Disscus the challenges that global warming presents to both governments and business - Essay Example

The purpose of this paper is to describe the challenges that global warming represents to both businesses and governmental institution around the world. Global warming is a problem that concerns the entire society across the world including the public and private sectors. Some of the dangers and consequences associated with global warming include ocean circulation disruptions, desertification, flooding of low-lands due to higher sea levels, hurricanes, extinction of species, mass disruptions of agriculture, and mass movement of people away from coastal cities (Bionomicfuel, 2011).

Global warming is hurting the earth’s ecosystem and is putting at danger the well-being of our future generations. The gas that is responsible for the majority of global warming is carbon dioxide (CO2) (Nationalgeographic, 2011). Based on the fact the CO2 is the primary reason for global warming corporations and governments have to implement solutions to limit the release of CO2 into the atmosphere. There are five others gases which are considered by the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 as contributors to global warming.

The six greenhouse gases that are targeted by Kyoto are CO2, N2 O, HFC, PFC, and SF6 (Sudgen, 2011). The Kyoto Protocol was created in 1997 with the purpose of establishing standards in order to reduce air pollution. The treaty set environmental standards in industrialized nations. Developing countries were not included in the Kyoto protocol. The fact that developing countries were not included in Kyoto made this international regulation a bit ineffective in the battle against global warming.

The treaty forced countries to meet their national targets through their own initiatives. There are three mechanisms that help countries achieve their environmental goals. The three mechanisms included in the Kyoto protocol were emission trading also known as carbon trading, development mechanism, and joint implementation. Emission trading limits and trading rules in each country varies which makes every emission trading market operation different (Sudgen, 2011). The way emission trading works is that companies that fall below the set environment standard receive credits.

These credits can be sold to companies that exceed their limits so that the buying company can comply with Kyoto. One of the most active and effective carbon trading systems in the world is the European Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS). Since the scheme includes the participation of many countries the EU ETS is the largest trading system in the world. The capacity of the EU ETS is 2 billion tonnes of CO2. The clean developing mechanism is the second mechanism provided by the Kyoto protocol. The developing mechanism allows companies with subsidiaries in developing countries to implement emission reduction projects in a developing nation such as Argentina.

The reduction in emissions of these projects gives the companies carbon credits that can be used in their operations in industrialized countries. The joint implementation system allows companies that have subsidiaries in other industrialized countries to interchange the carbon reduction credits earn in either country. A problem with the Kyoto Protocol was that the most powerful nation in the world, the United States, never acceded to it. A new governmental