Misplaced Ethics of Climate Change: Political vs. Environmental Geography

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Notes

Notes

1 According to a clarification sent to governments by the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, “since the Conference of the Parties [at Copenhagen] neither adopted nor endorsed the Accord, but merely took note of it, its provisions do not have any legal standing within the UNFCCC process even if some Parties decide to associate themselves with it” (de Boer 2010).

2 For example, in a joint letter, Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told heads of state that the “Copenhagen Accord represents the essential first step in a process leading to a robust international climate change treaty” (Rasmussen and Ban 2009: 2), and German Chancellor Angela Merkel described it as a “step, albeit a small one, towards a global climate change architecture” (quoted in den Egenhofer and Georgiev 2009: 1).

3 This assumes that individuals are considered to account for industrial, agricultural and other pollution coming from their consumption of materials things, power, food and so forth (cf. Hertwich and Peters 2009).

4 For data and trends, see, for example, Baer Athanasiou and Kartha (2008) and Baer et al. (2009). The remaining global emissions can be attributed to roughly 4 billion people who contribute relatively litter per capita and ought not in most cases be expected to reduce their greenhouse emissions (and indeed in the majority of cases should be allowed to increase them) until alternatives are provided to them.