By Michelle Mueller
A simple news search for climate change will return countless media headlines claiming climate change could cause power blackouts worldwide, that we’ve hit a “point of no return,” that it’s “too late,” alongside others which tie a changing environment with the costly fire season, mass flooding and even the source behind radical extremist groups. Images of a decaying green pastures, the last polar bear and the iconic melting Earth fill the internet. Our scientists are crying of the last generation to reverse the effects, while our politicians are split in a duality of committing to tackle the issue head on, while others failing to address environmental changes from existing at all.
Last month, delegates gathered alongside the United States in Paris for the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 21) to engage in dialogue on the future of environmental security and preservation. The conference resulted a “historic” negotiation of the Paris Agreement, which aims to “keep a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius and to drive efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels” (UN Press Release). The agreement is contingent upon the ratification by at minimum 55 countries which together make up 55% of global greenhouse emissions, and alone essentially lacks any formal legal binding (thus virtually ensuring similar legacy as the failed Kyoto Protocol effective since 2005).
Further, the Paris Agreement manifested despite two parties (the United States and Canada) concurrently partaking in the commission of the Keystone XL Pipeline which is set to run through Alberta, Canada to refineries in Illinois and Texas despite expressed environmental concerns over the potential for oil spills over one of the largest fresh water reserves in the world, among increased carbon emissions. Phase 1-3 has already been completed, and President Barack Obama signed a bill to expedite the final phase a week before Paris. Costing over $7 billion, the Keystone Pipeline is expected spur economic development in the form of tax revenue, jobs and indirect private sector investment (estimated $20 billion) (US Chamber of Commerce).
Climate change and economic development are not mutually exclusive events. Rather, energy drives the economy and instead of investing money in expedited permits to facilitate increased usage of destructive, unsustainable fossil fuels, we should place such monetary resources in expedited research and development for alternative energy sources.
“We have felt the energy research & development budget has been woefully underfunded for years,” said Phyllis Cuttino, director of the clean energy initiative at The Pew Charitable Trusts. Energy is the third-largest sector in the United States and only has a research budget of $5 billion annually. By comparison, the US spends $30 billion on health research and $80 billion on defense research annually.
Among the largest obstacles the fight for clean energy faces is the public perception of feasibility. Scott Tinker, director of the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin, said major new energy sources are “multiple, multiple decades away.” Developing alternative technologies takes time, space and monetary resources, but the ideas are there.
Rather than perpetuating the narrative of potential armageddon at the hands of illusive climate change (fear mongering), the media should seize the position of opportunity on climate change not only as an alternative to fossil fuels, but also a potential economic driver.
As we enter the “Year of the Climate,” I invite you to push dialogues past circumstantial lamentation and complacency with non-binding international “agreements” and look towards reality-based solutions to mitigate the increase of CO2 emissions permeating our ozone. Fossil fuels are not the only source of economic development in the energy sector, and alternative energy sources are essential in our evolution.
Michelle Mueller is an Assistant Online Editor for the Sigma Iota Rho Journal of International Relations. She is senior at DePaul University majoring in International Studies
