Alejandro Rubinstein-Nadeau
541
Solutions to Climate Change:
Global and Local
If the average person was asked
to name 10 methods of curbing climate change, it seems likely that
they would only name things doable by themselves or others like them:
turning off the lights in unused rooms, carpooling, driving less,
using energy efficient products, etc. How else can a consumer think?
However, the percentage of United States Carbon Dioxide emissions
that are from residences and places of business is a meager ten
percent. So what are the main ways we're generating greenhouse gases?
It must be industrial, right, with the huge amounts of natural gases
superheated into plastics and what not? Wrong. Only 14 percent of
American CO2 emissions are industrial- and although transportation
and electricity are the largest sources of emissions, they each only
represent 31 and 38 percent respectively.
The point is not that we
shouldn't or can't tackle climate change because it's such a
multifaceted issue- just the opposite, in fact. It's that because
climate change exists in so many spheres of the way in which we live
globally, has so many factors, and so many consequences, our efforts
to combat climate change must be equally multifaceted, both
grassroots, targeting residential emissions, and top-down, targeting
industrial, electricity-generating, and transportation climate
change.
We
shouldn't ignore residential emissions just because they are a
smaller
percentage of total Greenhouse Gas emissions, because they are still
emitting significant amounts- for instance, buildings contribute 79
percent of New York's total climate change. Excluding
transportation, the main cause of residential greenhouse gas
emissions lies in the sucking of energy by household appliances,
mainly temperature regulating appliances, exacerbated by badly
constructed buildings with little insulation, single paned windows,
etc. One solution to this is obvious: improving residential (and
other) buildings to be more energy efficient (storm windows,
increased insulation, etc). Although
these are capital heavy investments, according to the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "by
2030, about 30 percent of the projected GHG [Greenhouse Gas]
emissions in the building sector can be avoided with net economic
benefit," meaning that the energy savings exceed the initial
cost.
Another
sphere of climate change solution deals in larger, more capital heavy
solutions. Most of us have heard of CO2 sink solutions, and probably
need not hear about the science of it here. What is important,
however, is the new way in which the United Nations and it's member
states are pursuing these large scale solutions. Using market driven
innovation to their advantages, the United Nations is creating
profit-driven initiatives for businesses to develop solutions,
hopefully catalyzing the deceleration and eventual lowering of
greenhouse gas levels.
Christiana
Figueres, executive secretary of the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change said:
"Businesses must be heard, leveraged and invited to develop
scalable climate change solutions to drive climate action. This can
create the political space for more ambition in the UN climate
process, which as part of a virtuous cycle can in turn catalyze more
business action."
The
third sphere of climate change action is limiting emissions and
rewarding reduced emissions at a governmental level. Unfortunately,
this may be at odds with current corporate practices, and because of
rampant corporate influence in politics, firm political action with
regards to climate change may be slow, or too late, especially in
this country.
"Carbon
Dioxide Emissions." EPA.
Environmental Protection Agency, n.d. Web. 15 Nov. 2013.
<http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/co2.html>.
Biello,
David. "10 Solutions for Climate Change: Scientific American."
www.scientificamerican.com.
Scientific American, n.d. Web. 15 Nov. 2013.
<http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=10-solutions-for-climate-change>.
