In the morning lecture with Professor Michael, we’ve learnt about the ins and outs of policies and the hard truth about climate change. It is important to realize that global warming is a real issue backed up by evidence that proves our human activities caused temperatures to go up rapidly.
The greenhouse effect is good in moderation, it is used to keep the earth at a habitable temperature. However, the GHG concentration has gone up substantially due to many amounts of toxic gas emitted by burning fossil fuels and animal husbandry and deforestation that causes trees to release carbon dioxide.
With the rising global mean temperatures, ice caps are affected and therefore will melt, leading to the rise of sea levels. It has already risen about 80cm-120cm within the 21st century, soon enough in the future, it will flood cities with low sea levels, like Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and possibly Hong Kong.
Climate change intensifies extreme natural events to become more destructive and deadly. An increase in evaporation causes heat to transfer from the oceans to the air more frequently. As the storms travel across oceans, they pull in more thermal energy and water vapour. For example, the Philippines has recently been hit by the deadly tropical storm Megi on April 8, annihilating many homes and perishing over 100 victims. Usually, the typhoon season in the Philippines is between June and September.
Since the rapidly increasing rate of global warming is anthropogenic, we should be able to exert changes through laws and policies. States cannot act unilaterally because they damage the financial interests of their companies/citizens. International law consists of agreements between states. Climate agreements work as legal arrangements, but they are inefficient to solve the problem of Climate Change. “Shall” is an often misinterpreted in legal documents, as it is legally binding but not in terms of achieving the targets set. For example, the Paris Agreement nearly failed because the word "shall" had been approved instead of "should", meaning that developed countries would have been legally obliged to cut emissions.
Here is my take on the commitments of an agreement about climate change: All parties will cooperate to prevent the rising temperature levels from reaching the limit of 2 degrees Celsius. Funding should be moved away from fossil fuels and instead, to renewable energy sources instead. Companies and states should be evaluated to draft out suitable changes that they must abide by.
The climate change argument is full of political and emotional opinions. We, humans, are to blame for the lack of proper effective changes in the journey to reducing GHG concentrations. I hope that we can collectively put our greed aside and work together to protect our only home, Mother Earth.