Development Ethics and the Copenhagen Accord: How Important Are the Global Poor?

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Notes

Notes

1 United Nations Development. Program (1991) Human Development Report 1991 (New York: Oxford University Press).

2 These papers are posted at ClimateEthics.org, the Rock Ethics Institute's climate blog and include: “Nations Must Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions to Their Fair Share of Safe Global Emissions Without Regard To What Other Nations Do” posted June 8, 2008, “Minimum Ethical Criteria For All Post-Kyoto Regime Proposals: What Does Ethics Require of a Copenhagen Outcome” posted December 29, 2008, “A Comprehensive Ethical Analysis of the Copenhagen Accord” posted January 31, 2010, and “Ten Reasons Why Examining Climate Change Policy Through an Ethical Lens is a Practical Imperative” posted February 9, 2010.

3 This presents a plausible ethical condition; according to Kant's Categorical Imperative, we may use another merely as a means only if we obtain their free consent.

4 Brown states the principle thus: “no nation or person has a right to continue destructive behavior on the basis that others who are contributing to the harm have not ceased their destructive behavior” in “A Comprehensive Ethical Analysis of the Copenhagen Accord.”

5 Brown writes, “Violating a provision of an international agreement such as the UNFCCC is considered a wrongful act under international law, and is therefore an unethical action for consenting nations. (See, e.g., International Law Commission Draft Articles on State Responsibility Art. 2(a) & (b)” in “Nations Must Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions to Their Fair Share of Safe Global Emissions Without Regards to What Other Nations Do.”

6 Examples he favors include “Contraction and Convergence” and “Greenhouse Development Rights.”

7 For philosophical discussion of this approach to equity, see “Greenhouse Development Rights: A Proposal for a Fair Global Climate Treaty,” followed by open peer commentary in Ethics, Place, & Environment Vol. 12, No. 3 (2009), pp. 267–312.

8 The problem of dirty hands is related but distinct from the “political realist” position, which will typically deny that morality is comprehensive, denying that it properly ranges over politics. For a realist view, see Raymond Geuss, Philosophy and Real Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008).

9 See Stephen Humphreys, ed. Human Rights and Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).