climate change: Who's the blame?

Introduction (animation)­

So let’s start off with what is global warming?

Global warming is basically an increase in the world’s average temperature

which then leads to many kinds of climate changes around the globe

For example,

Increased chances of droughts or floods that appear occur in Bangladesh that stop people from growing crops and other things

Lots of species of animals are now also at the risk of being extinct

More extreme weathers are occurring in many places which can cause forest fires, tornadoes, and extremely cold weathers to occur in those places.

But how does global warming all work?


Well we’ll start off with the sun’s radiation absorbed in to the earth.

The radiation then either gets reflected back in to space

Or because of the greenhouse gases we produce, the radiation gets trapped inside earth

All this radiation then gets collected up and causes the earth to start warming up.

This whole process is called global warming,

but what is causing the greenhouse gases?

we’ll many things contribute to global warming as a whole

plants, volcanoes, natural waste, cows, sheep’s, and other things

But those only contribute a tiny amount global warming, the majority of greenhouse gases come from us using

cars, factories, trains, buses, boats, planes etc.

 First part (video)

The blame for climate change can be viewed in a few ways, by individuals *human silhouette*, by countries *country silhouette* or by nature *volcano silhouette*.

First let’s look at how we individuals contribute to global warming.

There are two ways us as individuals contribute to global warming. The direct way, and the indirect way.

The direct way contribute to global warming everyday simply by using things like (full screen images) light bulbs, showers, fridges, phones, laptops, TV, air conditioners, heaters, cars, buses, elevators, escalators, etc.

and it’s because all these things we use require fuel such as electricity and gasoline which in order to make, majority of the time would be done by burning fossil fuels which ends up producing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

In fact in 2003 the average carbon footprint per household is around 12.4 tons.

The indirect way we contribute to global warming is by buying new products which has been manufactured by factories.

Each product that we buy has used a substantial amount of energy to make in which the consequence is the greenhouse gases produced by making the product.

Another way we contribute the global warming is by waste. For all the waste that we end up disposing, that end up being processed before going to landfills and that process can produce lots of carbon emissions.

In 2003 the average amount of indirect carbon footprint per household is around 35 tons which is over 2.5 times more of our direct carbon footprint which is why the industrial factories produce so much more greenhouse gases than we do.

This makes the total Carbon footprint per household in 2003 including our indirect emissions to a grand total of around 50 tons per year.

Okay now let’s looks statistically at which country has the most carbon emissions per person.

In 2003 the EIA *EIA (energy information administration international energy annual)* collected data from each country then made a graph showing which countries emits the most carbon dioxide per capita.

As the graph shows, the United States emit the greatest amount of carbon in 2003. Even though America is only 4.4% of the world’s population, they are responsible for almost 25% of the total carbon emissions and with around 20 tons is over 6 times the global average of 3 tons.

Another thing we can see from the graph is although many think that china is the biggest source of pollution,

you can see that they are under the world average and nowhere near the one of the top emitters of greenhouse gases

per capita that is

Second part (video)

In a global scale the blame for climate change is a little bit more complicated. Many people think that pollution comes from the factories in China and although that may be true, you can’t entirely blame china but instead the consumerism culture around the world.

China’s factories are just a small part behind a much bigger picture.

Third part (animation)

Let’s start off with the consumerism culture. In 1970 the consumerism was used as a term of where the social order and ideology of consumerism *consumerism* encourages us to purchase goods *newer and newer generation of things* and replacing our old ones even to the point where our old products function almost as if they were brand new yet we still replace them with newer ones. *iphone 4 and 5*.

Now this consumerism has brought a completely new problem to our world in two ways, the first is to our earth’s resources which are disappearing faster and faster with the higher demand of new products.

The second way is what we have now which is a climate change problem. With higher demands for goods, America and other places around the globe has completely shifted the weight on to china where they can build factories for very low prices *factories appearing from America moving to china*. This then causes lots of carbon emissions.

Then here’s where America and the other places gets bitten back in the tail.

Pollution gets shifted to the consumerism places; they now have all the pollution in their country however they blame China for all the pollution even though they are the main reason for the pollution in the first place.

End/Final part

so back to the question. Who is to blame?

Well no matter how you think of who is to blame for climate change, there is no real ONE certain kind of people or ONE certain country to blame.

In other words if you want to blame anyone in the world for climate change, its EVERYONE

because one way or another we have all contributed to emitting greenhouse gases, and buying in to the consumerism culture and this is our fault and not for China or any of the companies making the money to take the fall for.
so next time you take a shower for over an hour because you just have nothing to do
Or keep your TV on while you’re gaming and clearly not focusing on the TV
Or Buying the iphone 5s when you know it’s basically the same thing as the iphone 5

Just remember, this is our world, and it is our responsibility to take care of it
And a final quote, we do not inherit from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.








Sources:

 "Report 5: How Do We Contribute to Global Warming?" Report 5: How Do We Contribute to Global Warming? N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.

"The Age Of Stupid - Consumerism." YouTube. YouTube, 06 Feb. 2011. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.

"Consumerism." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 15 Mar. 2014. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.

"How Big Is One Ton of Carbon?" The Green Economy. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.

"Global Carbon Emissions Rise to New Record in 2013." Scientific American Global RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.

"SRI-RTP." » Blog Archive » Which Countries Produce The Most Green House Gases. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.

"Climate Change and Global Warming Introduction." - Global Issues. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Mar. 2014.