Climate Change: An In-Depth Look

The concept of global warming, also known as the greenhouse effect, has been around since the 1800s when the French mathematician Joseph Fourier discovered it in 1824. In 1896 the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius also discovered the concept. Both scientists stated that the greenhouse effect is caused by the sun's radiation that bounces off the Earth's surface and is trapped by such gases as carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) such as Methane (CH4), Nitrous Oxide (N2O), and Ozone (O3) in the atmosphere. This process increases the average global temperature to about fifteen degrees Celsius, which is warm enough to maintain life on earth. The activities of human beings such as the burning of fossil fuels and releasing CO2 into the atmosphere has led to an increase in the greenhouse effect and thus, global warming occurs.

Since the 1800s when little was known about the greenhouse effect and it's sister effect 'global warming,' more has come to be understood about the causes and effects. We now know that human activities are the main root of the problem. Coal-burning power plants, automobile exhausts, smokestacks, and other human waste vents contribute to thr approximate 22 billion tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere each year. Animal agriculture, manure, rice paddies, landfills, and coal contribute to the yearly 250 million tons of methane released into the atmosphere. It is the contribution of industrialized nations that is amounting to the majority of these emissions. The United States had 36.1% of the contribution among industrialized nations in 1990, the European Union had 24.2%, Russia had 17.4%, and Japan had 8.5%. Because of these huge contributions, countries are working together on an international level to reduce these numbers among industrialized states. Now that we are aware of what the causes of global warming are, entities such as the European Union are stepping up to increase the efforts at finding a solution to this global predicament.

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The effects that the greenhouse effects has had on Earth have been barely noticeable to the general population, but to the scientists and those involved in the study of global warming, the effects thus far are an alarming warning of what is to come. Scientists have documented climate-change induced changes in 100 physical processes and 450 biological processes. Since the late 1800s, the average temperature on Earth's surface has risen by about 0.3-0.6 degrees Celsius. Looking at the chart, one can note that in the last century there has been a sharp increase in the average global temperature as opposed to the previous half-century. This sharp increase is what has the global scientific community concerned. This change in temperature comes from an increase in the amount of CO2 that is being emitted into the atmosphere. It is predicted that between now and the year 2109, the surface temperature will increase by another 1-3.5 degrees Celsius. These slight changes in temperature can do more harm to the environment than one might think. Slight temperature changes will have different effects on different regions of the world, but everyone will be affected in some way. One region, the North and South Poles, are "keys to understanding the global ecosystem. They are important in maintaining climate equilibrium, but they also represent vulnerable regions that are particularly sensitive to the effects of global warming." In the extreme northern and southern regions of the globe, the ice caps will start to melt as a result of increased temperatures. This melting is going to cause the sea level to rise by 15 to 99 centimeters by thr year 2109 and endanger all of the coastal and low lying island nation states. In some cases where land is already at or below sea-level, such as the Netherlands, Vietnam, Egypt, Bangladesh, and more, this slight rise in water level is going to cause major problems making these areas uninhabitable and causing immense refugee problems. Besides the glaciers melting, this slight temperature increase is going to cause a thaw of the tundra regions of the earth. With a thaw of tundra, a large amount of methane, which is currently frozen withing the permafrost and ice clathrates is going to be released into the atmosphere.

Another effect that global warming will have is the spread of zones where disease conditions are favorable. Contagious diseases such as malaria, bluetongue disease, hemorrhagic fever, tularemia, and rabies are likely to see an increase in occurances among the populations in regions such as the Mediterranean, Russia, and the Crimean-Congo region.

Financial effects go along with the global warming trends of our century. The change in the surface temperature of the earth is going to lead to a dramatic change in the frequency of severe storms and other extreme weather events. Droughts, floods, hurricanes and more are going to increase in frequency and intensity causing much more damage than normal. It is expected that this increase in natural disasters could cost about 150 million US Dollars per year in the next decade. This is going to lead to an increase in insurance costs and disaster relief costs, thus putting a strain on consumers, taxpayers, and the industry.

Other forseeable negative effects on the environment that our actions are causing are an increase in desertification - the spread of the deserts. While the deserts are spreading, the water supply is expected to decrease along with agricultural output and fisheries. Fragile ecosystems of the mountains and wetlands will be endangered, as will certain species of these regions. It is because of the varied impacts that the greenhouse effect has on our earth that the term "climate change" has replaced the term "global warming" in international jargon and because of all of these serious effects that entities such as the European Union have taken it upon themselves to do something to better our environment.

The United Nations Environment Programme's mission statement declares that their goal is "to provide leadership and encourage partnership in caring for the environment by inspiring, informing, and enabling nations and peoples to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations. The UNEP was established in 1972 and is the voice for the environment withing the United Nations. They are involved in many different processes working for the environment such as assessing regional, national, and global environmental conditions, strengthening institutions for the wise management of the environment, and much more. Besides the basic UNEP, they also have several specializing conventions such as the Ozone Secretariat, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, and the Convention on Biological Diversity. The UNEP has bases around the globe so that they can stay up to date with the current situations and especially to have an advantage in the understanding of the environmental issues facing the developing countries. One milestone of the United Nations Environment Programme was it's coordination with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1988 to create the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is a specialized agency within the United Nations, similar to the UNEP. The WMO is the ultimate authority on "the state and behaviour of the Earth's atmosphere, it's interaction with the oceans, the climate it produces and the resulting distribution of water resources." The World Meteorological Organization was established in 1950 and serves as a forum for international weather cooperation. The role of the WMO is an important one, looking out for the safety and well being of the world's population while providing real-time data on matters of safety and security of society, and matters of environment protection. They serve as a weather service broadcaster as well, spreading news of imminent weather threats and working to reduce the amount of damage done to property and populations. The WMO also contributes significantly to policies in the areas of it's involvement. In collaboration with other United Nations agencies, the WMO is involved in programs such as, "the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the International Convention to Combat Desertification, and the Vienna Convention on the Protection of Ozone Layer.

The United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organization, as stated before, created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in 1988. It's members are all the members from both of its founding organizations. This organization regularly reviews the state of environmental and climate change knowledge of the scientific community and their main role is "to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation." The IPCC is broken down into four groups: Working Group I, Working Group II, Working Group III, and the Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories. Working Group I assesses the scientific aspects of the climate system and climate change, Working Group II assesses the vulnerability of socioeconomic and natural systems to climate change, negative and positive consequences of climate change, and options for adapting to it. Working Group III assesses the economic and social dimensions of climate change, and the Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories is responsible for the IPCC National Greenhouse Gas Inventories Programme.


These working groups prepare reports and summaries on their findings that are available to experts and policy-makers around the world. The assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change comes from peer reviewed, revised, and published scientific literature and their assessments or reports are available and "referenced by policy-makers, scientists, experts, and students around the globe. The IPCC is an important institution for the education of many important players in the international environmental playing field. These assessments are widely used and influential to entities such as the European Union when working on global and European environment policies.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is an international treaty agreed upon by 189 countries and was established in 1992 at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) conference, also more popularly referred to as the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. This agreement went into action in 1994 and symbolizes countries around the world joining together in an effort to confront the issue of global warming. The UNFCCC focuses on pollution of the oceans, wetland degradation, damage to the Ozone layer, and the rapid extinction of plants and animals. The main intent of the treaty, however, is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, thereby reducing the effects of global warming on our planet. The treaty's stated objective is "to achieve stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a low enough level to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system." the UNFCCC was originally created with no mandatory actions imposed on the signatories, and no enforcement of greenhouse gas emissions within the countries. The UNFCCC did, however, allow for follow-up protocols or updates that would set mandatory emissions requirements - one such update is the Kyoto Protocol.


The signatories of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change are divided into three different groups - Annex I, Annex II, and developing countries. Annex I countries are industrialized nations that agreed to reduce their emissions to the target amount, and if they are not able to reach this goal, they must buy emissions credits or invest in conservation. Countries that fall into this category include: Estonia, Iceland, and the Russian Federation. Annex II is for developed countries that are to pay the costs for the developing countries, "put[ing] the lion's share of the responsibility for battling climate change - and the lion's share of the bill - on the rich countries." these countries include the European Union, the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Developing nations have no set emissions requirements as the other two groups do. Instead, they get technology and money from those countries included in Annex II and are not expected to implement any of their commitments under the Convention unless they are receiving adequate funding from their Annex II countries.


Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, signatory countries must meet annually to discuss the progress of their work and negotiate more enforced restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions. The first of these Conferences of the Parties (COP) took place in Berlin in 1995. It was at. This conference that the participants agreed to the Berlin Mandate, which called for a 2-Year Analytical and Assessment Phase (AAP) that would create a purported "menu" of options that the members could choose from to suit their own individual country's environmental needs. The members of the UNFCCC have had a total of eleven conferences until this point, holding their meetings all around thr globe. It can be argued that the COP-3 held in Kyoto, Japan in December of 1997 was the most important as this was the founding of the Kyoto Protocol.

In November 1997, a major event in international environmental policy took place, the negotiations of one of the most ambitious environmental treaties. More than2,200 delegates from 158 different Parties to the Convention and six observer states, nearly 4,000 observers from NGO's and other international organizations, and more than 3,700 media representatives attended the Third Conference of Parties in Kyoto, Japan confirming that the environment was moving into "high politics." The result of this conference: the Kyoto Protocol, a legally binding agreement that puts responsibility on each and every member to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, and the confirmation of the global community that climate change is altering priorities and becoming a hot topic of discussion and policy. The overall aim of the Kyoto Protocol, as noted in Article 2, is "the stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system." This protocol was fully put into effect on February 16, 2005 following the ratification by Russia.

Article 3 on emission limitation and reduction commitments is the center of the Kyoto Protocol. Article 3 contains the pledge of the international community to reduce the emissions of the "basket of four gases" (CO2, CH4, N2O, and SF6) by at least 5% below the 1990 levels during the period from 2008-2012. This 5% emission cut would be achieved by reducing each country's emissions at different amounts, I.e. 8% cuts in Switzerland, Central and Eastern Europe, and the European Union; Russia, New Zealand, and Ukraine will stabilize emissions, and Norway, Australia, and Iceland are allowed to increase. Also included in Article 3 are the country-specific "quantified emission limitation and reduction commitments" (QELROs). These QELROs set specific targets, timelines, and regulations for each specific country.

Joint fulfillment of commitments is the main issue discussed in Article 4 of the Kyoto Protocol. The idea of "bubbling" - to work together in groups to fulfill reduction commitments - came much to the elation of the European Union. This idea allows the European Union to work together as one entity or on an "internal burden-sharing arrangement" to reduce their emissions as a while. Member states can work out the cuts and allowances among themselves as long as the total result meets the requirements stated in the Kyoto Protocol. The European Union was working towards this addition to the Protocol not only to promote better cost-effectiveness, but because the European Union as a whole feels that it possesses better competence to regulate these sort of proceedings. As Oberthür and Ott point out,

With respect to implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, participation of the Union is indispensable since a number of the policies and measures affecting the emission of GHGs in the Member States are decided in Brussels. Under the European Union Structural and Cohesion Funds, for example, well-financed programmes influence the economic development or the structural adjustment of less developed regions and provide for some redistribution of resources. Important decisions impacting GHG emissions are furthermore taken in the area of the EU Common Agricultural Policy, as well as in the development of the internal market in the energy sector and many other policy areas.

The European Union serves as the main entity among the member states and thus requested that they could work together as a whole- 'bubble' - to work towards achieving the standards of the Kyoto Protocol. After the European Union signing of the Kyoto Protocol on April 29, 1998, it made the following statement: "The European Community and its member states will fulfill their respective commitments under Article 3, paragraph 1, of the protocol jointly and in accordance with the provisions of Article 4.

Emissions trading, as allowed in the Kyoto Protocol under Article 4, is an innovative solution to not only cut back in emissions across Europe, but also to reduce costs. Emissions trading began in the EU on January 1st, 2005 and have become the world's leader in this emerging emissions market. This idea creates incentives for European corporations to create environmentally friendly solutions to production, and also encourages investment emission-reduction projects elsewhere. The investment of corporations in other less developed regions spreads the transfer of environmentally friendly technologies to other countries, giving them the support to grow.

Emissions trading has grown into a new market within the European Union. The establishment of emissions trading has led to the creation of carbon traders, carbon management specialists, carbon auditors and carbon verifiers. Through this idea, companies are given emissions allotments. In the event that a company does not use it's entire allotment, these extra "pollution units" can be sold to others in need. This idea instills within the companies the idea that conservation and protection of the environment can earn them money. Along with this, if a company is polluting more than it is allowed, it will have to buy allotments from another corporation, thus encouraging them to do something about their costly emissions problem and engaging their ingenuity of their engineers to find cost effective ways to reduce emissions.

The European Union has a vested interest in the reduction of reliance on fossil fuels, the key contributor to greenhouse gases. The European Union, as it currently stands, imports just under half of its energy demand requirements and is showing a growing trend that more importation will be necessary. The EU utilizes its own fossil fuel resources by extracting them from the reserves of the North Sea, but reserves are limited, quickly diminishing, and relatively costly to extract. Because of this, it is expected that reliance upon foreign energy sources will increase from just under half now, to 55-70% of all energy needs. The EU recognizes that their dependency on foreign energy is becoming an increasing predicament and with the oil price shocks of the 70s and 80s that severely increased their energy bills, they changed their energy policy objectives. In the 1990s, their objectives stated that they were to "promote the sustainable development of the energy sector and enhance energy saving in the region."

Aside from the Kyoto Protocol, which is aimed at countries, not individual businesses, some industrial units have taken it upon themselves to implement their own emissions standards. Lafarge, a world leader in building materials has taken the Kyoto Protocol as an example to be followed and has set to reduce their own company's emissions by 10% between 1990 and 2010. This company has been working side-by-side with the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) to accomplish their goals by "promoting sustainable construction and by developing new materials with lower carbon content."

DHL, the worldwide logistics company that is now part of the Deutsche Post World Net, launched a new program to reduce the amount of fuels it's fleet uses in Scandanavia. They have changed from the traditional fossil fuels that are so damaging to our environment to biogas and rapeseed fuel blends. These fuels exude only a fraction of the harmful gases into our atmosphere that the traditional fossil fuels do, which is good because as Commissioner Dimas points out:

transport emissions are 20% above their 1990 level, and rising. There is a clear need for a comprehensive and integrates strategy to consider the contribution of various players, such as oil companies, car manufactures, the public authorities and private vehicle owners in a joint effort to curb the on-going trend.
These are other companies that have taken similar actions to help the environment on their own. It is because of companies like this, with this kind of initiative that our environment is going to become a better place. It is not only the use of different fuels that will cut back on detrimental emissions, but the use of railways and the sea to transport goods, and also the use of audio conferences as opposed to business travel has been shown to reduce the use of CO2 by 2.2 million tons.

Cutting back the emissions that are being released into our atmosphere is of great importance to the European Union. As the Commission presented at the Sixth Environmental Action Programme:
a healthy environment is essential to long term propensity and quality of life and citizens in Europe demand a high level of environmental protection. Future economic development and increasing prosperity will put pressure on the planet's capacity to sustain demands for resources or to absorb pollution. At the same time, high environmental standards are an engine for innovation and business opportunities. Overall, society must work to de-couple environmental impacts and degredation from economic growth. Businesses must operate in a more eco-efficient way, in other words producing the same or more products with less input and less waste, and consumption patterns have to become more sustainable.
The EU aims to better the environment for the good of future generations, and for the quality of life of it's citizens. Pressures being exerted on the earth right now are only going to get heavier with increases in population, increases in resource consumption and put more strain on the ecosystems that we live in. The European Union is calling on all citizens of the world, regardless of nationality, to come together and work towards a solution that will make the world a better place to live.

The EU has been a major player in international environment policy conception and emerged as a leader during the Kyoto Protocol discussions. They were the driving force behind the Kyoto Protocol, and have established many environmental sectors and organizations within their government. The EU member states contribute a total of 24.3% of all of the carbon dioxide emissions of the industrialized nations in 1990. Because the EU accounts for such a significant amount of all emissions in our world, they have taken responsibility and stepped up to change their ways. Another reason that the European Union member states have taken it upon themselves to be a leader in environmental policy is the recent emission cut-back successes of some of its member stars. Germany, for example, from 1989 to the mid nineties has successfully cut back its emissions by 12%.

As mentioned before, the rising of the sea level is one potential outcome of global warming. Europe is a major landmass surrounded by water, it has a lot of coastline and many major cities along the water. If the sea level were to rise as scientists are predicting, this could mean serious problems for the coastal European cities such as Amsterdam. Shifts in the Gulf Stream will alter the weather patterns effecting Europe. Changes in the weather will lead to changes in zones suitable for agriculture and thus a shortage of food is possible in Europe.

Climate change poses a colossal threat to the world that we know today. Without the actions of the European Union to set an example and lead the industrialized nations, our world could change drastically within the coming decades as a result of our human activities. The authority of the EU on the international environmental policy sphere has been welcomed with open arms. Climate change is affecting each and every one of us and the call for action is upon us now. What we do today will affect generations to come. The European Union, along with the Kyoto Protocol, is serving as major initiators and initiatives to change our habits and reform our ways. If we do not follow the outlines and goals we have laid before us, the entire Kyoto Protocol with all of its negotiations and efforts will be in vain.

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