HONORS 100 B

Evan Ulman

Assignment #4: Global Challenges, Interdisciplinary Answers

1. Climate change is a crisis that we as a global community will face - some through career, some
through personal choices. Building on what you heard in the interdisciplinary discussion, how
might you choose to address this challenge in your own life?
It is an unescapable fact that the current rate of climate change poses a near existential
threat on life as we know it. For the last 10,000 years, humanity has lived in a temperate period
which has allowed agriculture to thrive, and with it, civilization. The question is not whether,
continuing our current levels of emissions, humanity will continue to exist without major
calamity, but for how long. With an issue so large and so insurmountable, there is very little an
individual can do to reverse the trends of global warming. Turning off the lights, eating less
meat, and using public transportation are all great first steps which we can all take, and indeed,
which I myself take, but they are simply not enough, especially when only a minority of the
worlds population takes them.
A larger, more comprehensive solution must take place for crisis to be averted. The
everyday actions taken by individuals will in no way add up to the significant solutions taken by
nations. All major progress occurs from the top down, for even if grassroots issues to be tackled,
they must be done so by those in power. And so the greatest impact any one person can make,
and which I will make, is to vote for candidates which support in climate change initiatives, and
much less believe in climate change, to write letters to incumbents, urging their support for our
environment, and to, when the previous actions fail, petition the government for a redress of
grievances.
Truly, the solution to climate change is basic civic engagement. But to hope a majority of
the electorates of all the worlds leading nations will actively pursue the advancement of climate
rights and protections is terribly nave. In the worlds largest carbon emitter, China, citizens
voting rights are highly restricted, and the leading class of elites are unlikely to pursue stringent
emissions standards when they benefit so heavily from the use of fossil fuels. Nor are citizens of
the United States, the second largest emitter of carbon in the world, likely to demand reparations
for the climate anytime soon, not when the president-elect believes climate change to be a
malicious hoax perpetrated by the Chinese government.
And so the basic fanfare of civic engagement will likely not be enough to encourage
policy makers all over the world to adopt stringent regulations over the emittance of pollution. I
understand my own responsibility to do more than to play the game. It is the responsibility of this
generation to rewrite the rules. I cannot now imagine, no matter my course of study or my future
career, not in some way professionally addressing the qualms of climate change. The process of
creating public policy is a long one, with many actors along the way giving input to legislation.
Lawyers, wonks, legislative aides, professors, think-tanks, public interest groups, and experts all
give advice in the formal legislative process. And furthermore, bureaucrats in federal and state
agencies, from the desk of the president or governor all the way down the through agency
offices, play an integral role in the execution of the law.
My interest in public affairs is naturally interdisciplinary because the issues we face as a
country and as a species are multitudinous. Some of the most intense policy debates arise not
over what solutions should be taken, but over which issues matter most. Today, and for the
foreseeable future, the most prescient threat is climate change, and it is the responsibility of
everyone to help shape the debate to meet that reality.