Week of 12/7 - 12/11 Post #3

As the UNFCC cop 21 meetings in Paris are drawing to an end, I am excited as, while doing some further research I have found some additional aspects and things that will be taken into account in the final treaty draft and meetings. Government officials have endorsed the idea that forests are key climate solutions. I have found that there is a decent amount of account taken for nature, especially in terms of forests. I found that the UNFCC secretariat has launched a "forest info hub" in which talks about how forests play a crucial role in the climate change regime. This hub talks a good amount and focuses on emissions from deforestation as deforestation (the mass tree removal in an area to be short) accounts for very high amounts of emissions and greenhouse gas emissions that contributes to climate change. This has a large impact on animals as it directly impacts their habitat availability as well as the emissions that come from deforestation contribute to climate change which further puts a strain on animals such as habitat degradation and melting in the polar regions. Along with this, it was discussed that a need to work toward a system of incentivizing the reductions in emissions from deforestation is needed. An additional report was that the tackling of methane and black carbon could reduce the artic warming by 0.5 degrees Celsius and this would be huge in terms of helping animal populations in these areas. These statements made by world leaders and scientists leave me very optimistic that something of worth will be achieved and a legally binding treaty will be reached at the Paris meetings and we as a world will be coming together to fight this pressing and growing problem of climate change and global warming.

Week of 12/7 - 12/11 Post #2

I found a report that I would like to discuss in today's blog that I believe a big step in eventually reaching a worldwide legally binding treaty in regards to climate change and total emissions, which is something that I have always thought would be a huge step in limiting the effects of climate change and global warming. The article that I found talked about how not all parties are not ready to place there final positions on the matters of climate change while a large number of parties are willing to work towards an agreement of limiting a 1.5 degree Celsius increase as the maximum level. I am not surprised that there are parties who are hesitant to agree to certain circumstances and I am remaining hopeful that, while I believe this may cause some delays in the progress being made towards a legally binding treaty, that it does not end with a final impact resulting in a legally binding treaty being achieved. I believe that a legally binding treaty would have a tremendous impact on limiting the effects of climate change. This would be huge in terms of the relation to my research on the effects of climate change impacts on animals as it would greatly lower the risks that animal populations are put at by only allowing climate change to occur to a certain point; a point that would be potentially much higher if an agreement is not reach. I remain optimistic that some type of legal treaty will be reached and this will be of much benefit to animal populations as they will face much less stress that what could have been potentially seen in the future if a legal treaty is not formed.

Week of 12/7 - 12/11 Post #1

I found an example of how it has been established that it was noted how that by the end of the year our worlds climate will most likely be 1 degree Celsius above that average global temperature in the pre industrial area. It is huge that this becomes widely understood that this is truthful and accurate before the world leaders can move forward and fully address the problems at hand regarding climate changing and global warming. An increase in temperature by 1 degree Celsius ( an amount that sound like not very high initially ) can have huge impacts on the worlds climate, especially in the polar and cooler areas of our world. With an increase in temperatures, it becomes more likely that crucial habitat such as the ice regions and ice caps will melt and destroy crucial habitat for certain animal groups. Along with this, other regions climate will be greatly altered as well. Elements such as crucial plants and food sources may no longer be able to grow, which provide crucial elements to the survival of animal populations whether by providing crucial habitat or nourishment to these animals. The full spectrum and possibilities need to be analyzed to fully understand what the potential impacts of climate change are and to be able to fully calculate what must be done to prevent. In this next week I really look forward to seeing what is done to address these enormous problems that our world will be facing in the near future if some serious changes are not made in our highly consumptive lifestyles that we are all currently living with. If some big changes are made, I believe that animal populations may benefit the most from such changes and I feel that animals need to be thought of in these negotiations as they have an intrinsic value as well that is often overlooked in these types of issues.

Week of 11/302-12/4 Post #3

I found an interesting article that I found was one that was related to countries with large amounts of forests. Countries are arguing that their trees and forests in their country needs to be preserved and conserved. It was discussed that 12 percent of CO2 emissions is attributable to deforestation. This process is a terrible one and needs to be stopped. This topic is very closely related to my topic of animal populations as obviously many groups of animals reside in the forest and if deforestation continues to occur, it will have a very negative impact on various amounts of animal populations as they will have less areas that are available for them to live. A lot of attention was given to the idea of how forests play a very large role in the overall health of the planet. Trees have the ability to absorbs large amounts of carbon and this process is very important to overall well being of our planet as we release a very large amount of carbon that is very detrimental to our environment and plays a significant role in the process of climate change and global warming. The more trees available to absorb the excess amounts of carbon that we emit into the atmosphere the better and the lesser amounts of climate change that potentially occurs. We as  a world cannot continue to cut down a large amounts of trees and allow deforestation to occur or the effects of climate change and global warming will be experienced at a greater strength down the road.

Week of 11/30-12/4 Post #2

For my second blog post this week, I would like to discuss an agreement that was made that I believe is a great idea and will be extremely beneficial in the future both to human populations as well as in relation to my topic, animal populations. There was a an agreement made that aimed to implement a program throughout the world that is focused on "risk reduction" and potential ways to prevent natural disasters before they happen. The focus of the program is to install a system that gives people, especially in lesser developed countries more of a "heads up" in relation to natural disasters. This idea is a great one and to help this be achieved, 80 million dollars was given to this program with the hopes of many lives being saved in the future and it impacting more than 1 billion people worldwide. Along with this, insurance agencies in the lesser developed countries is being looked at with the hopes of these systems being expanded to protect more people and particularly the more vulnerable people in our world. I believe that it is great that this system is being expanded and installed as it will potentially save a large amounts of lives in the future by being able to alert the people in danger sooner and this will help by giving these people more time to go to safety. I also believe that this may help us to understand these deadly storms better and potentially lead to us to lower the odds that they occur in the future and this will be of benefit to animal populations if we change our negative consumption lifestyles for the better.

Week of 11/30 - 12/4. Post #1

To this point it sounds there has been slow developments that have frustrated some that more has not been achieved to this point. Barack Obama among other world leaders have pledged and proposed the idea that they are willing to give money to the least developed country's fund (the ldc fund). It was described that by pledging money to the ldc fund would help to reduce the risks involved by climate change in lesser developed countries as well as "help vulnerable populations rebuild stronger after climate related disasters". Something that I enjoyed learning that Obama among others suggested that needed to be done in regards to climate change is "regularly updated targets" in regards to emissions and overall goals towards climate change emissions, while also providing the necessary aid and helping lesser developed countries to be able to report their emissions which may not otherwise be able to do so. An fact that was brought up that I found interesting was that the countries that have the largest solar energy potential, are currently using the lowest amounts of solar energy. This should be the complete opposite. There are numerous other issues that were brought up as goals to be achieved at COP21 and many of these ideas are closely related to my topic of "how climate change impacts animal populations" as climate change makes surviving for many populations much more difficult rather due to habitat loss, the ability to no longer survive in an area due to climatic changes etc. and as many of these goals would potentially help to limit climate change, it would also greatly aid in the survival of all animal populations.

Week 13

This week of class we only had class on Tuesday due to the thanksgiving holiday. For class on Tuesday we began by going over the logistics for the remaining time that we have in the semester. I am excited for the people in my class who are going to Paris next week as I think that they will have a great experience and how lucky they are for having the opportunity to attend such an important meetings that is related to such an important issue. I look forward to checking in with my classmates while they are over there and learning second hand through them what is being said by whom at these meetings as well as simply discuss with my classmates how their experience is going overall. During class we discussed what everyone's paper topics were for the White papers that we submitted earlier in the day and I was greatly impressed with everyone's paper topics as I feel that based on the examples of summaries and explanations that everyone presented in class I would say that we as a class covered a vary wide variety of issues related to the concepts of climate change and they sounded like they all were very well researched as well. I personally choose to write my paper on how climate change impacts and was able to find a bunch of information related to the topic. We as a world need to come together and find a way to limit our emissions so that animal populations are not severely deteriorated or forced into extinction overall. I argue that due to the fact that humans have caused the vast majority the problems that are affecting animal populations, we have a moral obligation to help these animals so that they do not become extinct. I look forward to following this idea as the meetings continue to occur in Paris in the coming weeks.