Dickinson to Durban » Archive
“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
The Responsibility of the World
Deciding whom to blame for climate change is an incredibly complex and sensitive issue. The reasons behind this stem from two very important aspects of what it takes to deal with climate change. First the difficulty of changing the habits of millions of people and second, and possibly more importantly, the cost of making changes. Because of these, everyone wants to put the blame and responsibility on someone else, anyone else. When first looking at who should clean up and prevent climate change, it is key to look at who is responsible for the mess we are in now. Looking at it from a historical view, it is clearly the United States and other developed countries who take the cake for historically polluting the most(Roberts and Parks). But as we move … Read entire article »
Filed under: Climate Change
The Blame Game
As a student of environmental studies, it is impossible for me to lay the blame of current global warming/climate change on anyone other than myself and my fellow human beings on this planet. Over and over,skeptics, regulation-weary industries, and politically minded scientists have done their best to dispute the fact that the change in global temperature is a natural occurrence, or is only temporary. However, after decades of research and speculations, the advancement of technology has allowed us to prove that, without a doubt, climate change is occurring and that we are the ones responsible for this change. One of the most famous representations depicting anthropogenic contribution to global warming is the Keeling Curve. This curve shows the annual readings of CO2 from Mauna Loa,Hawaii since 1958 (more information found here). Alright, so we … Read entire article »
Filed under: Environmental Politics
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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