Capitalism And Climate Change

Climate change is not a new concept. It has been mostly referred to as global warming in the past. As much as people would like to file this issue away as something to deal with at a later date, it simply cannot wait. This problem we face is costing us billions of dollars, forests and wildlife are being eliminated, and people are dying. Starting to sound like a big deal, right? Future generations will be affected the most. People who do not even exist will have to pay for what we, all people, have done to this earth. To begin to make changes, one must realize the severity of the issue. Bill Mckibben, author of “Recalculating the Climate Math,” conveys that “We’ve already raised the world’s temperature by one degree—enough to melt almost half the ice in the Arctic, kill off huge swaths of the world’s coral, and unleash lethal floods and drought. July and August tied for the hottest months ever recorded on our planet, and scientists think they were almost certainly the hottest in the history of human civilization” (Page 3 of 5). Global climate change is a serious problem because it increases natural disasters and is the cause of extreme weather.

Climate change is the most serious issue humankind is facing in the 21th century. Future generations depend on our ability to make the necessary social changes, before reaching the tipping point of irreversibility, which will lead the planet into a catastrophe incompatible with life.

The UNFCCC is working with the various governments around the world to stabilize the amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere to keep the planet from warming more than 2ºC above pre-industrial temperatures (Watts, 2015). The most noted of the work is the annual Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings that began with COP1 in Berlin back in 1995. The COP3 adopted the Kyoto Protocol, even though it wasn’t fully accepted by all member nations. The COP21 was an effort to legally bind members to their submitted plans of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), defining what level of greenhouse gas production each nation would commit to not exceeding from 2025-2030. Prior to the INDCs, a bleak outlook was forecast in 2009-2010 of global temperature rising between 4-5ºC. That figure was restated by the UNFCCC prior to the COP21 in Paris, to below 3ºC, due to the commitments of the INDCs (Watts, 2015).

Global climate change has been an unresolved issue since the 1970’s. Despite the facts presented by scientists, the governments refuses to take action. It has been estimated that the global mean temperatures have already risen by 0.8°C and the current amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will cause the temperature to rise by another 0.8°C, whereas 2°C is considered the maximum rise which the earth will be able cope without any major catastrophes (Mckibben, 2012). At the present rate of climate change we are already experiencing a shift in seasonal patterns. The governments’ inability to make strict laws regarding reduction in emission, therefore, stirs the controversy that what is stopping them and why do they refuse to do anything about it.

On the surface big business and climate change seem like fundamentally different issues, but upon deeper investigation, we can see that these issues have an underlying direct correlation. How can two ideas that are fundamentally different interact so thoroughly on one topic? Naomi Klein dedicates her work to investigate how these two issues interact, and what microcosms of our society encourage this interaction. Klein has a revelation about the issues with big businesses dominance over our society. She also suggests ways for us to change our lifestyle to be more environmentally friendly and prevent massive damages to the environment. Klein’s works have the power to change how we think about these big businesses’ presence in our society

Climate change has become a major issue in global environmental politics as it has been shown to have a correlation with issues such as deforestation, biodiversity loss, and desertification. As Chapter 45 states “The 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found consensus in the scientific community that greenhouse gas emissions have significantly increased because of human activity and, further, that the modest temperature increases we have already experienced are “very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.” Due to this report awareness was brought to almost everyone of how serious human activity was to the global climate. In 2009, it was declared that “If global warming is to be limited to a maximum of two degrees C. above preindustrial values, global emissions need to peak between 2015 and 2020 and then decline rapidly”. To me this sounds foreboding and it is something that deserves our full attention immediately. To try and get a better understanding of how serious climate change is, I’m going to try and interpret chapter 45 which deals on climate change through 5 different paradigms of International Relations.

“Scientists have been warning about global warming for decades. It's too late to stop it now, but we can lessen its severity and impacts” - David Suzuki. Global warming, a primary topic of debate in various conversations throughout all levels of government, has been an issue for countless years. In fact, of the 134 years recorded, the 10 warmest years have all occurred “since 2000, with the exception of 1998 “(NASA). Solving a global issue such as this is not as easy as it may seem; however ,The Paris Agreement vows to do just that by setting a plan to limit global warming to well below 2°C in “the first-ever universal, legally binding global climate deal” (Europa). Before signing off on such an agreement one must analyze the many negatives

Naomi Klein 's "This Changes Everything" is an insightful detail about the discussion of an approach and method for climate change. Klein has mentioned a lot of importance issue demanding the climate change. The factors affecting the climate changes are the social force, which has a hand in contributing to the problem. It is about an analysis of contemporary capitalism and its hugely impact that has left on the environment. The book divided into three parts relating to climate change, which links with scientific, political and social factors. The first section of the book is “Bad Timing," illustrates the direct relationship between global warming and global economy, which is the

We have all heard statistics over how unmitigated global warming can lead to rising sea levels, increased temperatures, lower rates of precipitation. The Congressional Budget Office recently found that climate change, if unmitigated, would create costly damage not only to the United States’s economy, but also to the world as a whole (source). Despite a scientific and general consensus that climate change is real and a problem, actual committed action against climate change has been disappointingly slow, until recently. We also know the cause of climate change. The United States EPA finds that “Carbon dioxide accounts for most of the nation’s emissions and most of the increase since 1990” (EPA). What we don’t know is a solution.

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, a book written by Naomi Klein, is about climate change and the attitude of people towards it. The book is basically trying to show that the powerful politicians and organizations deny the climate change because of they are self-centered. Klein tries to motivate common people to raise their voice against such activities done by the self-centered people and declare a climate crisis. Klein’s book is highly controversial as there are many people who do not believe in climate crisis and they do not think there is any self interest behind this fact. In this paper, I am going to explain why this book is the most rewarding and opportune text for our course.

The climate change impacts of greenhouse gases threaten the economic development and environmental quality. These threats indicate that all nations regardless their economic growth should work collaboratively to reduce the emission to a certain level. Hare et al. (2011) argued that “climate change is a collective action problem” thus requires a global coordination from all countries. This indicates that actions from several countries would never be sufficient to address the climate change problem. If a global target to limit warming to 2°C or below is about to achieve (UNFCCC 2010, p.4) a broad range of participation is required (Hare et al., 2011). However, the increasing complexity of negotiation processes is inevitable. Each country will pursue its own interests during the

According to an article focused on environmental awareness, “the world’s average surface temperature rose by approximately 1 degree Fahrenheit, the fastest rate in any period over the last 1000 years” (Source A). Damage has already been done to the environment but it is not the time to throw our hands up, it is the time for leaders in all sectors to tackle this issue head on. We know that carbon dioxide is the culprit, so now it is imperative to implement the solution and take a hard look at who is producing the most greenhouse gases. Big changes need to take place but they can only be done in steps and not all at once to be effective. In an excerpt from a book about global warming, Mark Maslin brings up the point that many feel the Kyoto Protocol does not go far enough; scientists believe that a 60% cut of greenhouse gas emissions is necessary in order to “prevent major climate change” (Source E). A sixty percent cut of emissions should be what countries work up to achieving but first and foremost, every country needs to agree to the Kyoto Protocol guidelines. The Kyoto Protocol itself should not be viewed as the end in the discussion of greenhouse gas restrictions, but rather the first stepping stone to a much broader and effective

In December 2015, almost 200 countries around the world, gathered in Paris to sign an accord to slow global warming. Only three developed countries did not agree with the accord. To most, it may seem that preventing global warming is necessary to protect future generations from heat waves, super storms, and extreme flooding. Classical liberalism can provide the best explanation of why some countries choose to ignore global warming.

The decline of the environment due to natural and human exertion is known as the degradation of the environment. The natural weather occurrences such as heavy rain, flooding, storms, earthquakes, volcanoes etc. are not administered under human control. These meteorological phenomenon’s wreak devastation on the environment from time to time causing the land to become unsuitable to cultivate. On this subject matter, the human population does not contain the power to stop the wrath of Mother Nature. Rather, we are forced to sit back and watch. Nevertheless, humans engage in a crucial role towards the degradation of the environment in which we live in. Unavoidably, the degradation of the environment is a rising and utmost worldwide subject. I accept that the root cause to environmental degradation is the excessive use of resources on our land utilized by the processes under capitalism. As Jensen wrote in Endgame, “The global industrial economy is the engine for massive environmental degradation and massive human and (nonhuman) impoverishment.

On December 12 of 2015, 195 countries made history by committing to the first truly global international climate change agreement (Paris Agreement, 2015). This agreement took place in Paris and was adopted under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The outcome of the Paris Conference on Climate Change was described as “revolutionary” (Venezuela) “marvelous act” (China) and as “a tremendous collective achievement” (European Union) that introduced a “new era of global climate governance” (Egypt) while “restoring the global community’s faith of accomplishing things multilaterally” (USA) (Paris Agreement, 2015).