“Is this destruction and poisoning of the natural world, this trampling of human rights, the legacy that climate campaigners want to leave the world? Is this really the only ethical way to deal with the question of global warming? Is it even ethical at all? … A public debate on the damage being done by climate change policy is long overdue.”
At the heart of much policy to deal with climate change lies an ethical approach to the question of intergenerational equity, namely that current generations should avoid passing costs onto future ones, who can play no part in the decisions. In fact it has been said that this is the only ethical way to deal with global warming, although this is not true – professional economists have identified several alternatives.…