Enter your username and password below

Not registered yet?   Forgotten your password?

Clean Development

The Millenium Development Goals, agreed to by every member country of the United Nations in 2000, call for the worldwide eradication of poverty and hunger, universal education, gender equality and huge improvements in health by 2015: two years ago!!

Can we do this without making the planet warmer?

Let's think big and imagine how we can confront the climate crisis in a way that is realistic about the other major problems that we face as a planet and as a species on it.




Clean Development >

New Changes, New World, New Problems?

chanj16

Eradicating poverty and hunger, educating everyone, empowering women, and improving the health of the world all sound like extremely difficult tasks. Keeping the planet from getting warmer while also achieving these goals seems altogether impossible. I do think it is possible to complete all these goals without making the planet warmer, but it will take a lot of minds working together.

Hunger and poverty may not be completely eradicated, but from according to the Food and Agriculture Organization from 1990-1992 to 2010-2012, hunger and poverty in the world has actually fallen by 36%. There were still 870 million undernourished people in 2010-2012, but progress has been achieved in that area. I believe that if we continue to support agricultural development in developing countries, the poverty and hunger rates will continue to decrease because these countries will become more self-sufficient and more food will be available.

Education and gender equality are also important, but I believe that these factors will not have a great effect on global warming. Specific educati on about climate change, our carbon footprint, and the general impact of humans on our environment could definitely create more awareness, especially if people push companies and governments for policies supporting “green” initiatives like a better waste recycling system.

The things I am unsure we can achieve without making the planet warmer are major health improvements. Health improvements are beneficial to the human race, but they also negatively impact the globe because health improvements mean that more people will live. If more people live, then the population might increase, creating a higher demand for food, water, and other natural resources while also creating more wastes. Another thing that could happen is better health and fewer diseases could facilitate the development of a stable economy in developing countries. A stable economy might allow for citizens of these countries to have fewer children because there would be less of a need for many children to earn money. Thus, the solution of this problem could go either way.

hcl1610

It certainly is possible for society to achieve all these high goals with little to no climate change.
Hunger and poverty may take a long time to be completely eradicated, but fixing the hunger issue definitely can be done without any major carbon emissions. Countries that have major hunger problems should educate the citizens on how to properly grow sustainable crops. By growing more crops, they would actually help the carbon emissions since plants create oxygen from the carbon dioxide. Poverty is a much harder thing to prevent. The world's wealth is finite and if money is given to the poor, then someone else's money is lost. Even if this somehow is fixed, it does not have to create any new carbon emissions.

I agree on your education and gender equality points. It would not have a great effect on global warming. If anything, education will create a larger awareness of people's carbon footprint.

Major health improvements most likely will create a larger footprint, due to the new technology created to get and use the new information. It is true that more people will  live, but saving lives are the whole reason we are worried about the world's condition; the medical improvements would be short-term and saving the Earth's atmosphere is long-term. Lives are important, and the biggest thing at stake. Good health does not always generate a great economy, however. It may make it better, but it is not the only factor in the economy.

2 posts
You must be logged in in order to post.

Board footer

Powered by FluxBB

This site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Privacy
Terms