Global Warming Essay

Global Warming

Global warming is the result from human’s activities in the past century since the industrial revolution time. It is a catastrophe that is definitely going to occur in the future unless we take actions to stop it. Global warming deals with rising climate change which refers to the change of average temperature pattern on planet earth which is caused by the increasing amount of Carbon Dioxide emitted to the atmosphere increasing the concentration rate of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere which its role in this eco-system is to trap heat energy from the sun to make this planet able to support lives. It is a really important issue that threatens lives of people living on islands in pacific and species of animals that are sensitive to temperature which a rise in few degrees could actually make them go extinct. According to the article The Science of Climate Change by Prof. Kurt Lambeck, “Climate models, together with physical principles and knowledge of the past variations, tell us that, unless greenhouse gas emissions are reduced and greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are stabilized, global warming will continue, by 2100 it is estimated that the average temperature will be between 2-7 degrees Celsius higher than the pre-industrial time while rise of the 4 degrees Celsius could mean the loss of many species of animals and hundreds of millions of people seeking refugees due to rising level of sea water and drought”,

 Global warming is an issue of common good because it concerns with the well-being of all mankind on the planet, and also to achieve success in dealing with this issue, every human has a role they must play in their part to help reduce or stop the emission of greenhouse gases. Even normal everyday people must at least be educated on this issue and do their part simply by carpool or use the public transport instead of personal vehicles, and stop using the products that produces greenhouse gas such as hairspray and things which needs to release Carbon Dioxide in the making like foam products. There are also other major roles that must be fulfill in order for us as human to achieve the common good in this issue such as the regulations from the governments, international agreements on this issue, compliances of the industrial companies that creates Carbon Dioxide.

There are many perspectives and parties which have involvement in this issue such as; the international authorities like IPCC which publish assessment reports on the situation on climate change every few years, and the UNFCCC, the people living on islands in pacific, and the economic points of view.  The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change(UNFCCC) is an international agreement aim to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at a level that would that would prevent the catastrophe. They divided the responsibilities to different groups of countries classified by their capacity to help with the situation by having the developed industrial countries like the United States, China,  japan, United Kingdom, German, and so on taking the lead in the campaign followed by developing countries which have less mean and capacity to contribute the cause. This is the right and ethical way to do it if the developed countries really mean to stop the climate change since the majority of the greenhouse gas is produced by those developed countries themselves. But if we were to think about how serious the consequence would be, every countries whether big or small should do whatever they can to help out the best they could, especially the countries that are responsible for the emission.  Another important perspective would be the economic, it could be said that economic is a major reason for greenhouse gas emission from the widespread of consumerism by capitalist markets in the United States to the Chinese booming economic which will result in large number of factories and production plants producing greenhouse gas at an increasing rate  and therefore  leads to global warming. There are many ethical issues risen from the economic perspective such as, “We should not take any significant actions right now because the people in the future will be richer and have better technological means to take care of the global climate change then”, and “is it fair that the poor people today have to sacrifice their time and resources  for the sake of richer people in the future?”. This in my opinion are very selfish and absurd thinking. We should not be questioning whether the economic growth is more important than the lives of other people no matter in the present or the future. It sure is more logical to spend the money for a better world for everybody to live in than to be rich with the planet with ruined eco-system and may be half of the species of animal left, and hundreds of millions of people have to seek refugee because their homeland is under the effect of rising sea water level. Therefore everybody should be able to sacrifice their material richness for the common good because we can’t simply let others suffer from our actions no matter directly or indirectly. The third perspective is the developing countries which have not contributed to causing global warming nor benefitted from the industrial revolution and technology but is being gravely affected by the effect of global warming. The people living in the pacific islands such as the Palau, are in the danger of having their homelands swallowed by the rising sea level caused by the emission of greenhouse gas from the super power nations like the United States, China, and Russia, etc. They have no choice but to bring their issue forward to UNGA(United Nations General Assembly) and IJC( international justice court of justice, which would make them be able to leave and work in the United States as refugees of climate change, which is quite disappointing considered from how they lost their homeland to the actions of some super-power countries. This perspective is a really important example to us as how the serious the climate change is, what will happen to people living on islands or other areas near the coasts if the developed countries do not plan to stop the emission in the near future.