The Study Of Ethical Foundation Of The International Cooperation To Address Climate Change

Any country or region’s emissions of greenhouse gases in the world will affectother countries and regions with atmospheric circulation, and will affect theecological environment at last. Facing the global threat of the atmosphericenvironment deterioration, the international community has reached a consensus thatto protect the atmospheric environment is a common responsibility of themankind-this is a kind of consideration which bases on ethics. For the managementproblems of climate change, climate scientists, economists and other professionalresearchers can help us find climate change’s "cause", then help us address climatechange’s "effect", but how should we do, it is not only a subject in the scientific field,but also is a problem of ethics category.First, this paper through studying the development course of the internationalcooperation on climate change and we have already achieved important achievementsto expand the historical review of the international cooperation to address climatechange.Then, according to the outstanding problems at the present time in the course ofthe international cooperation to address climate change, for instance, there are manyproblems in the course of the greenhouse gas emission rights’ transaction what wasestablished in the Kyoto Protocol, developing the monitoring work of implementationwas difficult and the problem on the Parties didn’t implement or incompleteimplementation. Through these problems we can study the main ethic defects behindthese outstanding problems and the internal contradiction of the ethical value-judgingcriterion which is between the Parties, for example, the principle of historicalresponsibility is not fully reflected, lacks restrictions. The principle of historicalcardinal goes against the science and rationality and the ethical fairness. The definition of the principle of common but different responsibilities is fuzzy, and theprinciple’s binding character is not strong. Differences exist in the performance ofthe principle of intergenerational equity, and there are no same standards. Theprinciple of precautionary and cost-benefit still exists some difficulties in execution.The principle of promoting favorable and open international economic system lacksmechanism guarantee.At last, the paper around four principles what are as follows: we should seriouslycoordinate global interests and fully balance efficiency and fairness, refine theprinciple of “common but different responsibilities”, persist in the principle ofintergenerational equity and emphasis on the principle of “social rate of returnpriority”, cultivate and deepen the conscious of environmental ethics andinternationally moral responsibility of the participation subject to perfect ethicalfoundation of the international cooperation to address climate change.