Dickinson to Durban » Entries tagged with "Governing Climate Change"
It is Time to take Responsibility and ACT!
Every nation state, and every person, holds some degree of responsibility for anthropogenic climate change. In the world today, one cannot live without leaving an impact. However, the answer is not as simple as that because responsibility is not distributed equally. It is crucial to recognize the vastly different emissions of states. In that light, those states who have contributed most to the problem ought to be charged with the task of leading the nation states towards more sustainable economies and ways of life. This requires the cooperation of states who hold the most power in the international system, who currently feel little direct effects of climate change, and who are stubbornly stuck in their gas guzzling ways. Thus, persuading these states to take responsibility for their contribution to climate … Read entire article »
Filed under: Climate Change
As the Gap Widens
By: Christine Burns ’14 The issues surrounding responsibility for climate change stem from an inequality between developed and developing nations. This inequality makes it difficult for them to see eye to eye, on issues such as responsibility for causing climate change and for fixing climate change.When it comes down to it, it does not matter who is responsible, because everyone is affected by climate change. We can play the blame game, but that is not going to solve anything. Yet, it must be said that developed nations such as the United States and Europe are predominately responsible for the climate change that is starting to be seen now (Bulkeley and Newell). They went through their industrial revolutions 150 years ago during which they relied heavily on fossil fuels, and since then … Read entire article »
Filed under: Climate Change
Easy as pie?
“It is increasingly recognized that nation-states are increasingly limited in the degree to which they can directly effect emissions of (greenhouse gasses) and the ability of societies to adapt to climate change. While the language of international agreements often suggests that nation-states can act as containers for emissions of GHG– cutting up the global emissions pie into nation-sized pieces, setting targets and conducting emissions inventories– the GHG emitted within the boundaries of a nation-state are shaped by processes and actors operating across national boundaries…” by -excerpt from “Governing Climate Change” by Peter Newell and Harriet Bulkeley Global climate change is a problem which is…well, global. On Earth, there is no easy way to divvy up the atmospheric commons into neat slices of pie for each nation-state to monitor and control for GHG emissions. As … Read entire article »
Filed under: Climate Change
Rethinking the Nation State and its Role in Climate Governance
Global problems like global climate change are typically seen to require global solutions. And the actors typically seen to be responsible for these global problems are the nation-states that constitute the global system. Bulkeley and Newell challenge this assumption in their book Governing Climate Change, arguing against the view that “the nation-state is the only or necessarily most important unit of climate politics” (p. 4). While I certainly agree that a “nation-state” is an inadequate unit of analysis when construed simply as the sovereign government of a state, I prefer to rethink the understanding of the nation-state rather than discredit its importance. In support of their argument, Bulkeley and Newell demonstrate the need to expand the view of the nation-state, suggesting an alternative view of the state as “a dynamic system … Read entire article »
Filed under: Climate Change
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