Friday, May 2, 2014
Climate Change is a Market Failure
The class dicussions we've been having about how the environment and conflict are related is so dynamic and complex. The two are so interconnected yet so separated at the same time. The different authors present so many different views: doees conflict cause environmental degradation, or does environmental degradation cause conflict? I think the answer is both. The Amazon has seen death threats over land threats, Sudan is separated by an oil crisis between the North and the South, and the Somali pirates are taking over the surrounding waters to prevent illegal fishing.
Something interesting I came across actually while doing research for our final paper was the role of economics in all of this. Climate change is the hottest (literally) topic on the global scale. It affects every single country and will only be an issue that gets solved if tackled in a global, cohesive fashion. There is so much information out there in the world that shows the detrimental effects of climate change. It could be towns sinking in the future, or the New York Times articles that show people murdering each other over forrest land. The immediate effects are bad enough as it is, some of the worst civil wars around the world have to do with natural resources. For our paper, we are focusing on South East Asia and analyzing the effect of climate change in that region. They are probably the most suceptible region to the effects of a changing global climate. One article I read was about the role of the market which I believe relates greatly to our class dicussions.
The world cares about money. They care about business, they care about profit. If the world wants people to care about the Amazon, about the blood diamonds, and aboout the failed state of Sudan, you have to make it about money. The article I read posed action towards climate change as the "greatest market failure" in the entire world. Until the global community can set up a market structure revolving around climate change that is profitable, we won't see any change. If you want governments to act and work together they need a market environment. Right now anything with climate change is too high-risk with extremely vague outcomes and therefore no one is investing. While getting someone to invest isn't that easy, investments and creating a new market are the only way the world is going to react and act to reverse climate change. Developing coutnries respect the Chinese because they approach them as they approach a business, yet the United States is shelling out cash towards projects that often fail and attempting to set up unstable governments in failed states that will also fall through. The United States needs to change their mindset: global development for the sake of the environment has the potential to be a profitable business and there will be no change until we start treating developing worlds as business projects where we have a goal to create a good finished projects through investments that allow these people to build their own countries.
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I agree with you here, and I think your group's presentation will be very interesting! As a politics major, I often think in this class, "Yes, but so how do you make people care?" when we discuss topics of environmental degradation or environmental violence that does not have a direct impact on their individual lives. The answer is economics. If the media would present Somali piracy, for example, as something that could cause a spike in oil prices so that producers could protect their ships, or as some other connection to world prices, more people would be inclined to care. Similarly with conflicts in diamond-producing countries. If the media were to present these issues as something that drives up prices globally, people would be more inclined to pay attention and demand action. Money is one thing that connects people across ethnic, religious, political, and social ties.
ReplyDeleteI agree that in America the key to finding a solution to climate change and making people care about it is to put it in terms they understand. So many American are concerned with money, so that is definitely a way to get their attention. Putting dollar signs on the issue is also a way to better understand it. I know many don't feel it is appropriate to put a money amount on the impacts of climate change because it can't account for everything that will happen, but it is a way to make it more definitive. At least until we have more to go off of. And putting dollar signs on the issues is a big way to get the attention of those who oppose climate change initiatives, since that tends to be a big motivating factor in them shooting it down and denying climate change.
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