Climate Change Policies

Yulissa Montes
University of Texas at El Paso
Professor Ruby Pappoe
RWS 1302
 Abstract
Climate change is a global issue whose effects have been noticed for the past several

decades. Countless Presidents before our current have tried to input resources and implement

policies that would provide research efforts for the cause. The main issue is that today there are

many climate change skeptics, including our own President Donald Trump and his

administration. Because they lack this, they do not want to enact climate change policies and

have indeed backed off the Paris Agreement, an agreement between 132 countries vowing that

the best efforts would be put in for clean air. Since we are seeing President Trump wish to get rid

of these policies that work to slow down the effects of climate changes, we wish to analyze the

impact this would have on our daily and future lives. We will start by defining climate change,

what exactly it is and how does it affect us. Then we will discuss why populations tend to deny

the issue. Then to the main issue at hand that needs to be addressed, climate change policies and

their impact and role at slowing down evident effects of climate change.

Importance of Advocating for Climate Change Policies: A Review of Literature

The issue of climate change has been around since the start of the industrial era. The

emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere has caused major issues in our environment

such as climate changes. The advocacy for this issue began when President Richard Nixon

addressed the issue of acid rain and the greenhouse effect in 1969. This then began several

conferences lead by the United Nations, who got countries to put in resources into researching

the greenhouse effect. However, these efforts are not taken seriously in todays society. There

are so many climate change skeptics, even our current United States President Trump believes it

is a hoax created by the Chinese. The issue with this is that now no one really believes the issue

of climate change is actually occurring or is even serious enough to take a stance on

immediately. This can be dangerous because the effects of climate change are happening now

and will only get worse throughout the years if nothing is done about it. The following questions

will help discuss what exactly is climate change and the major issues with climate change in

todays society:

1. What exactly is climate change, how exactly is it affecting our daily and future
lives?
2. What exactly causes the majority of the population to neglect the issue of climate
change?
3. What happens if no major policies are enacted to decrease the negative effects of
climate change?
4. Why is climate change an important issue to address right now?
These research questions and primary research will help narrow the paper into a more in depth

understanding as to why climate change issues are seen the way they are today as well as the

inevitable facts that will happen if no major policies are enacted. The limitations are that the

study mentioned for the primary research is only focused on data collected in Romania.

What exactly is climate change, how exactly is it affecting our daily and future lives?
As mentioned before, the effects of climate change have been around since the industrial

era began and greenhouse gasses were beginning to be emitted into our atmosphere. However, it

wasnt until the middle of the 20th century that the effects were noticed. The Nixon

administration began to enact a policy to input research efforts into discovering new methods of

slowing down the effects. This brings us to our first point, what is climate change? How is it

affecting our daily and future lives? According to author, Amanda MacMillan writing for the

National Resource Defense Council (NRDC), climate change can occur when carbon dioxide

(CO2) is emitted into the atmosphere along with other air pollutants, this causes these harmful

gases to become trapped in our atmosphere. Because of this, these gases absorb radiation and
sunlight that was originally to be bounced off the Earths surface causing them to trap this heat

making the planet to become hotter (MacMillan, 2016). This phenomenon is defined to be the

greenhouse effect.

The global effects of this climate change have been noted for the past decades. A study,

conducted by Lonnie Thompson and her associates, came to show the effect it had on ice caps

and glaciers in the Andes, the Himalayas and on Mount Kilimanjaro. The research conducted by

Thompson (2010) concluded the following:

The ongoing widespread melting of high-elevation glaciers and ice caps, particularly in
low to middle latitudes, provides some of the strongest evidence to date that a large-scale,
pervasive, and, in some cases, rapid change in Earth's climate system is underway

She comes to an overall keen conclusion that because glaciers and ice caps are melting, sea

levels are rising. If earth loses 8% of its ice caps then the sea levels will rise drastically causing

coastal cities to become fully submerged (Thompson, 2010). She then ends her paper by arguing

that climate change is something that is rapidly occurring and the only way to stop it is for

mitigation to occur amongst our communities.

What exactly causes the majority of the population to neglect the issue of climate change?

Technology has a massive impact on our daily lives, our perspectives are altered through

how the media perceives a certain issue or topic of choice. Because of this, the issue of climate

change is neglected by the majority of the population. The argument behind this is, public

confusion is exacerbated by reporters who misunderstood the basic scientific principles of

climate change (Antilla, 2005). Researcher Liisa Antilla discusses in her paper research

conducted on perspectives of climate change put on by the media throughout the course of a full

year. It consists of a two-part study, the first part analyzing media tactics to try and portray the
issue of climate change a particular way, the author here analyzes several articles. The second

part of the study analyzes the rhetorical aspects of articles who promote climate change

skepticism. She also mentions in her paper that large corporations also use media to portray a

false image to the public in order to benefit their profits, a number of large corporations that

profit substantially from fossil fuel consumption, such as ExxonMobil, provide financial support

to their political allies in an effort to undermine public trust in climate science (Antilla, 2005).

At the end of the study an overall consensus is reached, the media influences much of what the

public perspective is on climate change, because of this there are a lot of articles who wrongly

frame climate change.

While the media can be overlooked as a possible explanation as to why individuals lack

to support climate change policies, an insightful perspective is given by scientist, Ajay Singh.

Singh argues that the underlying reason for this is due to the idea of perceived distance. Singh

(2017) discusses the idea of perceived distance:

Psychological distance is measured in four dimensions: hypothetically or the likelihood

of an event occurring (with unlikely events being more psychologically
distant), temporal or when an event is occurring (with events in the past or future being
more distant), social or who the event will be experienced by (with dissimilar people
being more distant), and spatial or the physical distance an event will take place (with
geographically distant places being more psychologically distant).
In the paper, it is discussed that this idea contributes a lot to why individuals are not supportive

or advocative for climate change policies, they simply do not perceive it as something that is

currently occurring. To them it is something that is not taking place right now, or it is not as

serious as people make it out to be. This can be due to the explanation discussed before, the way

media perceives the issue.

What happens if no major policies are enacted to decrease the negative effects of climate
change?
 Polices enacted by government officials have a massive impact on both our daily and

future lives. Because President Trump thinks climate change is a hoax created by the Chinese, he

wishes to retreat from policies dealing with inputting research efforts into decreasing the effects

of climate change. This can be a very harmful move due to the fact that if nothing about climate

change effects is done, then they will only progressively worsen. James E. Hansen, a scientist

who has over 39 years of experience working for NASA, wrote a paper on his personal opinion

on this issue. Hansen discusses how we can still avoid dangerous human made climate change

but we are not on the right path for doing so. He states that we are near a tipping point, a point of

no return, where no matter what we do to try and change the effects of climate change nothing

will change and the effects will become irreversible. He mentions how if no major policies are

enacted to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions by the two major sources of CO2 emitters,

vehicles and power plants, then reaching the tipping point would near. He goes on by discussing

the negative effects that will be seen if nothing major is done to change the route in which

climate change is taking, further warming of more than 1 degree Celsius will make the earth

warmer than it has been in a million years. CO2 emissions continuing to increase approximately 2

percent annually for several more decades, yield additional warming of 2 o3 degrees Celsius and

imply changes that constitute a different planet (Hansen, 2006).

Essentially if no major policies are enacted the effects will only worsen. However there

are methods that can be applied throughout communities in order to progress as a society and

lessen the effects of climate change. The document inserted before, created by an organization

who promotes climate change policies in Turkey, came up with a mitigation chart. The chart

shows how we as a society can mitigate all together in order to reduce the effects of climate

change. The main idea it promotes are examples of key important components of greenhouse
reduction policies, and how by enacting these policies the carbon dioxide emitted into the air will

decrease a significant amount throughout the years.

Source: (UNFCCC, 2004)

Why is climate change an important issue to address right now?

Based on the previous research questions, a more in depth research was obtained to

emphasize the importance and significance of advocating for climate change policies. Associate

Professor Dr. Daniela Burghila and her graduate students wrote a research paper on foreseen

climate change effects. She discusses the causes for climate change effects, she provides research

on all of the data obtained throughout the past decades, she really emphasizes the ladder effects

of the issue at hand.

 Burgila provides several

graphs containing essential data

providing evidence that climate

change is an actually occurring and

not a hoax. In the figure discussing

the difference in temperature

Source: (Burghila, 2015) throughout the previous century,

there is a significant difference. This evidence shows that after the 1950s the difference began to

rise significantly throughout the years. This also proves that industrialization and massive

burning of fossil fuels is what causes these climate changes. Because there is such a difference

there are a lot of natural disasters that have happened since then, mainly including droughts and

heat waves.

Providing data from the figure, it is evident that the United States is one of the worlds

leaders in carbon dioxide emission. Since the emissions began to decrease after 1990 and have

remained stagnant since, this suggests that major policies need to be enacted in order to decrease

emissions even more. It is evident that polices do make a major difference, since one of the first

climate change policies was incorporated during the Nixon presidency.

Source: (Burghila, 2015)

Methods and Participants

Burghila did not really have participants, she merely obtained data through various

records and machinery implemented today and through past decades. She obtains data from

various observatories in Romania all in regards to the amount of carbon dioxide being emitted

into the atmosphere. Burghila argues that urbanization and industrialization lead to chaotic

consumption, massive pollution, natural disasters and an irreversible imbalance of Earths

system. She is effective in providing various resources and evidence all supporting her claims

that greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere have cause climate change that has affected

everything in our environment, from heat waves to the melting of ice caps.

Study Limitations and Benefits

The study performed by Burghila was limited to data obtained from Romania, and only

focused on the previous effects of climate change. It only suggested of the effects that could

come if there was nothing done about carbon dioxide emissions. Overall, she only suggested that
in order to obtain better data today there are technologies that record climate change data more

effectively than machines that would five years ago. It did not really answer what would happen

if no major policies were enacted, the data provided only suggested that carbon dioxide emission

would continue to rise.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this literature review has analyzed statistics, data, and information that

answer questions regarding why climate change policies are important to advocate. Although the

media and major corporations make it seem that climate change is not an important issue to

address since according to them it is not rapidly occurring, we must remember that it is. We must

remember that we must perform our own research and figure out for ourselves that climate

change is rapidly occurring and that the effects can be seen today. Over the past several decades

carbon dioxide emission has gone up significantly, as well as the difference between

temperatures, this suggests that without major climate change policies the effects seen today will

only worsen. Advocacy for climate change policies is more important now than ever because

even our own United States President believes it is a hoax and has backed away from pursuing

climate change policies. Only we can make a change by mitigation techniques and advocacy for

climate change policies to decrease the effects. After all, this is the planet we live in, we must

look out for the future generations and keep this planet clean.
References
Antilla, L. (2005, December). Climate of scepticism: US newspaper coverage of the science of
climate change. Global Environmental Change, 15(4), 338-356.
Burghila, D. (2015). Climate Change Effects- Where to Next? Agriculture and Agricultural
Science Procedia, 6, 405-412.
Hansen, J. E. (2006). Can We Still Dangerous Human-Made Climate Change? Social Research,
73(3), 949-974.
MacMillan, A. (2016, March 11). Global Warming 101. Retrieved from NRDC:
https://www.nrdc.org/stories/global-warming-
101?gclid=Cj0KEQjw4cLKBRCZmNTvyovvj-
4BEiQAl_sgQt8CBeLiAu48CgAjzcLHCm_Bt0mNG9WM5RUOgUd0ZVYaAvc38P8H
AQ
Singh, A. S. (2017, July). Environmental Science & Policy. The perceived psychological
distance of climate change impacts and its influence on support for adaptation policy, 73,
93-99.
Thompson, L. G. (2010). Climate Change: The Evidence and Our Options. The Behavioral
Analyst, 153-170.
UNFCCC. (2004, January 13). Mitigation of Climate Chage. Retrieved from The First Ten
Years: http://www.keneamazon.net/Documents/Publications/Virtual-
Library/Mitigacion/28.pdf