Are We Finally Going to do Something About Climate Change?

In 2002, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a document entitled “Climate Change and Biodiversity.” The study provides statistical information in order to construct the impact that climate change has on biodiversity. To put it simply, climate change negatively impacts biodiversity. And people caused climate change; therefore humans are also responsible for the rapidly growing disruption of biodiversity. Newer statistics can be found on NASA’s website. 

(Image: NOAA)

It’s been 12 years since the IPCC released that specific study and climate change is anything but a new concern, nor has it been improved at all, but perhaps it’s finally time for us do to something about it.

This past Tuesday, world leaders from nearly 200 countries around the world met at the UN in New York City to discuss the issue of climate change, which is becoming more and unavoidable worldwide. (A live feed of the entire event can be found here.) Despite its urgency, this is the first time leaders have formally discussed this issue in five years, when Barack Obama, Angela Merkel of Germany, Manmohan Singh for India, the UK’s Gordon Brown and others failed negotiate the issuesuccessfully enough to enact change in Copenhagen.

Before the failed Copenhagen summit, Wired.com writer Brandon Keim released an article entitled “The Psychology of Climate Change Denial.”

Keim draws attention to an announcement by The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate in 2007, which warned that depending on human energy habits, the world’s temperature would rise between 1.5 to 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century.  Even a midrange change in climate would likely cause catastrophic natural consequences.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon opened up the summit amongst powerful world leaders with the statement “we are not here to talk. We are here to make history.” Although no international solution on climate change action was reached, it did create the atmosphere (no pun intended) for a global treaty to be reached by an upcoming Paris summit in 2015.

Perhaps the most noteworthy speech of the summit was President Obama’s address, which was covered in an International New York Times article by Mark Landler. In Obama’s speech he name dropped the USA and China as the world’s biggest economies and well as polluters, as well as the two countries bearing the most responsibility to lead the global effort towards fighting climate change because “that’s what big nations have to do.” 

(Image by Pablo Martinez Monsivais, AP)

If Beijing and Washington can’t come to some sort of an agreement then very few countries will likely agree to the treaty and again, nothing will happen. As Obama said, “we can only succeed in combating climate change if we are joined in this effort by every nation, developed and developing alike,” the president said. “Nobody gets a pass.” 

Climate change has far too often been made a political and an economical issue.

Still in America, Republicans tend denote that new rules prompting change nationwide as a “war on coal” and an energy tax. While obviously enacting change will affect the economy, not doing anything will raise the temperature of the global atmosphere so drastically that sea levels will rise, droughts will ensue, and food shortages, powerful storms and more will plague the worldwide population.

The time to make change is now. One of the most powerful moments of the summit was Leonardo Dicaprio’s speech seen here in an article by TIME.  He talked about his job, as an actor, which is simply put- to pretend. To quote Dicaprio’s speech: “mankind has looked at climate change in the same way, as if pretending climate change wasn’t real, it would go away. But I think we know now that isn’t the case.” 

The inclusion of Dicaprio as a speaker was a wise one. To be honest, I hadn’t heard anything about the UN Climate summit until somebody shared a link to Dicaprio’s speech on my Facebook timeline. Social media is a powerful tool for sharing and spreading ideas, but it is also a carefully calculated one. Most people may not care about, or be familiar with the issues concerning climate change, but almost everybody knows who Leonardo Dicaprio is. His rhetoric matters more to the general public, as he is a face we’re used to being entertained by, therefore we, as a mass are far more likely to listen to what he has to say.

Climate Change has in fact finally ditched its negatively perceived, Al Gore hyped mainstream name of “global warming,” and has moved onto a new name and a new driving force of action- The Internet. (Which Al Gore arguably also created) As I said before, my initial interest in climate change was struck by a Leonardo Dicaprio speech and I’m sure I’m not the only one. Organizations like Greenpeace and The Campaign Against Climate Change have incredibly accessible websites, which allows for climate change awareness to be spread more easily and rapidly. But you don’t have to be an organization to get the Internet’s attention.

Even the millennial generation can do something about Climate Change, and some have. Wired.com posted an article in February about a group of Columbia University students involved in a project called POLAR partnership. But what really has drawn attention to these students is a video project they’ve created called “FutureCoast,” a fictional narrative they’ve created which involves voicemails being sent back and forth from the future. The project has gained a lot of hype, which continues to contribute to the global awareness of climate change.

Image: NASA

I am hopeful that we have finally reached the point in human history where we, as a global community, will really do something about climate change. Only time will tell, and evidently, we don’t seem to have a lot of it left.





Link to Analytic Reflection