Moral Reflection On Climate Change

This study attempts to construct a comprehensive climate justice theoretical system to discuss the justice issues concerning climate change, in terms of basis, core, realization and objective of climate change.Climate justice could be examined from its course and result, in that the course of justice should be realized by following proper procedures, and the result of justice should be realized by distributive justice. Climate procedural justice is the premise of achieving climate result justice. The procedural injustice is bound to leading to injustice result. Viewing from the perspective of procedural justice, we must firstly design an international climate change negotiations mechanism and policy making procedure with justice, in order to fully reflect the interests of every involving party (especially the developing countries) who shall be in an unprejudiced and democratic decision making procedure.The distributive justice could be examined from inter-generational climate distributive justice and intra-generation climate distributive justice. Developed countries often emphasize the inter-generational responsibility of the contemporary to the future generation, indicating that the greenhouse gas emission of developing countries including China is immoral owing to its possible harm to the unborn future generation. However, they ignore the harm upon the developing countries of the past emissions by developed countries. Currently, the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere has been produced since the Industrial Revolution (after1975). The contemporary people living on the earth bear the consequences of the over emissions majorly by the developed countries. Meanwhile, any measures limiting the greenhouse gas emission will hold up the development of developing countries, who should not be the main responsibility party for the present climate change. Therefore, before we talk about the inter-generational justice, we must clarify the intra-generation justice. Certainly, activities of contemporary people will influence the future climate in200years as well as rights of future generation. Hence, both developed countries and developing counties must review the current development mode from the perspective of sustainable development.The historical distribution with injustice could be rectified through corrective justice, for which there are two approaches:the carbon tax and emission permit trading. There are also three principles for the corrective justice:polluter-pays principle, beneficiary-pays principle and difference principle.Climate change is a typical issue of global public goods, which can likely result in "supply inadequacy" and "free ride". Only every country worldwide discards its individual self-interest to construct a global justice view, can they achieve the full cooperation among each other to fundamentally slow down the global climate warming.The essence of the climate justice lies in equity and development because the distribution of climate change interests and burden directly relates to the living and development rights of developing countries. To realize the climate justice worldwide, the developed countries must discard the traditional justice view of "beggar-thy-neighbor" to enlarge the community of justice, admitting the citizenship of all human beings in climate change interests and burden distribution to establish a universal global justice view.