Kyoto Protocol and The Obligations of the Parties

Global warming and climate change exist and the two have called for a world attention to reduce their impacts. The Great 8 nations, including U.S., have convened various global summits where heads of states come to debate how to counter the increased climate change. Various recommendations have been proposed to counter the effects of climate change and device ways in which the change can be accommodated. This paper will discuss the rhetorical questions asked by the author in the journal article. In addition, the paper will attempt to answer some of the questions posed by Eric Klinenberg, the author of Adaption.

In order to even attempt to explain the interactions of states in the global interstate system we typically have to look towards two words, international relations. International relations also try’s to explain the interactions of others whose actions manifests from one country and then is steered towards people of another country. While each state is exploited as ‘sovereign’, specified international groups and organizations are needed as state and non-state actors. These actors include the United Nations (UN), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and Amnesty International. International Relations involve the study of foreign policy, negotiation, war, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, international conflict, trade, and economics. Each of those foreign affairs essentially makes up the relation between countries. A very important issue going on in international relations today is global warming and climate change. Unfortunately this matter receives very little attention. The reason it is so serious, is it could eventually destroy our world, as we know it today. Global warming is already having severe effects on communities, health, and climate. Our sea levels are rising; heat waves are more frequent, wild fires are growing, were experiencing severe droughts, and also increased storms.

by 12.5% which was well above the goal of 4.7%. The downside is, when this was created it

changing climate and how to respond to these changes. Their Fifth Assessment Report, which is

The advent of industrialized civilization has brought to us many remarkable feats that enhance our everyday lives. Such things as automobiles, airplanes, tractors, mainframe computers, and even relatively simple machines like lawnmowers have intertwined themselves into the everyday culture of modern day industrialized countries.. These products have provided us enormous benefits compared to the types of lives our ancestors used to live. In the eyes of some, the consequences of industrial activities that have evolved around the world will not pose any problems in the future, however as most have realized, this is not true. Contemporary production processes use fossil fuels such as

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.

Its adoption in 1997 and ratification in 2002 furthered the fight against anthropogenic interference with earth’s climate system. Canada’s commitment began with a goal to reduce GHGs by 6% reduction from 1990 levels by 2012, or 461 megatons (Canada and the Kyoto Protocol 2016). In order to achieve these goals, legal requirements expected policies and measures prepared by the participating countries to reduce GHGs, by utilizing all available mechanisms, including joint implementation to earn emissions reduction units (ERU) to be counted towards the target, the clean development mechanism and emissions trading (Kyoto Protocol 1997). Every year, on the date set forth, every participating country was expected to keep track of emissions limits and performance standards, develop spending or fiscal measures, as well their expectation for the next year and results from the previous (E. Canada 2013). When the first reduction timeline was up in 2008, instead of a decrease in emissions, Canada recorded an increase 24.1 percent higher than 1990 levels. The lack of commitment was superseded by the new government’s ‘Made in Canada” effort to push country-unified laws, though no significant changes were

The meaning and understanding of climate change has been a critical issue of concern to development, scientific and environmental researchers in the world. All over the world, there have been a lot of issues surrounding the causes and impacts of the phenomenon which led to the establishment of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to help assess and provide information about climate change to society (Agrawala, 1998). This essay presents arguments on who is qualified to be an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) expert and who should be qualified. It begins by describing the role of IPCC and its structure including the roles of the authors of the IPCC reports such as lead authors, coordinating lead authors, contributing authors, expert reviewers, review editors and government focal points (IPCC, 2008). It then concludes by arguing in favour of the need for the inclusion of other experts as part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The Protocol was initially adopted on 11 December 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, and entered into force on 16 February 2005. As of September 2011, 191 states had signed and joined the protocol. The only remaining signatory not to have

Climate change looms large over our rapidly growing and continually changing world. No longer are the adverse effects of this menacing global issue a mere ominous projections, they are starting to become a very concrete reality. Countries are today experiencing rising sea levels, which compromises coastal infrastructure, prolonged drought, squeezing food supply and agricultural productivity, as well as extreme storms. Rising temperatures have already led to vast reductions in the size of the Arctic. There is now no doubt amongst scientists that anthropogenic activity has been the primary catalyst to the

“The Kyoto Protocol is an international treaty which extends the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits State Parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the premise that (a)

Although the Kyoto Protocol had the right intentions with the desire to lower greenhouse gases, however, lowering gas emissions would hinder the economy for many of the nations without a proper substitution or solution. This is a proposal that would not sit well with many of nations; especially since the nations did not all agree climate change. The Kyoto Protocol would produce concentrated costs because lowering gas emissions would affect nations differently, and in addition to that, there would exist a distribution of benefits because not all nations would benefit equally because their polluted atmospheres vary. With a proposal that could hinder the progress of they industry, “both economics and politics deal with problems of scarcity and conflicting preferences” in which nations would rather support the economy than take a risk at an opportunity to help the atmosphere (Wilson 363). The Kyoto Protocol falls under the categorization as entrepreneurial politics where the overall conclusion contains distributed benefits and concentrated

In November 1988, at the request of U.N. members involved in climate change research, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created. To help assist U.S. involvement with the IPCC, the U.S. Global Change Research Program (GCRP) was established in 1989. In 1990, the IPCC completed the first of a series of recurring international scientific and policy assessments of global climate change. According to the National Climate Program Office, these assessments aimed to ?review scientific knowledge about natural and human-induced climate change and ... provide governments with a sound consensus of scientific evidence on climate change and resulting impact on natural and human systems from which policy options can be developed.?

Prior to the Paris Agreement, participating countries have submitted national plans that addressed their intentions for combatting the climate change after 2020 (Dimitrov 2016). These nationally determined contributions outlined a number of issues – all being relevant to adapting and coping with climate change challenge. Although these contributions are not final, they are representative of the intended climate actions that countries will pursue after 2020.

Annex I countries are industrialized nations with large carbon emissions, such as the US, Australia, EU, and Russia. The agreement has four implementation mechanisms designed to achieve the desired reductions in emissions, but only asks that countries comply with the reductions rather than suggesting a methodology. The primary method for countries to reduce emissions is through domestic policies, traditionally taking the form of governmental controls, which each nation would be responsible for creating and enforcing. Domestic policy is “…likely to become a ‘hook’ to ensure that the industrialized countries implement the policies necessary to spur real changes towards less carbon-intensive production and consumption patterns (Depledge 11).” The domestic policy article in the Kyoto Protocol is intended to provide governments, not an international body, with direct control over domestic emissions.