The Kyoto Protocol

The Kyoto Protocol

Eduardo S. Liersch

University of Phoenix

Subhendu Roy - ECO 370

November 26, 2018

The Kyoto Protocol

Throughout history, climate change has been evident through roughly seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat. Most of these climate changes have been small and attribute to variances in Earth's orbit that change the mount of solar energy. With the end of the last ice age came about the beginning of the modern climate era. This also marks the beginning stages of human civilization on Earth. Global climate change, otherwise known as Global warming, is the trapping of greenhouse gases that collect in the atmosphere and keep the heat trapped in. This is one of the factors that makes Earth's environment livable for the organisms that inhabit it. However, the presence of greenhouse gases significantly increased during the mid-20th century and continues to rise. This rise is largely due to the emittance of fossil fuels from coal, oil, and gas to run vehicles and industries. Global warming has caused observable effects on the environment. Flora and fauna ranges have shifted, plants are flowering sooner, ice on rivers and lakes are breaking up and glaciers have shrunk. "...most of it is extremely likely (greater than 95 percent probability) to be the result of human activity..." (NASA, 2018). Human beings are more than likely the cause, so human beings should be the ones reprimanding the situation.

In the modern world, nothing comes without a cost or some sort of price label put on it. In fact, it is practically impossible to get any major large-scale operation underway without some sort of funding. That is just how the world works now. As with most things nowadays, we must look at the costs versus the benefits to determine if action is necessary, beneficial, and feasible. In fully developed countries, such as The United States, carbon emission levels are far more important than to a country that is in development, such as Bangladesh. This is because developed nations feel more endangered by the carbon emissions than others who are facing greater environmental threats such as air pollution, water pollution, poor sanitation and other local threats to health and safety. So, rightly, most of these developing countries feel that the well-off, developed nations should be the ones financing the mitigation of climate change. "Any action combating global warming will be, intended or not, a foreign aid program" (Schelling, 1997). Though this may be true to start with, the benefits will be accrued through the future generations of developed and developing worlds.

In December of 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, an international conference discussed the risks of climate change extending on the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This international treaty became known as The Kyoto Protocol and was put into action February of 2005. Its goal was to reduce greenhouse gas emissions based on the consensus that global warming was present and more than likely cause by human-made CO2 emissions. Its main application was for six greenhouse