Lucas Skiba

4/6/16

Lesson #9

GEOG 030

Climate Diplomacy

In this systems diagram it is explaining the process of which nations are coming together to solve the problem of climate change. As you can see the first box says industrial revolution and use of fossil fuels. This was the beginning era where we first started polluting our country. The second box contains greenhouse gas emissions and bigger population. This was after the industrial revolution and when the world’s population almost doubled in size and the climate of the earth began to change. This is what leads us to climate change. Now today climate change is not just a problem for one country but the whole world, so this leads us to United Nations Climate Control Conference. Nations coming together to to make a treaty on climate change. So in 2009 they held the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit (The Guardian 2010). During the summit the Copenhagen Accord was introduced. This was to get almost every nation to decrease greenhouse gases but it did not guarantee global greenhouse gas cuts to avoid dangerous climate changes. Some poor and vulnerable countries disagreed with the accord because they would need money to fund their emission cuts. The U.S. sending cables to other countries to get information from them and to see if they can be trusted was a result from the Accord as well. This is all just negotiations to figure out what countries need to cut back on, to decrease climate change, and to decrease global greenhouse gases. When there are a total of 140 countries trying to come to an agreement for one problem it is very difficult to agree especially when everyone wants to better their own country. But the result was 116 nations out of the 140 are for the accord.

To make a difference on climate change I believe that we all need to come to an agreement just like what the United Nations are doing. Certain countries and especially the U.S. need to make sacrifices if we want to stop global greenhouse gases from dangerously warming up our earth. Our roots as the United States are deep within the industrial industry and has made us a powerhouse over the years, but now we see that we have been slowly damaging our earth and it is time for us to make a change. I believe the State Department’s cables should be public, as a citizen we have the right to know what our country is negotiating, and who they are negotiating with. Even if the cables were the result of not all the countries joining the accord I am glad they did not agree because the accord doesn’t even guarantee that the global greenhouse gas cuts will stop climate change from reaching dangerous levels. I believe we as the United States need to sit down with other developed countries such as China, South Africa, Brazil, Europe, Japan etc. and see what are the biggest polluters in each country and decrease them in some way. We need to draw a line in the sand saying each country depending on it’s size can only pollute and create this many greenhouse gases. It is just so hard to get countries to change their industrial and transportative ways in a sense it is like changing a culture but the goal here is to live on earth sustainably for as long as possible. The ways and cultures of today are leading us down the wrong path to sustainability. We has nations need to make sacrifices in our industries and lives to cut back on causing so much greenhouse gas emission and start looking for a more sustainable future.

Bibliography/Citation List:

1. GEOG 030 Climate Change (2015). Retrieved on April 6, 2016.

https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog030/node/389

2. The Guardian “WikiLeaks cables reveal how US manipulated climate accord” (December 3, 2010). Retrieved on April 6, 2016. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/dec/03/wikileaks-us-manipulated-climate-accord