Quand le changement climatique interroge l’humanité

Abstract

The effects of climate change show both locally and globally deep inequalities or discriminations. However, these sometimes come from limiting GHGs (greenhouse gases) or adaptation to climate change policies. Adaptation raises the question of inequalities through the artificialization of the world due to protection from climatic hazards, as shown by the relationship between poverty and the negative impacts of natural disasters. However, protections offered by modernity, based on a more complex and fragile society, could lead to collapse, analyzed by J. Diamond (2007). Mitigation induces different temporalities between current toxic pollution reduction and greenhouse gases control in the long term. Of course, the sources generating GHGs and toxic emissions are the same but biomass burning, biofuels or houses insulation are examples showing possible contradictions between safety in the short term and climate change control in the long term. Environmental prevention must respond to new challenges which must combine justice at different spatial and temporal scales and respond to value based social choices, beyond the rational dichotomy between strong and weak sustainability, strongly questioning the validity of the sustainable development triptych. Maybe, the questions raised by climate change have more to do with individual ethics than with highly theoretical political orientations ?

Keywords

• climate change
• mitigation
• adaptation
• public health
• sustainable development
• health inequalities