Global Response to Climate Change - Report Example

Global response to climate change Climate change, often referred to as global warming, has been a of both political and ecological debate during the last few decades. The subject of climate change has raised much attention around itself and had lead world governments and organizations towards initiating special programs and initiatives that would lower human impact on the warming. While politicians and scientists argue, let’s take a closer look at this global issue, analyze the problem from different points of view, and try to define whether the currently lead international discussions are as objective as they should be. Everything started in 1988. That year the topic of climate change was more than ever before covered in media, having caused increased public attention to the issue. In the US it was caused by James E. Hansen’s senate speech regarding a threat of global warming. (McCright and Dunlap, 2000: 500) The same year Hansen’s concern was supported by Margaret Thatcher, a Prime Minister of Great Britain at that time, who outlined the possible risks of climate change (Carvalho, 2007: 223-243). The concept of climate change itself, however, wasn’t new to the world at that time. Climate of the planet has always been changing periodically, making people adjust to colder or hotter environment all the time. Probably everyone has heard about so called ‘ice ages’, when great parts of the planet were covered with ice. At the same time, such cold periods were changed by hot ones, like the Medieval Warm Period (A.D. 1000), when most parts of the planet were experiencing hot and dry weather (National Research Council, 2006: 2). During the last 2000 years the most significant climate changes were the mentioned above Medieval Climate Anomaly, the Little Ice Age of 1500-1850, and the warm period of the industrial era, which is lasting during the last 100 years (ibid). These climate changes were caused by various factors, including changes in the planet’s orbit, changes in solar activity, and eruptions of volcanoes. (US Environmental Protection Agency, 2009) The current warming of climate, however, is believed to be much intensified by the influence of human activity that has lead to increased levels of greenhouse gasses emissions. Greenhouse gasses, in their turn, are believed to be the cause of raise in average temperatures on the Earth. David Adam of Guardian outlines that emissions of carbon dioxide produced by human activity are the major cause of the above natural level of greenhouse effect. While before the industrial revolution the level of this gas in the atmosphere was at 280 parts per million (ppm), these days it is at 386ppm, and is increasing by 2-3ppm every year. (Adam, 2009) Still, human activity is not the only cause of the current climate change and global warming. Scientists argue that natural factors, such as solar activity also greatly influence modern climate. Stanford SOLAR Center (2008) states that variations in solar activity is the cause of about a quarter of recent temperature variations. However, since carbon dioxide emissions is the only influential factor that people can control, this exact activity is meant in most cases when discussing methods of slowing down or stopping global warming, which can lead to global catastrophes, such as tsunamis, hurricanes, floods and so on. The world society has recently devoted much attention to the problem of climate change. Based on the scientific reports and pressed by environment protection activists the countries had to come to a conclusion that certain measures should and can be taken in order to reduce the impact of industrial and agricultural activities on the atmosphere. As a result, one of the most known historical documents related to environment protection was signed by a number of countries – a Kyoto protocol. Signing of this paper was initiated by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1997. (GlobalGreenhouseWarming.com) The protocol came into force in 2005. The countries that signed the protocol aimed at fighting climate warming by means of reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases. The international agreement has obliged the participating countries to reduce levels of emission of greenhouse gases on average by 5%. The treaty also provided the participating parties with certain tools for reaching the set goal. Among them is emissions trading, which means that a country can sell its right to produce a certain amount of emissions gases to another country. Another is clean development mechanism (CDM). It allows developed countries to raise their gas emission limit for helping developing countries in its reduction. Finally, the Kyoto protocol enables countries to implement emissions-reducing projects jointly (GlobalGreenhouseWarming.com; UNFCCC). Nearly all the world countries have agreed to take part in the initiative. Sadly, the USA is not participating in the program – the country has never ratified the document. On this issue KyotoUSA, a public organization in the US, comments that without the participation of the United States the agreement cannot be effective since the USA produces 25% of the planet’s greenhouse gases (KyotoUSA). Though there do exist local initiatives that aim at reducing the level of greenhouse gas emissions, the country does not participate in the international effort. This can be explained by the fact carbon dioxide, the gas that has the greatest influence on the greenhouse effect, comes form combustion of foil fuels that include oil, gas and coal (US Environmental Protection Agency, 2010). Consequently, reducing the emission of carbon dioxide means reducing the usage of oil, gas and coal. These fuels, however, are the basis of the majority of industrial production processes, as well as automobile industry. Therefore, reducing the emission of carbon dioxide would mean lowering profits of oil and gas companies, first of all. Secondly, reducing the emission requires reducing manufacturing and production levels that may have negative consequences for both manufacturers’ revenues and country’s economy in general. Decreased production will, in its turn, lead to a fewer number of jobs available in the country. As for the automobile industry, in order to reduce car emission the manufacturers have to either optimize the existing technologies, or develop alternative, pollution free, energy solutions. Though car manufacturers are already working on the second option and releasing hybrid and electric cars, the whole country’s infrastructure might need to transform in order to provide such automobiles with new fuel stations. All this costs money. As an alternative for reducing manufacturing, government might want to legislatively restrict production emissions by means of forcing companies to capture carbon dioxide from industrial facilities before it is released into the air (US Environmental Protection Agency, 2010). However, it is also expensive technologically for both private and government organizations. As a result, neither of the parties is willing to pay for cleaner environment. A research conducted by a management consulting company Accenture reports that only one out of 20 large companies considers climate change to be one of the issues of corporate agenda (Gregory, 2008). Managers and executives believe that climate change issues will only increase company’s expenses while provide no additional opportunities. A study conducted in the United Kingdom in 2007 reports that only 14% of companies give any consideration to environmental issues. In 2008 the situation changed only to senior executives’ saying that they got “personally somewhat or very worried about global warming” (Clarke, 2008). Different is, however, opinion of general public. In 2007 81% of consumers said that the problem of climate change does worry them (ibid). Consequently, this trend has had more influence on companies than international or local agreements. While it’s always possible to transfer production to a country that has a less strict legislation regarding gas emissions and, in such a way, reduce production cost, it has become less possible to get customer’s support for companies that do not contribute into protecting the environment. However, though a number of governments and corporations devote effort and money to reducing carbon dioxide emissions, there also exist governments that don’t view the problem as one of their priorities, and companies that do not deal with consumers directly. Consequently, such structures and systems reduce the effect of international society’s efforts: “the triad of anti-environmentalist industry leaders, pro-business bureaucrats and denialist politicians has until now had striking success in beating off environmentalist lobbying” (Clarke, 2008) In general, a joint effort of both world governments and corporations is needed for protecting the planet from potentially catastrophic results of climate change. All the world governments have to pass pieces of legislation for reducing emissions, while corporations can provide financial support of environment protection programs. However, all this may be effective only under the condition that all of the planet’s governments participate in the initiative. Non-governmental organizations and groups are fighting for this goal. The December 2009 UN climate summit in Copenhagen ended up signing an international agreement that obliges countries to keep temperature rises to no more than 2C. However, the agreement does not oblige countries to reduce gas emissions down to a specific level. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that all the world countries will agree for the conditions set for China, Brazil, India, South Africa and the USA (Vidal, Stratton and Goldenberg, 2009). So, though these days the issues of climate change and global warming are receiving much public attention, the actions of organizations that can positively influence the situation on the planet are not too effective. While some countries and companies do invest into the clean atmosphere, others consider it to be too complex and expensive. As a result, the good efforts of the first ones get totally diminished by the carelessness or avarice of the others. The world lucks tools and strategies that would unite all the countries in fighting the climate change. References Adam, D. (2009). Q&A: Climate change, Guardian.co.uk. Accessed 16 April 2010, . Clarke, R. (2008). ‘Corporations and climate change. Comment & Analysis’, Green Left Weekly, issue #745. Carvalho, A. (2007). ‘Ideological cultures and media discourses on scientific knowledge’, Public Understanding of Science, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 223-243. Global Greenhouse Warming. The Kyoto Protocol. Accessed 15 April 2010, . Gregory, S. (2008). Many Businesses Still Lag Behind. AssociatedContent.com. Accessed 15 April 2010, . KyotoUSA. Accessed 15 April 2010, . McCright, A.M. and Dunlap, R.E. (2000). ‘Challenging global warming as a social problem: an analysis of the conservative movement’s counter-claims’, Social Problems, Vol.47, No. 4, pp. 499–522. National Research Council (NRC) (2006). Surface Temperature Reconstructions For the Last 2,000 Years, National Academy Press: Washington, DC. Accessed 15 April 2010, . Stanford SOLAR Center (2008). Global Warming. Accessed 16 April 2010, . UNFCCC. Kyoto Protocol. Accessed 15 April 2010, . US Environmental Protection Agency (2009). Past Climate Change. Accessed 14 April 2010, . US Environmental Protection Agency (2010). Human-Related Sources and Sinks of Carbon Dioxide. Accessed 15 April 2010, . Vidal J., Stratton, A. and Goldenberg, S. (2009). Low targets, goals dropped: Copenhagen ends in failure. Guardian.co.uk. Accessed 18 April 2010, . Read More