As expected, the meetings in Copenhagen have amounted to mostly talk and little action. While Europe has taken some steps to pledge financing to developing countries for taking a low-carbon growth strategy - far more than the United States has been willing to front - the prospects for agreement are no more firm than before the meetings began last week.
But perhaps what is lacking is a proper frame for the issue. Public acceptance of the existence of climate change is a moot point; the very existence of a world meeting on reducing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions signals it. But defining the issue as specifically one of temperature change, rather than as a broader dilemma of environmental conservation and biodiversity, is what is keeping the eco movement from achieving its full potential.
The 350 campaign and others have succeeded in putting carbon dioxide emissions in the public consciousness. Even the average person can understand CO2 emissions create a greenhouse effect, rising temperatures and effects ranging from subtle changes in seasons to outright climate catastrophes. The simplification of climate change has enabled a mass movement.
But this gives leaders an easy escape. Emission of greenhouse gases such as CO2 or CH4 (methane) can be tied directly to industrial or agricultural production, energy consumption or cows breaking wind. Therefore, this makes trade and protectionism the arena for debate; and the recent round of WTO talks has shown that this is where leaders from both developed and developing countries can drag their feet and blame the other side. But if environmentalists can successfully implant in the public's mind that it is not only climate change (temperature changes), but also environmental degradation, mass-extinction of species, turning our oceans and parks into oil wells and mines, and utter waste (does your mobile phone charger really need to come with 3 pounds of packaging?), they can successfully re-frame the issue into one of broader importance.
I'll conclude with one example. As a student of international affairs, I have many classmates who profess a devotion to saving the environment. Copenhagen must come up with positive results, they say. Yet, I can't even begin to count how many times I visit a sandwich shop frequented by many such students and see how wasteful our society can be.
When a customer buys a sandwich, the woman at the register puts it in a plastic bag. Not long after eating the meal, many of these students discard the perfectly pristine plastic bag - destined for a landfill after being useful for literally 7 minutes (the time it takes to walk the sandwich over to a place to sit, take it out of the bag, and eat it). Multiply that by the hundreds of students who visit this one sandwich shop in New York City.
The amount of waste is astounding, and it seems to me, at least, that few link waste and climate change as one issue about protecting the environment and reducing our consumption. Saving the environment is not just about maintaining a temperature.
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3 years ago
4 comments:
saving the world? between 1 and 5% of world GDP. Saving the banks costed us 5%! (Economist, 2009)
great post. I agree that the focus on CO2 is both a help and a hindrance - helpful because it gives us a concrete goal to aim for (80% reduction viz 1990 levels by 2050) and a hindrance as it's quite abstract - the reason the wasted plastic sandwich bag is bad is that another has to be made to replace it, increasing CO2 emissions...
This is why I'm an advocate of personal carbon rationing. Every year you get a credit card pre-loaded with X tons of CO2 - you can spend it however you want, but if you insist on wasting sandwich bags or flying every week, you'll run out of credit - whereas if you're a vegetarian cyclist who heats their home by solar, you'll be in credit.
Linking our everyday mundane actions to the glaciers melting is tough, but as you say it's the key to clamping down on climate change!
(p.s. small technical point, when cows break wind it's methane (CH4) not CO2 they release - but methane's 25 times as powerful as a greenhouse gas than CO2, so all them McBurgers are boiling the Earth...!)
Well said! Couldn't agree more that the focuses of the debate makes it more of an abstract goal that is for 'important' people to establish and follow but there is little importance placed on the difference each individual person can make.
Big campaigns such as these would be the ideal forum to help individuals also become aware of their footprint. To challenge us to realize that we are actually at the core of the debate rather then spectators. Simple steps that could be easily introduced worldwide should be emphasized at meetings such as these. Like you were saying, encouraging reusing not just recycling. If during the climate change campaigns, they encouraged the individual to change one aspect of their daily routine to make it more environmentally friendly, we would see a huge rise in awareness and probably also an impact towards the "climate change goals".
For example, how many times have we passed a tv/computer screen that has been left on without doing something about it? Turning off that tv screen would have a similar reduction in carbon emissions as buying a more efficient car without any investment.
But I am guilty myself, I am surrounded by an un-green environment where layers of plastic containers are opened to uncover sterile clampers, pounds of paper scattered throughout and thousands of soda cans thrown into trash cans cause the puking patient needs gingerale, but the provider does not have time to look for a green bin amidst all the choas. But its okay cause we're saving people, right?
So, next time you hear me clunking down Lombard St with a pound of cans, you know I am just trying to fulfill my role as a medical student. I am making a difference somehow!
PS. Great title!
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/opinion/17friedman.html?sudsredirect=true
I thought this op-ed complemented your post well cause he's also calling for the climate scientists to make the argument palatable for the common man (even though its for completely different reasons). Although he calls for just a "what we know" but I think that could be accompanied by a "based off of what we know, a what YOU can do!" - a 25 page accompaniment written in a 3rd grade reading level.
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