Posts Tagged climate

The Future of Global Climate Policy

This is a guest post from Britney Wilkins; she writes at Online College.

As the United States and other developed nations continue to pressure developing nations to conform to their global-emissions protocol, it has in turn become a global debate that serves to affect the economies of these nations. With the United Nations climate conference looming closer in the calendar, countries such as India are getting ready to unleash their negotiation tactics in an effort to protect their nation’s own interests. There is a major difference between developed and developing nations which proves to be a debilitating constraint when attempting to allow them to grow at a rate Western nations grew at the same point in their evolution.
Countries such as India and China have opposed Western requests to decrease various carbon dioxide emissions and maintain that the West never had caps on similar emissions during the Industrial Revolution. Regardless of the time period, such emissions had the same debilitating results but also allowed many nations to reach the status point they are at today. Therefore, India maintains that it needs to release these types of emissions in order to become a fully developed nation. The recent bill passed in the United States by the House of Representatives has served to ruffle some feathers as the bill states that the U.S. will impose sanctions on countries that did not accept the binding emissions cuts. “Sanctioning” is a term that developing nations fear, as it has only served to further hamper the capacity of developing nations to grow and instead nearly sets them backward on the road to development. Read the rest of this entry »

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Long live Freedom, long live the Earth!

“We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way. The third is freedom from want…. The fourth is freedom from fear.”  Franklin D. Roosevelt

America is celebrating its Independence Day today. The day honors the birthday of the United States of America and the signing of the ‘Declaration of Independence’ on July 4, 1776.

For any nation, Independence Day is the day to be proud of their past, to salute those who struggled and sacrificed for independence. It is a day to remember the importance of freedom. Thanks to our ancestors all over the world in different countries, we have the freedom to pursue our goals and dreams. We have the freedom to express our opinion, the freedom to decide what is good for us and our family.

Equally important, it is also a time to remember this: while we live a free life dictated by our own will, we also have responsibilities as the free citizens of the globe. We owe it to those who sacrificed everything for freedom; we also owe it to the future generation who will tread this planet after we are long gone.

Franklin D. Roosevelt envisioned a freedom from fear. Let us do our share in minimizing the fear of uncertain tomorrow by making this planet a better place to live for a long-long time. While we guard our dear freedom, let us also guard our future and the future of our kids by being responsible and caring inhabitants of this earth. We can do our share towards keeping this planet safe by reducing pollution and by eliminating waste. Let us educate ourselves and everybody around us to improve the environment, and to minimize the impacts of climate change.

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