Limiting Temperature

Limiting Temperature

Introduction

The seventeenth annual United Nations Climate Change Conference that is also known as the seventeenth conference of the parties or COP 17, took place in Durban, South Africa in December 2011.

In the past, west has usually shown that giving a price for something now that would prove to be a problem in the future is something that is hard to except (even when the economies of the countries in the west were doing good). So it was much easier for them to simply blame the emerging nations such as china and India in spite of the past inequality of those emissions. But not paying attention to that makes it very easy to wish that these developing nations will start to acknowledge the issue of emissions rises.

On the 11th December, in Durban, many important and crucial steps were brought out in the open and agreed at the United Nations climate convention meeting that also included an agreement to come up with a new and better inclusive treaty and also the establishment of Green Climate Fund.

But the results of this conference in the coastal city of South Africa were some very serious challenges that include working on maintaining the global temperature rise under 2 degrees Celsius in the twenty first century. (Shah, 2012)

Discussion

Scope of the Challenge

We cannot ignore the issue of climate change in our world because it is the most noteworthy threats that we are facing today. According to a study by the American Meteorological society, there is around ninety percent chance that that the global temperature will rise by around 3.5 to 7.4 degrees Celsius, that is 6.3 to 13.3 degrees Fahrenheit in less than a century, with the lands and poles experiencing greater increases. These shifts in the temperature, although seem very minor and harmless, but they can set off major disasters in the form of desertification, increase in sea levels, unfavorable and volatile weather patters, shortage of water etc.

In the November of the year 2011, the International Energy Agency informed that our earth is fast approaching a breaking point in regards to the climate change, and said that the next five years are expected to be very critical for the efforts for greenhouse gas reduction.

One option for us to decrease the emissions would be to stop the use of fossil fuel based power and switch to alternative sources of energy, that is, nuclear, solar and wind. Another option for us is to come up with ways to achieve greater efficiency from our use of energy. We can do that by creating and coming up with new technologies and bringing changes to our everyday routines and behavior so that each of us contributes to produce smaller carbon foot print. This creation of and using of energy efficient technology can help us to reduce green house gas emissions. But all of these solutions of course bring with them major costs and the commencement of financial crisis all over the world has put many limitations on the budgets of both ...