Paris Agreement on Climate Change
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different circumstances and is impacted by climate change in different
ways. The Paris Agreement is formulated to allow each nation to develop
its own plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The Paris Agreement also covers many other related topics, each of
which relates to causes, consequences, or concomitant issues related to climate change and the overall goal of limiting global temperature increase
to under 2°C. Article 7 of the Paris Agreement includes the goals of enhancing adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience, and reducing vulnerability
to climate change (UNFCCC, 2015). Article 8 includes the development and
use of early warning systems, emergency preparedness, and risk management to help address the impacts of climate change weather events. Article 9
addresses financial aspects of the Paris Agreement: The costs associated with
both climate change effects and ameliorating those effects as per the Paris
Agreement are already large, difficult to manage, and still growing. Article
10 includes the significance of developing new technology to help accomplish the goals of the Paris Agreement, and this is a topic on which there has
been some success and great potential moving forward. The developments in
wind and solar generation of electricity have already had significant impacts
on reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. For instance, US greenhouse gas
emissions in 2017 decreased 0.66% compared to the previous year (Houser
and Marsters, 2018), bucking the previous pattern of year- on- year increases.
This decrease was because of changes in the generation of electricity away
from coal and towards wind and solar.
2.3 Impacts of Climate Change on Health and Welfare
A 2°C increase in global average temperature can sometimes sound like
not an awful lot, but the range and size of its impacts are amazingly large.
Of course, air temperatures are higher, but there is also more water – more
polar ice melts rather than stays frozen and there is more moisture in the air
(humidity). But on top of that, the temperature increase alters the weather
patterns around the globe. Changed weather patterns lead to massive rainfall
and flooding in some areas, drought and massive forest fires in other areas,
and crop failures in yet other areas. No one is saying that climate change
alone is creating all these issues – floods, droughts, fires, storms, and other
weather patterns are always waxing and waning – but global climate change
gooses all of these events into being stronger and more extreme. All the while,
the melting ice caps raise the sea levels, chronically flooding populated areas
that were once relatively safe from that risk. All together, these floods, fires,
droughts, and other changes have massive human population displacement
consequences, as people migrate to hopefully safer regions. These effects are
often intertwined, but the following paragraphs review each of these impacts
as separately as possible.
13
13
different circumstances and is impacted by climate change in different
ways. The Paris Agreement is formulated to allow each nation to develop
its own plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The Paris Agreement also covers many other related topics, each of
which relates to causes, consequences, or concomitant issues related to climate change and the overall goal of limiting global temperature increase
to under 2°C. Article 7 of the Paris Agreement includes the goals of enhancing adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience, and reducing vulnerability
to climate change (UNFCCC, 2015). Article 8 includes the development and
use of early warning systems, emergency preparedness, and risk management to help address the impacts of climate change weather events. Article 9
addresses financial aspects of the Paris Agreement: The costs associated with
both climate change effects and ameliorating those effects as per the Paris
Agreement are already large, difficult to manage, and still growing. Article
10 includes the significance of developing new technology to help accomplish the goals of the Paris Agreement, and this is a topic on which there has
been some success and great potential moving forward. The developments in
wind and solar generation of electricity have already had significant impacts
on reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. For instance, US greenhouse gas
emissions in 2017 decreased 0.66% compared to the previous year (Houser
and Marsters, 2018), bucking the previous pattern of year- on- year increases.
This decrease was because of changes in the generation of electricity away
from coal and towards wind and solar.
2.3 Impacts of Climate Change on Health and Welfare
A 2°C increase in global average temperature can sometimes sound like
not an awful lot, but the range and size of its impacts are amazingly large.
Of course, air temperatures are higher, but there is also more water – more
polar ice melts rather than stays frozen and there is more moisture in the air
(humidity). But on top of that, the temperature increase alters the weather
patterns around the globe. Changed weather patterns lead to massive rainfall
and flooding in some areas, drought and massive forest fires in other areas,
and crop failures in yet other areas. No one is saying that climate change
alone is creating all these issues – floods, droughts, fires, storms, and other
weather patterns are always waxing and waning – but global climate change
gooses all of these events into being stronger and more extreme. All the while,
the melting ice caps raise the sea levels, chronically flooding populated areas
that were once relatively safe from that risk. All together, these floods, fires,
droughts, and other changes have massive human population displacement
consequences, as people migrate to hopefully safer regions. These effects are
often intertwined, but the following paragraphs review each of these impacts
as separately as possible.