Environmental+Policy+Briefinf

1. The top five environmental issues are Climate Change, Energy, Waste, Food and Water [] 2. Climate Change [] 3. The cause of climate change are the increase of the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect is when heat is trapped by the atmosphere and remains in the earth rather than space. Climate change is because the earth is heating up. Carbon dioxide adds to the green house effect, carbon dioxide emmision has increased over the past few years which has caused climate change. [] 4.Main Contributers to climate change are car companies whose cars emit carbon dioxide and fossil fuels, when land is cleared for agriculture and industry also increases the greenhouse effect. Deforestration also contributes to climate change. Most modern nations are contributers to climate change, China has the most emissions but it has the smallest per capita emmisions. The United States has the second highest amount of emmisions and the highest per capita emmisions. This is a graph showing the CO2 emissions for several nations. The more CO2 emissions a country has, the more it contributes to climate change. [] [] [] 5.All regions on the world are impacted by climate change but some regions might be slightly warmer than others. North America is going to have increased heat waves and less snow pack in western mountains. Latin America will lose their rainforest and get more savannah. Europe will have the increased risk on inland floods. In Africa and Asia there will be less freshwater. [] [] 6. The economic cost of damage is different depending on what scientist is asked, some say it is only about .25% of the GDP, other says it is about 2% of the GDP while other believe that the cost is very high and could go up to 20% by 2020. [] 7. There is not much that can be done to clean up climate change. The temperature can not lowered, but the future can remain the same through organizations such as the Clean Air Act. [] 8. If not cleaned up the damge of global warming could increase to 20% of the GDP by 2020, the increased temperatures make agriculture much more difficult and farmers will lose profits. Animals could become extinct and it will be increasingly difficult for countires to find freshwater. The Global economy will decline by 7% by 2050 if not stopped. [] [] 9. Possible solutions for climate change include eliminating the burning of coal and oil that cause fossil fuels. Roads can be upgraded so that cars get better gas milege. The general public can not travel as far to go to places and consume less. [] 10.A political Allie of the environment is Al Gore, In his book, "He paints a scenario in which the U.S. passed climate legislation this year, a global treaty was negotiated, and the world was "pleasantly surprised that so many of the changes [in energy supply and use] were not only inexpensive but actually profitable," [] 11. Poltical adverasries of the environment are Republicans and Big Business "Environmental protection in the US is under attack from extremist Tea Partiers backed by big business." []