The Ethics Of Responsibility On Climate Change

Climate change has been taking place at an unprecedented speed since the industrial revolution, which has become one of the most significant challenges confronting the world today. A consensus has been made in science that the climate change caused by human factors has taken place and will continue to affect the whole climate and ecosystem. In light of this, climate change has been put on the international political agenda. In1992, the signing of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change raised the curtain on climate negotiations. Negotiations have been held under this framework for over20years and each negotiation ends up with breakdown, disappointment and pinning hopes on the next one. International actions on climate change have not seen any substantial progress, putting climate game in trouble and making a growing number of people care for climate change.Climate change is not merely a scientific, economic or political issue, but basically an ethical issue. Facing challenges on climate change, we have to answer the question of "What should be done" first, which cannot be answered just with economic calculations. We need to evaluate our actions by virtue of ethical and moral standards. Only a reasonable and righteous decision conforming to moral standards can be accepted by each party to bring about concerted actions. In recent years, climate ethics has developed to a certain extent, but still remains in a stage analyzing the feasibility of each concrete proposal. Each proposal is supported by some ethical principles; however, it is not perfect enough to be widely recognized. Recently, an increasing number of ethicists are trying to seek a multivariate comprehensive framework including each kind of concrete principles and proposals to satisfy the requirements of each party to act in concert. However,"being multivariate" cannot resolve the dilemma of climate ethics, because this kind of compromise to practicality has by no means seized the nature of the issue.As a new issue occurring in the era of technology, climate change has the unique characteristics of this era, which is far beyond the control of conventional ethics. The reason why an appropriate ethical principle to support our mitigation actions cannot be found is that the conventional ethics is incapable of dealing with new challenges proposed by climate change. To solve the problem, we have to renovate the conventional ethics. The ethics of responsibility is presented by Hans Jonas exactly in the overall context of the era of technology. Reflecting on the speedy development of postwar technology and a series of negative effects brought by it, he indicates that the development of modern technology leads to the change of the human habitat and the nature of human actions which requires the renovation of ethics, i.e. the proposition of a future-oriented, unidirectional and integrally linked responsibility.This paper analyzes the climate change issue from the perspective of the ethics of responsibility and points out through analysis that climate change is in essence the by-product of technological progress and the result of arbitrary expansion of technical power. Existing disputes on climate ethics remain the game within the limits of human immediate interests without a clear understanding of the responsibility should be borne, vainly attempting to seek a solution out of the problem to resolve the "dense fog" in climate ethics through this kind of understanding. The objective of this paper is not to put forward ideas on specific measures on emission reduction but to illustrate the essence of climate change as a technical issue and find the crux of the climate ethics problem through analysis of the ethics of responsibility and indicate a direction for problem solving by virtue of this brand new responsibility, and through analysis of geoengineering, as a specific technology, point out it is by no means an effective solution but part of the issue itself.