portfolio

Simpson 1

name

Professor Morgan

CW1100

26 July 2020

Climate Justice

Today's decisions will significantly impact tomorrow's world, which the future generations will operate. This is to mean that the current man has a hand in the success or failure of the coming civilizations. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports establish our climate change actions' long-run ramifications. The climate change operations of the people currently are estimated to jeopardize the privileges and the living of the coming generations and environmental sustainability. Most of the effects associated with climate change are regional, and others have catastrophic ramifications to the marine ecosystem, weather, and entire environment. The global climate summit agreements should acknowledge the essentiality of climate justice. Although pundits have criticized contemporary governments and agencies on their sluggishness and the futility of actions taken to conserve the environment, I choose to adopt a rather optimistic attitude on the interventions put in place with the hope that progressively, they will be absolutely observed.

In the past, up to the middle of the last century, man was not conscious on the almost indelible damages his actions have caused the environment. To be more specific, governments were naïve that the emissions by industries and the waste discharged on the surface of the earth would only last for a short while. Consequently, they went blind on the large volumes of greenhouse gases, ozone damaging fumes of gases as well as the discharges that were released on land and on water from the numerous industries that were set up before mid-last century. Lethal doses of pollution were released in the environment until weather changes gave the first warnings. These changes include global warming, the increase of respiratory diseases and the extinction of some aquatic organisms due to water pollution.

Even after the rise of environmental activists and the general public understanding on the damages of environmental pollution, extreme capitalism by some economies hindered the collective responsibility towards stopping the environmental problem (Gratzer et al., 3). In this ear most of the controls put on pollution depended on the goodwill of the subject nations and organizations. In many cases they would ignore please to practice responsible business. This necessitated the rise of international conventions and agencies such as International Union for Conservation of Nature and IPCC to establish globally binding laws and policies on the management of the pollution problem in its varied forms.

The creation of international organizations and government agencies to ensure safe climates in future have evoked the spirit of climate justice. These are principles that are aimed at enhancing fairness in industrial actions of man towards fellow man, towards the society, the globe and towards future generations. Consequently, climate justice touches the aspect of future justice. From the scientific literature, I attest that environmental justice has been the pivotal subject of the geographical debates since its disclosure through the United States' exploration with environmental racism. Observantly, as the values and the norms of environmental justice get into international law and the civil society movements, the situations expand more (Fisher).

The flourishing of this spirit has resulted in three main changes that are characteristic of the today’s man objectives towards protecting the environment. They include the adoption of globally binding policies on pollution control, embarking on research and implementation of renewable sources of energy and advocacy toward adoption of pollution corrective measures by all men in the planet. The three-point approach embodies the principles of climate justice.

Ensuring that energy sources are sustainable and will be available for future civilizations is a way of enhancing climate justice to the people that will come after us. The use of renewable sources of energy is an important way to meeting this objective. Renewable sources of energy are those that cannot be depleted- those that get back even after usage. Energy experts have maintained that the usage of renewable sources of energy has no hazardous emissions to the environment whatsoever (Verma, 2). Some of these kinds of energy sources include wind energy and solar energy.

The application of the use of these sources of energy has one more contribution on climate justice. The sources will not be depleted and however much we use them, the generations to come will find them and use them in to meet the energy needs of their time. In fact, using them will lead to an established culture of responsible usage of energy. Hopefully, the people then will embrace the tradition and shun extreme capitalist tendency of only focusing on the short times products and services and the revenue the industries offer.

The whole transition to complete renewable energy plays a critical role in championing the health and privileges of the current and future generations with the opinion of climate action.

The holistic application of entirely renewable energy is firmly embedded in the Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals. Renewable energy campaign contributes to the health and the overall well-being of the today and tomorrow's generation. I have observed the imminent dangers and the continuous threats of global warming every day. The total global goal to create and maintain a sustainable 100% renewable energy is should no longer be treated lightly or a mere idea but a universal generational benefit urgency.

A 100% renewable energy mix is an essential element to achieve energy autonomy by 2030. Notably, attaining 100% renewable energy will involve several structural changes in electricity production (Selosse et al. 100). Reunion Island is vastly endowed with renewable energy sources like solar, geothermal, hydropower, sea energy, and biomass, which are powerful elements for the achievement of the global agenda 2030 and achieve climate justice.

Secondly, the spirit of climate justice has prompted today’s man with the task to obey the currently set energy use regulations. These laws are developed by all nations through a consensus especially from the international conventions on environment. Local justice systems have been rallied together to form a web of judicial officers which check on the compliance of each nation on these set regulations on drawing energy. Examples of regulations are minimal carbon emission reached at three years ago and the zero-waste discharge into water bodies that was formulated five years ago.

Some other nations have ratified international regulations and localized the administration of climate justice through local courts. This form of international compliance has been touted as the best as it creates a universal conception of pollution issues and a uniform address on violation. Environmental researchers have indicated that there is a tremendous that their interventions have led to tremendous positive growth of a clean planet and one which can sustain energy needs to years and times of infinity (Verma, 3).

The third way of achieving present and future climate justice is through advocacy to ensure that each human being is conscious on the need to protect the environment against our own negligence and that of fellow man. The adoption of this philosophy has been based on the fact that pollution is perverse, and its control requires that every man becomes part of the mission to conserve it (Lu et al., 11). Its adoption is aimed at making global citizens to pressure their governments towards the full compliance towards laws and regulations put forward through international consensus.

One specific strategy that the advocacy has adopted is persuading the public to boycott and avoid products of organizations that do not adhere to the set environmental laws. The effect of this initiative has seen industries and governments ensure they adopt these measures. The public advocacy has also managed to convince consumers of energy to shift towards safer and renewable sources of energy. In a research paper published last year, Judit and others, implied that six percent of energy consumers have shifted to the use of solar panels globally (Judit et al., 89).

Climate justice manifests the concerns of fair treatment and productive involvement of all persons regardless of color, gender, and race, among other descriptive factors, in the creations, establishment, and implementation of the environmental laws, policies, and regulations (Jenkins 118). Through the prospects of informing, educating, and mobilizing the global partners and the general public to uneven distribution, environmental perils, and benefits, ensuring productive participation of affected communities in critical decision making depicts a distributive and strategic justice concerns.

Initially, environmental justice focused on domestic, activist-led, and communal strategies for ensuring an equal and just distribution of the toxic burden. However, the federal governments devised policies to protect against any future inequality in climate justice decisions by acknowledging that local and other specific groups are affected, and the national ramifications of the noxious components are observable (Jenkins). Climate Justice establishes a proactive ideological plan to mitigate the growth rate to control climate change.

Additionally, there is a responsibility for climate justice in legal procedures. There is an emergence of atmospheric trust litigation in the United States, which targets the government agencies and utilizes public trust to oppose the government's environmental servitude responsibilities.

As a result of environmental challenges that depict ecological and climate justice, participation in critical decision making is not adequate. Therefore, there is an increase in demand and an urge for more appropriate justice strategies such as energy centered approaches. As depicted earlier, energy justice majors with the energy system. Energy justice has the potentiality to mitigate the pitfalls of climate justice. It provides a lens through which scientists and corporates can initiate solutions on climate justice-related issues.

Climate justice between regions and states is achievable, and ideal has history has depicted. It is attainable by subsuming the countries with vast access to a stable climate and have a large share of climate advantage. Argumentatively, the states who enjoy more of the climate benefits should bear a higher percentage of the total climate change abatement. In this approach, it represents an effective climate justice among the global states (Puaschunder). Climate change costs should be shared and distributed among generations based on the current and the future. In this context, there are climate change losers and winners. The winners should collect the taxes from mitigating the adverse effects, and the losers should focus on raising the revenue to offset the costs associated with climate change.

Going forward optimism on the meeting of absolute climate justice requires action on three fundamental areas. First, there should be speedy migration from non-renewable sources to renewable sources of energy. Global environmental conventions should tighten terms towards meeting set deadlines. This should be accompanied by stronger regulation laws and smarter strategies towards adoption of the declarations b local states. Secondly, environmental authorities should embark on intensive research works identify more sources of population so as to carpet all sources of environmental degradation. Finally, the public must be made to appreciate these proposals for change to enhance easy adherence to collective declaration on environmental protection.

In conclusion, I have optimistically made an extensive exploration of climate justice from the past, current, and future to safeguard tomorrow's generation's ambitions. Importantly, climate justice has been attainable through a precise application of holistic renewable energy, observance of agreed upon laws and regulations. Additionally, it evident that climate change advocacy winners should play the tax collectors role, and the losers should raise the revenue to reduce further implications of climate change.

Work Cited

Fisher, Susannah. "The emerging geographies of climate justice." The Geographical Journal 181.1 (2015): 73-82.

Gratzer, Georg, and William S. Keeton. "Mountain forests and sustainable development: The potential for achieving the United Nations' 2030 Agenda." Mountain research and development 37.3 (2017): 246-253.

Jenkins, Kirsten. "Setting energy justice apart from the crowd: lessons from environmental and climate justice." Energy Research & Social Science 39 (2018): 117-121.

Lu, Yonglong, et al. "Addressing China’s grand challenge of achieving food security while ensuring environmental sustainability." Science advances 1.1 (2015): e1400039.

Oláh, Judit, et al. "Achieving sustainable e-commerce in environmental, social and economic dimensions by taking possible trade-offs." Sustainability 11.1 (2019): 89.

Puaschunder, Julia. "Mapping climate justice." Governance & Climate Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2020. 23-38.

Selosse, Sandrine, et al. "The renewable energy revolution of reunion island." Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 89 (2018): 99-105.

Verma, Ashok Kumar. "Sustainable development and environmental ethics." International Journal on Environmental Sciences. 2019d 10.1 (2019): 1-5.