Shahid Abbas
The rapid economic growth of developing countries especially china, India, given their immense population size is putting further strain on available energy sources as well as increasing the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The IPCC are intrinsically flawed because of its conservative and bureaucratic nature instead of a scientific body. TWO errors came to light in the IPCC report in 2007 that the glaciers in Himalayan might disappear by 2035 secondly 55 % of the Netherlands lies below sea level so it will vanish if the sea level rises across the world. As he previous civilizations had an impact on their environment but those civilizations were only regional and that impact was trivial compared to what is happening today. No earlier civilization intervened into nature to the degree to which we do every day and on a global scale. Oil , gas and coal are the dominant energy sources in the world producing greenhouse gases on a large scale so now there are chances of new industrial revolution to bring new about new environment friendly technologies .OPEC crisis in 1970s had frightened he world after that many countries like France ,Sweden, Denmark, Brazil etc. decided to be independent of oil which that had been imported for a long time.IAEA set up to monitor oil production after the 1970s oil embargo, predicted in 2007 that there will be no peak in oil production before 2030.In 2011 oil prices went to over 150$ billion a barrel a s a result of events in the Middle East. In the race of world domination two major powers US and China both have adopted the expansionist policy they are extracting oil from developing or poor countries for their own benefits. Environmental economists tend to look towards carbon markets as likely to contribute most to enabling us to cope with global warming this is because as author has mentioned that global warming is the greatest market failure the world has seen. Green movements started in 60s ,70s in japan…they describe themselves not as anti-science but as anti-scientism. Green political thinking depends on two basic strands one as a green theory of value and the other is the green theory of agency. The polluters pay is the logic behind climate change taxes and carbon markets and it is the origin of the principle that countries which have contributed most to greenhouse gases in the past should make the largest cuts today. Democratic states are dominant and they positively encourage the open development of science, allow mobilization of social movements, environmental pressure groups and NGOs.While non-democratic states or totalitarian states maintain high degree of control over civil society organizations, able to stimulate technological advances in the military sphere. A climate change Bill was introduced in 2008 and according to its original version greenhouse gas emissions were to be reduced by at least 60% by 2050 over a 1990 baseline. Then negotiations started in US during Clinton, Bush and Obama’s era and he supported the American Clean Energy and Security Act 2009.Obama gave considerable space to clean energy, US asserted to invest in research and development in low carbon technologies. If the actions were implemented in all US states then carbon emissions would fall 27% below 1990 levels by 2020.Key argument of this article is that the industrial nations must take the lead in addressing climate change and the chances of success will depend a great deal upon government and the state. The state must promote political and economic convergence, as the main driving forces of climate change and energy policy. It must make interventions into markets to institutionalize the polluter pays principle, ensuring that markets work in favour of climate change policy. Some people talk about the coming of new industrial revolution which will bring low carbon technologies. But there is a debate that how much beneficial such technologies will be…the potential of these technologies lies in their convergence with renewable energy .Jobs creating through the spread of renewable technologies sounds like a prime form of economic convergences Wind power has created thousands of new jobs ,for instance in Germany. Taxation is one of the main levers of state policy in the struggle to reduce emissions. Carbon taxes can be of two sorts those whose revenue is spent on environmental purposes and those whose purpose is to influence behaviour, aimed at persuading people to drive more fuel efficient cars and taxes investing in the production of renewable technologies. In Finland first CO2 tax was established in 1990 initially it was slow but later it expanded. The world has moved on with the passage of time and many leaders and citizens in the south believed that the discourse about climate change was a tactic used by the rich countries actually to stop the poor or developing countries from developing. There is a possibility of collaboration between North and South not only in terms of contraction and convergence but especially as concerns adaptation. Aids and financial assistance to the poorer nations must focus much more on adaptation. International negotiations started in this respect for a long time as IPCC’’s first assessment was offered in 1990 as part of the Rio Summit, the summit introduced the UN framework convention on CC, signed by 166 nations. All nations agreed to calculate their emissions and report the levels annually. It was accepted that there should be common but differentiated responsibilities among nations for stabilizing climate change. The Kyoto Protocol started the Clean Development Mechanism which allows industrial states to get credits to put towards their Kyoto targets by funding clean energy projects in developing states. Chinese president Jintao committed to reduce their emission by 40-45 % by 2020 followed by India to reduce 20-25 % the same date the industrial counties in addition accepted the goal of raising $100 billion a year by 2020 to help developing nations cut carbon emissions.
The EU made a strategy for dealing with climate change issues but for this took an initiative at summit meetings in Cardiff and Vienna in 1998.the core proposal by EU was that the EU would cut its emissions by 20% by 2020.As a result of recession, the carbon output of EU fell more than 9 % this figure chows that the target of EU to achieve 20% reduction in emission looks more achieveable.The geopolitics of climate change in the 21st century seems to be more conflictual sort of nature. Like many nations have claimed areas of the Arctic as their own so there seems a possibility that armed conflicts could occur as states are trying to gain hold over resources climate change issues especially in conjunction with developing scarcities of energy could become both militarized and dominated by security risks .the result would be the deterioration of international cooperation where security is increasingly seen as divisible. The geopolitics of oil is what nations facing today the Gulf and Saudi Arabia hold in its production…oil and it over production in oil rich countries has become bed of thorns…many conflicts among major powers today rotates around the geopolitics of oil. Oil is the enemy of freedom…as if the price of gets higher, the more likely an oil rich country is to turn autocratic. I think that it might be thought improbable that the US and China could collaborate in a serious way on energy and climate change issues, but there is a precedent.
The very advance in global warming, the dangers of climate change becomes more urgent and it is necessary to press them…coping with them could be a means of rehabilitating the United Nations itself States leaders might come to realize that not only can do without it but that lack of effective global governance is a prime reason why those dangers have become so acute.
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