Climate Change – Does Carbon Emission Really Matter?

One of the main topics of COP15 in Copenhagen 2009 is “carbon emission”. Countries were still arguing about every single issue of carbon emission. According to NASA’s research, the carbon dioxide concentration has risen to 390 ppm rather than the upper limit for safe atmospheric carbon concentration, 350 ppm. It is easy to tell that the industries did a lot of effects on the carbon dioxide concentration. Scientists claim carbon dioxide the cause of global warming, but meanwhile skeptics doubt the correctness and reliability. Even some people consider climate change a normal phenomenon and that it warms up the northern countries such as Russian and Canada.

However, I myself believe in the majority that human-made greenhouse gas is warming up this beautiful but fragile planet. As we have seen recently, lots of disasters happened and weird weather always occurred. To take Taiwan as an example, fluid has become more serious ever. Now a little rain could submerge a village. And the mass wasting also has become really threatening. I remembered when I was a child, if the temperature went up to 30℃, it was pretty hot. Fifteen years passed and the average temperature in summer now is 38℃! The snow in Hohuan Mountain disappeared (it shows up again this year, which is rare to happen.). Because Taiwan is an island country, the rise of the sea level will also threaten the inhabitants. I don’t want to see that we have to move our country to another land in my life. That is terrible.

Until now the most obvious cause of the climate change is carbon dioxide emission. We can’t really deny that. The consensus about global warming is like the smoking issue. If we refuse to face that smoking kills and keep doubting on it, it will be too late when smoking kills us. Besides, the carbon dioxide emission problem was made by human beings, so we ourselves need to take responsibility on it.

As other countries face common problems about climate change, they meet and discuss together and more complicated problems occur, especially on the carbon dioxide emission limit. The U.S. and China are the two most carbon dioxide emission countries which are also the most important roles in COP15. And there are also negotiations between the rich countries and the poor countries, the developed countries and developing countries, and even the OPEC and the clean tech. All is about economy. It is kind of ironic. Every country concerns about the climate change but meanwhile no country would like to disadvantage itself a bit from the protocol. That makes the protocol even more impossible.

That is one reason that I don’t have so much faith to see the agreement be done. I could almost predict that in the future (I can’t tell it’s far or near), a more serious debate for living starts when the earth steps into another climate state. What I could do now is to live a simple life, try to be carbon-neutral and wipe away my carbon footprint. Also I could dearly hope that green energy can fully replace fossil fuel.

One of my friends went to COP15 as a representative for Taiwan in the COP15 Youth Conference. They proposed the problems caused by climate change in Taiwan and shared common opinions with the youngsters from all over the world. It was quite depressing that Taiwan was not in the UN and naturally became marginalized. However people still care about the Cross-Strait relation. And I believe their trip to Copenhagen also made publicity about Taiwan. I love one slogan in COP15 “Think global, act local”. No matter the result of the agreement failed, we could still do our best to save our planet and our descendants, absolutely without an economy or political view.

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This is my assignment on climate change, if any mistakes, I would like your correction :D