Global Climate Change Discussion
Shall Developed Nations Pay Climate Reparations?
Background:
According to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2013), “Warming of the [Earth’s] climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia… It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.”
Human-induced climate change is causing a wide variety of environmental, political, and socio-economic impacts on human civilization. According to the Sierra Club, the U.S. Government spent more than $350 billion in response to climate-change-related extreme weather events from 2008-2018 (Mark, 2018). According to Fenge (2001), Inuit living in the artic region of North America are experiencing many consequences as a result of global climate change they had very little part in causing. Further, entire island nations also producing negligible greenhouse gas emissions are being drowned from anthropogenically accelerated global sea level rise. These island nations will cease to exist, putting their people and cultures are risk.
During international negotiations regarding how to handle the global climate change crisis, developing nations request they receive $100 billion per year for climate change mitigation measures. Further, they want additional compensation for weather-related disasters as well as a "displacement coordination facility" for refugees (Kostigen, 2015).
Of course, developed nations are only agreeing to a tiny fraction of such a potential cost, while trying to turn the attention to their own regional mitigation measures. President Obama, a Democrat concerned with climate change, rejected the proposal to pay significant climate reparations. Present Trump further denies that global climate change is even happening. European countries and China are hardly offering money, either.
The question arises, Shall Developed Nations Pay Climate Reparations?
Different stakeholders have different perspectives on this issue.
Broad Assignment:
You will watch the movie Day After Tomorrow to view a dramatized, fictional American science fiction perspective on global climate change. After watching the movie but before coming to your discussion section, everybody will read the IPCC’s most recent synthesis report making the case that climate is warming and the warming is due to human activities. Further, after watching the movie but before coming to your discussion section, each person will be assigned to a stakeholder viewpoint and you will read a document presenting the viewpoint you are assigned to articulate. In class you will participate in discussion of the scenario.
Everybody reads:
Stakeholder ID’s For This Assignment:
- United Nations
- International Development Scholar
- United States Government
- Climate Geoengineering Advocate
Specific Readings by Stakeholder ID:
You are welcome to search the internet to find more resources in support of discussing the viewpoint you are assigned to represent.
1. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change article, “About the Fund”.
Also available here: https://www.greenclimate.fund/who-we-are/about-the-fund
Also available here: https://www.rethinkingrefuge.org/articles/are-reparations-owed-to-people-displaced-by-climate-change
Also available here: https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/us-to-oppose-mechanism-to-fund-climate-change-adaptation-in-poor-nations/article5351162.ece
4. Dannenberg, A., Zitzelsberger, S., 2019. Climate experts’ views on geoengineering depend on their beliefs about climate change impacts. Nature Climate Change.
Note that this item cannot be shared publicly, but is available through UCD's online journal access rights. Please obtain this from the SAS004 Canvas Files pages or by downloading it directly from the journal from a UCD-hosted internet connection: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0564-z
Activity in Discussion Section:
- 10 minutes settling class down, deal with class issues, and TA intro to scenario.
- 10 minutes discussion with same all people with same viewpoint discussing how to make your main points
- 10 minutes with an opposing viewpoint, one-on-one
- 10 minutes with an opposing viewpoint, one-one-one
- 10 minutes whole-class discussion wrap up.
Literature Cited
- Fenge, T. 2001. “The Inuit and Climate Change”. Isuma 2:4:1-10.
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2013. “Climate Change 2013: Synthesis Report. Summary for Policymakers”.
- Kostigen, T. M. 2015. Poor nations want U.S. to pay reparations for extreme weather. USA Today, September 12, 2015 issue. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/09/12/kostigen-climate-change-reparations/72014440/
- Mark, J. 2018. The Case for Climate Reparations. Sierra Magazine. April 23, 2018 issue. https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2018-3-may-june/feature/the-case-for-climate-reparations
