GLOBAL WARMING

Global Warming

Global Warming

In the 21st century, global warming is of crucial importance for countries all over the world. A spot near the equator in Brazil, approximately halfway between the North and South Poles, has been used to illustrate the extent of environmental damage caused by civilization (Williams, 2006). Clouds of smoke hover over the rainforests that are so crucial to the ecological balance of the planet because of the oxygen that they generate. Parts of the rainforests have been burned to make way for factories, fast food restaurants, and other signs of civilization, even though the plants, birds, and animals found in the rainforests can never be replaced. Even the most isolated parts of the world suffer from some of the effects of global warming because of water and air pollution, illegal waste disposal, oil spills, and acid rains that migrate from more civilized areas (Singer, 2007).

In 2001, scientists reported that the snows of Kilimanjaro (the highest mountain in Africa) which were made famous in 1952 through a short story by (Archer, 2007), were in danger of melting away by 2016. Glaciers in the Bolivian Alps were expected to suffer a similar fate by 2011. In 2002, scientists reported that a 5.4-degree rise in Alaska's temperature over the previous 10 years had resulted in irreversible changes in Alaska that were causing melting permafrosts, sagging roads, and dying forests. Some people believe that the changes in Alaska's environment can be traced to the 1970s when Alaska was opened up for oil exploration, allowing boreholes to be drilled in the frozen earth (Oreskes, 2008).

Scientists announced in September 2003 that a huge ice shelf in the Arctic Ocean, known as the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, was breaking up after three thousand years, giving eerie credence to the threat of global warming (Kok, 2008).

In 1988 in Toronto, Canada, the World Meteorological Association Organization and the United Nations Environment Program established the Panel on Climate Change to examine the affects of global warming on the nations of the world. As a result of the panel's work, 176 countries participated in a worldwide conference on global warming in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan. The Kyoto Conference produced the Kyoto Protocol in which each participating country agreed to set targets for reductions in the emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants that contribute to the greenhouse effect and established a timeline that individual countries must meet (Fisher, 2006).

Industrial nations that bear the most responsibility for environmental pollution were required to initiate changes more quickly than were developing nations that produce less pollution. The Kyoto Protocol also established so-called credits that could be earned by countries with low levels of emission. The credits could then be sold or traded to industrial nations to offset their excessive emissions of polluting gases.

President Bill Clinton signed the Kyoto Protocol on November 12, 1998, pledging that the United States would reduce carbon emissions by 7 percent below the 1990 levels by 2012 and sent the Comprehensive Electricity Competition Act to Congress (Firor, ...