There was an interesting debate in class which centered around what was the biggest crisis in our world: climate change or human right’s infractions. Yes, at face value these seem like two completely different issues, but pieces like the one Watt-Coultier wrote combine the problems into one massive issue. Her people’s livelihood is endangered by global warming. Islands and their people are being buried beneath the waves because of the harm we’ve done to our planet.
It’s hard for us to see. We’re in the middle of the United States surrounded by green trees and rolling hills. The world looks fine from our point of view. And despite some extremely cold weather, people love quipping about how the weather is simply unpredictable in the Missouri. There’s a potential disconnect between the routine we live and the reality of climate change’s effect on even our part of the world. Watt-Coultier’s piece describes a people who are about to lose their culture because of climate change, and they didn’t do anything to create the problem. Industrialized nations use cars, and Inuits used dogsleds. Our carbon emissions have melted their ice, and we’ve left them to deal with that problem alone. They and the island peoples will be forced to leave the land of their ancestors, culture and history to accommodate our lifestyle. Indeed, our over consumption is an infraction on human rights. The problems are connected, and we have an obligation to change the course of climate change.
Having said that, there will need to be a dramatic shift in our nation’s infrastructure. Wealthy oil companies and other energy producers sit at the top of our society. They run politics and the economy. Our society has been developed around our ability to travel great distances, have a cool (temperature) living room and hundreds of amenities and comforts. Our trash fills landfills, and consumption drives our culture. Our scientific knowledge isn’t good enough to repair the damage to the earth just yet, but we can make sure the damage doesn’t continue. People have to make the conscious decisions to lead simpler lives. Zero waste lifestyles are popping up all over the internet as people boast about fitting months of trash into a mason jar. But society needs to reconfigure, and energy production needs to lead the way. We need a greater reliance on renewable energy and clean energy.
(Goingzerowaste.com)
Politically, the Paris Agreement was signed in 2016 and was intended to institute a global plan to reduce carbon emissions. The United States withdrew from the agreements, and the agreement can do very little to enforce its goals. The video we watched in class stated that the national plans were left to each individual nation. Once all these goals are added up, there is significantly less reduction in carbon emissions than the plan had hoped for. Climate change is a global issue, and when left to individuals, a global goal is going to fall short. There needs to be a collective standard and an enforcement.
Moldova is part of the Paris Agreements and has a Climate Change Office, but much like with the Paris Agreement, the regional areas have been left to develop and institute their own plans, and there is little organization or incentive to follow through. The nation is largely reliant on agricultural production and most people live in rural areas, so the growth of floods, droughts and other environmental phenomena wreak havoc on the country’s infrastructure (climatelinks.org). The country doesn’t have any association with water.org or 350.org, and there weren’t any results when I searched Greenpeace’s website for Moldova. I couldn’t find and local or international groups that actively do environmental work in Moldova. There was a pilot project from a group called ClimaEast in association with the EU that tried to do work in one of Moldova’s national parks maintaining top soils, but the project hasn’t posted since 2013. The nation is one of the poorest in Europe, and its political instability doesn’t lend itself to unified movements on any front.
(Photo of Moldova’s Orhei National Park from the Global Environment Facility)
Globalization 3510W 