No global governance meeting of magnitude, as it is the case of the Conference of the Parties (COP) can be formally considered a failure in the political realm, not at least by the participants. Even less, if it is a milestone in the COP history as the one occurred in Copenhagen. It was announced as the largest climate summit, accounted with the largest representation ever achieved, 190 states parties – 130 of which had the participation of their heads of state, and an assistance record with a head count close to a 27,000 total headcount. However, the Conference fell short in generating consensus and producing the long expected policy element to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. In contrast to the anticipated, and only after many late hour informal-informal sessions, the end of the Summit came with a weak document without binding commitments: the Copenhagen Accord.
Several elements of that “less than fully successful” experience towards advancing worldwide to a solution to Climate Change, shall be taken into consideration, while driving a parallelism into Paris 2015. The similarities are striking, hope of millions is now centered in post 2020 agreements, the outcomes of the event to be performed at French capital. And it is only by taking the past experience as lessons learnt, and steering negotiations to a new framework that is effective, while also inclusive, and able to account for some individual tradeoffs towards a global solution, that the failure won’t be a repeated history in France.
For this answer, I will discuss elements within the UNFCCC – COP framework, understanding that the status quo of Climate Change negotiations won’t be significantly different in the next year and a half. Solving the challenge will definitively also ...
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...ity, limits were proposed, but in terms of intensity targets (in an emission/GDP base), and not on total emissions.
Significant effort must be placed to change this view into one that accommodates every country into taking action. An incremental proposition, similar to the model implemented in the Montreal Protocol, where countries should not be expected to all commit to identical cuts in emissions or bear equal economic burden, in initial terms, due to significant differences in socio-economic development between countries, might have traction to solve this issue.
A proposal for Action
Addressing climate change requires not only an improved global framework, but maybe to rethink the broader overarching question. Is the UNFCCC framework proposed in the early 1990s, in a different global dynamics working? Or a is it that a new Global Governance Structure is needed.
The Kyoto Protocol was created to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that are affecting Earth. The project is extremely expensive and lacks effectiveness. The protocol may benefit the world in the far future, but it is not worth a country going poor. Also, if tackling the issue involves the cooperation of our entire earth, developing countries should not be excluded. The Kyoto Protocol raises many concerns, and if something is going to impact our economy so greatly, it should not raise any concerns and should be foolproof. In order to demonstrate the lack of effectiveness, the economic consequences must first be discussed.
It was in this setting that the Nations of the world gathered to discuss the issue of global warming in late November of 1997 (Christianson 254). From the beginning, the United States was viewed as the villain. Undersecretary of State, Stuart Eizenstat, and head of the U.S. delegation, let it be known that no amount of pressure could force the administration to flinch. “We want an agreement, but we are not going to Kyoto at any cost” (qtd. in Christianson 255). Vice President Al Gore added: “We are perfectly prepared to walk away from an agreement that we don’t think will work”.
Hoffman, M. (2013) “Global Climate Change” in The Handbook of Global Climate and Environmental Policy
It is the responsibility of the developed world to change. They have the resources and technology to significantly curb emissions and dampen the effects of climate change. As the world’s second largest emitter of Co2, and as the world’s largest economy, the US must become a leader in the battle against climate change. However, historical incidents of environmental degradation indicate that will power is simply not enough. Unless environmental problems are seen and felt, the US population has been slow and reluctant to act. Unfortunately this lack of will power is still present. As a citizen of the United States, I see no hope for change without the help and intervention of government. Without economic incentive, individuals and firms will not change. I believe that the US government must intervene and implement emission reduction policies, and work toward limiting emissions to the earth’s natural sink function.
On December 12, 2015, President Obama and world leaders secured a global agreement to combat climate change” (White House). For the past eight years in the presidency, Barack Obama showed his devotion in addressing the worsening effects of climate change. He proposed and coordinated with different institutions to help solve the problem. However, since this problem has been around for so long, the results of any projects and programs will not be seen right away. It may take several years, decade or even a century. On the other hand, this is a great start for us. This is his legacy and this should be practiced for us to achieve what we really wanted in solving this problem. We should not just wait, we should
Climate change, never has such an impending natural disaster been so heavily ignored. While this problem of Greenhouse Gasses holds more long-term implications than any other problem found today, little to nothing has been done to address this problem. Through the last century, industrialization has revolutionized the world, in all aspects of life from comfort to industry. While this has obviously had its benefits, it has also created a world that is almost entirely dependent on carbon dioxide producing technology. This has caused the single biggest problem when it comes to curbing this issue known as climate change. That problem is the simple fact that in order for the people to make a positive unified change in the C02 levels they produce, they’re going to have to make sacrifices. These sacrifices range from giving up or reducing their use of various CO2 producing technologies, to paying new taxes such as carbon taxes. The causes for Climate Change and the lack of action to curb it are, of course, complex, but there are at least three significant factors: High prices required to produce and implement low-carbon technology; lack of political and corporate support; and an extensive public reliance on technology (Weeks). More than this, the public, along with the government, have been unwilling to sacrifice either money or effort, which has only served to exponentially increase the problem at hand.
Climate Change is unique among international issues because of its global scale and impact, and the cooperative nature of the plausible solutions. If we are to build a sustainable environment for our species we must act as one world, as opposed to a loose collection of nation-states acting for our own self interest. Our political systems are not designed to meet such ends, so climate change holds an interesting position on the stage of international diplomacy.
Examine, The World May Have Hit Peak Carbon Emission, document E, which talks about how there is a chance that we may be on our way to lowering carbon dioxide emissions, but the future of climate change lies in the hands of China’s and India’s growth and how they plan on fueling their growth. It also depends on the national leaders that signed the Paris climate agreement and whether they plan on upholding their part of the agreement through the years. The author of the paper Fast Company describes the unpredictable future by saying “Even if emissions were to peak soon, global emissions would still take years to decline substantively. An acceleration in the transformation of energy use and production is needed.” This shows that even though nations are finally coming to the reality of climate change and are planning on taking action with the treaty,
Many today may choose to overlook the problem of climate change or write it off as unimportant, but climate change will one day catch up to this civilization if the world does not start to fix it now. Friedman preserves this central claim adeptly throughout his book, using arguments and evidence that all contribute back to
COP 22 Marrakech: This was the 22nd Conference of parties involved in the Paris Agreement . The purpose of this meeting was to discuss and implement plans to show the world how the Paris agreement is in effect and they are putting in all the resources for its effective and efficient
Although it is often a topic for contention in politics, global warming over the span of several decades, has led to climate change, which has had an alarming impact globally. Climate change needs to ...
To sum up, the EU drawn attention on climate changes and has essential goals to help other regions and countries to change the world. According to the Kyoto Protocol, the EU and other countries have big dreams about changing climate in positive way. That how the EU manages to accomplish the defined aims on the Kyoto Protocol depends on the EU leaders and Europeans also on the major emitting countries and other powerful world’s countries which have essential impact on climate changes.
...urgency that will eventually compel developed and developing nations closer to an agreement. In the US, climate change is becoming a staple topic for upcoming campaigns and even the US military and intelligence agencies are using climate change as a standard for measuring the durability and sensitivity of states. As the stakes rise, so does the sense of urgency and inevitability of international coordination and cooperation.
In conclusion, global climate change is a very long discussion with many ways to improve the environment, but a long journey to finding a solution. Although we can 't do away with our main sources like power plants, cars, and factories we must continue to find solutions to making our environment safer and suitable to live in. Hopefully in the near future we will have a better understanding of how to address our global climate changes, but for now, we can focus our ideas on preventative ways to not harm ourselves and our
Nowadays, we can see a lot of campaigns to reduce this humans’ contribution of greenhouse gases to atmosphere. These campaign’s missions are usually about reducing the energy that we use, convincing us to use recyclable energy, stopping the deforestation... These missions are all about mitigating to climate change. Climate change mitigation is the actions to limit the significant rate of long term climate change. In other words, climate change mitigation is all of the actions about lowering the humans’ greenhouse gas contribution to atmosphere. It is now too late for humans’ to prevent the effects of climate change, but these effects can be reduced in the future with mitigation. The most popular treaty, disenchant of humanity, is Kyoto Protocol. The main goal of Kyoto Protocol is reducing the human emitted greenhouse gases, in other word, mitigation. Also in ways that underlying national differences in GHG emissions, wealth, and capacity to make th...