DK GreenRoots

President Obama has been working hard to restore U.S. moral leadership after 8 years of Bush's inhumanity and depravity. Effective climate change legislation would show the world our humanity and morality because the target of how much warming we will tolerate will determine who lives or dies. Our troops in Afghanistan understand that 350 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere should be the target.

There is the related moral issue of who pays for climate change damages. Rich nations are not only primarily responsible for climate change, but also reaped huge economic benefits from placing poorer nations in vulnerable positions that worsened the impacts. Yet, now rich countries bicker about providing monetary "assistance" to developing nations to adapt to climate change impacts as if the payments were charity. Proposed assistance in the millions will not cover the billions of average adaptation costs that is still less than the estimated trillions of ecological damages caused by rich nations. Treating adaptation measures as charity continues the injustice and immorality of not taking responsibility for those external costs never considered or paid by corporations and governments over the years.