The climate change and American election 2008
Name:Jian Yan Student ID：S07483
Research paper supervisor:Dr.Seku Conde
Minzu University of China
2007-2008 Academic Year
Abstract: The environment problem influences every aspect of the world, economy, agriculture, and politic. This paper will focus the central issue on climate change and American election. To have a study on how the climate change influence American people and government, what’s the voter’s attitude, what are the candidates’ policies, and give some conclusions of my own.
Key words: climate change; American election
The environment problem is more and more serious in today’s world, look at the world outside, we can see the depressing environment: the disappearing forest, the global warming, the destroying disease, and so on. And in these problems, the very thing we pay more attention to is the climate change. We all know that the average temperature in daily life is higher than the past; we notice that the summer is hotter, and winter is also warmer, there is less snow. And just because of this kind of changing, the society has got a great loss, for example, the water problem, the dry land, the destroying agriculture around the world, and so on. Inevitably, the politics is influenced by the climate change; most of the countries pay attention to it, for example, the Kyoto-protocol, the climate change has become a very important issue that every candidate cannot ignores, just as the Australian says, ” climate change is a big problem, ……whoever is in government, they’ve got to address it”[①]
Part Ⅰ
The definition of climate change
Climate change" means a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.[②]
There is overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity—primarily the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation due to agriculture and urbanization—is responsible for a sharp and continuing rise in the concentration of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases in the earth’s atmosphere. The most direct consequence is a rise in average global surface temperatures, which is why the phenomenon is known widely as “global warming” (surface temperatures have already increased worldwide by 0.6 degrees Celsius, or about 1 degree Fahrenheit, since the start of the twentieth century.)[③]
It is a complex system representing cumulative effects of regional or weather patterns. Solar energy is the driving force in the earth’s climate. Although the climate remains fairly stable on the human time scale of decades or centuries, it fluctuates continuously over thousands or million of years and is affected by a large number of variables. There have been perceptible changes in the climate all over the world, particularly in the last two decades or so. Study has shown that human activity may cause large disturbances in regional and global climate. Such disturbances include global warming and acid rain. [④] (chapter 13, page 331)
An overview of the climate change
What is the cause of climate change? Scientist tells us that global climate change is caused by the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the lower atmosphere. The global concentration of these gases is increasing, mainly due to human activities, such as the combustion of fossil fuels (which release carbon dioxide) and deforestation (because forests remove carbon from the atmosphere). The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, has increased by 30 percent since preindustrial times.
Projections of future climate change are derived from global climate model or general circulation model (GCM) experiments. Climatologists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) review the results of these experiments for global and regional assessments. It is estimated that global mean surface temperature will rise by 1.5° to 3.5° C by 2100. This rate of warming is significant. Large changes in precipitation, both increases and decreases, are forecast, largely in the tropics. Climate change is very likely to affect the frequency and intensity of weather events, such as storms and floods, around the world. Climate change will also cause sea level rise due to the thermal expansion of the oceans and the melting of the mountain glaciers. Global mean sea level is anticipated to rise by 15 to 95 centimeters by 2100. Sea level rise will increase vulnerability to coastal flooding and storm surges. The faster the climates change, the greater will be the risk of damage to the environment. Climatic zones (and thus ecosystems and agricultural zones) could shift toward the poles by 150 to 550 kilometers by 2100. Many ecosystems may decline or fragment and individual species may become extinct. The IPCC Second Assessment report concludes that climate change has probably already begun.
Climate changes reflect variations within the Earth's atmosphere, processes in other parts of the Earth such as oceans and ice caps, and the effects of human activity. The external factors that can shape climate are often called climate forcings and include such processes as variations in solar radiation, the Earth’s orbit, and greenhouse gas concentrations. So what are the factors of climate change? It is combined by Variations within the Earth's climate, Glaciations, Ocean variability, and there are some non-climate factors which drive to climate change, the greenhouse gas such as the carbon dioxide, Current studies indicate that radiative forcing by greenhouse gases is the primary cause of global warming. And Plate tectonics, Solar variation, Orbital variations are other factors of the climate change.
The consequence of climate change
We always see climate change as the global warming, but the consequence of climate change is broader than global warming. We can expect that its impacts in many ways, such as the sea lever rise from the melting of polar ice caps; regional changes in precipitation; the disappearance of glaciers from high mountain ranges; the deterioration of coastal reefs; increased frequency of extreme weather events like droughts, floods, and major storms; species migration and extinction; and spatial shifts in the prevalence of disease. However, these impacts are just the natural disasters caused by the climate change, there are other serious consequences, including the impacts on human being’s health, for example, the El Niño Southern Oscillation has been shown to influence inter annual variability in malaria, dengue, and other mosquito-borne diseases, which is a big threaten to human being, and there are also other impacts, such as the impacts on water quality and quantity, on food security, on heat waves and milder winters, on air pollution, and so on.
Actually, environmental change can threaten global, national, and human security, environment and the management and degradation, climate, change, water quality and quantity, and the management and distribution of natural-resource assets (such as oil, forests and minerals). These factors can contribute directly to conflict ,or can be linked to conflict, by exacerbating, other causes such as poverty, migration, small arms, and infections, diseases, for example, experts, predict that climate change will trigger enormous physical and social changes like water shortages, natural disasters, decreased, agricultural productivity, increased rates and scope of infectious diseases, and shifts in human migration; these changes could significantly impact international security by weak states, and increasing humanitarian crises, recourses can also build confidence and contribute to peace through cooperation across lines of tension.[⑤]
Part Ⅱ
The climate change is an emergency to human being
From the paragraphs above, we know that the climate change has so many impacts on human being, including the natural disasters caused by it, the serious diseases it bring with, the water worries, air pollutions which are close to our daily life.
But different people have different opinions on climate change, some people think that climate today is ok, and there is something more emergent to climate change. Many people may now be who recognize that environmental conditions, precipitate or contribute to other conditions-violent conflict, civil unrest, instability, regime or state failure-regularly associate with security, as usually define. They are vastly outnumbered by those who either openly oppose the environment security, linkage or ignore it as irrelevant or inconsequential. Take the Bush government for example, they think that terrorism is a big threaten to America and other countries, and Iraq is an important problem that should be solved right now.
The 2002 white house national security strategy, in 34 pages of text, mentions the world environment in only one short paragraph about U.S trade, negotiations.
In his February 2004 ”worldwide threat briefing” to congress, director of central intelligence George Tenet devoted five pages of testimony each to terrorism，Iraq and proliferation three paragraphs to global narcotics, a paragraph each to population trends, infections, disease, and humanitarian food insecurity, but nothing at all to environmental matters.
The much ballyhooed, future-oriented, hart-Rudman commission, where members extolled their own prescience for adumbrating9/11-type terrorist attack on the united states, gave only the most cursory treatment to 21st-century environmental challenges in its initial lotion can be –and implicitly will be counteracted by economic growth, and the spread of remediation technologies, the commission essentially dismissed the subject with this (dare we say: ideological) statement:” there is disagreement over several major social traumas within 25 years, but the scientific evidence dose not yet weather patterns result from anthropogenic activity as opposed to natural fluctuation .”
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