From Guest Blogger Kelly Shepherd: Leaving the Paris Agreement–Changing American Views Toward Climate Change
In May 2017, President Trump made an announcement that he would be withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement, an agreement created by the United Nations that deals with climate change. The agreement aims to decrease greenhouse gas emissions and reverse some of the effects of global warming.
Trump’s decision to withdraw from this agreement came as much of a shock to the American people as well as to the UN, as America has largely been seen as an asset to the agreement, being one of the most powerful countries in the world and one of its biggest offenders of greenhouse gases.
Despite the current administration’s decision to end involvement in global warming mitigation, the American people continue to value climate change and the impact it is currently having on our environment. Environmental scientists all over the country are doing what they can to increase awareness of this issue.
Increased Awareness
All over the country, individuals and organizations are making vast changes to policies and volunteer efforts to show the president that we don’t agree with his decision. Not only is climate change increasing the need for sustainability MBA students, it is also increasing the amount of jobs created for the issue like solar energy, alternative resources and many more fields.
People are becoming more and more aware of the impacts of climate change on the environment and are actively working to better it. Contractors and architects are beginning to design green buildings, wind farms are popping up more frequently, and solar energy is being integrated into standard suburban homes.
As the majority continues to recognize the harsh effects climate change has on our environment, the level of environmental awareness grows and society begins to value different things. Instead of running water while we brush, buying veggies from the grocer or simply tossing our old food scraps, we now reuse shower runoff, grow backyard gardens and compost.
Increased Activism
Activists are also starting to have a bigger voice in the environmental issues at hand. Some of the latest examples of this would be the protesting that took place during the Keystone Pipeline accords. Volunteers and activists stood strong on the land to try and stop the construction of the pipeline from destroying native lands.
Currently, individuals are signing petitions to stop the construction of a Starbucks coffee in Yosemite and preserving natural lands. Natural lands help deter the negative effects of climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide as they grow.
When the deadly wildfires in California blazed through hundreds of thousands of acres of national forest, volunteers helped remove debris from waterways to help keep dangerous toxins and chemicals from poisoning the water supply. This kind of activism, these volunteer efforts show a clear change in the American attitude toward climate change.
Increased Attitude
The attitude toward climate change is not only changing, but becoming more powerful. People are not in agreement with the current administration. In fact, some believe this administration should go back to basics and relearn environmentalism, as it appears they have forgotten.
Instead of being a leader in environmental betterment as it should, the United States has chosen to forgo all responsibilities to the Earth and build pipelines that will do no good, walls that will divide natural lands and policies that will stop funding for climate change.
Perhaps it is time that we take a page from a country clearly more adept at deterring global warming. In Germany, some consumers are actually being paid by power companies to use electricity because they have generated too much in their wind farms. How can it be possible that Americans are going into debt from high priced bills, while others are finding themselves closer to financial freedom with each light switch?
The withdrawal from the Paris Agreement did little to stop Americans from believing in and trying to stop global warming. Each day, we continue to push forward in finding the solution for climate change. With or without the support of the Trump administration, Americans will continue to support the effort being made to better the environment.
Kelly thank you for your well-considered and passionate post on the most important topic facing the world to date; greenhouse gasses and their reduction to insignificant levels permanently to forestall catastrophic consequences for all people if we do not collectively rise and solve this issue within the foreseeable future.
True enough there is nothing new in that sentence; every person on the planet over 12 years would by now have a reasonable understanding of the GHG phenomenon I would think. I certainly detect that when lecturing to young students (12 – 16) in rural and remote middle schools about ‘new age technologies that will improve their lives’.
And it’s encouraging to see people like yourself being interested enough to put their thoughts on the subject into print in such a professional way as you have Kelly.
There are many Kelly’s out there thankfully, and I meet them in my professional life everywhere I travel and work; China, India, Bangladesh, Australia, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, USA etc. These are some of the places that I work in regularly in the renewable energy sector.
We all need to value and support every Kelly out there because they represent change, and the GHG crisis unfolding requires change; change via technological solutions not yet mainstream, and that’s why the educated and inquisitive Kelly’s of the world need to get mobilised and start discussing the future in terms of the ‘global development of energy generation technological solutions’ that are ‘not yet main stream’ but importantly are well advanced in their development infancy beyond the theoretical level, that will eliminate GHG issues permanently.
And that’s what is really exciting for near future generations as ‘new era clean, safe, low cost, massive and compact power generation’ will underpin and usher in a new era of opportunity and prosperity and environmental sustainability in all things for all people.
Lastly Kelly, the solutions you are focusing on with absolute sincerity I am sure, are not really solutions at all; they are not the end of the technological road with regards modern energy generation technology that will advance all peoples of the world moving forward. They are merely a panacea with only small scale boutique applications relevance in practice in a rapidly growing and developing world. Many people lose sight of this critical point Kelly and have difficulty visualising a world with double the current population by 2045. It is a major factor relating to ‘new era technologies’ moving forward, particularly energy intensive food and water production and manufacturing technologies to replace traditional agricultural and aquaculture sciences as we now know them.
So my recommendation is to stay nimble and do not blindly consider that ‘what you see and hear at the moment’ is the final word for the future energy generation technology for the world in perpetuity. It is not so.
Better is to remain curious and inquisitive about new age energy generation technologies under development as enduring replacements for fossil fuel generation. Invest in your further education through a variety of ways to remain contemporary in your knowledge on the subject Kelly.
You will impress yourself as you move through the journey of learning on this critical global issue, and come out the other end as an authoritative and objective blogger that both informs and importantly educates others going forward.
All the best as you move forward in your learning.
Lawrence Coomber
Kelly,
Like Lawrence, I congratulate you on your passion and concern for the environment.
When you’re young it’s a time for passion and enthusiasm. The world seems a simple place and problems and solutions obvious and certain.
As people grow older and accept responsibility for other peoples well being and lives, they start to look more deeply into issues and realize most issues are enormously complex.
Solutions once thought so easy and right, seem less so when the enthusiasm is removed and consequences of implementation become more apparent.
I believe it’s important to absorb information from the widest variety of sources available. Sadly, that process may separate you from groups of committed ‘activists’ while making you less certain of the absolute righteousness of belonging to a particular movement or cause.
Reality and passionate idealism need not be opposed, but only if you keep an open mind.
In reality, the Paris Accord was a cynically designed political trap constructed by the Europeans and PRC to gain industrial and trade advantage against the US. Most people have never bothered to read the entire document, so don’t appreciate how careful analysis reveals the document is at best merely symbolic, but potentially disastrous for America.
Only a naive American President would commit his nation to such a flawed agreement. Europe has a long history of ensnaring the English speaking world in such follies.
Likewise, those opposing pipelines achieve nothing except a less efficient and far more harmful method of transporting oil and gas. How the demonstrators who killed and destroyed rare native flora and fauna in sanctuaries, left not only 4000 tons of garbage , including excrement behind, but abandoned 214 bewildered and mistreated ‘pet’ animals, could be said to be beneficial for environment, escapes me !
Germany’s ‘Green Energy’ policy has been a disaster for both Germany and the environment. Germany is now using more coal fired power than in 1965, while energy costs have increased fourfold in the last decade.
Activism can be great, especially when volunteers help clean up natural disasters. Your example of volunteers helping clean debris from rivers etc is very heartening. However, I’m not sure putting your local greengrocer out of business is really helpful, especially at it presupposes everyone enjoys the luxury of having the time and space for a back garden.
It may shock you to learn that only 40 years ago, young activists and scientists were in an absolute panic over imminent “global Cooling”. All the best scientific minds and advocates predicted unless radical social changes were made by 2015 80% of the planet would be too cold for habitation !
Only a few years earlier, the world scientific community along with eager young activists predicted 1977 to be the year the “stork would pass the plow”. By 1990 the consensus opinion was confident world famine would irreversible.
As late as 2010 the theory of ‘peak oil’ was accepted as an absolute certainty by most academics, environmental advocates, scientists even most of the mainstream media.
These predictions all proved absurd, because they were extreme and didn’t take into account rapid advances in technology providing practical, non disruptive solutions.
As Lawrence points out, there are to approaches to environmentalism. The first based on an ideological commitment to an idealistic political doctrine, the second is a commitment to finding practical environmental improvements where all the ramifications have been carefully researched and the logistics of implementation thought through in detail.
Kelly, climate change is inevitable. The planet’s climate is continuously changing. How we manage those changes is what’s important.