POLS 170 BLOG GROUP 0403

Blog Post #4: Paris Climate Accord I read an article discussing the future of the Paris Climate Accord following our class discussions regarding the successes and failures of global environmental agreements such as the Montreal and Kyoto Protocols. Initially completed in 2015, the article assessed how the agreement had fared five years after its inception. The author believes the accord is working and will continue to yield positive results for the future. After conducting my own close analysis, I disagree with the author’s argument regarding the accord.  In my view, the agreement is a respectable yet timid attempt to coordinate all global actors and encourage them to take steps to keep global temperature increases "well below" 2°C by 2100. However, I argue the treaty itself is weak because it does not have any binding limits on emissions. In fact, the treaty gives each respective country the authority to craft its own climate plan. I assert that this is a major risk and a pr...

  It has now been two long years since the COVID-19 pandemic uprooted our lives as we knew it. We were forced to adapt to the ever-changing mandates and lockdowns that were implemented to keep everyone safe. Recently in class, we talked about the idea of globalization and how some people believe that it can be beneficial or not. The more I think about the pandemic, the more it feels like it spread as fast as it did because of globalization. My belief is that being dependent on globalization is terrible for countries because if another pandemic arises in the future, the same kind of suffering will take place. Prior to the pandemic, economies all over the world were dependent on globalization. Some were dependent on tourists visiting their countries, while others were reliant on foreign trade and investments. When the pandemic struck, it was clear that this kind of dependency was not healthy as economies all over the world suffered terribly. International travel declined by aroun...

Climate Change and the Paris Agreement           This past summer I was walking with friends around New York City and I remember we were in a small park-like area of the city, I am not certain where, and I looked up at one of the imposing buildings looming overhead and saw a clock that was counting down. At that point in time I think the clock read something like 6 years, 107 days, and some hours:minutes:seconds. I remember being slightly confused on what the clock was counting down to, until later I researched it and found out it was known as the Climate Clock. It was made possible by scientists, artists, educators, and activists across the world to remind everyone walking past just how much longer we have until it is too late to fix the damage we have done to our planet and climate change becomes irreversible. Not all hope is lost yet, however. In December of 2015, 192 countries and the European Union joined the Paris Agreement to reduce the emissions of ...

  A Criticism of Buck: The Covid-19 Pandemic To say the very least, I am very skeptical of Buck’s argument that there is “No Tragedy of the Commons.” Rather, she advises her reader to take a “dual focus” by looking at parallel historical successes and addressing these issues in a more epistemological way. Buck agrees with the definition of the tragedy of the commons being: “a right which one or more persons have to take or use some portion of that which another’s soil produces…and is a right to part of the profits of the soil, and to part only, the right of the soil lying with another and not with the person who claims common.” This definition, at first, seems to hold true, yet when we take a look at the current social and economic climate of the world, it is much easier to criticize Buck’s work. At this point, COVID-19 has affected every country in one way or another. With the WHO declaring COVID-19 a pandemic and issuing a “global health emergency,” governments have issued va...