Cost of Mitigating Climate Change - Essay Example

Cost of mitigating climate change by citizens in developed and developing countries Introduction The ravaging changes in the weather patterns that have been attributed to a number of natural catastrophes across the world have been attributed to increased climate change. Climate change arises from a number of manmade activities which interfere with the normal ecosystem and affect the natural balance creating room for events such as glaciation and global warming. Governments and international institutions responsible for the mitigation and control of climate change have attempted to develop common grounds and rules for different governments to adopt (Crisp, 2003). These rules are meant to develop a common approach towards climate change mitigation in the world and include a number of legal conventions and protocols ratified by different countries across the world. Climate change can be traced to the 17th and 18th century when the need for industrial development drove different countries in Europe to adopt large scale production approaches. Developed countries like the United Kingdom and the United States are therefore considered as some of the mega contributors to climate change due to their level of development. The carbon emission of these countries has remained high despite attempts to reduce climate change through the use of various means like carbon credits (Crisp, 2003). Mitigation is costly and countries must commit a lot of resources to ensure that it is achieved to salvage the situation. The protocols that have been developed have attempted to include all countries, developed and developing, in the attempt to commit to the mitigation process. However, the massive contribution of the developed countries to climate change during and after the industrial revolution era has created a debate on whether they should shoulder the major burden of mitigating climate change. The impacts of developing process in the developing countries led to an increase in the changes in the climate that have created the ravaging impacts witnessed today. To develop a fair approach aimed at mitigating the impacts, burden should be shared based on the level of responsibilities between countries (Armstrong, 2005). Sharing the climate change mitigation cost among countries The intergovernmental panel on climate change meeting in 2007 identified the need for a global collective approach in mitigating climate change and controlling its spiralling impacts. This is due to the fact that the continued increase in climate will have major impacts to all nations across the world irrespective of their contribution to climate change. Mitigation measures and the ratio of burdening the responsibility have affected the ability of different countries to move with swiftness and adopt the best mitigation measures. This led to the introduction of the common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR) and the principles of sharing the burden through the Rio declaration on environment (Armstrong, 2005). According to this principles, different countries in world agreed that the approaches and inputs towards mitigating climate change must be shared albeit not equally. The CBDR principle highlighted the contribution of the developed economies in mitigating climate change due to the high pressures that their activities have continued to exert on climate change. This principle has created massive disagreement and misinterpretations as different countries involved continue to debate on the level of contributions and responsibilities (Crisp, 2003). Citizens of the developed countries should bear the greatest responsibility in mitigating climate change due to the polluter pays principle (PPP) that their government committed to. According to this principle that has been ratified by most of the developed countries, the countries that are responsible for pollution should pay the mitigation cost relative to the emissions. Developed countries are more industrialised and therefore have a large number of companies operating within their boundaries. The companies emit massive level of gasses into the atmosphere which are responsible for global warming and climate (Armstrong, 2005). The PPP principle therefore developed an ethical approach to mitigation that makes it essential for different countries to control their emission as higher emissions translates to higher costs of mitigation shouldered by the country. The Kyoto protocol pegged emission to a given minimum and different countries were given the responsibility of ensuring that their emissions do not go beyond this minimum. Countries that surpass the minimum quota must pay for the climate change mitigation relative to their excess emissions. This is more common in the developed economies as compared to the developing countries that are still struggling to establish their manufacturing units locally (Crisp, 2003). Developed countries like the United States and the United Kingdom benefited from the industrial revolutions of the 18th century and this is attributed to the growth today. These countries were able to market their farm produce to different industries in the country and this led to an increase in their per capita income and the gross domestic product. During this time, the developing countries like Africa and the Caribbean were under the rule of the European colonialist who controlled their prime agricultural lands to feed their industries at home. As a result, the industrial revolution which is attributed to the emergence of climate change benefited the developed economies like the United States and the United Kingdom. According to the beneficiary pays principle (BPP), countries that derived massive growth and benefits from processes that affected the climate should pay more as compared to the others. Citizens of the United Kingdom and the United States enjoy great road network, robust economic growth and great educational and healthcare facilities thanks to the industrial and other revolutions that affected the climatic balance. As they work and earn high perks as compared to their colleagues in the developing economies, they must shoulder the burden of climate change as the processes attributed to this benefited them. Unearned inequalities from pollution of the environment must therefore be reduced in the pursuit of mitigation measures and the beneficiary pays principles is the best approach to develop. Agents or countries that have benefited from climate change due to their historic activities must therefore pay for the mitigation cost as compared to those that have not. This creates fairness and enables other citizens especially those from the developing economies who never benefited from the pollution to pay for the mitigation cost as other citizens enjoy. Most developing countries have been charged for every benefit that they have continued to receive from the developed countries making it important for every country to account for the benefits that the environment has offered them. The rich countries have had massive benefits from the environment and the richness and developed status has been achieved at the behest of environmental degradation. Though the impacts that their activities had on the environment were not intentional, the benefits that these unintended acts produced had massive impacts on their economic growth. Other people cannot therefore be held liable for impacts they did not benefit from whether the destruction was intentional or not. Mitigation on the impacts of climate change must also weigh on the ability of a country to bear the costs, a fact that places the developed countries at a better position to address these approaches than the developing countries. Developed countries have high per capita income attributed to their activities in history which set the ground for climate change in the globe. These countries can therefore use these resources to mitigate climate changes as their development status has achieved its maximum threshold. The expertise and the labour available in the developed countries like the United States and the United Kingdom can be effectively used to fight the ravaging impacts of climate change in the world. Most of these professionals benefited from the economic status of their countries and this enabled them to advance their education from fruits that affected the climate. Fairness and natural justice makes it appropriate for such professionals and other citizens in the country to channel significant resource to climate mitigation measures. Most citizens in the developed countries have opposed this argument, stating that their abilities should not be used to make them cater for global issues (Eliss, 2009). This argument has however lost the fact their level of development cannot be divorced from activities that their forefathers engaged in during the revolution era. These activities laid the ground for environmental challenges that we have continued to face and therefore makes them liable to shouldering the mitigation measures. Just like parents teach their children to learn to clean their messes, the environmental messes that the developed countries created must be catered for by themselves in a ration equal to the benefits they continue to enjoy (Aldy, Barrett & Stavins, 2003). Developed countries have had significant influence on the policies of the developing countries especially those that share in their ideals like the former colonies of Britain. As a result, policy pronouncements made by Britain reverberate well in these countries and they are easily accepted and adopted by the governments. Borrowing from this trend and the impact that these countries have, their citizens should feel the pride and set the climate mitigation example for developing countries. The increased human activities have contributed significantly to increased climate change, an environmental phenomena that has massive implications on human and animal life (Eliss, 2009). Desperate attempts have been made to improve the strategies and mitigation measure aimed at reducing climate change and global warming impacts. A number of protocols and conventions have been convened by the United Nations to garner the support of member states in adopting policies that will ensure a decrease in the overall global warming. Most developing countries have adopted the approach of establishing industrial estates and companies to increase their exports to other countries and increase their GDP. These same actions are responsible for the climate change and global warming challenges facing the world today (Mendelsohn & Dinar, 2006). By staying at the forefront of climate change mitigation by shouldering the burden in relation to their historic activities, the developed countries will motivate developing countries to adopt development approaches that do not harm the environment. Human activities have continued to create significant challenges to our environment and the climate as a whole, challenges that must be addressed to salvage the rising implications of environmental degradation. Climate change is long lasting change that affects the overall weather patterns and occurs over an extended period of time arising from a number of human and nonhuman activities (Caney, 2005). A number of events and activities within the biosphere interfere with the normal ecosystem balance which creates disturbances in the environment. These changes affect the glacial formation which results into movements of the tectonic plates, overwarming and shifting of the ocean beaches and levels (Eliss, 2009). A number of catastrophic events have continued to occur as a result of the climate changes causing devastating damages in properties and lives across the world. These include the Katrina, the earthquakes in different parts of the world, the tsunamis along the beaches of Asian continent and among other events. These events have created an urgent need for different world bodies to develop frameworks to mitigate on the causes and develop approaches that can reduce its impacts across the globe (Page, 2008). A number of protocols have been ratified by different conventions and most of these are geared towards pushing countries into adopting safe practices that reduces climate change. In this paper, the topic of climate change will be critically evaluated to develop a proper basis of the causes, the impacts and mitigation measures adopted across the world. The paper will also discuss the conventions ratified among them the Kyoto Protocol among others that have aimed to reduce the impacts of climate change (Baer, Athanasiou & Kartha, 2007). A number of activities have been advanced by climate scientists as the major causes of climate change and most of these events are attributed to carefree human activities. On s superficial analysis, climate change can be seen as a situation caused by increased solar energy and radiations from the sun reaching the biosphere and earth surface. The movement of such solar energy is dispersed across the globe by oceanic currents, monsoon winds among other means. Climate change causes have been categorized into two classes with the major contributing class being the human causes (Caney, 2005). The other category of climate change that has remained relatively above human control is the natural causes, mostly resulting from long lasting human activities. China and India are some of the emerging economies in the globe who have adopted large scale industrialization seen in the developed countries in the 19th and 20th centuries. This route contributed to the current global warming and the state of the environment predicting a future challenge as a result of activities by china and India. By paying highly for the mitigation measures, the developed countries will motivate china, India and other developing economies to adopt environmental conscious industrialization approaches. China for example adopted a stand which depended on the action of other developed countries in taking the burden of mitigation. By promising to act once the United States through its taxpayers pay for the mitigation costs, china offered a challenge to the developed countries to show fairness by acting against their initial actions on the environment (Baer, Athanasiou & Kartha, 2007). Before the 80s, the impacts of greenhouse gas emission on climate change were relatively unknown and this led to the massive pollution by the industrialised nations, an event that affected the environment to date. However, citizens of these countries have continued to argue that their mitigation cost cannot be pegged on their historic activities as they acted in ignorance while pursuing economic prosperity. Due to the fact that the harm on the environment that their industrial activities caused was unintentional, they have continued to argue that they cannot be forced to pay for such as this will be retrospective punishment (Caney, 2005). Their current activities and emissions should therefore be weighed and the cost of mitigation imposed upon them based on these emissions. These arguments may seem valid and fair but the impacts that the historic activities caused on the environment cannot be corrected through forgiving their lack of knowledge. If the United States produced over 300 thousand metric tonnes of CO2, fairness demand that they mitigate the impacts of this emission by the development progress that they have continued to achieve (Page, 2008). Carbon dioxide also takes longer in the atmosphere after emission and the climate change in the world today associated with global warming is as a result of the activities the countries engaged in several years ago. The citizens of these countries should therefore accept the responsibility of mitigating climate change as their ancestors prepared the way for their personal growth through stronger economies at the expense of environmental conservation (Baer, Athanasiou & Kartha, 2007). Apart from pegging their mitigation costs on the historic emissions, the current emission rates are higher in developed countries than developing countries. The United States for example emitted over 17 tonnes of greenhouse gas in 2008 compared to 5 tonnes by china in the same year. To improve the impacts of mitigation, increasing the costs paid by the developing nations will be effective as a reduction in their emission significantly reduces the overall greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. The quality of life in the developed countries is already high and reduction in emission by adopted green measures will not impact on their progress in any way. Most of the citizens in these countries can comfortably use other means of transport to work as opposed to personal cars due to their ready availability. This is not possible in the developing countries that are still attempting to improve their life standards and adopt measures that increase the per capita income of the citizens (Caney, 2005). Adopting other means of transport as a mitigation measure will affect production as most of the workers will means transport to work due to the wanting level of infrastructure development. The challenge of adopting greener ways of life while working towards mitigating climate change is close to impossible as the country will lag behind in achieving its development plans (Page, 2008). The contribution of developing countries towards climate change mitigation has been weighed on their commitments to growth and the availability of scarce resources. While mitigation of climate change is major issue of concern to all countries irrespective of their growth levels, developing countries have other pressing needs like economic growth and the development of infrastructure. According to Elis (2009), developed countries are faced with massive challenges on the need to improve their socio-political and economic status which makes climate change mitigation cost an extra burden they cannot be able to shoulder. Emission restrictions and the carbon quotas have the potential of affecting their growth and reducing the impacts of the gains they have made. This is especially important in instances where the quotas are based on the emissions of other developed economies like the United States and the United Kingdom. These developed countries can comfortably reduce their carbon emission and pay for the mitigation cost without affecting their economic performance. After the industrial revolution, developed countries have had a free reign to develop for over 200 years. These countries have developed their industries which have contributed significantly to environmental pollution due to the carbon they emit yearly. Control on emission began in after the end of the Second World War when the air pollution control act and the clean air act came into force. These acts reduce the level of emission not because of its impacts on the environment but due to the negative effects it had on air transport. It is up to the 80s that the need to reduce emission into the atmosphere as an attempt of reducing carbon emission came into force. This means that these countries have over 2 centuries to develop themselves in an environment devoid of regulation and restriction. This increased the emission and contributed the current global warming and climatic changes witnessed in different parts of the globe (Caney, 2005). Based on this premise, a move aimed at capping the development progress of the developing economies by catering for the mitigation cost will be unfair. After other countries had over 200 years reign of development, it is only fair if such countries through their citizens and tax payers to be made to pay for the mitigation cost. This will provide a friendly environment for the developing countries to develop their infrastructure, health and education systems to reach the levels of the developed nations (Page, 2008). In a country where the citizens do not have a better living standard, compelling such a country to take responsibility for climate change will punish the citizens of this country. This can be compared with developed and rich countries like the UK and the US who have the ability to pay for more than just a decent life for their citizens who should have more moral responsibility to commit to the mitigation process (Caney, 2005). However, critics have advanced strong points against the notion that payment for climate change mitigation should be pegged on a country’s ability as this erodes the principle of moral responsibility. Some poor countries who are exempted from the mitigation expense may engage in environmentally harmful activities due to lack of moral responsibility and the need to pay for their climate destruction. Conclusion With the ability to pay system in place, different countries especially the developing countries will not be burdened with the need to pay for the climate change impacts. Such countries would engage their resources on the betterment of the welfare of their people as opposed to working towards the moral social responsibility towards the environment due to the actions of other states. The PPP approach combined with the ability to pay makes it essential for polluters and countries who engage in deleterious activities to pay for their actions despite the sorry state of their economy. This is essential in ensuring that countries that are exempted do not engage in environmental unfriendly activities due to lack of moral responsibilities. References Armstrong, W 2005, it’s not my fault: global warming and individual moral obligations, advances in the economics of environmental research, 5, 293-315. Aldy, J., Barrett, S. & Stavins, R 2003, Thirteen plus: a comparison of the global climate architectures, climate policy, 3, 373-397. 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