most terrestrial and marine species and the end of our advanced civilizations.4 For civilizations or societies that are not well-suited to standard climate erraticism, the more recurrent and extreme events created by this change will be shattering. These effects will separate their economic, social, and political institutions, dispersing out into global disorder. Climate change will touch, disproportionately, all areas of the globe, and will cross not only human societies and cultures but also generational boundaries. Climate change and its toxic impact on the sustainability of hundreds of millions of people if not civilizations could be at the threshold

PERSPECTIVES OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, CLIMATE CHANGE AND HEALTH -GLOBALLY AND LOCALLY, 2021

There have been enough serious indicators that the state of climate change at the end of the second and the beginning of the third decade of the 21st century can be characterized as a climate crisis. The devastating impact of human activity on the climate, practically as the main cause of intense climate change, is considered an axiom in science today. Despite numerous urgent warnings from science, the human reaction in the direction of lifestyle changes has been insignificant and insufficient, and the safety limit of climate change tends to decrease. The ability of our planet to sustain humanity has been seriously impaired, and within the existing limits of sustainability, basic human rights have been called into question, above all the right to life and health, food, housing, and existence in general. Given that the emissions of gases that heat the planet come from energy plants, factories, vehicles, and agriculture, the key to resolving the climate crisis lies in the hands of man and his relationship to ecosystems. By presenting vital indicators, the author of the paper firstly points out that the world is in a state of climate crisis, and then, analysing the ways in which climate change endangers the individual, he explains the necessity of withdrawing the declarative character of the right to a healthy environment and classifying it as basic human rights. Looking at the climate crisis through the human rights lens, the aim of the paper is, on one hand, to highlight the human responsibility for turning climate change into a serious security threat to individuals and humanity as a whole and, on the other hand, to emphasize the importance of the right to a healthy environment as an intergenerational phenomenon, i.e. the right of the present generation and those yet to come.

The 'consequentialist' and 'welfarist' approach − the assessment of a policy in terms of its consequences for individual welfare − that is embodied in standard welfare economics is highly relevant to the ethics of climate change. In Section 2.3, we described the standard approach to ethics in welfare economics i.e. the evaluation of actions in terms of their consequences for consumption by individuals of goods and services. We emphasised that 'goods and services' in consumption were multi-dimensional and should be interpreted broadly. In this appendix we examine that approach in a little more detail and compare it with different ethical perspectives of relevance to the economics of climate change. For many applications of the standard theory, the community is defined as the nation-state and the decision-maker is interpreted as the government. Indeed this is often seen as sufficiently obvious as to go unstated. This is not, of course, intended to deny the complexities and pressures of political systems: the results of this approach should be seen as an ethical benchmark rather than a descriptive model of how political decisions are actually taken. Nevertheless, questions such as 'what do individuals value', 'what should be their relation to decisions and decision-making', 'what is the decision-making process' and 'who are the decision-makers' arise immediately and strongly in the ethical analysis of climate change. These questions take us immediately to different perspectives on ethics. Economics, together with the other social sciences, has in fact embraced a much broader perspective on the objectives of policy than that of standard welfare-economic analysis. Amartya Sen 1 , for example, has focused on the capabilities and freedoms of individuals to live a life they have reason to value, rather than narrowly on the bundles of goods and services they consume. His focus is on opportunities and the processes that create them, rather than on outcomes only. Similar emphases come from discussions of equity 2 (with its focus on opportunity), empowerment 3 , or social inclusion 4. While such perspectives are indeed different, in practice many of the indicators arising from them would overlap strongly with the areas of focus in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and other indicators commonly used by international institutions. Indeed, the MDGs were the outcome of analyses and discussions which themselves embraced a range of ethical approaches. Impacts of climate change on future generations and other nations raise very firmly questions of rights. Protection from harm done by others lies at the heart of many philosophical approaches to liberty, freedom and justice. 5 Protection from harm is also expressed in many legal structures round the world in terms of legal responsibility for damage to the property or well-being of others. This is often applied whether or not the individual or firm was knowingly doing harm. A clear example is asbestos, whose use was not prohibited 6 when it was placed in buildings with the worthy purpose of protecting against the spread of fire. Nevertheless insurance companies are still today paying large sums as compensation for its consequences.

The fundamental ethical issues with respect to climate change involves the concept of intergenerational ethics and problems of corruption, as well as Monbiot’s theory of the “denial industry.” The natural environment can be perceived as having intrinsic and instrumental value, however, if certain issues do not appear to have anthropogenic concerns, most egoistic human beings do not see the incentive to do much about it. Although various laws have been enforced to help resolve climate change, it is ultimately up to society to take responsibility towards preventing future harm and preserving the environment.

Climate Change Ethics for an Endangered World, 2020

Climate change confronts us with our most pressing challenges today. The global consensus is clear that human activity is mostly to blame for its harmful effects, but there is disagreement about what should be done. While no shortage of proposals from ecological footprints and the polluter pays principle to adaptation technology and economic reforms, each offers a solution -but is climate change a problem we can solve? In this provocative new book, these popular proposals for ending or overcoming the threat of climate change are shown to offer no easy escape and each rest on an important mistake. Thom Brooks argues that a future environmental catastrophe is an event we can only delay or endure, but not avoid. This raises new ethical questions about how we should think about climate change. How should we reconceive sustainability without a status quo? Why is action more urgent and necessary than previously thought? What can we do to motivate and inspire hope? Many have misunderstood the kind of problem that climate change presents -as well as the daunting challenges we must face and overcome. Climate Change Ethics for an Endangered World is a critical guide on how we can better understand the fragile world around us before it is too late. This innovative book will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate change, climate justice, environmental policy and environmental ethics.