The Kyoto Protocol - an Attempt to Solve a Problem of Global Warming - Coursework Example

Global Warming] of Institute] Global Warming – Elements of a Public Relations Plan Summary During the summer of 1988, the public’s attention was daught by the eath’s surface temperature which can said to be rising with great steep which may not be able to change back. Though by 1997 December, global warming was not only effecting the climate but also the business era. After acknowledging this fact, representatives of more than a hunred and sixty nations made an aim that they had to control the greenhouse gases and different toxic gases that were harming the atmosphere. The Kyoto Protocol needed different industrial nations to give their support and decrease the use and misuse of these gases before the year 2012. (Schneider, 103) The protocol is familiar with the fact that most of the scientists are working upon that global warming is a serious threat to the world, against which serious actions must be taken in order to maintain it when we can. Introduction Although some critics might be against the statement that there is a contribution from human activity which increases the greenhouse gases which pollute the atmosphere. Some scientists have also researched that if there is an increase of even two degrees Fahrenheit in the greengases and global warming, we are likely to experience more of severly damagable storms, earthquakes, floods, in consequence to which more diseases would arrise. Such consequences would not only damage people, the community or the society, instead it would be harmful to the entire business era and the economic system. The Kyoto Protocol warned the business leaders that the new laws that will formulate are going to not only reduce the greenhouse gases which are produced but infact, may also disturb the flow of many business around the world due to which many producers might have to change the way the produce and manufacture products. In addition, business may have to suffer from a shift in the demand curve due to energy-efficient products whose main aim would be to reduce extra pollution while at the same time providing services to the society. We could say that these are few of the reaons why many business leaders are facing issues with the Kyoto Protocol for reducing the greenhouse gases. When these sort of problems arise, many manufacturers are now thinking of where to begin in order for them to not make any losses in the future due to shifts in the demand and supply curvs. Bad Weather Ahead It is noticed that even though most of the weird weather conditions are often caught by the public eye, severe changes are yet to be introduced which may cause choas within the society.Therefore, companis who are directly affected by the climate change or companies whose demand and supply vary according to the climate, for example clothing companies, should think of the severe consequences which they may face in the near future as the climate change has started to emerge. Public Relations Campaign Environmental initiatives threatened core components of right-wing ideology such as the primacy of individual liberty, the absolute rights of private property, free enterprise and laissez-faire government. (Schneider, 103) Right-wing think-tanks and media outlets thus began a relentless public relations campaign that attacked environmentalism as alarmist or worse. In conjunction with right-wing politics, the fossil fuel industry, wishing to avoid regulation, taxation and negative publicity, used proindustry research and catchy advertisements to persuade the public that climate change was simply not a concern. Though President Bush kept his campaign promise of hosting a conference on global warming, he reversed the strong rhetoric and activist stance that characterized his presidential campaign. Instead the President claimed that scientific uncertainty clouded the issue. He favored more research, the unchanging mantra—along with denial—of most right-wing politicians in the United States. (Schneider, 103) Both public awareness and climate policy in the United States thus remain years behind the rest of the world; climate change was barely even mentioned during the 2004 presidential campaign. In early June 2005 the New York Times confirmed the continuing strategy of global warming denial on the part of the Bush administration—despite its earlier acknowledgement of the problem. In his press briefing of 8 June 2005, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan falsely claimed that the National Academies of Science holds that there are ‘considerable uncertainties’ regarding the science of climate change. (Schneider, 103) The right wing continues its successful propaganda campaign to dispute climate science, and the current presidential administration, despite warnings from its own scientists, gives no indication of honestly grappling with the policy implications of global warming. Until the public receives consistent and honest information regarding the overwhelming scientific consensus about climate change, it appears all to likely that the world’s most well known producer of greenhouse gases will continue its disastrous policies. Lessons Learned Lets take insurance companies for example, they should adapt their predictive models in order to make sure that the future costs are going to be accurate and even if the company faces any losses, the insurance company should not be much effected by the losses. In order to value waterfront properties correctly, companies that are regarded as Real Estates will need to come up with advanced thought about controlling the floods which might occur within the city. On the other hand, companies specialising in agriculture, will have to invest a lot in new sectors where the climate is sufficient enough to make families viable, and at the same time, they might have to drop some of their investments, for instance crop shortage facilities, only in regions which may become to warm and unbareable for the individuals to live in. Business that help the tourists to look around are faced with many situations which may cause severe stress within the business. If the climate is not steady and too many storms are expected, due to which floods might occur, consequently, people might think twice before making a trip with the thought of the climate in their mind. On the other hand dry weather may cause ski disasters if it is a mountainous area. Public Relations Strategies Companies that depend on the climate and whose demand and supply curves alter due to the weather need to come up with techniques in order to manage the risks and threats which may prosper in their direction. One way of doing this could include investing in acquiring better information about different risks associated. Over here we can take the example of the Risk Prediction Initiative which was developed by insurance companies in order to recognize and prevent damage which may be cause due to hurricanes coming their way. Swiss Re, a leading reinsurer, has a group of in-house specialists who track the latest research in climate change and identify emerging risks and trends. The information is critical to Swiss Res success, since its ability to turn a profit depends on its skills in assessing and pricing risk. The stakes are high. Thomas Streiff, head of Swiss Res environmental management unit, points out that a single hurricane smashing into Miami could do property damage worth $60 billion to $80 billion, of which about 50% would be covered by insurance. Overall economic loss could exceed $100 billion. (Schneider, 103) Companies and Global Warming All companies that buy property insurance in areas where the weather has become more volatile will be affected by insurers reassessments of risk. Streiff says customers dont necessarily have to worry that their coverage will be dropped, or even that premiums will skyrocket. Instead, he suggests, companies seeking insurance may be required to invest more in risk reduction, such as by constructing sturdier buildings. Some companies may choose to adjust their portfolios of climate-dependent assets. For example, some property and casualty insurers are trying to reduce the amount of coverage they provide in disaster-prone coastal areas such as Florida. As some businesses abandon the playing field, however, others may replace them and charge the premium prices made possible by reduced supply. For example, the demand for products such as malaria medicines may shoot up in the industrialized world. Anticipating Regulations However, people living in Munich and Minneapolis for example need not to worry about risks and threats regarding the climate as they can said to be out of danger for a good few decades. So if we keep the business era in mind, we can say that global warming does exist in the business world which has been seen as a huge threat to the business itself. After seeing such situations, it is very predictable that the state government will increase the taxes on fuel consumption and require cars and other appliances to use less energy in order to prevent extra greenhouse gases to emerge. Such programs, with the background of regulations, will alter the values of different assets. As regulations push up energy prices, theyll reduce the value of some assets- fleets of trucks that get particularly low gas mileage, for example, and poorly insulated commercial buildings. They will also increase the value of goods and services as diverse as renewable-energy technology, process control equipment, and telecommunications services - such as teleconferences- that substitute for transportation. (Schneider, 103) One market approach is to tax emissions of greenhouse gases. Companies could then decide if its more efficient to pay the tax or invest in reducing emissions. But given the aversion to tax increases in the United States, this approach is probably not politically feasible. A more viable solution would be to set up a system of tradable permits, as the U.S. Congress did for sulfur dioxide in the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act. Under such a system, the government allocates emissions permits that companies can then buy and sell. Businesses that would have to pay huge sums to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases could instead buy permits from companies that are able to make the required operating changes more cheaply. A tradable-permits system could reduce overall costs while giving businesses a continuing incentive to cut emissions. (Schneider, 103) Agriculture and forest-products companies may also find new opportunities, especially if they can persuade governments to subsidize or otherwise encourage a variety of activities that remove carbon dioxide from the air. Planting trees may in some cases turn out to be a cheaper way to limit atmospheric carbon dioxide than reducing emissions, so companies that plant forests should lobby for regulations that recognize their efforts. Cultivation practices such as no-till agriculture can prevent the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by reducing disturbance of the soil- and makers of herbicides that facilitate no-till agriculture will want to communicate that fact to policy makers. Like automakers, energy companies stand to be hit hard by any new policies that arise from the anticipation of global climate change. The energy industry provides an illuminating contrast between a company that has adopted a forward-looking strategy and another that supports the status quo. (Schneider, 103) BP Amoco has been a leader in supporting international efforts to slow climate change. It has even announced voluntary cutbacks of its own carbon dioxide output, promising that its emissions of greenhouse gases in 2010 will be 10% below 199O levels. BP Amocos voluntary cutbacks are similar to those that would be required under the Kyoto Protocol. BP Amocos leaders also believe that by announcing the 10% cutback theyll release the creativity of employees and increase their commitment to the company. In other words, confronting the climate challenge will stimulate the companys employees- line workers and managers alike- to think more imaginatively. And to the extent that the employees see their values reflected in BP Amocos goals, they may become more committed to their jobs and to the company. Its clear that this managerial approach has very little to do with conventional, engineering-driven ideas about pollution control. On the other side of the divide is ExxonMobil. The company maintains that the evidence for global climate change is inconclusive and that no international accord is necessary. Unlike BP Amoco, ExxonMobil was until recently a member of the Global Climate Coalition, a consortium of trade groups in the energy business and other industries that oppose regulatory controls (the coalition no longer has individual companies as members). (Schneider, 103) The coalition and its supporters appear to be betting against the weight of scientific opinion, but their approach to the problem may be subtler than it appears. If they can stall regulation of carbon-dioxide emissions, they might be able to protect the short-term values of their assets. They may hope theyll be able to convince the public that government regulation is a greater evil than climate change. In doing so, they run the risk of missing out on the opportunity to help tip the balance toward more sensible forms of intervention. The Climate of Public Opinion The only thing which may cause a problem in all of this, more than the weather, is the opinion of the public. But if there is good publicity to support the ideas, bid dividends can be paid, due to which the public interest will increase. Companies that previously tried to tackle the climate change issue are now being debated against and some of them do not even have answers to questions proposed anymore. (Schneider, 103) Although some companies are making investments to increase energy efficiency and to study and accommodate changes in weather patterns, most of those efforts have not reached the publics attention. Surprisingly few companies make public statements- or even have pages on the Web sites about how they are dealing with climate change. By contrast, Swiss Re has been vocal about its investments in knowledge on climate change, and the company has broadcast its concerns at industry conferences, on the Web, and in discussions with the insurers that are its customers. BP Amoco has also made public announcements about its commitment to reducing carbon-dioxide emissions, including a high-octane address by John Browne at Stanford in 1997 and other speeches. Further information can be found on company Web pages. While good PR buzz on preventing or preparing for climate change has its appeal, smart companies realize they have to earn the publics trust. They know its simply bad business practice to make investments, relocate resources, or change strategies solely for the sake of appearance. They also realize that overstating their commitment to reducing global warming wont wash in the long run. (Schneider, 103) The public will eventually see through pledges that are skin-deep. And losing the credibility needed to participate in future debates is a significant price to pay for a short-term public relations gain. As they think through the PR challenges, executives should bear in mind the trade-offs between the pursuit of regulations with short-term advantages and the encouragement of a regulatory climate that will be stable and predictable-and therefore friendly to investment- over the long term. They should recall that, following World War II, the United States began pushing its partners down a long, uneasy path toward free trade. Fifty years later, the system is still imperfect, but trade is much freer and incomes are much higher than they would be if government leaders had not been patient and far-sighted back in 1949. Building a workable international system to manage climate change is not a one-shot, one-year project. Business leaders would do best to sell their elected representatives on a long-term approach to managing the effects of climate change. Generation of Policy Options Analogies do not necessarily prove anything. They merely suggest a possibility. The plausibility of a physical or societal analogy is not a sufficient reason for it to be used by policymakers because several plausible but contradictory policies could be formulated based on different analogs drawn from the same pool of objective scientific information. But, then, on which historical analog should a decision maker rely? (Schneider, 103) The use of an analogy in the development of specific policies related to global warming is risky. Unfortunately, some policymakers are not reluctant to use these analogies as guides to or support for the formulation of specific policy options to cope with the hypothesized regional impacts of global warming. Often, specific analogies are chosen by politicians to support specific policies they favor. For example, a senator who seeks to enact a national energy plan might favor a specific global warming regional analog to underscore the need for such a plan. Making matters chosen by politicians to support specific policies process than the models actually are. For example, the return of the Dust Bowl is often cited as a probable regional impact of global warming in the North American midcontinent. Although it is clearly within the realm of possibility that, given the normal variability of the regions climate, a dust bowl could temporarily reappear in the future, it is a misapplication of the analogy to suggest that permanent dust bowl conditions may be in the regions future. Such analogies, however, can be used to identify policies that might eliminate shortcomings in societal responses to environmental change. For example, the analogy of the Dust Bowl is a reminder that the region is droughtprone. It is a reminder that inappropriate land uses could set the stage for desertification if drought conditions were to return to the region. It is also a reminder that, despite the regions favorable level of economic development, farmers have not yet been able to buffer completely their activities from the vagaries of weather. An official statement of the 1988 World Conference on the Changing Atmosphere in Toronto drew an analogy between the consequences of nuclear war and global pollution leading to global warming. This analogy was not made by "idealistic, scientifically innocent environmentalists" but was used by the Toronto conference organizers to compare an unknown situation, the consequence of global warming, with a better-known worst-case scenario, a nuclear holocaust, to capture the attention of policymakers, the public, and especially the media and to urge prompt policy action to address the global warming issue. (Schneider, 103) This explicit analogy apparently was meant to evoke an implicit analogy; it was an attempt to transfer all of the fears associated with the consequences of a nuclear war to climate change and to further the adoption of policies in response to those fears. The nuclear war analogy is an example of how one can identify a "dread factor," with regard to societal impacts, much as physical scientists have suggested cataclysmic dread factors among the plausible impacts of climate change on the physical setting, such as a disintegration of the west Antarctic ice sheet or a rapid switch in ocean currents. Such changes in the physical system would greatly challenge societies to develop adequate response (coping) mechanisms based on dread factors. Recent interviews with the Toronto conference organizers support the assertion that the nuclear war analogy was invoked to grab the attention of the media. The consequences of a nuclear war are a worst-case scenario of societal impacts of human actions. For arguments sake, what if the organizers had favored a different, less severe scenario, such as the summertime analogy to global warming? Replacing the phrase nuclear war with perennial summertime would modify the Conference Statement to read as follows: "The consequences of global warming are second only to the consequences of a perennial summertime." What effect, as a call to action, would this analogy have had on policymakers and the public? (Schneider, 103) Strengths and Shortcomings Despite the ongoing philosophical as well as practical debate on the value of analogies in physical and social scientific inquiry, it appears that the careful use of analogies can provide some insight into the possible regional implications of a global warming. Analogies have been used as heuristic devices both to educate the public and to generate scientific hypotheses worthy of additional research. They have been used by modelers to improve their understanding of atmospheric processes under conditions of climatic changes involving both warmer and colder global average conditions and to parameterize atmospheric processes, an essential part of general circulation modeling. Analogical reasoning and analogies are an integral part of human thought and communication processes. They can be used to generate a first approximation of the regional impacts of a global climate change. They can also provide reasonable insight into the possible societal responses to those impacts. The use of such reasoning must be explained so that others will know better how to judge the appropriateness of that use for the particular context. Analogies must be accepted as important approaches to scientific inquiry, but those who use them must be explicit about the analogies strengths and shortcomings. Physical scientists often say that global models provide the research community with sensitivity analyses of atmospheric processes and, therefore, of climate under a variety of conditions. Similarly, analogies can be a tool for researchers undertaking sensitivity analyses of societal responses to changing environmental conditions. When used carelessly, however, historical analogy can be a misleading guide to action. Mazlish has identified two special problems with the use of historical analogies in the social sciences: fair sampling and self-fulfilling prophecy. The problem with fair sampling is that there is a greater possibility of achieving an adequate sample of cases in the physical sciences than in the social sciences. (Schneider, 103) Thus, analogies in the social sciences are often based on only a few instances, so that their findings are somewhat more tenuous and their usage is in need of greater care. The problem with self-fulfilling prophecies is that societies respond to signals they perceive in their environment. Thus, projections could turn out to be false or true depending on human perceptions of, or responses to, environmental change. Analogies also have been proposed to suggest possible alternative futures and to stimulate specific policy formulation to cope with the adverse aspects of those futures. The latter, of course, is one of the uses of historical analogies most fraught with risk. While all other functions of analogies are directed toward improving knowledge of a marginally understood climate system in terms of the impacts of feedback mechanisms in global warming projections, the forecasting function for purposes of specific policy action remains one of the riskiest applications of analogies. There is no perfect regional analogy to the global warming expected to occur during the next several decades. Important boundary conditions that affect atmospheric processes-such as the spatial and latitudinal extent of sea ice, the extent of vegetative cover, solar parameters, and the Earths orbital characteristics-are constantly changing. Nonetheless, analogies can aid scientific inquiry into societies capabilities to cope with environmental change. Analogies can also provide clues, generate ideas, and spark reactions that lead to different searches for new analogies. Each analogy gives additional information about the target problem. The use of analogies and analogical reasoning has been central to human understanding of the physical and social regional impacts of global warming. Even if one does not accept particular analogies to future global warming, critical assessments of them can improve understanding of its potential regional impacts. By providing useful insights, historical analogies may give societies the opportunity to capitalize on their strengths and to minimize their shortcomings. Clearly, the use of historical analogies has a future in researching most aspects of global warming. No Excuses for Inaction Global warming is a problem characterized by uncertainties. And in a world where even TV weather forecasters cant accurately predict rain or sun, business leaders might be forgiven for tending to more immediate problems and leaving climate-change efforts to the next generation. (Schneider, 103) But as with any other risk, the uncertainty is no excuse for inaction. The vast majority of scientists agree that we will face serious consequences if we fail to address the problem. Given the long time it takes for climate changes to occur, drastic short-term actions dont seem necessary. But dealing with climate change will be expensive. It may cost us as much as we have spent on cleaning up air and water pollution over the past three decades. Action Must be Taken Clearly, business leaders need to inform themselves about climate change and think systematically about its effects on their companies strategies, asset values, and investments. Some manufacturers and producers are taking this subject very seriously and are trying to figure our ways to control the climate issue within the business eras. And those who are not worried about it, well its high time they need to start thinking about such issues. Conclusion This paper has examined disputes over environmental issues, focusing on the problems associated with global environmental change. It has been argued that these issues could be sources for a substantial number of future disputes between states. In order to attempt to resolve and/or avoid these disputes, a worldwide effort will be required. To this end, four preconditions for international cooperation were identified: economic costs, fairness, expectations, and commonalities. These preconditions were examined in-depth and applied to the experience of the ozone layer depletion and global warming issues. By applying the evidence to the theory, some insight into the reasons for conflict and cooperation was provided. The fact that global warming has now started effecting not only the society alone but also the business era is a matter which must be dealt with serious thoughts. If business do not come up with smart techniques to resolve this matters, or perhaps, techniques to sustain this matter, the society will face an enormous downfall which may take decades to resolve. Further, this framework can be used to examine the potential for future international cooperation, and thus the chances of avoiding and/or resolving future international disputes in these issues. Works Cited S. H. Schneider, Global Warming: Are We Entering the Greenhouse Century? (San Francisco, Calif.: Sierra Club Books. 1990), 103. Pitch Letter [Editors Name] [Editors Address] Dear Editor, Agreeing to the fact that global warming is becoming a serious issue not only to our society but also to the public relations, I believe focusing on the problems associated with global environmental change is becoming a potential issue for us. It has been argued that these issues could be sources for a substantial number of future disputes between states. In order to attempt to resolve and/or avoid these disputes, a worldwide effort will be required.This framework can be used to examine the potential for future international cooperation, and thus the chances of avoiding and/or resolving future international disputes in these issues. I believe your readers will be very interested in this topic especially those who believe that global warming is becoming a serious threat to our world. I hope you agree with me. Ill be in touch soon. Sincerely, [Writer’s Name] Read More