Climate change can and will affect us all, despite apathy

Publication Date: 11/19/2009

Very soon, my roommate and I will be taking a trip to Copenhagen. Perhaps you know why? If your answer is “no,” allow us to enlighten you and simultaneously ease our frustration.

This December, Copenhagen will be hosting the 15th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The conference will address mitigating climate change as well putting a cap on carbon emissions. We, along with other fellow Purdue students, will be attending the event to hopefully see history take place. At least that is the hope. Hope that our leaders and the world will take the necessary actions to stop CO2 emissions and invest in a greener, brighter future.

Sadly though, our initial excitement of the trip has exponentially dimmed over the course of the past couple weeks. The source of our frustration and disappointment is the lack of general knowledge of the conference, needless to say the significance of the outcome of Copenhagen.

The general reaction of the people we’ve told that we’re going to the conference is, “Why?” This includes well-educated professors and students. Perhaps even more disappointing is when we explain that Copenhagen will be successor to the Kyoto Protocol, to which we are met with even more blank stares or a much delayed grunt.

In 1997 the world moved to adopt the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty which mandated that countries cap their greenhouse gas emissions and address climate change based upon their level of development. The target was to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations to 5.2 percent lower than 1990 levels by the year 2012.

Needless to say, to date the United States is the only country that did not sign the Kyoto Protocol. In 2012 the Kyoto Protocol will expire. Next month’s conference in Copenhagen will be extending and make improvements to the Kyoto Protocol. How is it, then, that so few people on Purdue’s campus have heard of the Kyoto Protocol, much less the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change next month?

Climate change itself has the potential to affect everybody’s life. In fact, it is capable of destroying entire countries. Take Bangladesh for example: If flooding, tropical cyclones, storm surges and/or droughts become more frequent or severe due to a changing climate, it will become painfully obvious that for some countries, climate change action is no “over dinner” debate, but in fact a question of life or death.

“But Bangladesh doesn’t really affect me,” you might say, “so why should I care about some conference on the other side of the world?”

Think again. Climate change and the laws put into place for climate change will affect everyone in the U.S. whether or not you feel that climate change is occurring and being caused by human activities. In 2006, the U.S. provided 42 percent of the world’s corn or about 11.1 billion bushels, more than 50 percent of which was grown just in the states of Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska and Minnesota. If climate change goes the way most scientists are predicting, the corn-belt will be moving north into Canada.

Agriculture is ingrained – no pun intended – in the American way of life. Now tell us that doesn’t affect you.

With that said, please read up about the subject, so if one of us ends up speaking with you, you can give us more than a blank stare.

Christine W. Chung is a Natural Resource and Environmental Science alumna; Maya Zawadsky-Weist is a junior in the School of Environmental and Natural Resource Engineering; both may be reached through the opinions desk at opinions@purdueexponent.org.