Thursday 20 October 2016

What do Kim Jong-Un, Robert Mugabe and the rest of the world’s national leaders have in common?


They all agree that Climate Change, specifically human induced climate change, is real, and most of them are trying to do something about it.

ENTER THE DONALD!


Yes, Mr Trump, that guy who might become the President of the US, doesn’t believe in climate change. Let’s let that sink in for a moment.

I’m going to try really hard not to personally insult this buffoon gentleman in this post but I think I’m going to find this difficult.

Seriously, if you take a look at this article by the Sierra Club you will see that this puts him at odds with every national leader around today. In the past he was pretty open about this, as a quick glance at his twitter feed will reveal (if you have some free time and are want to be entertained / shocked, read the responses:


Yes, because if your local weather cools down a bit during Winter then Global Warming MUST be a myth!



Please come to one of my Global Environmental Change lectures Mr Trump. You might learn something. Might.

He’s also vowed to “cancel the Paris Climate Agreement and stop all payments of U.S. tax dollars to U.N. global warming programs.” That’s the Paris Climate Agreement that pretty much every country in the world has signed. Okay, fine, as this study in Nature (Rogelj et al., 2016) points out, the Paris agreement is not the be all and end all-  essentially it’s a strong step in the right direction but requires existing targets to be strengthened if we are to realistically see the 2 degree limit on global warming.

Back on topic though, The Donald has decided that this Paris Climate Agreement should be unsigned.
In my opinion, this is a huge societal problem for two reasons.

Firstly, given that the USA is the 2nd largest emitter of CO2 , at about 17%, if the US doesn’t take internationally recognisable measures, all it would take is for China, Russia and India to follow suit and suddenly more than half of the world’s CO2 emissions would come from nations that refused to be part of an international agreement on action against climate change.

As we can see, it's quite important that the US stays on board if we are to tackle the CO2 problem... 


The second problem, is a more human one. There are similar issues of setting an example, except here we are talking about Mr Trump himself. Regardless of whether he is elected president or not in a few weeks time, he is the presidential candidate of the Republican party and as such is something of a legitimate figure. Being a combination of a celebrity and a political figurehead, Trump’s views on climate change DO matter as they can influence a generation of young people, as implied in this paper by Jackson (2005). If you’re a young American growing up in rural America and the person that your family would like to lead their nation, suggests that climate change is a hoax, there’s a strong chance you’re going to believe them and grow up with that opinion. I shouldn't need to explain why that could be so damaging!

The take home message here is that with all the controversies surrounding Donald Trump and the 2016 election, it’s easy to forget this information, which frankly, should be enough to rule him out as a candidate. I think Professor Michael Mann of Penn State University explains it pretty well:

  “If you care about the planet, the choice would seem clear.

If the appropriate catch-phrase for the 1992 election was "It's The Economy Stupid!," then this time around it ought to be "It's the PLANET stupid!".”

Now without wanting to get into a political debate, Mr Trump’s stance on climate change alone would rule him out from getting my vote, if I had the right to vote in America. So if anyone from across the pond is reading this, you know what to do in a few weeks time! 
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Wednesday 12 October 2016

Introduction

Thanks for stopping by

This blog is a place where I'll be developing my ideas on things that we sometimes overlook when talking about climate and questioning why we make certain decisions about the climate and world in general.

I'm a geographer surrounded by other geographers and we seem to spend a lot of time looking at problems with the world and examining some ways to fix them.

I'm also a member of society, and at least in the UK, I feel that we're a decent bunch and we do have some sort of an environmental conscience. We try to do our bit, some more than others, whether this is through buying an eco-friendly car, recycling or simply 'thinking about the environment'... whatever that means.

Pretty much for all of my living memory, climate change has been something that a lot of more important geographers than me, are concerned about. It's something that I'm interested in too and I guess that's how I've ended up doing a geography degree at UCL.

Over the coming weeks and months I'll be casting a critical eye over some of the practices that we've adopted as responses to climate change and questioning how and why we set our priorities as individuals and wider societies. I'm going to try and look beyond the obvious and in some ways I guess I'm going to take a slightly contrarian approach to some familiar topics but my hope is that this will encourage people to engage with my blog and hopefully post some comments.

Anyway, stay tuned, more to come very soon. 
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