|
||||||||
|
Abstract This case explores some of the key issues in understanding the human aspects of global warming and what can be done about it. It presents global warming as largely the result of globalization and industrialization, in which the advanced industrial economies – and particularly the United States – are responsible for much of the problem; yet it acknowledges that as the rest of the world rapidly industrializes, the problem will become more acute and potentially catastrophic. The case exercise assigns four roles to explore this issue: the National Association of Manufacturers, representing U.S. Business Interests; the AFL-CIO, representing the interests of organized labor; the Bush Administration, representing the U.S. government; and Greenpeace, representing the environmental community. Through role-playing, students will learn about the key technical, economic, and political issues and tradeoffs, as they seek to come up with a compromise solution that has some possibility of being acceptable to all parties. Global Climate Change and What Can Be Done About It Printable format (Adobe PDF) Introduction: The Issue Globalization has taken its toll on the planetary environment. As every country on the planet becomes part of a single global economy, global industrialization requires vastly increased amounts of the planet’s limited resources. Much of the problem lies with the world’s high-income industrial nations, which – despite having far fewer people – contribute the most to global environmental damage, since they use (and waste) by far the largest share of global energy. People who live in high-income countries are energy hogs, consuming 41 times as much energy per person as people who live in low-income countries, and 3 times as much as people living in middle-income countries, as the following table and figure illustrate: Differences in Energy Consumption (pounds of oil equivalent): Low-, Middle-, and High-Income Countries (Excluding China and India) Income Level Low Middle High Per-person energy consumption, 1980 251 3,389 10,238 Per-person energy consumption, 1994 295 3,252 11,167 Avg. annual pct, growth per-person Energy consumption, 1980-1994 - 2.3% -1.7% 1.9%
The United States is one of the world’s worst offenders in terms of global pollution. With only 4 percent of the world’s population, the U.S. contributes 25 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide). The United States, for example, today wastes more energy than it consumed a mere thirty years ago; today more energy leaves smokestacks and tailpipes than was needed to power factories and automobiles in the 1960s.
As they attempt to industrialize through their participation in the global economy, the poor nations of the world will likely join the wealthy ones in inflicting major damage to planetary ecology. To meet the growing needs of the world’s people, global industrial output would have to increase some five times over present levels. Although global population has slowed somewhat, total population is predicted to nearly double over the next half century. Just three countries (China, India, and Brazil) today account for more than two out of every five people on the planet. If they industrialize using the same technologies in use in the industrial nations today, significant environmental damage will result. And indeed they have every intention of industrializing – and every right to do so. Within the next decade, a billion new jobs will be needed in the world’s low-income countries just to feed their growing populations. If present trends continue, these jobs will likely involve the massive movement of people off of farms and intro cities, where they will labor in factories that do not utilize environmentally sensitive technologies (indeed, one of the reasons that globalization of production is occurring is to enable manufacturers in advanced industrial nations to take advantage of the lowered environmental standards and lax enforcement in poor nations). Forests will be converted to farmland and pasture, to be used for commercial export-oriented production. Consider, for example, the problem of deforestation. Almost half of the forests that originally covered the earth have been cleared or degraded. According to a 1990 study by the World Resources Institute and the United Nations, 40-50 million acres of tropical forest are lost each year, approximately 100 acres per minute – an area equivalent in size to the state of Washington each year. The remaining large tracts of ecologically intact forest (mainly in Amazonia, Central Africa, Canada, and Russia) are valuable for many reasons: they are home to indigenous cultures, they provide global biodiversity (including vast untapped pharmaceuticals), they store carbon and emit oxygen, and for many people they satisfy spiritual needs. Nearly two-fifths of the remaining frontier forest is threatened by logging, mining, and other large-scale development projects. Many scientists argue that the release of carbon dioxide and other industrial and agricultural gases contributes to a greenhouse effect, forming a layer of gases in the upper atmosphere which traps heat at the planet's surface that otherwise would be reflected off into space. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is known to have increased 25 percent in the last hundred years, due to increasing burning of fossil fuel, deforestation, and pollution. It will have doubled by 2030, at present rates of increase. By geologic standards this is an enormous change in a very short period of time. By using core drillings of the polar ice caps, scientists have determined that the increase in carbon dioxide during the past century dwarfs any previous increased over the past 150,000 years, both in terms of magnitude and rate. Scientists now uniformly agree that this is resulting in global warming, and recently have predicted an average rise in planetary temperatures by 10.5 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century, far higher than previously thought. This increase is due entirely to human activity, and will likely have catastrophic environmental effects.
source: U.S. Global Change Research Program ) Another critical environmental problem that results from industrialization and urbanization is the depletion of the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere. Ozone depletion results from chemicals containing chlorine, such the chlorofluorocarbons (CFC’s) used in industrial solvents, dry cleaning, air conditioners, and refrigerators. A major ozone “hole” has appeared in the south polar region. Even though the industrialized nations have agreed to strict limits on CFC use (production declined by nearly half between 1988 and 1991), ozone depletion is expected to continue into the next century, because CFC’s take many years to reach the upper atmosphere where they do their damage. The Rio Conference 170 nations gathered at the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, focusing on the interconnection between environmental destruction, industrialization, and poverty. Low-income countries forced a discussion on the tradeoff between the environment and development, pointing out the inequity that occurs when countries who have already achieved a relatively high standard of living suddenly call on those who have not to tighten their belts and do with less for the sake of environmental protection. High-income countries sought international environmental standards, including a biological diversity treaty that would limit rainforest destruction, whaling, oceanic pollution, and species extinction. Global population control was also a high priority. Low-income countries, in exchange, sought a global climate treaty that would cut back carbon dioxide emissions, stabilizing at 1990 levels by the year 2000. They requested that programs for sustainable development be financed out of a $125 billion “green fund,” controlled by the low-income nations, into which the wealthy nations would each contribute one percent of their wealth to be used in support of sustainable development projects. The low-income countries also demanded that part of their debt to the wealthy nations be forgiven, on the grounds that sustainable development is not possible as long as the poor nations are forced to log their forests and exploit their natural resources simply to pay the interest on their loans. In short, the low-income countries seemed to be saying that if they are to accept global environmental standards that might restrict their economic development, the high-income countries must help pay the price. The industrial nations balked at some of these demands, fearful of placing too many restrictions on private businesses. The low-income nations, in return, refused to limit their ability to exploit their resources. While the Rio conference focused global attention on the interconnections between economic development, poverty, and environmental destruction, it also demonstrated that much more cooperation between wealthy and poor nations is required before these problems can be seriously addressed. The Kyoto Conference Five years after Rio, 170 nations gathered in Kyoto to continue the discussion, and develop measurable standards for coping with the world’s environmental problems. After much debate and discussion, the world’s industrial nations agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions an average of 5.2 percent by 2012, based on 1990 levels. The European Union, in which socialist and green parties, as well as environmental groups, have strong political influence, originally argued for a 15 percent reduction, but under pressure from the United States significantly lowered its target. The United States, the world’s largest contributor of greenhouse gases, fought for lower standards, but – under pressure from the European Union – eventually agreed to a 7 percent reduction. The European Union agreed to 8 percent. A number of issues were left unresolved at Kyoto, however. Little agreement was found on the matter of “pollution credits” – the right of countries to “earn” the right to increased at home pollution through presumably offsetting actions (for example, investing in clear air projects in other countries, or buying credits from other countries that had exceeded their pollution objectives). Especially controversial was the matter of “sequestration,” a policy championed by the United States under which countries would get credit for “carbon sinks” created by their forests and farmland, which “sequestered” carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The United States initially sought to meet half of its pollution goals in this fashion, although eventually agreed to reduce its sequestration demands by three-quarters. Kyoto failed to agree on a requirement for developing nations to reduce or make any commitments concerning their emission levels. Finally, the demands for a Green Fund and debt forgiveness, important to low-income countries, remained unanswered. The United States signed the Kyoto agreement, although the U.S. Senate never ratified it. The Hague Conference and Its Aftermath In fall 2000, the countries that had participated in Rio and Kyoto came together in the Hague (Netherlands), for the purpose of translating the Kyoto accords into a detailed, enforceable treaty. They were unsuccessful. The compromise proposal over sequestration proved unacceptable, as did such issues as the Green Fund and debt forgiveness. Another meeting was scheduled for May 2001. In late March 2001, however, the newly elected U.S. President George W. Bush reversed himself on a campaign pledge to support the reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, explaining that he now realized that carbon dioxide was not a pollutant. President Bush announced that the mandatory 7 percent reduction in greenhouse gases, agreed to by the United States in Kyoto, was now “off the table.” Citing concerns about rising natural gas prices and power shortages in the western states, Bush stated flatly that “We will not do anything that harms our economy.” The U.S. reversal appeared to undermine any possibility of an agreement on global environmental problems, and was especially distressing to the European Union members who had fought hard at Kyoto for a compromise agreement. Public Opinion Public opinion polls clearly show widespread support in the United States for ecologically sound policies. For example, a national survey of more than 1,800 randomly selected adults, conducted by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) in October 1999, found that three-quarters of all Americans agreed with the statement, “countries should be able to restrict the import of products if they are produced in a way that damages the environment, because protecting the environment is at least as important as trade.” The Scenario You are a representative at the May 2003 international conference on the environment, held in Beijing, China. The first two follow-up conferences to the Hague were failures: no agreements were reached, and the United States was unwilling to change its position. Since that time the United States has been in a mild recession, and a slight Democratic majority has been elected to both houses of Congress. Socialist and Green parties remain the dominant influence in European politics, as the European economy has rebounded. China has been admitted to the World Trade organization, over the opposition of organized labor in the United States. The summer of 2001 was the hottest in memory, while the winter of 2001-2 was the coldest. Your Charge To come up with a mutually acceptable agreement on the global environment – one that stands a chance of being ratified by the world’s leading governments, including the United States. YOU ARE A REPRESENTATIVE OF ONE OF THE FOLLOWING ORGANIZATIONS: The National Association of Manufacturers: You are the head of the delegation of the NAM, which strongly opposes the Kyoto treaty on the grounds that it will hamper American businesses. According to the NAM, “Under the ill-advised Kyoto accord, the United States and other industrial nations must reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by an average of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels, or 30 percent below 2010 emissions projections, between 2008 and 2012. The recent surge in prices for oil and natural gas, and the net loss in the manufacturing sector of 200,000 jobs in August and September, are clear warnings of the potential cost of the Protocol. Past estimates predict it could cost the American economy nearly $300 billion a year and eliminate 2.5 million jobs by 2010….The NAM continues to urge the Administration and Congress to reject the Kyoto Protocol in favor of voluntary, cost-effective and flexible climate-change policies.” (http://www.nam.org/tertiary_search.asp?TrackID=&DocumentID=22174) The AFL-CIO: You head the delegation of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations, which comprises most U.S. labor unions. The AFL-CIO’s membership has been declining for years. The organization represents tens of millions of American workers, and its primary concern is to make certain that workers get a fair deal out of any agreement that is struck. The AFL-CIO’s is committed to addressing “the complex issue of global climate change;” its stated objectives include “assuring global environmental repair of the carbon dioxide concentration problem with the formal participation of the entire international community committed to a mutually agreed upon, binding solution.” Yet at the same time the AFL-CIO wishes to protect “the industrial base of the United States with no movement of jobs or pollution to other countries because of perverse incentives as a result of a flawed international agreement; and providing a just transition for American workers so that no American worker loses economic ground in our pursuit of more sustainable and environment-positive global practices.” Citing various studies predicting between 900,000 and 1.5 million jobs lost by 2005 if Kyoto is ratified, the AFL-CIO Executive Council in 2001 called upon “the President to refrain from signing the proposed Kyoto Protocol to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Instead, we urge the President to lead a serious conversation with the American people in which he presents the legislative and regulatory plans, expected economic effects and projected environmental outcomes that his administration anticipates as a result of implementing their current strategy.” (http://www.aflcio.org/publ/estatements/jan1998/cskyoto.htm) Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs. You are the official head of the U.S. delegation, empowered with negotiating the U.S. position on climate change (http://www.state.gov/g/). You represent the Bush administration, which is strongly opposed to placing any restrictions on the carbon dioxide emissions of U.S. firms. In statement issued March 29, 2001, President Bush stated that “We'll be working with our allies to reduce greenhouse gases. But I will not accept a plan that will harm our economy and hurt American workers.” Specifically, President Bush made it clear that he would not impose an agreement that had not first been ratified by the Senate. At the time he initially rejected Kyoto, the Senate was evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. During the 2002 elections, however, Democrats gained a 12-seat majority in the Senate, and the Senate majority leadership has indicated a willingness to ratify some version of the treaty. Greenpeace: You are the Climate Policy Director for Greenpeace, one of the largest and most effective Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) in the world. Greenpeace has played a major role in arguing for greenhouse gas reductions as part of the Kyoto accords, and typically mounts a delegation of several hundred people at the international climate treaty conferences. According to Greenpeace, “If governments continue to act irresponsibly…then people from rich countries should prepare to build ever higher and wider dikes, from which they can watch the rest of the world suffer and drown from climate change. Either that or demand that politicians give them access to the solutions to climate change in the form of clean energy and energy efficiency.” When the Bush administration rejected the Kyoto limits on greenhouse gas emissions, Greenpeace – in a March 29, 20001 letter to European Union President Romano Prodi – called upon the EU to play a leadership role, arguing that “The EU needs to focus now on ratifying the Kyoto Protocol itself and build a global coalition to ratify the Protocol without the United States.” According to Greenpeace, US global warming policy is now run by giant oil and coal interests: “The shocking and unprecedented trashing of the most important global environmental agreement ever has confirmed our worst fears that the White House has been colonized by oil and coal companies.” http://www.greenpeace.org/
Discussion Questions
Teaching Notes Spend several classes reviewing the issues of global climate change from a technical, economic, and political perspective. Review in particular the history of the three conferences mentioned in this case (Rio, Kyoto, and the Hague). Assign the students to do web-based searches on each of the cases, as well as climate change generally. Some useful resources are provided at the end of this paper. Count off by four to assign the students into one of the four roles. Give the students a week to do the research necessary to play their role effectively and with conviction. They can begin by doing research at the websites provided for each role, but should use that only as a starting point. This is an excellent opportunity to develop web-based research skills: there is a great deal of information on the web about global climate change, official (from governmental sources), partisan (from various groups), and journalistic (web-based searches of the major national news media). Each student should write a 2-3 page single-spaced policy brief arguing for the position of his/her assigned role. The brief should be referenced and documented. It should be written in memo form, to the Secretary General of the United Nations. It should begin with a subhead that succinctly lays out the principal issues, from the standpoint of the organization represented. It should then have a subhead that discusses at least three alternative solutions. A final subhead should elaborate on the preferred solution, making as strong a case as possible. The briefs are intended to prepare students for their role play, and should be handed in class on the day of the role play. On the day of the role play, first divide the students into homogenous groups (i.e., comprised of people plying the same role), and give them 45 minutes to compare notes and strengthen their positions. Everyone in reach group should be on the “same page” when they finish. Have the students reconvene, and reassign them to mixed groups. Ideally, no group should be larger than 12 students, mean three from each role. (In smaller classes, smaller groups are possible; in large classes, a 12 person limit should be imposed.) Give the students 60-75 minutes in the breakout groups to come up with a compromise solution. Instruct them to “get into role;” to imagine that they really are the person whose role they have been assigned, and to argue accordingly. Have each group chose one person to be a scribe, recording the main points of initial agreement, initial disagreement, and any eventual compromise position. An attendance sheet should also be passed around (since the grade for the exercise should be based both on the brief and on participation in the case exercise). Finally, have the students reconvene once more. There are two options at this point, depending on the instructor-facilitator’s comfort level with one or the other approach. Either: Divide the classroom into sections, one for each of the breakout groups. Have two representatives from each group come to the front of the class and present a brief statement of what the group came up with. Allow 10 minutes or so per group; actual time allotted will depend on the number of groups reporting. The instructor-facilitator should ask questions, and encourage questions from the floor. Round of applause after each presentation. Divide the classroom into sections, one for each of the four roles, with placards indicating the section. (In other words, students sit with a same-role delegation.) The instructor-facilitator plays the role of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, ideally sitting at a front table with an appropriate placard. S/he simply runs a meeting, calling out questions (for example, drawing on the discussion questions), and generating a discussion among the students. Before a student speaks, s/he should clearly state her role, and speak from that position. A skillful facilitator will play off one comment to solicit another (“So that’s what the U.S. industrialists think. What does the representative from Greenpeace have to say about that?”). With good facilitation, this can lead to a lively and often heated debate. Some Web Based Resources (in addition to those listed above) Biogems: A Project of the Natural resources Defense Council United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change U.S. Global Change Research Program U.S. Global Change Research Information Office U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Global Warming Site U.S. State Department Spotlight: Climate Change (prior to 1/20/00) |
||||||||
|
This site is
maintained by John Foran |
||||||||
