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The author focuses on the increasingly pressing need for humanity to face the finite nature of the planet, and in doing so to address the distributional issues relating to coping with the impacts of climate change and keeping the anthropogenic pressures on the environment within manageable limits. Within the context of actual negotiations and positions taken at the 1992 Rio Conference and since, and of the division between the priorities of the developed North and the developing South, he examines the arguments relating to the ethical aspects of various approaches to the problem and identifies two ‘focal allocation approaches’. In conclusion, he emphasizes the political challenge facing the international community in the next century as the need to distribute responsibility for the causes and effects of greenhouse gas emissions becomes ever more acute.
Michael Grubb (Sat,) studied this question.