Dickinson to Durban » Key COP17 Issues
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
Cramped and Crowded
My favorite yoga teacher always jokes that the only way to get world leaders to agree on anything is to force them into doing hot yoga together. With yoga mats arranged only inches apart in a small studio heated to 98 degrees Fahrenheit, each state head would have to peacefully “negotiate” their space, attempting to stay fully conscious of their breathing and the future of the world as each sweats on the other. I could not help by remember this joke during our class simulation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change last week. Each group comprised of ten or so countries divided into negotiating blocs denoted by their economic status: “developed,” “developing,” and “other developing” (i.e. “least developed”). We represented a specific state, simultaneously functioning under a … Read entire article »
Filed under: Climate Change, Key COP17 Issues, Mosaic Action, Summer Reading Responses
“Naivety breeds cooperation.”
Last Thursday night the entire Mosaic class (all upperclassmen) and a First-year seminar had the names of countries assigned to them and were put in a room for three hours and told to solve the problem of Global Climate Change. I can’t decide if it was harder or easier than I thought it would be. On one hand, it was a lot more difficult to solve the problem than I expected. At first everyone seemed eager to cooperate. As the night went on, however, people started to get protective of their designated country groups (Developed, Rapidly Developing, and Developing). As part of the Rapidly Developing Group (as India) I thought that it would be relatively easy to negotiate with the “Developed countries” if we just told them we would do what … Read entire article »
Filed under: Climate Change, Key COP17 Issues, Mosaic Action
How to Balance Climate Justice with Collective Responsibility?
Everyone is responsible for the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) that contribute to global climate change, but some much more so than others. In an atmosphere that doesn’t care whether GHGs come from the rich or the poor, how do we balance the need for drastic emissions reductions with a mutually agreeable sense of fairness? In chapter five of their book A Climate Injustice, Roberts and Parks explain four approaches from which to consider the question of fairness: grandfathering, carbon intensity, historic responsibility, and emissions per capita. Each perspective has differing implications for developed countries (the global North) and developing countries (the global South). Grandfathering allows a country to make its GHG reductions relative to a baseline from their past emissions. The Kyoto Protocol is an example, as countries agreed to reduce … Read entire article »
Filed under: Climate Change, Key COP17 Issues
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