Tag: climate change

Without Accords, Goals to Curb Global Warming are Toothless

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Dec. 20, Jo Guldi, data scientist, historian and professor at SMU Dallas, for a piece critical of ineffective efforts to gain acceptance for laws and initiatives that could reduce the impact of climate change. Published in Inside Sources under the heading Without Accords, Goals to Curb Global Warming are Toothless: https://tinyurl.com/3w8c9uha

​A month ago, COP 27 (the 2022 U.N. Climate Change Conference) had its last session.  What did it accomplish? A fund was set up for rich countries to pay for climate-related disasters in poorer nations. But the basic answer to the question of what COP 27 accomplished, now as in previous years, is still this: not much.

No new climate targets were agreed on. Meanwhile, most nations fail to meet the climate targets they agreed on in 2021. At COP 27, representatives at the congress released statements praising the potential of the renewables sector, essentially engaging in public prayer that the invisible hand of the market will present a solution. They frittered away a long and expensive opportunity for states to do something.

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We need a global government of land, air and water

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May 20, Jo Guldi, data scientist, historian, and Associate Professor at SMU Dallas, for a piece advocating for world-wide equity in land ownership as one means to combat global warming. Published in Foreign Policy News under the heading We need a global government of land, air and water: https://bit.ly/3MyYlxv 

Polls show that two-thirds of Americans believe that the government should do more to combat climate change.  Over the past decade, the People’s Climate March (2014 and 2017), Extinction Rebellion (2018-21) and the March for Science (2017) have come and gone without achieving systemic reforms or creating political mechanisms . That’s because Americans have only been thinking about America. To fight the unprecedented, planetary challenge of climate change, we need politicians willing to run on a platform of international solidarity that claims Earth as a space for human life.

Parochialism is entirely understandable. Climate change in the abstract is made real at home, literally.  All Americans, particularly indigenous, ethnic, and working-class Americans are near the brunt of climate change: they inhabit landscapes made toxic by corporate dumping or easily flooded by increasingly violent storms. Yet Americans’ experience is not unique. The same issues elsewhere articulate a global emergency. 

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