I. Introduction
The nations of the world have express responsibility under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on the basis of equity to prevent dangerous interference with the climate system. For this reason among others, as stated in an earlier post, no nation can deny its responsibility to reduce emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions (See: Nations Must Follow Climate Change Justice, Climateethics.org, http://climateethics.org/?p=20)

This post reviews the responsibility of state, regional, and local governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and looks at one US state, Pennsylvania, as a case study to examine these issues. Unlike many other US states, Pennsylvania has no climate change strategy. This post will make the claim that this is a moral and ethical failure even though Pennsylvania is taking some steps toward improving its energy mix in regard to greenhouse gas emissions. If a case can be made that Pennsylvania is failing to live up to its ethical responsibilities, stronger cases can be made about other US states and regional and local governments.
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I. Introduction
This paper provides a brief assessment of the ethical issues raised by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Working Group III report, Mitigation of Climate Change.¹ It argues that energy efficiency and conservation are not simply two more options that can be employed to address climate change; they are the most equitable and sustainable options.² Energy efficiency involves doing the same amount of work, or producing the same amount of goods or services, with less energy.³ Energy conservation is a broader term; it involves using less energy, regardless of the whether energy efficiency has changed.⁴ The other major options available to address climate change are direct reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, long-term storage of carbon, and adaptation.

The paper argues that Working Group III should issue a special report in the near future assessing the potential of energy efficiency and conservation to contribute to stabilization of greenhouse gas emissions in the next ten years. It also argues that Working Group III should directly address developed country leadership in future reports, especially on per capita energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

After summarizing the Working Group III report, this paper describes three ethical principles stated in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that are particularly relevant to efficiency and conservation, and how they indicate that energy efficiency and conservation should be prioritized. This paper then explains these recommendations.
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I. Introduction
Victims of climate change rarely get heard. While the accomplishments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are laudable – Nobel Peace Prize, four assessment reports, wide recognition as the authoritative body on climate change – their work comprises the input of a narrow elite, not the wider community now impacted by climate change. The epistemic community that makes up and informs the IPCC is largely comprised of social and biophysical scientists and technicians from Northern centers of research (see Miguez and Domingos 2002). The voices of the sufferers – people living in climate change hot spots, indigenous nations, children, disenfranchised – are not included in the assessment reports and seldom reviewed for inclusion in the work of the IPCC. They are not part of the IPCC’s decision making process, nor is their consent sought for policy decisions. These conditions have ethical implications.

Ethics, in this context, is the act of identifying criteria that ought to be used when making public policy. An ethical framework that draws on widely held principles of procedural justice helps reveal a shortfall in the work of the IPCC and offers hope for a more effective climate regime. Here I use an ethical framework we developed with the Rock Ethics Institute (see Brown et al. 2006) that serves as methodology and structure from which to assess the inclusiveness of the IPCC.

At the 27th session of the IPCC in Spain, delegates considered, among other things, the future of the IPCC. For a more inclusive and effective climate regime, we suggest an ethical framework for WG III be part of the IPCC’s future.

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Organized by: Penn State University, the Rock Ethics Institute, and The Collaborative Program on the Ethical Dimensions of Climate Change, The Brazilian Forum on Climate Change, Coordination of Post Graduate Programs in Engineering of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro-The Energy Planning Program

I. Introduction
This report examines ethical issues raised by the work of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The report summarizes conclusions reached at a workshop at the 13th Conference of the Parties (COP-13) of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Bali, Indonesia on December 14, 2007. The sponsors of this workshop thank Dr. Ogunlade Davidson, Co-chair of IPCC Working Group III, for responding to the issues raised in the workshop. His thoughtful responses and remarks have been helpful in guiding our thinking.

Climate change raises many different types of profound and unprecedented questions of justice and ethics for the world. By ethics in this report we mean the domain of inquiry that examines claims about what is right or wrong, obligatory or non-obligatory, or when responsibility attaches to human actions. A number of the most important ethical issues raised by climate change were examined in the White Paper on the Ethical Dimensions of Climate Change released by the Collaborative Program on the Ethical Dimensions of Climate Change (EDCC) at COP-12 in December 2006 in Nairobi, Kenya. (White Paper, 2006). http://rockethics.psu.edu/climate/whitepaper-intro.htm

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I. Introduction
This post looks at some equity issues that arise because of who the experts are that IPCC relies on in conducting its work. The post examines how the work of IPCC could improve its performance to consider issues raised by procedural justice regarding the selection of experts that perform the synthesis for IPCC and the range of literature that IPCC considers on which it bases its reports.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988 to assess for policy-makers available information on the science and socio-economic aspects of human-induced climate change.

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“All models are wrong; some are useful.”- George Box

I. Introduction

The Ramsey model is a prominent tool for climate change assessments. It is used in the Stern Review and the work of William Nordhaus, among others. As with all models, it is wrong: it contains inaccuracies in its descriptions of the world. Some of these inaccuracies, including the model’s treatment of spatial distribution and its representation of human welfare, have important consequences for climate change assessment.

The model’s underlying ethics is also of great importance to climate change assessment. The two dominant approaches to defining the model’s ethics yield carbon tax rate recommendations which differ by a factor of ten. One approach, called the descriptive approach, contains serious flaws. All Ramsey model assessments use a limited class of ethical frameworks which values human welfare and nothing else. Those who don’t support such frameworks might dismiss assessments using the model out of hand.

This paper explains these important nuances of the Ramsey model to help put in perspective the climate change assessments which use the model. The paper is based on an award-winning forthcoming essay on the Ramsey model (Baum 2007) and is part of ongoing analysis of the ethics used in climate change assessments.

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EVENT FLASH: Bali side event, December 14th 2007.
Details: http://climateethics.org/?page_id=28

I. Introduction - The Urgency of Ethical Analysis of Climate Change Issues

Express ethical reflection on climate change issues is urgent for three reasons. First, climate change raises the most profound types of ethical questions, literally issues of life and death, and such questions as to how burdens of reducing the threat of climate changeh should be shared among people and nations throughout the world given that groups have different responsibilities for causing the problem and different vulnerabilities to climate change harms. These questions cannot be reduced to solely scientific or economic questions (although ethics needs to be informed by these disciplines). Such questions of responsibilities and damages are essentially questions of ethics, morality, and justice. Ethics is the domain of inquiry that rigorously examines claims about what is right or wrong, obligatory or non-obligatory, or when responsibility attaches to human actions.

Second, unless people see that climate change creates ethics and justice concerns, they will not likely be motivated to do what is needed to protect those most vulnerable to climate change who include many of the world’s poorest people and future generations. If citizens look only what is needed to protect themselves from harm, they are not likely to commit to the huge greenhouse gas reductions needed to protect those who will be most severly harmed by climate change.

Third, unless developing nations believe that an international approach to climate change is just, they are not likely to join a global regime urgently needed to solve the problem. That is, the failure to consider just and ethical solutions to climate change has direct practical consequences.
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