{"id":529,"date":"2011-09-14T04:44:24","date_gmt":"2011-09-14T04:44:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/?p=529"},"modified":"2011-09-14T04:46:48","modified_gmt":"2011-09-14T04:46:48","slug":"it-is-time-to-take-responsibility-and-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/2011\/09\/it-is-time-to-take-responsibility-and-act\/","title":{"rendered":"It is Time to take Responsibility and ACT!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every nation state, and every person, holds some degree of responsibility for anthropogenic climate change.\u00a0 In the world today, one cannot live without leaving an impact.\u00a0 However, the answer is not as simple as that because responsibility is not distributed equally.\u00a0 It is crucial to recognize the vastly different emissions of states.<\/a>\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Thus, persuading these states to take responsibility for their contribution to climate change, and then take action to prevent disastrous effects from occurring is unlikely.\u00a0 Here in lies the imminent challenge: to integrate proposed solutions to create one that states can work together to achieve, and fast.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The United States emits an atrocious amount of carbon dioxide which is pushing the entire world a bit closer towards experiencing dangerous climate change each year that the country does not act. In their book, A Climate of Injustice<\/em>, Roberts and Parks list baffling statistics showing the United States\u2019 unparalleled role in creating this problem.\u00a0 \u201cThe average United States citizen dumps as much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere as nine Chinese citizens, eighteen citizens of India, and ninety Bangladeshis\u201d (R&P, 5).\u00a0 These numbers are scary, and scream that change is necessary on United States\u2019 part.\u00a0 Additionally, they prove that the United States is among the countries most responsible for anthropogenic climate change.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The pressing issue is: who is going to take responsibility for climate change and influence change in the international political arena? There have been attempt on the international level to come to agreements about the level of carbon dioxide countries should be permitted to emit such as the Kyoto Protocol.\u00a0 However, Kyoto pushed the idea that developed (Annex 1) countries should take the lead in reducing emissions, and the United States disliked the fact that all countries were not obligated to significantly reduce their emissions.\u00a0 As a result, the United States did not sign on to the agreement.\u00a0 Although the United States should be the first ones to reduce their emissions because they are grossly higher than most other countries in the world, the country is not even willing to try.\u00a0 The world cannot wait for the United States to work through their politics and fossil fuel interests to begin tackling climate change, but at the same time it is difficult to move forward without the largest player involved.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Looking forward, it is difficult to see a path which will please most countries because everyone has their specific interests and excuses.\u00a0 Ultimately, developed countries not only need to reduce their emission, but they also owe developing countries aid because of the affects climate change has already had on developing nation such as desertification.\u00a0 This concept, referenced in both Bulkeley and Newall\u2019s Governing Climate Change<\/em> and in Roberts and Parks\u2019s A Climate of Injustice<\/em>, is called \u201cecological debt.\u201d\u00a0 Developed countries used the easy energy (causing anthropogenic climate change) during their major development year and grew wealthy off of it.\u00a0 Now, they must repay the developing world by aiding them in developing sustainably. This process requires cooperation and huge amounts of resources, as do all proposed solutions, which seems like a tall and almost impossible order in the world today.\u00a0 The problem is that we do not really have a choice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Work Cited:<\/p>\n

Bulkeley, H., and P. Newell, 2010. Governing Climate Change. Routledge, New York. pp. 35-53.<\/p>\n

Roberts & Parks, 2007. \u201cFueling Injustice: Emissions, Development Paths, and Responsibility.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0In Roberts & Parks, A Climate of Injustice, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 133-184.<\/p>\n

Union of Concerned Scientists. \u201cEach Country\u2019s Share of CO2 Emissions.\u201d Accessed September 14, 2011. http:\/\/www.ucsusa.org\/global_warming\/science_and_impacts\/science\/each-countrys-share-of-co2.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every nation state, and every person, holds some degree of responsibility for anthropogenic climate change.\u00a0 In the world today, one cannot live without leaving an impact.\u00a0 However, the answer is not as simple as that because responsibility is not distributed equally.\u00a0 It is crucial to recognize the vastly different emissions of states.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Thus, persuading these states to take responsibility for their contribution to climate change, and then take action to prevent disastrous effects from occurring is unlikely.\u00a0 Here in lies the imminent challenge: to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":853,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19448],"tags":[34291,34239,34213,34236,34293,34235,1458,34294,34290,1872],"class_list":["post-529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-change-2","tag-a-climate-of-injustice","tag-anna-mcginn","tag-anthropogenic-warming","tag-bulkeley-and-newell","tag-carbon-dioxide-emissions","tag-governing-climate-change","tag-kyoto-protocol","tag-responsibility","tag-roberts-and-parks","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/853"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}