Climate change and ethics

The time has come to focus as much attention on what each one of us must do as on what others should be doing

The recent report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the aspirational target in the Paris Agreement of limiting global temperature increase to 1.5°C makes three important points:

• Meeting the aspirational 1.5°C target would require us to abandon coal and other fossil fuels in the next 10-12 years. This is theoretically feasible but in practice quite impossible given the investments already made and planned in the production and use of fossil fuels.
• Staying with the agreed 2°C target would imply significantly higher risks relative to the 1.5°C target including doubling of the number of people affected by water scarcity, more