Editor’s Preface. From time to time, ClimateEthics.org has argued that climate change creates civilization challenging moral and ethical issues that can only be solved when citizens and nations see their responsibilities as global citizens. See, for example. Ethical Principles Governing the Basic Foundations on Climate Change Policies, http://climateethics.org/?p=40, Collaborative Program on Ethical Dimensions of Climate Change Calls for Ethical Leadership in Poznan, Poland Climate Change Negotiations/http://climateethics.org/?cat=1, Nations Must Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions To Their Fair Share of Safe Global Emissions Without Regard To What Other Nations Do , http://climateethics.org/?p=37 The following post written by Tahirih Naylor, Representative, United Nations Office Baha’i International Community, and  Peter Adriance, National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the U.S. clearly articulates why courageous leadership that appeals to a vision of the oneness of humanity is urgently needed to guide global responses to climate change.

I. Introduction
The global community stands at a critical juncture as it decides how to deal with the potentially irreversible impacts of climate change on humanity and the environment. On the one hand, the COP-14 meeting in Poznan, Poland and COP-15 in Copenhagen, Denmark represent an unparalleled opportunity to reach new levels of cooperation—cooperation that is built on a growing unity of thought on the imperative of reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) globally. Governing bodies, civil society and concerned citizens around the world have rallied to raise awareness about this common challenge. Decades of research, advocacy and policy-making have also provided a strong scientific basis for action on climate change, have raised public consciousness and have provided norms and principles to guide actions. These efforts are remarkable at many levels.

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Three times in his movie Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore asserts that climate change is a moral issue. Yet, the US response to climate change has often failed to take seriously the implications of the claim that climate change raises moral issues. Although statements of President-elect Obama indicate a new willingness to assure that US climate change policy is consistent with global obligations, a recent report raises the question of whether the failure to understand the moral and ethical dimensions of climate change policy remains a problem among members of the Obama team.

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Editor’s Preface: This is the third in a series of articles in ClimateEthics.org looking at ethical issues entailed by the fact that people around the world will need to adapt to climate change. Also see Planning for adaptation to climate change raises ethical questions about the priorities: Examples from Tanzania and Ethical Issues in Funding for Adaptation in Countries Vulnerable to Climate Change; the Example of Bhutan. Adaptation needs will continue to generate profound ethical questions for the international community about such matters as how to set priorities for adaptation funding, who should pay for adaptation costs, how to deal with the needs of climate change refugees, along with many others in the years ahead.

I.    Introduction
This is the third in a series of posts on ClimateEthics.org that looks at host of ethical issues that arise due to the inevitable need for many around the world to adapt to climate change.

Many developing countries put high hopes in the Adaptation Fund which is expected to be launched at the 14th Conference of the Parties (COP) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Poznan, Poland (December 2008). The main purpose of the Fund is to provide financial assistance for adaptation resources for the most vulnerable. From a distributive justice perspective, the Adaptation Fund may offer practical ways to share both benefits and burdens of negative impacts from climatic changes. At the same time, the so far vastly insufficient funds (2% levy from certified emission reductions issued from Clean Development Mechanism projects, which equals to roughly $300 million by 2012) have triggered a perverse race to the bottom where countries risk competing against each other by essentially portraying themselves as vulnerable as possible in order to access the limited funds. This dynamic not only bypasses the intrinsic questions of ethics and justice between North and South, it downplays people’s agency, learning, and concrete efforts to enhance their own adaptive capacity and to respond to climatic changes. While the Bali Action Plan identified the need for enhanced action on adaptation by all Parties to the Convention, there are several obstacles to ethical and efficient implementation of adaptation actions. This paper discusses two of these obstacles: the first relates to an almost complete lack of culturally and literacy-sensitive learning tools for adaptation decision-making; the second obstacle concerns unequal and sometimes ineffective solutions in reducing risks associated with tipping points of ‘dangerous’ abrupt climatic changes.

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I.  Introduction
During the first two weeks of December of 2008 in Poznan, Poland, international negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) considered various proposals for replacing the Kyoto Protocol with a new climate change regime. This was done because the Kyoto Protocol ends by its own terms in 2012. The Kyoto regime is often referred to as the first commitment period under the UNFCCC. In Bali, Indonesia last year, the international community agreed to negotiate a climate change regime that will constitute the second commitment period under the UNFCCC in two negotiating sessions. The first of these took place in Poznan last month and the second will take place December, 2009 in Copenhagen.

Although little progress was made in Poznan on the architecture of a new second commitment period, various proposals were considered by the international community in discussions about a vision statement to guide future negotiations and in Poznan side-events sponsored by governments and NGOs.

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I.    Introduction
The Collaborative Program on the Ethical Dimensions of Climate Change (EDCC) (see below) participated in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) Conference of the Parties (COP-14) that took place in Poznan, Poland from December 1st through 12th, 2008.

The Poznan COP was the first of two meetings that the parties to the climate convention had agreed in COP-13 in Bali, Indonesia would be devoted to replacing the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012. COP-15 will be held in Copenhagen, Denmark in December of 2009.  The decisions reached in Bali defining the issues to be negotiated to replace the Kyoto Protocol are referred to as the Bail Road Map.

During COP-14, EDCC held a seminar on ethical issues that need to be considered in implementing many specific issues in the Bali Road Map and discussed these issues in a side event during the negotiations. A later post will review the conclusions arrived at in the EDCC seminar.

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I.    Introduction
This post examines additional ethical issues that arise when a government plans to eventually reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) from coal-fired powered plants through the use of carbon capture and geologic storage technology (carbon capture and storage).

As more fully set out in prior posts on climateethics, carbon capture and storage  is a very hopeful but not completely proven technology for reducing climate change’s threat from the large and growing number of coal-fired power plants around the world. See (http://climateethics.org/?p=46) and (http://climateethics.org/?p=38).

As previously set out in these earlier posts, geologic carbon storage raises a number of ethical issues that should be considered when making decisions about this technology’s deployment.  Yet, all solutions to climate change, including geologic carbon storage, must consider the ethical issues each solution raises in the context of the enormous ethical issues raised by the problem that the solution is trying to prevent, namely human-induced climate change. That is, as a matter of ethics, it is not enough to identify potential harms created by different climate change solutions; those opposing specific solutions to climate change must also consider the potential reduction in harms from climate change that the solution could enable as well as other ethical issues entailed by the climate change solution under consideration. It might very well be the case, for instance, that geologic carbon storage raises certain ethical concerns because of potential harms that this technology could create yet the potential adverse impacts of this technology are less ethically problematic than continuing to release CO2 from coal-fired power plants. If this were the case, then ethics would require those considering the deployment of this technology to compare ethical issues raised by carbon capture and storage with ethical issues raised by other viable options for reducing climate change’s threat.

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I. Introduction
This post examines ethical issues that arise when a government does not take action to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from coal fired powered plants because it plans to eventually use carbon capture and geologic storage technology (geologic carbon storage) to sequester carbon dioxide produced in coal combustion.

As more fully set out in a prior post, geologic carbon sequestration is a hopeful but unproven technology for reducing climate change’s threat which raises a number of ethical issues that should be considered in regard to its deployment. (http://climateethics.org/?p=38)

This post looks in more detail at one of these ethical issues, that is, ethical issues that arise by waiting for this hopeful but unproven technology to be perfected while continuing to emit GHG from existing coal fired power plants.

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