A Story Behind Global Warming

    Global Warming

    Global Warming* is a phenomenon involving in the increase in global-average temperature. It is one of the greatest problems which directly and indirectly affects natural balance of environment and living on earth. There are several consequences resulting from global warming. The changes in climate, the melting of ice over the Arctic and Antarctic regions, the increase of sea levels, and the unusual phenomena are examples of consequences caused by global warming. These consequences affect our existence and survival.

    *In this article, we use the term "global warming" and "climate change" interchangeably. In scientific context, climate change has broader meaning: the changes in climate characteristics. The earth's average temperature change, the flow of ocean current that causes the decrease and increase of temperate in some areas, rainfall, and snow falling are examples of climate change. Global warming has more specific meaning in which the temperature increases over the time (Boykoff,2007).

    Climate Change Movement

    There are numerous examples of climate change movement. For instance, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) was found in 1988 to "provide the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of knowledge in climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic impacts" ('IPCC, 2012). This organization does not itself carry out any research nor monitor climate change data. It assesses and reviews scientific information from published climate change literature. The IPCC has three working groups. Working group I responses to climate system and climate change assessment. Working group II assesses the vulnerability of economy and natural system to climate changes, negative and positive consequences, and adaptation options. Lastly, Working group III assesses alternatives for mitigating climate change through limiting or preventing greenhouse gas emissions.

    Another example of climate change movement is the establishment of Kyoto Protocol. In order to maintain the concentration of greenhouse gas emission to a safe level, Kyoto Protocol, to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), had been established since 11 December 1997 (UNFCCC, 2012b). There are three parties participating in this convention. The first party is Annex I countries. They are developed countries which respond to the reduction of gas emission according to their mutual agreement. For instance, one agreement was setup to reduce the greenhouse gas release by 5% in 2008 to 2012 period. The second party is Annex II countries. The countries in this party are responsible for providing financial resources to developing countries in coping with the gas releases and climate change. The last party is Non-Annex countries which are developing countries that are required to cooperate and answer what insurance and technological transfer they need to handle the gas emission and the climate change (UNFCCC, 2012a). The coordination of these parties aims to tackle the climate change by stabilizing amount of gas release over the world.

    As the climate change is one of the most serious issues, governments in many countries have regarded and put effort to launch campaigns and enact legislation to mitigate this problem. However, this effort does not seem to be successful. To illustrate, in United Kingdom, the government attempted to promote low carbon behaviors by launching campaigns to foster population's attitudes to be "greener". Some examples of the campaigns are "Are You Doing Your Bit?" and "UK Energy Saving Trust's". At beginning, the campaigns may have raised awareness about being greener for few year. In long period, they were not able to extensively foster a greater amount of people to take part in the campaigns. Thus, it is not an effective approach in changing people's behaviors (Ockwell et al., 2009). The reasons are that, psychologically, people does not act in the way they feel (Lorenzoni et al., 2007; Whitmarsh, 2008, as cited in Ockwell et al., 2009). While some people participate the campaigns, other people may consider it is difficult to do and is not acquaint with their lifestyles and what they used to do. Additionally, many people just ignored because they consider it is wasted of time whereas the majority of people do nothing. Also, they regard that the government should be the only one who takes responsibility on it (Lorenzoni et al., 2007; Whitmarsh, 2008, as cited in Ockwell et al., 2009). Consequently, these campaigns are not sufficiently effective to tackle the climate change problem.

    Why the government does not successfully enact legislation if the voluntary campaigns cannot be relied on? Carter and Ockwell (2007) illustrated that a primary barrier to the introduction of climate change legislation is that, government fears to negative public responses. Mostly, environmental policy is usually involved in regulation or taxation. As the environmental issue is broadly regarded as "unpopular" by public, difficulty is put to government when it rarely becomes possible to convince people to sacrifice themselves for those have not born yet. The introduction even becomes harder as only a few groups of countries follow the regulation but other people just take it for granted. A clear example that fears the government is a fuel protest by UK drivers in 2000. It deeply scares the government as it brought the country to halt. The protesters blockaded fuel depots and pressed the government to remove a fuel tax which highly increases every year (Carter and Ockwell, 2007). Additionally, the problem of taxation is, once it is canceled, humans will revert behaviors to their old behaviors --- as no regulation remained to be concerned. Another barrier is, there are other higher prioritized issues that government should be more concerned of. Rather than environmental issue, the government still needs to improve quality of life, health, education, and social security, and other higher prioritized issues. For this reason, budget for environmental issue remains small. Furthermore, the mismatch between time frame of environmental issue that lasts for many decades and the electoral cycle which is only a few years, leads to the failure of the legislation introduction (Ockwell et al., 2009). However, in 2008, the UK government attempted to launch a national climate change policy, UK Climate Change Act 2008, to legally bind targets for reducing the amount of greenhouse gas release. The policy aims to reduce the gas emission at least 34% by 2020 and 80% by 2050 (Parliament, 2008). Public widely complained about this regulation.

    Climate change movement also occurs in the United States. Brulle et al. (2012) analyzed surveys collected over a 9-year period, from 2002-2010, to find influential factors that change the level of public concern toward climate change. Brulle et al. (2012) mentioned that public concern about climate change has broadly varied for a few decades. For instance, the percentage of public response in the United States fluctuates during 2004 to 2010. In 2004, 26% of participants considered they worried about the issue. By 2007, the percentage had increase to 41% before dropping to 28% in 2010. The researchers found that participants are likely to respond the survey questions based on the recent information they receive. Thereby, information from political entities also play significant roles in participants' responses. In addition, public concern does not rely on scientific articles since general people rarely read them. Instead, popular magazines about climate change gain more interests (Brulle et al, 2012).

    One of the most critical climate movement in the United States is the decision of the president George W. Bush. In 2001, the president publicly proclaimed his stance not to support the Kyoto Protocol convention. This rejection turns out a complex, sensational, topics in US press and media (Boykoff and Boykoff, 2007). Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, said that it was wrong for the United States not coordinating the protocol and not helping combat climate change issue in which economic growth and environmental awareness can coexist” (Alvarez, 2003, as cited in Brechin, 2003).

    Like in the United Kingdom, methodology to mitigate climate change in the United States also encounters barriers. Betsill (2001) studied the obstacles to climate change mitigation based on the Cities for Climate Change Protection (CCP) campaign. There are three main barriers. First, the bureaucratic structure is not well managed for handling climate change policy. City governments are mostly divided into specialized departments where officers focus on their narrow works. Job functions are infrequently related to each other so that this structure lacks of interaction with people in other departments. On the contrary, the climate change mitigation requires the coordination of individuals in planning, controlling gas emission, and managing quality. Second, not all local cities have administrative capacity to develop local policy. Additionally, persons working in climate change mitigation need to be specialized in collecting and analyzing data related to gas emission. Thereby, it is difficult to assign this overloaded work to existing officials and therefore new job positions are required. The last barrier is budget allocation. It is also a tremendous obstacle. Due to the large amount of significant cost, several cities are not willing to invest financial resource for controlling gas emission (Betsill, 2001). This conforms to the United Kingdom government's perspective as the most important thing should be placed in the front row.

    As aforementioned, climate change is a serious issue that organizations, governments, and individuals have been paying attention to. However, not all people agree that global warming exists. Hulme (2009) disagreed to the existence of global warming. He explained that climate change is "an environmental, cultural and political phenomenon which is re-shaping the way we think about ourselves, our societies and humanity's place on Earth". Moreover, in a recent study by Leiserowitz et al. (2012), 1061 American adults aged 18 and older were asked questions regarding climate change. The study concluded that from 2010 to 2012, the number of Americans believing in existence of global warming increases by 13%, from 57% in January 2010 to 70% in September 2012. At the same time, the proportion of those who do not believe has declined nearly 50%. Leiserowitz et al. (2012) also found that this high proportion is liable due to the awareness of recent phenomena, including heat waves, widespread drought, floods, wildfires, and violent storms. This result conforms to the work of Brulle et al. (2012) which presented that public is likely to respond the survey questions based on the recent information they received. Although the percent of people agreeing the existence of climate change is greater than those who disagree, this study demonstrates that people view the existence of climate change in different angles.

    In an online discussion forum, Debate (2013), under a popular discussed topic "Is global climate change man-made?'' people controversially expressed their sentiments and opinions in positive and negative ways about global warming. For example, one of them thinks that global warming does not really exist. Instead, plant decay over the world emits carbon dioxide so it is a primary cause of global warming. Other people said that it is just government's imposture so they can easily control and regulate everything residents will do. In addition, many of them also believe that scientists are claiming that global warming certainly exists as they want to get money for their jobs. Actually, the world's temperature fluctuates -- they believe. Global climate change, both warming and cooling, has existed for centuries. Thus, global warming does not certainly exist. In another angle, some people contrarily believe in the existence of global warming. They give examples of scientific research and facts to support their stance. They mentioned that as the world becomes industrialized, people are consuming more and more natural resources. The burning of petroleum and gas produces carbon dioxide which is the predominant cause for climate change. Additionally, deforestation also affects the climate change - there is no tree to help remove carbon dioxide in the air. Without using other alternative energy sources and reforestation, the climate change will be getting worse.

    References

    Betsill, M. M. (2001). Mitigating climate change in us cities: Opportunities and obstacles. Local Environment, 6(4):393406.

    Boykoff, M. T. and Boykoff, J. M. (2007). Climate change and journalistic norms: A case-study of US mass-media coverage. Geoforum, 38(6):1190 1204. Theme Issue: Geographies of Generosity.

    Brechin, S. R. (2003). Comparative public opinion and knowledge on global cli- matic change and the Kyoto Protocol: the US versus the world? International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 23:106134.

    Brulle, R. J., Carmichael, J., and Jenkins, J. C. (2012). Shifting public opinion on climate change : an empirical assessment of factors influencing concern over climate change in the U . S ., 2002 2010. pages 169188.

    Carter, N. and Ockwell, D. (2007). New Labour , New Environment ? An Anal- ysis of the Labour Government ? s Policy on Climate Change and Biodiversity Loss. (July):1

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    Debate (2013). Is global climate change man-made? http://www.debate.org/ opinions/is-global-climate-change-man-made.

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    IPCC (2012). Organization. http://www.ipcc.ch/organization/ organization.shtml.

    Leiserowitz, A., Maibach, E., Roser-Renouf, C., Feinberg, G., and Peter, H. (2012). Climate change in the american mind: Americans global warm- ing beliefs and attitudes in september 2012. Yale University and George Mason University. New Have: CT. Yale Project on Climate Change. Avail- able at:http://environment.yale.edu/climate/files/Climate-Beliefs-September- 2012.pdf.

    Lorenzoni et al., 2007; Whitmarsh, 2008, as cited in Ockwell et al., 2009)

    Ockwell, D., Whitmarsh, L., and O?Neill, S. (2009). Reorienting Climate Change Communication for Effective Mitigation. Science Communication, 30(3):305 327.

    Parliament, U. (2008). UK Climate Change Act 2008.

    UNFCCC (2012a). Parties & Observers. http://unfccc.int/parties and observers/items/2704.php.

    UNFCCC (2012b). Status of Ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. http://unfccc.int/kyoto protocol/status of ratification/items/2613.php.


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