EPA and NHTSA Historic Proposal

1. Global Climate ChangeP. Brian FisherCollege of CharlestonPOLS 319Class 10: GCC as a Global Scale Problem

2. EPA and NHTSA Historic Proposal The proposal would be the 1st National Standards to limit global warming emissions. It is designed to: • Reduce global warming pollution from automobiles by 21% by 2030. • Cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 950 million metric tons. • Save 1.8 billion barrels of oil. • Save the average consumer more than $3,000 in fuel costs. • "This is a critical step to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and curb pollution that threatens our health. It will deliver immediate benefits for the country as Congress crafts comprehensive climate legislation.” --Enviro Defense Fund

3. Earth’s Limits “The earth is finite. Its ability to absorb waste and destructive effluents is finite. Its ability to provide food and energy is finite. Its ability to provide for growing numbers of people is finite…” “Moreover, we are fast approaching many of earth’s limits. Current economic practices that damage the environment, in both developed and underdeveloped nations, cannot be continued without the risk that vital global systems will be damaged beyond repair” --GEG, pp. 14-5 (from Natural Resources Journal 2001)

4. GCC: Global Scale Problem • Global biophysical system (e.g. climate, oceans, ozone), but fragmented international political system. • Inhibiting Solutions: Nations (through acts of their citizens) create environmental problems at the global scale, and yet solutions must be created through this same fractured global political system. • “We live in world fragmented by political divisions of sovereign states,” but “reassembled by pervasive flows of people, goods, money, ideas, images, and technology across borders.”

5. Primary (Historical) Drivers of Environmental Change Environmental change has resulted from: • massive population increase:both from increased consumption of earth’s resources and our ecological footprint (straining earth’s carrying capacity) • rapid technological innovation:permits massive extraction and exploitation of resources • an explosion in energy use:1 & 2 facilitate energy use, complemented by elite discourse promoting consumptive behavior 4) economic integration: promoted through globalization (Fordism) led to mass consumerism and the “growth imperative”

6. Globalization of Environmental Threats

7. 10 Drivers of Environmental Degradation • Population increase (but “gross abstraction”, felt locally) • Affluence (leads to heightened consumption) • Technology (can avoid environ costs; “progress”; who owns?) • Poverty (1/2 world lives less than $2/day) • Market failure (consumption of ‘nature’s capital’ as income) • Policy/political failure (not big/small, but changing capacity) • Economic growth (scale/rate) (most imp idea of 20th C.) • Nature of economic system (Neoliberal) • Culture and values (US) (anthropocentrism & contempocentrism—present over future) • Forces of globalization (vs. Sustainable Development)

8. Consequences of Human Activities UNEP (p. 132):“Human activities are progressively reducing the planet’s life-supporting capacity at a time when rising human numbers and consumption are making increasingly heavy demands on it. The combined destructive impacts of a poor majority struggling to stay alive and an affluent minority consuming most of the world’s resources and undermining the very means by which all people can survive and flourish.” 2 Driving Forces of Environmental Change: 1.Overuse or misuse of resources 2. Increases in pollutive outputs (mercury, GHGs, CFCs, Toxic Chems, etc) This has led to affluence (in the North) without responsibility for the consequences: 1. underwritten by the degradation of people (South and lower classes in North) and land, biosphere, and environment. 2. While in the South, factors such as increased population and low technology also caused environmental stress. So, many scholars see that environment problems are tethered to larger social, moral, ethical issues in which these environmental problems are embedded.

9. Global Environmental Concerns(GEG, pp. 17-18) • Ozone Depletion: ’87 Montreal Protocol • Climate Change: ’92 FCCC (at Rio) • Desertification: ’94 Conv Combat Desert • Deforestation: None • Biodiversity Loss: ’92 CBD (at Rio) • Population Growth: None—Plan at Cairo ’94 • Freshwater Sources: Conv on Non-Navigable Uses of Int’l Watercourses—not in effect • Marine Environment Degradation: UNCLOS • Toxification: Basel Convention int’l toxic waste - Stockholm Convention (’00) on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) • Acid Rain: Conv on Long-Range TB Air Pollution (EU)

10. What Makes a Threat Global in Scale? • Abuse of the ‘Commons’--areas beyond the sovereign control of a territory • Widespread Transboundary pollution • Local Assets important to all people (e.g. Grand Canyon, Amazon, African Plains) • Local or Nat’l Environ Threats best handled at the global scale

11. Hardin’s ‘Tragedy of Commons’ • Def’n: areas beyond the sovereignty of any nation which produces a conflict b/w individual and the common good over resources and protecting spaces. • EXs/ Oceans, subsoil, atmosphere, outer space, Antarctic • ‘Tragedy’: It’s rational to use, which leads to exploitation, of these areas without reciprocation or regeneration • Positive : the herder receives all of the proceeds from each additional animal • Negative : the pasture is slightly degraded by each add’l animal

12. Interconnection of Issues • Global Enviro Challenges are complex and have multiple causal and consequential pathways. • For Example, deforestation is an environmental degrading outcome, but it is also a cause of global warming, biodiversity loss, and desertification. In turn, GW and desertification (acid rain, toxins, ozone depletion) contribute to deforestation. • Environmental issues are also linked with Economic ones (e.g. globalization of trade, commerce, transportation has increased fossil fuel use leading to greater enviro damage.

13. IPAT Environmental Impact = Population * Affluence * Technology I = P A T Population: Size of human pop Affluence: level of consumption Technology: processes designed to transform raw materials * Ex/ (P doubles * A (per cap income) triples = 6 fold increase in CO2 emissions. If only 4 fold increase, then technology mitigating factor Insights: 1. Population is part of problem 2. Enviro probs are more than pollution 3. Enviro probs driven by multiple factors that compound Best applied to: Air pollution and Climate Change (IPCC)

14. IPAT highlights Equity Issues

15. Inequality Rising

16. Core of Environmental Problems? • Top 20% in world income consume 85% of its wealth and produce 90% of its waste • Simple Explanation: Although environmental problems are not new in themselves, industrialization and rapid population growth, technology have greatly increased the scale and intensity of the over‑exploitation of natural resources and environmental degradation, generating a wide range of urgent international and global problems.

17. Factors beyond I=PAT • Global Policy since 1950 has been an emphasis on: • faster economic growth “growth fetish” • Increasing power in fewer hands • Profit motive bottom line of corps • lack of true cost accounting--enviro costs not included--it is treated as public good and thus exploited • Unregulated economic globalization without concern for social and environmental consequences • Elite powerbrokers/nations erected new politics, ideologies, and institutions predicated on these ideas/principles. • Harnessing fossil fuels played a central role in widening int’l wealth & power • RESULT: • 1. More environmental degradation than any pt in history • 2. More inequality between humans than any pt in history • 3. More complexity to problems themselves • 4. Ideology that technology is part of “progress” that will save day; abstraction of nature