Kyoto Protocol And Global Warming

Currently in today’s news it pays to scare the population. The mass populous is guaranteed to continue to read or watch the news if they think our world is coming to an end. Bjorn Lomborg writes this article in direct defense of his positive outlook on our earth’s state. Lomberg’s approach to fixing the earth’s environment is to not just how we can affect the future, but how we can help humanity and the earth now.

This paper will be divided in three parts, beginning with a brief background on the global warming agenda and tackle the issues surrounding the Kyoto Protocol. The second part will look at climate change and the protocol from the respective lenses of realism and liberalism. I will argue that while none of the theories precisely covers the entirety of the issue, each provides helpful analysis falls short of clarifying the entire climate change picture. Can states cooperate effectively through the structure of the Kyoto protocol to solve an international problem of global warming?”

Right now throughout the world, industrialized countries produce sixty five percent of the world’s electricity from fossil fuels (Sesto). “According to current estimates, if developing countries should have a substantial economic growth in the next few decades, as is hoped for, they would produce 50% of the world 's electric energy by 2030” (Sesto). If the world continued at the sixty five percent fossil fuel rate, those developing countries would soon contribute to the increasing problem of greenhouse gases and pollution emissions. This would have a direct effect on the prices of fossil fuels, as prices would most definitely increase heavily (Sesto). “Proposed strategies for the United States include increasing energy efficiency, displacing fossil fuels with energy sources that are potentially CO2-neutral, and carbon storage in forests and other ecosystems” (Cook). As fossil fuels remains a threat to global constancy and sustainability, it becomes worse with increasing world population, higher energy demand, and technological progress.

Global warming is one of the most heated debates around the world in recent years; many governments and organizations are promoting environmentally friendly strategies and programmes in order to deal with this grave issue, which will cause long-lasting and far-reaching consequences.

In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol attempted to achieve the results that had been sought out when most of the nations of the world agreed to the terms set forth in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992. The new treaty put enforcement mechanisms in place, including the idea of carbon trading, that would reinforce the importance of lowering the amount of CO2 being released into our atmosphere. Looking back to that decision made eighteen years ago, I do not believe that the concept of carbon trading should have been introduced in lieu of a carbon tax as it is now a crutch used by corporations, both big and small, to either improve the profitability of their company by selling their unused carbon permits or to

Global warming is the increase in temperature of Earth’s atmosphere, and the Kyoto Treaty was made to reduce greenhouse gases, and have the climate that all living things have come to rely upon, back on track. After decades of ongoing research and debate, scientists have not been able to figure out what causes global warming. The only conclusion that has been made is the fact that greenhouse gases emitted by humans have led to deadly consequences. Thus, 189 United Nations member states have signed an agreement aimed at combating global warming. However, some countries have not ratified the treaty, leading to political dispute over global warming.

The Kyoto Protocol… insists on lowering global greenhouse gas emissions in the hope of reaching stabilization at some level, preferably one that is not too high. The basic requirement of the

In the face of climate change, reducing greenhouse gas emissions is not only a nation’s essential task but also a global duty. Because of poorly regulated emissions, some greenhouse gases will remain in the Earth’s atmosphere for thousands of years. The mitigation of global environmental emergencies requires uniform international standards and established rules. Therefore, international policy coordination by multilateral agreement is indispensable. This policy paper aims to discuss participation in the Kyoto Protocol Extension is worthwhile and what benefits and burdens await the nation taking part in the efforts towards emissions reduction.

In the last twenty years, the issues surrounding global climate change have become increasingly dominant in the international community, as the implications associated with the global issue pose many threats to the environment and humanity as a whole. Beginning in the 1970’s, scientific research regarding pollution led scientists to discover that chlorofluorocarbons (CFC’s) where destroying the ozone layer, posing threats to plant and animal life, and humans as a rise in skin cancer followed. Luckily, the world community came together to make the Montreal Protocol in 1987, which established a common goal of reducing and eventually eliminating the use of CFC’s, leading to the restoration of the ozone layer. Unfortunately, the world community has yet to fully collaborate on a universal approach to global warming. Since discovering that the burning of fossil fuels increases levels of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere and ultimately causes a rise in the earth’s temperature, successful collaboration between states has been limited. The global climate change regime has had many diplomatic problems due to the varying levels of resources within each state, different opinions regarding the weight of the issue, along with other cultural factors that make cooperation hard to achieve. The three main perspectives of international relations, realist, liberal, and identity, offer contrasting approaches to preventing the progression of global warming and other pressing climate

From melting glaciers to devastating storms and stranded polar bears, the mascots of climate change show how rapidly the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) are changing the planet. Such examples, in addition with the rising price of energy, drive people to want to reduce consumption and lower their personal shares of global emissions. In the 1990s, almost every member state of the United Nations resolved to confront global warming and manage its consequences. Thus the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) international treaty recognized a unified resolve to curb global warming. In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol strengthened the convention. The process of cutting the carbon is a complex business and not all hybrid design would be a success in regard to uncertainties and political lobbying involved. The regulation of the government, participation of the industry and other participants can make the system effective over a certain time span.

Over the last fifty years, different institutions, international organizations, industrial professionals and federal governments have been working on addressing one of the major challenges the world has been challenged to this day which widely is known as Global Warming. The Kyoto protocol is the well-known abiding playground internationally recognized as a global treaty placing obligations on developed nations to significantly minimize their Green House Gas emissions first adopted in Kyoto, Japan in 1997. Three actions are recommended for the UN to take up on: First, the UN shall bring all the major actors onboard to commit and work towards achieving the emission reduction targets by 2050. Second, the UN should engage in awareness creation to give more focus and special attention towards climate change policies at a deeper and wider level. Third, the UN is advised to lead negotiations to reach at a fair and equitable share of climate regulation costs

In response to the threat climate change poses, the Kyoto Protocol is an international treaty adopted by the UNFCC in the year 1997, which entered into force in 2005 [3]. In particular, the protocol hopes to legally compel ratifying and industrialized countries into lowering global warming through the reduction of six greenhouse gases that affect it. Quantifiable targets included reducing collective emissions by 5.2% compared to 1990 levels, with each country having a “common, but differentiated” responsibility that was based on their contribution to global emissions (see Appendix A) [3]. Each country’s target had to be met with either national measures or the following three flexibility mechanisms that would

With this in mind, the Kyoto Protocol (KP) was devised. The ultimate goal of the KP was synonymous to that of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC): to “prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”(United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 2014). To achieve this, the KP outlined several goals that include:

Additionally, it is said that the new standard was considering would have caused devastating harm, wiping out millions of American jobs and costing our economy more than $1 trillion over a decade, without any significant environmental or health benefits. As we can see these facts, to work on reducing the greenhouse gas emission, the US has to spend a lot of money. In addition to this fact, it is obvious that economic growth and increased energy demand are closely linked to increased emissions of CO2. The US cannot go on achieving the recovery of its economy and the reduction of greenhouse gas emission at the same time. Therefore, it will take a long time to make the US get involved in the Kyoto Protocol. It is now busy to rebuild its economy, and doesn’t have much scope to care about this global issue. Out of this economical problem the US facing, there are some other reasons why the US cannot be active on supporting the Kyoto protocol. I’d like to think of them in the next paragraph.

In 2012, the Kyoto treaty was set to expire but the goals set in the treaty were nowhere near completion so the countries involved decided to meet in Durban in 2011 to discuss a new treaty to extend the ideas of Kyoto. Since 2011 they haven’t exactly come up with a new plan for a treaty until the U.S and China, both of which were not part of Kyoto, set a couple of goals to lower their emissions. With both China and the U.S putting out their goals, all other countries involved with the new idea of a treaty will have a better idea on how to compromise to lower the emission output and stop contributing as much too global warming. As discussed in class, the amount of time the world has to get it together and put an end to the enormous amounts of emissions being pumped into the atmosphere is thirty years which is considered plenty of time if everyone could agree on a new treaty. Our carbon budget is how the countries have been looking at what happens in those thirty years. Worldwide the total amount of carbon we can produce is around 1,000,000,000,000 metric tons of carbon (Duncan 2014). With the U.S and China setting the limits and examples on how much to produce, the world now has an acceptable idea of how much each country can produce.