Failure To Respond To Climate Change

In this essay I will outline the ways in which the international community has failed to respond to climate change in the right way, specifically looking at the effect that climate change has had on poor countries and their peoples. The international community has failed to address climate change in a way that is effective in helping not only those in the developed world but also those in poor countries. The irony of global warming is that developed countries that contribute most to it are often in areas that are least effected by the consequences and yet they have the most power to combat the effects. In contrast poor countries, such as pacific island countries (PICs) and those in the arctic, are often situated in areas that are most effected

In attempts to reduce their carbon footprints, developed countries and western corporations have sought to sink their carbon emissions in poorer countries. One clear example of this is the planting of trees to cancel out carbon rich activities such as flights. Although this may seem an effective way to offset carbon emissions, as Benjamin Lester (2007, 37) outlines, there are significant problems with this approach. One main problem is that, although organisations such as the Society for Conservation Biology, may offset its members travel emissions by hiring locals in South Africa to plant trees, this is a short term solution because without committed maintenance the trees will die. Carl Death (2014, 79) takes this further by putting forward the suggestion that the practice of carbon offsetting is taking the responsibility of climate change action away from governments and moving it onto the individual consumer, a trend that has discouraged more radical and effective changes to our way of life. When individuals assume that they can cancel out their carbon emissions by donating to tree farms in poor nations they are ignoring long term solutions to climate change. Moreover, carbon offsetting initiatives have been referred to as a form of neo-colonialism because developed countries are once again exploiting local and indigenous peoples in poor countries by displacing them to grow the trees necessary for carbon offsetting initiatives (Dolby, S, 53). It is clear that the local and indigenous peoples of certain undeveloped countries are made to suffer as a result of western carboniferous capitalism. Carbon offsetting initiatives can therefore be said to be exploitative of undeveloped countries whilst also distracting western consumers from acting responsibly about climate