Enviornmental Changes

The need to change the way the world abuses the environment becomes greater every day. Many scientists already say that it is too late for the world to be able to heal itself, but doing something about it now could save us a lot time on the earth. The major issues that the earth faces today are the depleting ozone layer, rising global temperatures, and the greenhouse gases and other harmful emissions that are poured into the atmosphere every day.  In order to be able to reduce these issues to the point that the world could begin to heal, many things are going to need to be put into place. First, technology that acts as substitutes for harmful substances is critical because money will most of the time take priority over the environment and therefore if is no substitute companies will continue to produce the harmful substance in order to make money. Secondly, an international regime that does a very good job in holding all countries accountable for all emissions that they produce. It is critical that the regime hold every country to extremely strict standards. If not we would see something like the Kyoto Protocol, where countries were not held responsible enough and it was therefore not a success. Finally, the regime should come up with a set of protocol to show exactly how to reduce emissions. It should not say to countries that they must reduce emissions to this number and that’s it. The protocol should lay out how countries need to reduce emissions so that countries are even more accountable for their actions. If a country is not reducing emissions than the regime can see if they were doing the correct things.

 There is no question that to clean up the earth will take a lot of time and a lot of capital. If we do not make changes though the earth will certainly begin to have major issues that will not be fixable. The UN must decide that this is absolutely necessary no matter how much money it costs. Scientists need to be paid whatever it takes in order to solve the technological issues first. Then these advances must be put into place in all countries and the countries must be strictly held accountable for every emission they put into the atmosphere. There must be consequences then for not following the protocol, and this could be easily done through trade restrictions. If it is just left up to the countries themselves to solve these global issues it will never get done. No country wants to put more effort than another country for economic reasons, which is why this must be an international problem that is solved internationally. More prosperous countries can put in more resources but it is most likely that those prosperous countries are doing most of the polluting. Without a regime like this, the world is almost guaranteed to get to a point that there is really nothing we can do anymore.