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Introduction

Climate change is one of the focal points concerning the great ecolgical crisis that all societies find themselves dealing with in the XXI century. Other dramatic global problems, like water and food shortage as well as endangered biodivesity and energy security, are linked to this and are crucial to the whole human kind. Several people especially those who result more vulnerable, such as environmental refugees, little islands or urban slums inhabitants, may see their human rights jeopardized.
To contain global warming in a timely and efficient way is an important challenge for the sustainability of our future. This need clearly emerged during the last Conference of the Member States of the Convention on Climate in Bali , in December 2007: the conclusions committed International community to search for an agreement towards an effective and sustainable implementation, within 2009, of new and more binding targets in order to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs).
In these last months, the difficulty of achieving such goal has emerged as well as the awareness that it will be impossible to cope with such task without justice criteria , around which building a consensus and a joint action among the various components of the human family.
Religions and churches have given significant indications on this issue: the recent Benedetto XVI's plea as well as the positions of the Third European Ecumenical Assembly of Sibiu (September 2007) are important signals in this direction.
These themes have been considered by the VI International Conference on Ethics and Environmental Policies, dedicated to Ethics and Climate Change. Scenarios for justice and sustainability , held in Padua from the 23 rd to the 25 th of October 2008, on the initiative of the Lanza Foundation, in cooperation with the Euro-Mediterranean Centre for Climatic Changes, Climate Alliance Italy, Observa Science and Society, and under the patronage of Mr. Terry Davis, General Secretary of the European Council, the Unesco, the President of the Italian Republic, the Italian Ministry for the Environment, the Centre of Human Ecology of the University of Padua, and the Italian Coordination Local Agenda 21.

Analysis  

1. Consistency of scientific data
Global warming is a complex phenomenon, that depends on a large variety of factors and manifests itself in diverse ways in different areas of the planet. The vast amount of information and data processed in the last years by scientific research has, however, found an effective and balanced synthesis in the IV Report of the Intergovernmental Panel of the United Nations on Climate Change (IPCC), made up of more than 2500 scientists from all over the world. The result is a clear understanding of the phenomenon, which highlights the impossibility of explaining it without taking into account greenhouse gases produced by human activities. It is, therefore, a phenomenon with significant anthropogenic components in which the use of fossil fuels for energy production plays a crucial role.

2. Consequences
The consequences induced by the primary effects on temperature, rainfalls and other components of climatic events have also been widely analyzed. Many are the problems that from now up to the end of the century will very probably weigh on the quality of people's life throughout the world: the rising of sea level, the increase of extreme phenomena (heat waves and hurricanes) and the irregular distribution of rainfalls. Climate change will have macroeconomic consequences affecting directly and indirectly almost all sectors of the world economic system. The shift of climatic belts risks to cause relevant impacts also on health level, favouring the spread of diseases in areas previously unfamiliar with these. Planetary biodiversity itself will risk great consequences with a higher probabiliti of extinction for those species (animals and plants) unable to adapt to the rapidity of changes under way.

3. Urgent action
It is, therefore, a dramatic change, that is already starting to deeply modify the lives of billions of human beings, of present and future generations. In such conditions the precautionary principle - fundamental for environmental ethics – calls for a prompt action aimed at limiting the changes before they get out of control causing devastating consequences. Given current knowledge, no other solution is available without including a drastic reduction of climate-altering gas emissions. The aim is to stabilize CO2 concentration and that of other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, stopping their growth. Strong efforts in such direction are necessary on a technical-scientific research level as well as on a wider political-economic action level.
In the first place, a strong mitigation strategy is necessary in order to reduce today and tomorrow emissions in the atmosphere and increase the greenhouse gases absorption capacity of the natural environment (the so-called sinks, such as forests and farmlands).
Likewise, the adoption of adaptation policies in order to manage, in the best possible way, all the negative consequences – on people, natural ecosystems and socio-economical systems – of climatic changes on the way, must be strong as well.

4. Towards a wider political consensus
The conclusions drawn by the Conference of Bali (December 2007) and the road map thereby approved in order to reach a new International legal agreement for Kyoto 2, highlight that the majority of countries now recognizes climate change as a serious common problem for the future of the planet. In Bali the International community has also expressed its conviction about the necessity of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50%, from 1990 levels, within 2050 in order to keep down the increase of temperature within 2° centigrade. It is clear then the awareness of the urgency to redirect the actual development system with a deep revision of dominant economic systems and a strong transformation of the energy system in order to gradually reduce the role of fossil fuels in favour of renewable energy and at the same time increasing energy efficiency. Several studies outline that, even from an economic point of view, is far more convenient to act now rather than have to deal, in a few years, with the growing costs caused by the “climatic chaos”.

5. Improving ecoefficient technology
Such action may utilize increasingly available efficient technology that will enable strong reduction of climate-altering gases. Reductions of 20-85% of CO2 and other greenhouse gases emissions are today already possible in the energy efficiency sector alone. All the more so, one can look with confidence to human creativity, which from now on is likely to add to present knowledge new scientific technical and cultural opportunities and will help to give new answers to the problem ahead.

6. Multilevel action
A clear and shared global action has, therefore, the realistic possibility to start a positive process in order to operate in a more interactive way on multiple government levels (international, continental, national, local-regional), on multi-sectors (economical, social, environmental, cultural) and on different players (institutions, enterprises, citizens). It will, therefore, be possible to proceed in the direction of modifying the prevalent economical and social system through coordination between local and global action and the involvement of active community actors. A real opportunity is at hand allowing us to build a sustainable society, with the ability of maintaining itself through time, ensuring a future also to generations to come.

7. A cultural and educational challenge
First of all, our societies face a cultural challenge, which implies taking charge of a stronger social and environmental responsibility, keeping in mind that climate change is considered of the most important problems by the public opinion of the Western Countries. Therefore, citizens' direct experience will be able to steer attitudes and opinions and from there influence behaviours.
There is a general call for everybody to take a concrete responsibility on these issues in organization and production modalities, behaviours and lifestyles, to ensure a sustainable future. In this field it is imperative to implement a broad range of educational actions, capable of promoting a widespread awareness on an issue that puts at stake the future of the whole humanity and, already today, even the daily survival for many people.

8.  Beyond Kyoto : sharing responsibility according to justice
A decisive global political initiative is also necessary because climate change is a global phenomenon. Its containment requires a joint action by the International community, which goes beyond the principal on which the Kyoto Protocol is based. There is a need to behave following the principle of responsibility – common but also differentitated – for the common good of climatic stability.
In the first place, long-term industrialized countries are called to a decisive reduction of their emissions. That alone, however, will not determine an overall reduction, if the rapid and often unsustainable development in emerging countries continues to cause increasing production and consumption of fossil fuels. The involvement of the latter becomes therefore essential in negotiations of the new International legal agreement, which will regulate the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol ( Kyoto 2) starting from 2012.
It will be achieved only on the basis of clear equity criteria regarding cost allocation for policies of mitigation and adjustment. This means to understand how to share the costs of a global socio-economical transformation, which – as highlighted also in the 2006 Stern Report – in the middle-term will be beneficial to those who will achieve it, but in a short-term shows relevant costs. Therefore it's not surprising that those who have been called to sustain these costs have a variety of positions concerning who has to support them; we feel, however, that it may be possible to offer significant ethical indications for such a debate. We will do so considering some limitations of the perspective indicated by the Kyoto Protocol, which, however, attests the attention of the international community on climate change.

9. Two limitations of the Kyoto Protocol
One direction in which it needs to be overcome is about the criteria for emissions reduction: a proportional criteria such as that the Protocol proposes may be too binding for those countries which historically have had lower emission levels. From an ethical point of view there is no excuse for such a demand, that assumes for those countries with high emission levels, a problematic “acquired right of use” regarding the atmosphere, completely failing to recognize its nature as a public good.
On the other hand, the Kyoto Protocol with regard to the limitation of emissions has a limited group of countries bear the costs; excluded from this group remain some countries who significantly increase the emissions. It's not enough to refer to the principle: “Who pollutes pays” to motivate restrictions imposed only to countries historically industrialized: the problem today must be faced by all humanity and countries. Furthermore, such perspective would be unacceptable for industrialized countries, bound to expensive efforts, with the risk of seeing them nullified by a drastic increase of emissions by other countries. The commitments taken even unilaterally, for instance by the European Union, have the capacity to prompt positive action among all involved players, with the perspective of adopting shared undertakings.

10. An agreement in the name of equity
A more significant approach should refer to an equal right of the use of the atmosphere, which would determine for each country proportional emissions on the basis of their population. It must not be forgotten that even countries like China or India , often mentioned for the rapid growth of their emissions, still maintain a lower per capita level of emission compared to countries of historical industrialization. In such context the right to an equal use of the atmosphere – certainly not easy to found from an ethical point of view – seems able to offer a significant justice criterion. This poses strong requirements to industrialized countries, who are called to a deep rethinking of their development model, but specifies bounds – even if limited – also for the others.
It isn't necessary to think at such an approach in rigid terms: a mediation approach - significantly ethical and practicable – requires that equal per capita emissions are an objective to be reached progressively through a gradual convergence, starting from present levels, which results less costly for industrialized countries.
To make such approach compatible with authentic justice criteria there is a need to integrate it with effective mechanisms supporting a low cost spreading, also in developing countries, of low emission technology. It would, therefore, be possible for such countries to realize a better quality of life which is absolutely necessary, combining social and economical development with quality of the environment. On the other hand, for the industrialized countries, where such technologies have historically been developed, their low cost proliferation would be the price to pay for the postponement of reduction in costs for emissions tied to the gradual convergence in emission levels.

11. A new global responsibility
It isn't easy to match the need for effectiveness, with regard to the GHGs reduction, with the need for justice. Responsibility, wisdom and flexibility of all players involved are required in the belief that ineffective decisions in this field (or worse, the incapacity of taking common decisions) have too high of a price for the human family and particularly for its more vulnerable members.
In particular, it's important to be able to face the present financial and economic crisis with some foresight ability, without forgetting the ecological needs and without making them an alibi in putting off the necessary measures in front of the alarming signs as, unfortunately, happened for the financial crisis itself.

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