MAIN POINTS OF READINGS FOR LAST NAUGHTON EXAM!!

MAIN POINTS OF READINGS Cool It ? Lomborg advocates money for R&D rather than Kyoto to find new low-carbon energy technologies tax carbon dioxide Downside to Precautionary Principle? (p. 158, Lomborg) Carried to an extreme Traffic accidents would be greatly reduced if we drove 5 mph but that has too much of a cost A Challenge to Kyoto ? Dasgupta skeptic about Lomborg global warming is the central problem facing humanity Lomborgs thesis built on a deep misconception of Earth?s system and of economics when applied to that system one truth about earth: the system is driven by interlocking, nonlinear processes running at different speeds More of Kyoto would be really good Lofty Pledge to Cut Emissions Comes With Caveat in Norway ? Rosenthal Norway to be neutral by 2050 Relies too heavily on donations to environmental projects abroad rather than meaningful emissions reductions Cutting emissions at home will require real sacrifice Not enough environmental projects in poor countries to cancel all the big emitters out More than 95% of the countries energy is from waterfalls Equity and Greenhouse Gas Responsibility ? Baer et al long term emissions standards PER CAPITA based on how many people live in your country ethically obvious that per capita is the way to count every individual gets to emit the same amount of CO2 current system is unfair by GDP (size of economy) historical levels (Kyoto) industrial countries already had high levels developed countries got caps developing countries didn?t aims to equalize emissions across people, but still throught nation states, so could still have a few high emitters and a lot of low emitters, doesn?t imply equal standards of living CO2 emissions = productive capacity Effect: developing countries have to restrict themselves ( shrinking the economy Social justice policy Defining Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference: The Role of Science, the Limits of Science ? Oppenheimer uncertainty about everything! Hard to base long term planning on scientific findings that are uncertain and don?t take everything into account Trying to figure out how much effect we have, at what point is what we do okay? And at what point does it become dangerous? Natural science cannot tell us what is dangerous because dangerous is value based What constitutes dangerous anthropogenic climate change? As Rain Forests Disappear, A Market Solution Emerges ? Butler They are worth more cut down than standing, but with deforestation now a leading driver of global warming, a movement is growing to pay nations and local people to keep their rain forests intact. REDD = ?reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation? If the Amazon were a country, deforestation there would place it in the top seven emitters of GHGs worldwide Studies in Indonesia and Brazil show that locals earn more money in REDD Campus Ecology 2008 today?s student is just as unlikely as in 2001 to graduate with exposure to basic ecological principles, much less with an understanding of how the human-designed economy can work in harmony with natural systems 1/3 of schools use off-campus renewable energy sources to meet some of their electricity, heating and cooling needs