Dickinson to Durban » Climate Change
Just a bunch of fluff.
The Copenhagen Accord reads like a Disney version of a classic fairytale. You know, the fairytales where they leave all the “bad stuff” out, the scary stuff that actually make the stories real classic fairytales, just so that everyone can enjoy them. The Copenhagen Accord is the treaty that Obama, as well as the “leaders of China, India, Brazil South Africa and about 20 other countries” were able to cooperate and agree upon that last Saturday night of the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen at 3am with all the pressure of the conference on them to come up with something (1). First they acknoweldge that climate change is occurring. Then they explain how all countries are going to have to adapt and respond in different manners because each country … Read entire article »
Filed under: Climate Change, Key COP17 Issues
What got done?
Both the Copenhagen Accord and the Cancun Agreements, products of COP15 and COP16 respectively, are important documents in climate change negotiations. They are lacking though. Neither at any point have anything about what countries need to do to keep the global average temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius. Each document, in its own right, provides some good steps in helping the climate change negotiations move forward, providing different mechanisms to allot financial support and information transfer between the Parties to the Conference. I understand the need for these mechanisms and they are good things to have come out of the past two Conferences. These financial and other mechanisms can only help the future Conference of the Parties move forward and make some kind of significant move in addressing climate change. Again, they … Read entire article »
Filed under: Climate Change, Mosaic Action
The Fight: Development and The Battle That Ensues
When dealing with an issue such as climate change, how do people from different parts of the world, with different views and different needs, come together and find a common ground? What do they need to do to make a global challenge work for everyone? These are the things that the students participating in the Climate Change Africa Mosaic and students from a First-year seminar had to address on Thursday, Sept. 15th. We were placed into a world climate negotiation simulation, where we, the students, represented a country, then the countries were divided into block groups. Within 3 hours we had to come to an agreement with the other nations which both set forth climate reductions and still benefited our own represented country. This was a goal tat proved to be rather difficult, but … Read entire article »
Filed under: Climate Change, Key COP17 Issues, Mosaic Action, Summer Reading Responses
From Friend to Foe
By: Christine Burns ’14 On September 15th the Mosaic students and a first-year seminar participated in a climate change negotiations simulation. Each student was given a country to represent and we were placed into three categories: developing (EU, US), rapidly developing (China, India), and other developing (Sub-Sahara Africa, Bangladesh) countries. We then attempted to negotiate a climate change agreement between the three groups. I now have an understanding for how difficult climate negotiations truly are. I always get annoyed when global negotiations do not produce results, but after heatedly arguing with my friends and peers for three hours, I have a much better appreciation for how complex international negotiations are. Countries come from very different backgrounds making it difficult for them to see eye-to-eye and therefore come to a consensus that incorporates … Read entire article »
Filed under: Carbon Markets, Climate Change, Key COP17 Issues, Mosaic Action
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