Google Drive Link:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cKE7RZ-a-ikl1LbxNL-I57rvDW1xyRgBsmMpZetpzI4/edit
Gannon Conner
Ibe Liebenberg
English 130W
20 April 2020
Are We Killing Earth?
The problems of the human race’s ethics to keep earth alive are astronomical. Why is this such a hard topic to keep under control? If we all worked together, we could fix this problem along with many other world problems. Global warming is growing fast and nearing an irreversible state if we don’t act on the problem soon.
If we want to know how to fix global warming, we must know what it is first and how it is caused. Global warming is a gradual increase in the overall temperature of the earth’s atmosphere generally attributed to the greenhouse effect caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide, chlorofluorocarbons, and other pollutants. “In 1998, representatives from 159 countries met in Kyoto to discuss a problem which is sort of a prototype of a global issue: The earth is warming up due to the man-made greenhouse effect” (Macharzina 92). This phenomenon can be discussed from various standpoints. Scientists have worked out several models to calculate the warm-up at certain points of time based on differing assumptions. There are many questions unsolved, and it will take a good deal of time until they come to an exact forecast of the greenhouse effect including its consequences, Earth’s warm-up. “The industrialized countries account for the major part of the emission of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, chloro-fluorocarbons, and etc. which are the gases that trap the reflected infrared radiation in our atmosphere” (Macharzina 93). Over the past century, it seemed that these by-products of industrial production, warmth, and wealth were blown away somewhere else and would not bother anybody in the rich countries.
Global warming is and how it is affecting earth, how is it affecting us as humans? People globally are being forced to migrate to a different place to live because of global warming’s effect on their native land. Forced migration has become a world-wide phenomenon in the past century, affecting increasing numbers of countries and people. It entails important challenges from a global health perspective. This has been critically discussed about the “Japanese interpretation of global responsibility for health in the context of forced migration. This complements their analysis by outlining three areas of global health responsibility for European countries” (Bozorgmehr). This is a highlight of important stages of the migration phases related to forced migration and propose three arguments.
“First, the chronic neglect of the large number of internally displaced persons in the discourses on the refugee crisis needs to be corrected in order to develop sustainable solutions with a framework of the Sustainable Development Goals” (Bozorgmehr). Second, protection gaps in the global system of protection need to be effectively closed to resolve conflicts with border management and normative global health frameworks. Third, effective policies need to be developed and implemented to meet the health and humanitarian needs of forced migrants. Forced migration refers to a migratory movement in which an element of coercion exists, including threats to life and livelihood arising from natural or man-made causes. “This form of migration has become a phenomenon affecting millions of people since the 1940s, and an increasing number of countries in the past decades. Nine in every 1000 inhabitants of the world were forcibly migrated in 2015” (Bozorgmehr).
The recent peak in forced migration has been labelled as a “refugee crisis,” a term defining the victims as the problem, instead of problematizing the underlying causes of migration. “The true crisis is, as United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has put it, rather a crisis of solidarity. It is also not an acute but a chronic crisis: the number of displaced persons has already been at very high levels around 6 to 7 per 1000 world population between 1996 and 2013” (Bozorgmehr). Despite its long-lasting character and its obvious implications for population health, forced migration has not been explicitly categorized as a global health issue.
Is it possible to fix global warming? A lot of people think it is more than possible to fix with global isolationism. Global isolationism is conceptualized as a radically non-compromising coexistence of globalization and isolationism by design, aided by new information technologies, reactivated mass consciousness and slack political resources. It is characterized by the radical pursuit of new deals within the global geopolitical and economic order; renegotiation of existing deals for resource appropriation and democratic space for the marginalized; the collapse of the old political order via auto-implosion as a beneficial constraint; and the defense of the status quo in global resource and environmental governance due to trans-local insurrection. There are multiple phenomena that are transmuting into a delicate global economic and political turbulence. These include political and economic nationalism, populism, deglobalization (not the same as anti-globalization) and environmental movements.
Deglobalization is the process of diminishing interdependence and integration between certain units around the world, typically nation-states. It is widely used to describe the periods of history when economic trade and investment between countries decline. Anti-globalization is opposition to the increase in the global power and influence of businesses, especially multinational corporations.
In the decades before and after the new millennium, globalization became a buzzword which gained currency in management literature and much enthusiastic following in the media. “Its modern form had however started over 150 years earlier with enhanced transportation and lowered communications costs, allowing economic globalization and global economic integration to outpace political globalization. Modern globalization was presented in academic literature and in the media as being about openness, access to factors, technologies that facilitate movement of people, a world of capital without borders, trade liberalization, the import and export of cultural commodities and the rise of the transnational corporation” (Ahen 42-43). In sum, it entailed harmless geo-commercial exchanges that spread wealth and served as the engine of prosperity and economic development.
If we all worked together, we could fix this problem along with many other world problems. Using all of this information and applying it to help save earth, we would fix the global and economic problem that is ruining so many lives and killing earth.
Works Cited
Ahen, F. Globalisolationism and its Implications for TNCs’ Global Responsibility. Humanist Manage J 4, 33–54 (2019).
Alley, R., and Coauthors, 2007: Summary for policymakers. Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, S. Solomon et al., Eds., Cambridge University Press, 1–18.
Bozorgmehr K, Razum O. Forced migration and global responsibility for health: Comment on “Defining and acting on global health: the case of Japan and the refugee crisis.” Int J Health Policy Manag. 2017.
Global Responsibility: In Search of Finding a New World Ethic by Hans Küng.Macharzina, K. (1998). Global responsibility. Management International Review, 38(2), 91-93.
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