POL101Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Pulitzer Prize For National Reporting, World Trade Organization, Nationstates
● Inequalities
○ Depends on fossil fuels is uneven
○ Uneven responsibilities
■ Which emissions matter and how do we understand which emissions we
care about?
● Why are emissions so important?
○ It’s important to their economy, some countries
manufacture more, some import more, past conditions
contribute to development and developing countries want
to use them, global north have been responsible for global
emissions and global south has to deal with consequences
● Emissions = production and money
■ Responsibilities could be who has to pay more, who has to pay less
■ Per capita vs. absolute
● On the one hand, everybody agrees China is the largest emitter of
greenhouse gases, but only if we measure it in absolute terms,
and absolute terms don't necessarily capture all the benefits that
one could get from fossil fuels and the fact that per capita
emissions in the global north are much higher than china might
more fully capture the idea of who's benefiting from fossil fuels
● It’s not only about responsibilities for emissions but who benefits
from it
■ Historical vs. current
● Emissions correlate with economic growth
● China and India are the two largest emitters of carbon dioxide
right now, but global north is most responsible for emissions
■ Production vs. consumption
● Where do you count the emissions? You count them in the
country that consumes goods or do we count them in the country
that produces those goods? The countries that produce goods get
monetary benefits from selling those goods.
■ Burning fossil fuels have created energy revolution, making energy cheap
transportation revolution making transportation efficient and cheap
○ Impact is uneven
■ Most important inequality ethically
■ Leads to different sense of urgency, different ideas of how quickly we
should act to address this problem, etc.
● The simplicity of this problem is absolutely tantalizing, but yet the tantalizing solution is
one of the most difficult political challenges humanity has ever faced
○ Emit less greenhouse gases, simple as that, but still so difficult to fix
○ Some of the big problems is we can't know which is the right decision, it’s political
because the choice of features have different costs and benefits to different
people, the context and identity of the people thinking of these characteristics
varies
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● Telling the Story of the International Politics of Climate Change
○ The 1980s
■ Scientists started to worry about not just the dynamics of greenhouse
effects but thinking of the problem of climate change
■ Transition of climate change from scientific problem to political problem
● Scientists got worried and went to political people
● 1988-1990 is when we saw the transition, as soon as we enter the
“what are we gonna do about it” stage, it becomes political
● Conference in toronto first time brought together international
government officials, scientists made their case that international
community should be dealing with
○ Nation-states responded through the United Nations, first
thing they did was set up international governmental panel
on climate change (IPCC)
○ Essentially international community said they need to have
a really solid foundation on this problem if they’re going to
take action, need sense of scope and nature of problem,
UN set up IPCC to provide that information
○ IPCC collects scientific information, consensus of scientific
community, puts into report every four year
■ Lets them know nature of climate change,
responses, nature of impact
○ Science inform politics, science does not determine politics
○ Key initial principals
■ Universal Participation
● All countries are going to participate in negotiations, this is a
problem that must be discussed by as many states as possible
● Makes it a complex negotiation
● Everybody is implicated in climate change, everyone is causing it,
everyone is facing the consequences, but there are differences in
power, differences in capacity and differences in responsibility
● Some countries get paid for emitting emissions
● The politics of climate change are profoundly shaped at the global
level
■ CBDR (common but differentiated responsibilities)
● This brings together both concerns, that everyone is involved with
this either through having significant responsibilities of
consequences or significant worries about it
○ 1992 The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNCCC)
■ Bargaining over whether to take significant action
■ Bargaining positions
● The EU- cut emissions now significantly
○ Some major countries in the EU that already started to
switch to less emitting fuels have already seen the
find more resources at oneclass.com
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Document Summary
Responsibilities could be who has to pay more, who has to pay less. It"s not only about responsibilities for emissions but who benefits from it. China and india are the two largest emitters of carbon dioxide right now, but global north is most responsible for emissions. The countries that produce goods get monetary benefits from selling those goods. Burning fossil fuels have created energy revolution, making energy cheap transportation revolution making transportation efficient and cheap. Leads to different sense of urgency, different ideas of how quickly we should act to address this problem, etc. The simplicity of this problem is absolutely tantalizing, but yet the tantalizing solution is one of the most difficult political challenges humanity has ever faced. Emit less greenhouse gases, simple as that, but still so difficult to fix. Telling the story of the international politics of climate change.
