The Ethics of Climate Change

John Broome, in a June 2008 article in Scientific American, raised a number of ethical questions related to climate change:

Climate change raises a number of ethical questions. How should we -all of us living today -evaluate the well-being of future generations, given that they are likely to have more material goods than we do? Many people, some living, others yet to be born, will die from the effects of climate change. Is each death equally bad? How bad are those deaths collectively? Many people will die before they bear children, so climate change will prevent the existence of children who would otherwise have been born. Is there nonexistence a bad thing? By emitting greenhouse gases, are the rich perpetrating an injustice on the world’s poor? How should we respond to the small but real chance that climate change could lead to worlwide catastrophe?

Before your teeth start to hurt from trying to think about the ‘nonexistence’ of children… the article is about cost-benefit economics. Most of the rest of the article is about ethical considerations in determining discount rates.

The last of his questions has been in my mind for some time….How should we respond to the small but real chance that climate change (or, for that matter, any human induced environmental change) could lead to worldwide catastrophe? If you want to discuss it in moral terms, what right does anyone have to cause environmental change?…and from where do those rights arise?