Global citizens and ethical principles
'Climate change is forcing vulnerable communities in poor countries to adapt to unprecedented climate stress. Rich countries, primarily responsible for creating the problem, must stop harming… and start helping, by providing finance for adaptation.'
Oxfam briefing paper, ‘Adapting to climate change’
How do you define yourself? You are part of your family, your generation, your school and your local community. You live in Scotland - a rich industrialised country, part of the developed world. You share Planet Earth with over 6 billion people. You are part of the global community - a global citizen.
Oxfam sees a global citizen as someone who:
- is aware of the wider world and has a sense of their own role as a world citizen
- respects and values diversity
- has an understanding of how the world works economically, politically, socially, culturally, technologically and environmentally
- is outraged by social injustice
- participates in and contributes to the community at a range of levels from local to global
- is willing to act to make the world a more sustainable place
- takes responsibility for their actions.
As responsible global citizens we have to try to make informed choices and decisions. It is important to evaluate environmental, scientific and technological issues, and develop informed, ethical views of complex global issues.
Ethical Considerations
Ethics is a process of inquiry which examines ideas and their application regarding what is right and wrong, compulsory or voluntary, and what responsibility should attach to actions that cause harm.
An ethical examination of climate change issues will explore suggestions about what should be done about global warming rather than focus on descriptions of scientific and economic facts alone.
Ethical questions
As we come to terms with our responsibilities and the rights of others, the following questions are worth considering:
- Who is ethically responsible for the consequences of climate change, that is, who is liable for the burdens of:
- preparing for and then responding to climate change or
- paying for unavoidable damage?
- What ethical principles should guide the choice of specific climate change policy objectives?
- What ethical principles should be followed in allocating responsibility among people, organisations, and governments at all levels to prevent ethically intolerable impacts from climate change?
- What is the ethical significance of the need to make climate change decisions in the face of scientific uncertainty?
- Is the commonly used justification of national cost for delaying or minimising climate change action ethically justified?
- Is the commonly used reason for delaying or minimising climate change action that any nation need not act until others agree on action, ethically justifiable?
- Is the argument that we should minimise climate change action until new, less-costly technologies may be invented in the future, ethically justifiable?
- What principles of procedural justice should be followed to assure fair representation in decision making?
These ethical questions are from ‘White Paper on the Ethical Dimensions of Climate Change’. The full document can be downloaded from the Rock Ethics Institute website.
Photo credit: Rix Biodiesel Ltd..
Images are freely available for educational use in Scotland.