The controversial Australian bioethicist Peter Singer has compared a big carbon footprint with dropping a nuclear bomb on Bangladesh. In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald he said:

“Suppose we were waging aggressive war on Bangladesh, let's say, and we were dropping lots of bombs and somebody said we should stop this war, 'we have no justification for declaring war on Bangladesh'. And somebody else said 'well, but Australia has a big industry manufacturing bombs and if we stop the war we'll harm the economy because there won't be all these jobs'.

“Now I don't think even the conservatives would support that argument but what we're doing is not really very different. Now that we know the effects of our greenhouse gas emissions, we are harming people in Bangladesh almost as surely as if we were dropping bombs on them.”

Singer says that the moral argument is compelling even if there is not complete unanimity amongst scientists. “Even if it was only 90 percent of the relevant scientists that are convinced of this, I think we would have to listen to them. I think we couldn't take the risk that what they were saying was wrong." – Sydney Morning Herald, Nov 26