Ellis 1 Within the last decade, the earth has surpassed many milestones that once were never

thought possible. In the year 2004, the United States broke the all time record for number of tornadoes.1 In 2005, Mumbai had a record breaking total of 37 inches of rain within a 24-hour period, the most any city in India had ever seen.2 Hurricane Katrina took the prize of being the costliest hurricane in the history of the United States and the worst natural disaster ever seen in this country. What exactly, has made these benchmarks possible? The answer to this question has been disputed throughout the past few decades, but because of the most recent disasters to plague our planet, it is clear that global climate change is in effect and is the root cause of the recent natural disasters. Climate change is not just a concern for a few nations, but a cause of global alarm for every person on this planet. The Earth is facing a global emergency that needs attention immediately in order to be stopped. If no action is taken, the earth will pass a tipping point that it will never be able to come back from. With every fact and figure screaming in our faces that action needs to be taken to stop climate change, why is nothing being done? Why are factories and plants still allowed to dump carbon emissions and other harmful greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, melting the ice caps, lowering the air quality, and endangering every single one of the worlds 6.5 billion inhabitants? So many questions have gone unanswered in regards to climate change, and their answer can be found in profitable production, globalization, externalities, and government

Ellis 2 censorship intended to promote capitalism and keep the problem of climate change from reaching the masses on the level that it needs to. Global warming is a relatively basic concept to understand. The sun uses light waves to penetrate the Earths atmosphere and heat it to a suitable temperature. When that energy has somewhat warmed the Earth, it is sent back to the sun in infrared waves. Some of that infrared energy will of course be trapped in the Earths atmosphere, but this is a good thing because it keeps the Earth at a comfortable temperature that is able to sustain life. As time goes by, the problem has arisen that due to manmade carbon emissions and greenhouse gases, the Earths atmosphere is thickening, which is keeping more and more of this infrared light trapped. This is now heating the Earth, and consequently the oceans, to temperatures that threaten to cause a permanent change in the climate, to temperatures that will eventually become unsuitable for life.3 We are already seeing the results of this temperature change in all of the recent natural disasters that have occurred within the past few years. There are four factors of production: land, labor, capital, and entrepreneurship. In order to be successful, a company must incorporate all four of these commodities in the most efficient way possible in order to turn out a profit. Internalizing every cost a company creates is not an efficient way for them to make a profit. For example, pollution control spending would be an unproductive expenditure for these companies; it is another cost that they do not feel they need to incur, because it simply draws from their profits. This is when they make the

Ellis 3 decision to externalize their costs onto a powerless public. So many of the greenhouse gases and carbon emissions that are destroying our planet are being caused by these externalities being forced onto helpless communities that have no say in promoting clean air regulations, stopping illegal dumping, and are unable to band together to stop these production powerhouses. In the United States these companies usually target communities that are going through a process of churning or rapid transition where the community is too fragmented to unite as one. It is the lower class and the minorities who are suffering this exploitation, and it is mainly due to their position on the economic ladder. In Massachusetts for example, African Americans and other minorities are being drawn into communities that have the most environmental hazards, whether they are incinerators, nuclear power plants, etc. Companies will take advantage of the population around them; it will be those people the government will force to clean up pollutants with their tax dollars. Many individuals will not be able to afford this cost, which may result in nothing being cleaned up. The pollution will stay in the environment, adding to the promotion of global climate change bit by bit. The best way for companies to deal with their pollution and carbon emissions is to displace them. If the source of the pollutant is harder to trace, it is harder to stop it from being put into the environment. Without the ability to stop it, it will be very hard to combat the damage it is doing. Primarily, they look to use demographic displacement in areas that are largely low income, rural, working class, and overall, simply powerless. Geographic displacement is also

Ellis 4 a solution to the problem of what to do with air pollution and waste. Massachusetts has its primary sources of air pollution from factories and other sources that are out of state. The higher the companies are able to build their smokestacks the farther the air pollutant will travel before it settles; the deeper they are able to dig their wells underground, the farther down into the earth the pollutants will go, making it very difficult to target. 60,000 Americans are dying from air pollution every year, and that is an astronomical externality that production companies are willing to force onto the American people. Companies are constantly seeking new ways to privatize profits and socialize the cost of cleanup onto the surrounding area. They hide all of their externalities, create subsidiaries, and use green washing in order to portray hazardous externalities as beneficial. It is true that companies externalizing their costs and problems are prominent in the United States, but it is vastly more troubling on a global scale. The United States and other advanced capitalist countries owe at least $13 trillion dollars in ecological debt due to externalities to underdeveloped countries in carbon emissions alone.4 Those nations owe an amount much greater than that when the quantity of natural resources extracted from those under developed countries is taken into account. Oil companies, car companies, and other oil centric companies have made crude oil an inelastic commodity that people are now dependent on. The United States is constantly on the lookout for the next source of cheap oil and natural resources. At a profit of $5.5 billion a year, oil production in Equatorial Guinea is the third greatest exporter of oil in sub-Saharan Africa. Despite the

Ellis 5 richness of its land and resources, this country is still one of the poorest in Africa. With the population of Equatorial Guinea living on about $2 a day, it is clear that developed nations have acquired the knack of taking advantage of the underprivileged. As they say, absolute power corrupts absolutely and this is certainly true for Equatorial Guinea. The nation is under the dictatorship of Teodoro Obiang, who has ruled his country under a policy of friendship for foreign investors and overall disregard and oppression for the people he rules. The United States took full advantage of this relationship and has been able to exploit the land, resources, and people of Equatorial Guinea to no end.5 Policies like this would never even be considered, let alone implemented in the United States, but when they are in place in a smaller country that the rest of the world has little use for, it is a prime location for externality theory to come into play: go to a setting where the local people have no power and take advantage of it. One of the first steps in combating global climate change is empowering those under developed countries with the ability to preserve their resources for themselves and stop the over consumption of natural resources by superpowers such as the United States. In the United States, many individuals feel as though they are immune to climate change. This can be attributed to the fact that the negative impacts of climate change from companies and manufacturers have been externalized onto those who are powerless to stop it, and do not have the voice to speak out against this severe environmental injustice. The global South is where this is most certainly true, where super powers, like the United States, are able to take advantage

Ellis 6 of extracting energy and raw materials from these areas and give a disproportional monetary exchange in return. So much of the space and land in the South is being taken by the United States, yet the global Souths debt to the U.S. continues to grow each year. 6 It is the citizens of these poorer countries that will be affected most dramatically by climate change before anyone else. The hurricane that took place in Haiti recently is a prime example of this. Over 60% of the structures in the capital city of Port-au-Prince collapsed, and over 4.5 million people were left homeless. An earthquake of this same magnitude would have caused little damage and resulted in almost no loss of life had it occurred in a more developed nation such as the United States or China. Haiti, however, is much more underdeveloped and the people there are forced to erect homes and buildings with low quality construction materials, construct bridges with no shock absorbers, and to top it all off, build all of these structures on land that will, and in fact did, liquefy after the first few shakes of an earthquake. Now because of the earthquake, new homes will have to be built on undeveloped land and the dramatic deforestation of Haiti will continue. The lifestyle that these people live is also not conducive to a stable climate. A majority of people, not just in Haiti, farm for sustenance and use wood fires for cooking throughout the global South. This is adding to global climate change because almost 30% of CO2 emissions every year come from burning brush land for agriculture, and also wood fires used for cooking.7 The people of Haiti, as well as a majority of countries in the world, have a very small amount of social power.

Ellis 7 In an age where the information most easily obtained is through the 6 o clock news or the headlines of the New York Times, it is very difficult to find an unbiased and completely factual side of any topic. The media controls what the general public knows, and usually will put its own spin on the facts; their objective is to portray their viewpoint in the best light possible. If you were to look in any Republican or capitalist based newspaper, journal, blog, or any other informative source in the United States or other countries, there would be little mention of this climate crisis. These sources that are supposed to provide the general public with the truth will make no mention of the fact that there are over 25,000,000 ecological refugees and that this number grows by 5,000 people everyday, that 50% of the worlds coral reefs are now completely bleached, or that Earths volume of sea ice has decreased by over 80%. Instead, theses sources will proclaim that we have a handle on the climate crisis, it is not nearly as serious as the environmentalists say that it is, and in most cases will flat out deny the idea that climate crisis even exists. For example, under the administration of George W. Bush, global warming was delegitimized by administrators altering reports related to global climate change. Jim Hansen was the creator of these reports and he has gone on record saying that the government censored his speeches and threatened him with serious backlash if he did in fact decide to divulge every detail of his reports to the public, in order to make climate change seem less threatening. The film Who Killed The Electric Car introduces a concept that few people knew existed. It explores how the electric car was created and why it was so

Ellis 8 mysteriously taken off the market and never seen again, despite its significant benefits to the environment. The electric car came onto the seen in 1996. It eliminated smog and was vastly better for the environment when compared to gasoline-powered vehicles. It would have significantly reduced carbon emissions by modern day Americans driving on a daily basis, yet it was taken off the road and destroyed. Why would a product that could be so significant in eliminating carbon emissions and slowing the process of climate change be completely taken off the table? The answer lies once in again with production and in this case, big oil. Oil companies are creating 13.5 million barrels of oil a day, and with the introduction of electric cars, that number would soon have become obsolete. The electric cars did not use the same parts as gasoline powered cars; they had parts that did not need to be replaced and were not subject to the typical wear and tear seen in most gaspowered vehicles. This would have eliminated the revenue car companies generated by parts that would wear out. Electric cars would have eliminated systemic obsolescence, and that would only undercut the car manufacturers profits. Climate change is not a linear progression, it is much more dramatic than that. If carbon emissions are not cut by 80%-90% as soon as possible, we will enter a new climactic period. The climate will be about 5-12 degrees Fahrenheit warmer. Once this change happens, all of the permafrost in the North will melt and release tons of methane into the air; this will certainly be past the tipping point and global warming will become unstoppable. Species will not be able to adapt to the radical change in climate and extinction will increase rapidly. If both Greenland and

Ellis 9 Antarctica were to melt as a result of climate change, the sea level would rise 200 feet. Over 300,000 million people will be displaced as a result of climate change. As long as we are living in a world that is dominated by globalization, where environmental regulations are lax and there is an insatiable thirst for profit and to eliminate the competition, there will be no effort large enough to combat climate change. As long as we continue to live in a polluter-industrial complex where environmental justice is merely a suggestion and not a practice and neoliberalism reigns free over industry, there is no hope to stop climate change.8

Endnotes
1. Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth (New York: Rodale, 2006): 86. 2. Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth (New York: Rodale, 2006): 110. 3. Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth (New York: Rodale, 2006): 26. 4. Daniel Faber, Capitalizing on Environmental Injustice (Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2008): 173. 5. Daniel Faber, Capitalizing on Environmental Injustice (Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2008): 183. 6. Daniel Faber, Capitalizing on Environmental Injustice (Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2008): 209. 7. Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth (New York: Rodale, 2006): 227. 8. Daniel Faber, Capitalizing on Environmental Injustice (Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2008): 15.

Global Climate Change

February 22, 2010 Morgyn Ellis Class of 2014 Major: Environmental Studies Student I.D.: 000030620