Environmental Change Case Study

Environmental Changes have become one of the major threats to the world in the last decade. Climate change, for instance, does not only impact a single state at a domestic level, but it also influences nations’ well-beings at an international level. Therefore, it is significant for scholars, and politicians to have a valid understanding of the relationship between human and nature, since humans are one of the influencing variables that cause environmental changes. Many studies have been done to explain the causes of environmental changes including sea level-rise due to excessive green house gas emissions in the atmosphere, wasting mass natural resources, or international regime’s failure to take environmental problems into account. However,

Scientists have been trying to show many data that explains the threats of environmental changes, but in fact, the governmental actors give very little attention. Many studies have been done explaining the causes for the environmental changes, and blaming the state actors for not taking actions, but very few studies on the individual’s responsibility for environmental changes. Many misunderstand that government has to take every single actions toward the safety of the environment, and many communities rely on others for a positive outcome to happen. However, I argue that an individual is the main causal actor for climate change and that each individual is responsible for environmental movements to prevent certain threats. My hypothesis is that the more individuals there are to take positive actions toward environmental changes, less threats we will see to the environment. I take individuals actions as the independent variable, and environmental changes as the dependent variable. My unit of analysis is focused on individual

Scientific evidences and data can suggest a proof of the sea level rise, species extinction, or deforestation. We know that environmental changes have been taking place for many years, but what factors cause these changes? I will take climate change as an example. Climate change can be defined in many ways, but the main one has to be the change in the temperature. This can happen either naturally or by human actions. According to Environmental Protection Agency, “The historical record shows that the climate system varies naturally over a wide range of time scales. In general, climate changes prior to the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s can be explained by natural causes, such as changes in solar energy, volcanic eruptions, and natural changes in greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations” (EPA, 2009). The following graph shows the “estimates of the earth’s changing carbon dioxide”, and we can see the historical analysis of 800,000 years (EPA, 2009). As we can see, the CO2 concentration is varying from 180-300 parts per million. When the Carbon dioxide is lower, we tend to see the earth as ‘glacial’. On the other hand, when the CO2 is high, the earth is in the ‘interglacial’ period (NOAA,