Global warming is the one of the biggest problem faced by humanity. Global warming has been caused by natural and human activity (anthropogenic activity). There is relation among global warming, greenhouse effect, and climate change. The main cause of global warming is the greenhouse effect. The main effect of global warming is climate change.
- The global warming does indeed exist and it was mainly caused by human activity who is even still accelerating it.
- From global warming we expect a rise of the average temperature leading to among other things such as, melting of glaciers and melting of the polar ice, increase of the mean sea level as well as generally more of extreme weather events and nature disasters like droughts, floods, tornadoes, etc.
- Only a drastic reduction of the waste gas emissions in the very near future can stop this trend.
- CO2 (Carbon dioxide) emissions belong to the most important causes of global warming. CO2 is inevitably created by burning fossil fuels like e.g. oil, natural gas, diesel, organic-diesel, petrol, organic-petrol, ethanol.
- Recent investigations have shown that inconceivable catastrophic changes in the environment will take place as soon as the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere reaches the level of about 450 ppm. Today's concentration is already at 380 ppm and it raises on average 2 - 3 ppm each year, so that the critical value will be reached in approximately 25 to 30 years from now. See here for some graphs.
In the past, there was more or less a direct relation between the energy consumption (mainly fossil fuels) and the welfare of a country. This has so far prevented many countries from taking serious actions to reduce their consumption of fossil fuels. As of today however, this relation is not true anymore. Germany is a good example of a country where the CO2 emissions have been decreasing for several years despite of a growth of the economy.
In the Kyoto conference many countries have agreed to reduce their CO2 output until the year 2012, on average to 5% below their respective emissions of the year 1990. The USA - as the largest CO2 producer world wide - and most developing countries refused to sign this agreement.
Global phenomena are difficult to reach consensus about
Already today it becomes apparent, that a lot of western countries will largely miss their promises concerning the CO2 reduction. Several signer countries have even increased their CO2 output since the conference.
With this background, discussions have recently started about potential scenarios after the end of the Kyoto agreement, that is after the year 2012. The goal is to move also the USA as well as the developing countries into some sort of obligations.
However, even if it should be possible to sign new, similar agreements for the time after 2012, it is doubtful whether they would be more respected than the ones from Kyoto. This would only be different if sanctions were automatically imposed on those countries, whose CO2 emissions per person still exceed a certain CO2 level after a given transitional period. In the negotiations, each country would of course claim to be qualified for a higher CO2 emission per person than the other countries. Almost any country would fight for an emission level as high as possible. This would of course defeat the original purpose of the reduction agreement.
We are now at the core of the problem: Global warming is a typical global phenomenon, where the causer of the emission does not automatically suffer from it himself. Cause and effect are separated both in time as well as geographical.
For non-global phenomena, this is different. Let's for example take a chemical accident with poisons: The immediate environment of the plant will be contaminated, human beings, animals and plants in the close environment are harmed. The damage is almost immediate and clearly visible. For this reason, laws are legislated and strictly imposed for storing and handling of chemical poisons, .
Personal responsibility
If you increase your personal petrol or gas consumption for this year by say 1'000 litres because you use the car more often, will this lead to natural disasters? And if yes, where? Nobody will be able to take you to the court, because it is not possible to prove a direct relation between your increased yearly consumption of fuels and a drought in Africa. This does not change the fact, however, that the CO2 emission produced by your car does indeed contribute to the global warming. No doubt, you and I are responsible for the climate change, too.