Threats to Bioreserves

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.

Humans have constantly struggled to manage resources for 50,000 years, ever since they developed inventiveness, hunting skills, and efficiency. When they fail to manage and they destroy the environment around them. Diamond discusses eight types of environmental damage: deforestation/habitat destruction, soil problems, water management problems, overhunting, overfishing, harmful introduced species, human population growth, and increased per-capita impact of people. In Diamond’s best seller, Guns Germs and Steel, he explains how human population growth and food demand are directly correlated. When the population becomes unmanageable, humans strip their land of resources. The major theme of environmental damage is simply overexploitation of

This global crisis is known as Global Warming. According to Baranski, global warming “is the current and projected increase in average temperature near the earth’s surface due to increased greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere” in “Climate Change”. Many scientists have preformed studies, and have computer models that project the warming of the earth. These studies how that not only is the earth warming up, but man is causing this trend. Man’s use of fossil fuel in combustion engines in automobiles, heating and cooling of houses, converting coal into energy have all contributed the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This is known as greenhouse gas. The build up of greenhouse gases causes the global warming (Baranski).

Climate change has been an ongoing situation throughout history, although some still cannot comprehend the effects we have had on earth. All together we are leaving our earth and everything on it to die, sometimes slowly, but other time too fast for us to do something about it. In The Sixth Extinction, the author, Elizabeth Kolbert, finds a way to inform a large audience about the current and past problems involving climate change and how our time is going into another extinction, the sixth extinction.

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.

The first main problem is climate change. This phrase is everywhere, but a lot of people don’t really understand the connection between these words and their lives. Due to large global climate changes, this will threaten the natural biosphere as well as civilization. This issue is important because climate change is already occurring due to greenhouse

Sea level has risen 3.4 mm per year due to climate change. This can have devastating effects on humans, plants and animals, and their habitats. Climate change has become a colossal problem considering it can leave countless humans stranded or starving, that are in need of assistance. It has also caused distrust or rifts between countries over who caused it and whose responsibility it is to pay for the damages it has caused. The economy of places on earth will be suspected to plummet as a result of rising sea levels and temperatures provoking animals to relocate and countries to lose their major exports, or suffer from the increase in prices for their imported goods. The U.N. believes that this is problem is in need of a solution. The world

The speakers attempt to engage the International Biodiversity Conference to adopt measures to ensure the security of earth’s biodiversity, highlights the grave environmental struggles confronting world leaders. In the persuasive presentation, “Taking stock” which appeals to environmentalist, world leaders and those in attendance of the biodiversity conference, the speaker contends current efforts to secure biodiversity are lacklustre and threatening earth’s future, attempting to garner support for a new wave of environmental action. The images accompanying the presentation support the speakers’ contention by calling to attention that importance of biodiversity.

On the other hand, natural capitalism refers to the natural resources and the environmental systems that offer life support services to all living things. These services are of highly significant economic value to the extent of being precious and beyond price. However, business practices and public policies do not take into consideration the value attached to them. Therefore, natural capital is being lost and ruined by the careless and inefficient use of natural resources. Natural capitalism sticks to the promise of improved profitability and competitive advantages taking place because of the implementation of this approach (Bruekner 2010, 67).

In “ Think Again: Climate change,” Bill Mckibben addresses the climate change catastrophe. The damage has already begun and it may be too late to save the planet. There has been many debates and controversies on climate change, but that is about to change, and scientists have accepted the fact that humans are warming the planet. In 2007, the Arctic Ocean melted more ice than ever before. Again in 2008, more ice was melted and the Arctic is now open water. In addition, other regions will eventually suffer from crop loss and food shortages. Eventually, climate change will force states to start conflicts and wars over resources.

After the industrial revolution the Earth left its sustainability (Holocene) era to enter an uncertain future. The Anthropocene period involves the Earth’s well-being since this period of sustainability ended and the Earth has become more susceptible to the destructive ways of its human inhabitants. A group of twenty-eight scientist have recently (2009) gathered to devise a way to ensure humans do not continue their trend towards irreversible damage. These scientist came up with the framework for defining a reasonable range for humans to work in. Passing these thresholds could mean effects to local and regional problems to global effects depending on which boundaries are pushed. These planetary boundaries, with each threshold threat stated,

These changes are damaging the environment causing droughts, rising sea levels, tropical diseases threating wildlife, agricultural production and extinction of some animals as well as putting our health and life style at rick.

According to scientific research, the average temperature of the earth has risen by between ten and twenty degrees Celsius (M.L. Weitzman, 2008). These high temperatures could well be described as a ‘recipe for disaster’, and could produce results that would be catastrophic on a global scale. What is more alarming however, is that there is already a lot of evidence of predicted results of climate change, for instance, in Australia especially, severe draughts have been common in farming areas in the last few decades, there has been an increase of intense and extreme weather events, for example floods, flash floods, tsunamis, earthquakes and tornados, almost all of the natural disasters listed have occurred for ‘unknown’ reasons in the past few years. Rises in sea water level and temperature due to higher acid levels caused by global warming, threaten the existence of species and in some areas, entire eco-systems resulting in the loss of natural biodiversity. ‘Climate change is pushing the world to the verge of environmental and economic collapse, whether global deniers want to believe it or not’ (N. Klein, 2011).

Imagine a dying world, where organisms and resources are rapidly vanishing and the life-sustaining environment converts into a danger zone for its inhabitants. Imagination is not required for creating such a world because humans are currently constructing one. As a result of human activities, Earth has been transformed and a new geological age called “the Anthropocene” has been seriously proposed. The Anthropocene will witness the necessity for all walks of life to face numerous, new challenges as climate conditions deteriorate and resources deplete. In order to confront the ecological problems brought by the Anthropocene, communities must be resilient and this resilience must rely on collective decision-making and frugality. Moreover, there

Current international debates about climate change are shaped by different, often conflicting but also partly overlapping environmental discourses (den Besten et al., 2014). Authors such as Dryzek (1997, 2005), Hoffman (2011), Bäckstrand & Lövbrand (2007) and