U.S. Pledges Climate Deals with China and japan
Author: Lisa Friedman and ClimateWire
Source: Scientific American Date: April 15th, 2013 |
summary
The United States’ Secretary of State, John Kerry, meets with Chinese leaders in order to work together and decrease the emission of greenhouse gases. As the two biggest economies, users of energy, and air polluters, they hope to show how serious the situation is to the rest of the world through their compromise. Later on, the biggest economical countries meet in order to come up with an international plan to combat climate change. They agree that building efficiency is very significant but difficult to accomplish. Trying to get both developed and developing countries to become more energy efficient will be a challenge. But Kerry believes that energy efficiency isn’t an international decision and can be done individually between nations.
Reflection
I chose this article because I’m always interested to see what the world is doing in order to combat climate change; especially industrialized countries. I think it’s good that the U.S. and China were willing to meet on the matter since they’re the two biggest economies but I hope that more action will be taken soon. I also find it interesting that building efficiency is the main objective and I agree. If our houses were more energy efficient and didn’t require so much energy from non-renewable sources, then there would be less air pollution. I’m always trying to convince my mom to buy compact fluorescent light bulbs instead of the normal ones. She never believes me but I keep explaining that it saves energy and ultimately decreases the electric bills. I can only imagine how much better it would be for most homes to have efficient lighting, solar panels, proper plumbing systems, and other improvements.
The significance of this article is that many countries have noticed the issues of climate change and understand that something needs to be done about it. Whether they do something or not are up to them but the fact is that they have to do something. It seems that they may not come to a full agreement and that is very unfortunate. We people in power to speak up about this issue. If we talk about it once and then let it sit undecided, that is not going to solve the problem. We need to consistently fight this problem and take action instead of proposing something and never coming to a decision. |