POLICY BRIEFS Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

POLICY BRIEFS - Essay Example Tianyi Luo, Andrew Maddocks, and Betsy Otto reported that last July 2012, China’s government sought to establish 363 coal-fired power plants for construction all over China, with planned capacity of more than 557 gigawatts, a momentous 75% increase on generating capacity that can fit its rabid energy demand. The rest of the world fears that China is over-exerting itself on the global atmosphere. China asks: Why should it curb its own economic growth when first world countries before had no check and balance system on its energy use? The answer is because without global actions in reducing emission, the world is running faster toward a state of alarming global warming. Global warming is important to all of us because we all share the same atmosphere. Joseph Eugene Stiglitz, an American economist and a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and the John Bates Clark Medal, asserts: â€Å"No issue is more global than global warming: everyone shares the same at mosphere† (7). Aside from a Nobel Prize economist who is certain that global warming is our issue, several scientists are also concerned of global warming- principally, its causes and effects on people. Those who say that global warming is not human-made and not based on carbon-dioxide emissions are facing increasing evidence that prove them otherwise. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body that is composed of hundred scientists that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, stated that though the rise of global temperature can be as low as 2.7 degrees, if carbon dioxide emissions double for the next few years, the rise will be higher. Justin Gillis of The New York Times reported the potential effects of higher global temperatures all over the world, based on the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Warming the entire planet by 5 degrees Fahrenheit would add a stupendous amount of energy to the climate system. Scientists say the increase would be greater over land and might exceed 10 degrees at the poles. They add that such an increase would lead to widespread melting of land ice, extreme heat waves, difficulty growing food and massive changes in plant and animal life, probably including a wave of extinctions. In other words, global warming is a global issue because it will not only affect plant and animal life, it will affect human life as well. President Jim Yong Kim, you are in a unique position to help stop global warming because you hold a powerful position in one of the most dominant global institutions in the world. The World Bank has the primary functions of promoting world development, boosting productivity standards and standards of living in less developed countries, and assisting in-need countries’ reconstruction plans. You can support our proposal for financing changes that can curb global emissions. Furthermore, in your speech, â€Å"Within Our Grasp: A World Free of Poverty† delivered at Georgeto wn University last April 2, 2013, you showed awareness for the impact of global warming on poverty. You said: â€Å"The World Bank Group is now working on a revamped strategy to significantly strengthen our climate change interventions and help catalyze urgent action among global partners on the scale required.† Indeed, I agree that with the World Bank’s financial resources and global political and social power, it can do more to help address global warming. DISCUSSION OF GLOBAL WARMING AND POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS: Global warming is real. Richard A. Muller, a professor of