Glabalization and Climate Change

Steve Sanders

English 201

January 3, 2008

Synthesis Essay

Globalization and climate change

The climate is changing whether it’s wanted or not these events of melted polar ice caps, dramatic changes in weather; drought, warmer wetter winters and rising sea levels, also increased Co2 emissions in the atmosphere are only of few changes that have been increased by globalization. The economic pressure that is being forced is causing more harm to our living planet then some seem to know. Trying to slow the trend of globalization is highly unlikely because of economic growth and the rise of demand for goods and services. Rising underdeveloped countries that are emerging are going to have a hard time meeting the obligations of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases maintaining sustainable development, global change has become a popular word in scientific debates on a range of structural change in the earth’s ecology. Globalization has in the past played a major role in the controversial environmental debates. Many problems resulted in this area of discussion, in regard to the complex relationship between globalization, government, trade and transport, and environmental decay.

The current debate on the environmental effects of globalization is particularly concerned with the question whether a worldwide liberalization of trade may provoke environmental collapse. Three major environmental concerns related to trade are the domestic environmental effects caused by the use of imported products, the foreign environmental effects caused by the production of exported goods, and the environmental effects caused by transport movements needed for international trade. The (WTO is an international organization that was created in January 1, 1995) the importing and exporting of goods is creating larger impacts on the environment, the expansion of international trade is enhancing the amount of air pollution and environmental damage. “The carbon dioxide emitted from shipping and flying goods all over the globe, goods that could easily be produced much closer to the point of consumption”. It no longer matters what the self-governing societies want, but it’s what the global corporations want.

(Les, Leopold p1)

The WTO is already among the most powerful trading companies in the world, it has been granted with vast powers, which include the right to judge whether laws of nations are impairments to trade, by WTO standards. They rule laws concerning public health, food safety, small business, labor standards, culture, human rights, and other social and economic procedure. If any of these laws proved to be harming to trade, the WTO can demand their options, or enforce unkind sanctions “the broad benefits of trade and the associated economic change may come at a cost to some individuals, firms, and communities”. Trade rules should not provide a license to degrade the world or force it to trade away those things that value the most, like clean air, clean water, wild life, and wild places. Presently international rules like the U.S. Clean Air Act, which set high standards against polluting gasoline and can also, prevent America and other nations from rejecting imported products that are harvested or produced in ways that don’t meet tough environmental standards.

(Mark, Toma. Economist View p. 1)

The economic growth boosts worldwide trade and enhances communications between countries increasing in transportation which in creates harm to the geographical environment. This has caused a wide variety of threats to the environment and it shows a demanding problem of globalization forming environmental decay caused by the rise in international transportation. It is contributing to two main global environmental problems, which are the greenhouse effect and the depletion of the ozone layer.

Even though the effects of globalization contributed too many environmental defects, some may argue that free trade will avoid the efficiency losses associated with protection. It will reinforce economies of progression and that it “creates a structure of exports that is more consistent with resource endowments and they promote higher growth due to a greater efficiency of resource allocation; a greater access to economies of scale when production for the limited domestic market” the flow of trade does have its benefits and opportunities but how much will it cost the world in the long run?

(UNCTAD/UNDP. p. 18)

Globalization, government, trade and transport, and environmental decay issues are not easy to come by and can’t fix in one day, they take time and effort but the environment