Literature Review On Climate Change

Introduction to Literature Review

The earth’s climatic condition has been rapidly changing throughout history. Today climate change is greatly attributed to by human induced environmental practices. In order to effectively address climate change governments are joining together and building allegiances to combat this global issue. With practical solutions and advanced technologies governments have a greater advantage of addressing the issue of climate change. As the earth’s temperature rises the impacts of climate change are manifested through rising sea levels and extreme weather events. Being the world’s largest emitters of GHG the US and China holds a unique position to lead other developed nations and developing nations in adapting to

This chapter appraises previous research done by scholars and researchers on the topic area being discussed. The goal is ultimately to review the critical points on the topic and to support further ideas to be derived.

To most effectively discuss the topic of environmental cooperation between the US and China in the area of climate change a variety of literature has been selected based on its relevance in answering the following supporting questions:

What has the US and China done to effectively address climate change?

To what extent has the US and China contributed to climate change?

How effective has the US and China’s cooperative measures to climate change been?

Effectively addressing climate change

Joint climate change agreements and programs seem to be the only effective way of promoting global climate change adaptation and mitigation in the 21st century. States that face similar challenges in strengthening energy security and combating climate

Global warming will not be helped much by efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emission into the atmosphere. (Shaviv, Veizer 2003) It is believed that temperature variations in the atmosphere are merely due to cosmic forces due to fluctuations in cosmic ray emissions that account for approximately 75 percent of climate variations worldwide rather than human induce actions. They stressed that while the increased release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere can do damage it is secondary to the forces that are beyond the control of man. “……a significant reduction of the release of greenhouse gases will not significantly lower the global temperature, since only about a third of the warming over the past century should be attributed to man.” (Shaviv, Veizer 2003) According to (Kuban, 2007-2013) thousands of scientists have maintained that there is no convincing or overwhelming evidence that human activity is or ever will be responsible for any catastrophic disruption of the earth’s climate. As such climate change cooperation can only do so much. Also, mixed views are held by the US members of Congress on the issues of climate change cooperation. While some see the need to address climate change through international cooperation and are convinced in human-induced climate change others see cooperation as possibly