{"id":2207,"date":"2020-02-19T07:51:34","date_gmt":"2020-02-19T12:51:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/si-mba\/?p=2207"},"modified":"2020-02-06T09:52:30","modified_gmt":"2020-02-06T14:52:30","slug":"the-ethics-of-reducing-emissions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/si-mba\/2020\/02\/19\/the-ethics-of-reducing-emissions\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ethics of Reducing Emissions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This post was written by Jay Kulkarni ’20. Connect with him on LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

2019 may go down as the year that the world began to \u201cwake\nup to the climate emergency.\u201d<\/a> Inspired by climate activists such as Greta\nThunberg and Extinction Rebellion, the non-violent youth climate movement became\na global phenomenon that starkly highlighted the apathy and inaction of the\npolitical class in most developing and transitioning economies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Photo by\u00a0veeterzy<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0Unsplash<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Despite some recalcitrance<\/a>\namongst those aged 55 and older, acceptance of climate science is spreading. Climate\nchange is a scientific fact, and it\u2019s happening now<\/a>. It will unpredictably\nimpact\necosystems and biodiversity<\/a>, thereby affecting people who depend on their\nenvironment for ecosystem\nservices<\/a> such pest\/ disease control and provisions such as food and water. As\nthe world warms<\/a>, diseases will spread. Heatwaves will become deadlier.\nCoastlines will erode. Species will die out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We must confront our temporally-,\nspatially-, and ecologically-distributed responsibility <\/strong>to individuals,\nnations, future generations, and the other species with which we share our\nplanet. Scientists accept that reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is a\nrequirement to keep the global temperature increase to below 2\u00b0C\nin keeping with the 2015 Paris\nClimate Agreement<\/a>. The disagreements now stem from what to do next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One common refrain from political leaders — like Donald\nTrump — opposed to the Paris climate targets is that some countries are disproportionately\nexpected to do the heavy lifting of reducing emissions, which is seen as a threat\nto their economies<\/a>. The US has stated that it will withdraw from the Paris\nagreement on November 4, 2020, one\nday after the 2020 US Presidential election<\/a>. However, this argument ignores\nthe global and intergenerational\ndimensions<\/strong> of climate change; even though China has higher annual emissions\nat present, the US has historically contributed the most GHGs in total<\/em>. The US, along with other GHG polluters,\nare therefore attempting to \u201cpass\nmost of the burden<\/a> of their activities to people in other parts of the\nworld and the future in unfair ways.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other ethical phenomenon at play is the tragedy of the commons<\/strong>: as governments\nand industries act\nselfishly and short-sightedly<\/a>, they \u201cdeplete a freely available shared\nresource, against each of the parties\u2019 long-term interest.\u201d Most GHG polluters\nface no penalties, while the public pay the costs of pollution and climate\nchange through loss of ecosystem services and impacts to health and well-being.\nIn addition, there are skewed\nvulnerabilities <\/strong>at play, where the countries whose emissions levels have historically\nbeen the lowest<\/a> are those that may be amongst the most vulnerable to the\neffects of climate change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is therefore imperative that large economies acknowledge\ntheir proportionate culpability for the effects of climate change, as well as their\nresponsibility to the peoples and ecosystems affected. In addition, we must absorb\nthe lessons of indigenous people around the world, whose observations of the\ndynamic equilibrium of natural ecosystems have given them an \u201cequanimity\nand optimism\u201d<\/a> to better adapt to the coming ecological and societal disruptions\nwrought by climate change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post was written by Jay Kulkarni ’20. Connect with him on LinkedIn. 2019 may go down as the year that the world began to \u201cwake up to the climate emergency.\u201d Inspired by climate activists such as Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion, the non-violent youth climate movement became a global phenomenon that starkly highlighted the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The Ethics of Reducing Emissions”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4489,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[221,425622,272245],"tags":[4433],"class_list":["post-2207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-renewables","category-strategy","tag-sustainability"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8b9n0-zB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/si-mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/si-mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/si-mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/si-mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4489"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/si-mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2207"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/si-mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2210,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/si-mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2207\/revisions\/2210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/si-mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/si-mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/si-mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}