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Synergy
Esther Babson Class 2013 According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary synergy is “a mutually advantageous conjunction or compatibility of distinct elements”. Synergy is clearly a very positive term and used as such in relation to everything from the relationship between humans and computers to fitness programs. This idea of two elements working in sync is very helpful and appealing when looking at how to deal with climate change; especially with all of the negative reports climate change tends to give. In a World Watch article by Janet Sawin and William Moomaw called Renewable Revoltuion: Low-Carbon Energy by 2030, the authors, say that renewable energy and energy efficiency need to be used together. Their most powerful argument of the paper is explaining how this “synergy” between renewable energy and energy efficiency occurs in four ways. … Read entire article »
Filed under: Climate Change
U.S. Climate Policy-What Does it Take?
The United States is an incredibly difficult place when it comes to climate policy. Maybe it’s the divide down party lines over environmental topics, the lack of desire to change our habits or even just the nature of a democratic nation; regardless we Americans aren’t able to decide on how to deal with climate change. Part of the problem stems from the control industries have over decision making. The industries in the U.S. and across the globe hold huge amounts of money and thus hold huge amounts of power. In earlier posts the book Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway proved this point, showing how the tobacco industry blatantly lied and twisted information to confuse the public about the health effects of smoking. After reading Merchants of Doubt, … Read entire article »
Filed under: Climate Change
Hope from Cancun
This week we’ve been looking over the Cancun Agreement in order to access if they represent positive steps in the negotiations. As we learned from our simulation of negotiations, coming to agreements such as this, is incredibly difficult. Though the document still is not going to keep our world from going over the 2 degrees increase, it definitely shows that we still are moving forward, even if it’s slowly. An article I found incredibly helpful and informative about the Agreement was Reflections on the Cancun Agreements by Jennifer Morgan from the World Resources Institute. After reading through the actual Cancun Agreements, I definitely agreed with the points that the author makes and was enlightening on some points that overlooked. The first point which stuck out to me when reading the Cancun … Read entire article »
Filed under: Summer Reading Responses
Finding the “middle ground”
Solving the problem of climate change is an extremely difficult task when trying to negotiate with hundreds of other nation states, not to mention NGO’s, advocacy groups, etc. Every group has their own priorities of what they want from the negotiations and trying to find a middle ground can seem impossible. Our class, along with a first year seminar class, attempted to do what the world has yet been unable to do; find the elusive “middle ground”. Going into this I definitely had a lot more knowledge of the real process then the average student, which helped to keep me realistic about the possibility of agreement. We were split up into 3 different groups of “developed” “rapidly developing” and “other developing” countries and were charged with agreeing on reductions for each … Read entire article »
Filed under: Environmental Politics
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