Climate change is a "crucial ethical issue", says Peter Singer. Image: Courtesy of City of Sydney.

By Angela Dorizas

Australia has a heavy burden of moral responsibility for the problems caused by climate change, according to leading ethicist Peter Singer.

Speaking at the latest City Talk event, hosted by the City of Sydney, the Princeton University professor of bioethics and laureate professor at the University of Melbourne said Australia was using five times its share of the atmosphere’s capacity to absorb greenhouse gases.

“We have less than 1/300 of the world’s people, but we take about 1/60 of the atmosphere’s capacity to safely absorb greenhouse gases,” he said.

Likening the atmosphere to a pie, Singer said Australia was unethically consuming a larger slice than much poorer and densely populated nations and would therefore be disproportionately responsible for the catastrophic impact of climate change.

“Along with the United States, along with Canada and to a slighter lesser degree Europe, we have a heavy burden of responsibility,” he said.

He said Australia’s contribution to climate change was already perceived by the developing world as a form of aggression.

“From the viewpoint of President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, speaking recently at the African Union Summit a couple of years back, the nations that are putting out all the greenhouse gases are committing acts of aggression against other nations that are going to suffer more from it.”

He said in comparison to developing countries, Australia was well placed to survive the impacts of climate change.

“At least in the foreseeable future we are not going to have billions of Australians dying because of climate change.

“Our crops may fail in the Murray-Darling basin and that will be a disaster for the communities there and will cause a rise in food prices here, but we will not starve. We have social security. We have welfare.

“If the crops fail in parts of Africa because of the shifts in rainfall patterns, like those that we’re having in southern Australia, then people will starve. They will become climate refugees by perhaps the hundreds of millions. That’s why this is a crucial ethical issue.”

He backed the proposal by German Chancellor Angela Merkel to measure greenhouse gas emissions on a per capita basis, which would prevent countries with smaller populations, such as Australia, from emitting a disproportional amount of carbon emissions.

“That is the best and most defensible principle that you could put to the world,” Singer said. “It’s fair to everyone.”

Read the full story in the September issue of Government News magazine.