Welcome to Business Daily. I'm Justin Rolat and on today's program, I ask one of the world's top moral philosophers whether we have an ethical duty to act on climate change.

This is such a huge and catastrophic thing that we're doing to the planet that if ever there's a case when civil disobedience is justified, this seems to be one of them.

That is fighting talk for a university professor and he is not the only one.

We can either just say, well, you know, that's the risk, let's give up,

or we can say let's step up to the plate, all of us,

take our responsibilities seriously and do what we can.

The moral imperative to tackle climate change today on Business Daily.

Well, it's a wet, wet autumn day here on the roof of the BBC headquarters in London.

In fact, the rain that's been whipping Britain today was the last vestige of Hurricane Umberto,

which knocked out electricity supplies across 80% of Bermuda last week.

It's a reminder that weather systems are not confined to the locations where they originate,

and neither is climate change.

The people I can see driving their cars in the road below me are putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Not much, admittedly, but enough to make stronger hurricanes that will destroy livelihoods and take lives across the planet

just a tiny bit more likely.

Which raises a major ethical question.

What moral obligation does each of us have to other human beings

when it comes to our carbon emissions?

And it's not just other humans alive today.

It is also to future generations.

As a certain Swedish schoolgirl pointed out at the UN Climate Action Summit in New York earlier this week.

This is all wrong.

...