Culture at root of environmental problems

The issue of climate change has been on the international agenda since the late 1980s with the creation of the first Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change. Almost thirty-five years have passed, yet we are still facing the same issue. I am interested in exploring a) why the issue of climate change is so difficult to address, and b) the general public's reaction to the People's Climate March and whether it was successful in swaying the public’s opinion on climate change. I believe the reason climate change has been so difficult to address is because it is a problem of our global society's culture and traditions, and that the People's Climate March was a step in the right direction toward resolving the issue, but that much more needs to be done.

Climate change persists as a global problem today, not because of a failure in the design of the climate change regime (the Kyoto protocol), but because of the very nature and complexity of the problem. Unlike Prins and Rainer, who criticized the design of Kyoto, I align more with the argument in the Barrett reading. Seemingly less complicated issues, such as ozone depletion, are easier to tackle because they are not entrenched in a society’s customs. The issue of ozone depletion could be solved, not because of a perfect regime design, but because it was easy to change the behavior of the individuals causing the problem.

While the majority of our readings have presented a top-down approach, offering different arguments for the reasons why states do or do not care about an environmental issue (such as Sprinz and Vaahtoranta’s interest-based model), analyzing an environmental problem from the bottom-up is more effective. Climate change is caused by greenhouse gas emissions that, I believe, can ultimately be traced down to the individual. Since the industrial revolution, we have become accustomed to a code of conduct that dictates that the more you produce and consume, the better off you are. For example, owning the latest model of Apple’s iPhone shows that you, as an individual, are better off than someone who owns an older model (even if just last year’s model!). This reinforces a feedback loop in which companies provide individuals with rapidly changing designs and products; they keep prices down, keep people buying, and keep the inventory moving. As a result, individuals buy and consume as a way of life and as a way to measure social status. This means that if you don’t own or buy a lot of “stuff,” you don’t have value in society. This rate of consumption as a cultural norm has many repercussions, namely increased greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.

A similar situation can be seen with the issue of whaling in Japan, which we discussed in class. While Chasek et al.’s chapter in Global Environmental Politics argued about the effectiveness of the design of the international whaling regime, I believe the problem lies in the issue itself. The reason international actors have had trouble halting Japan from whaling is not because of a deficiency in the regime design, but because whaling is and has been a large part of the Japanese culture for centuries. Expecting Japanese individuals to change their habit of purchasing whale meat, or their byproducts, is no easy feat.

The People’s Climate March, which occurred on September 23^rd, drew over 400,000 activists to New York City to raise awareness on climate change. While the march did not aim in any way to alter individual’s consumption habits, it did try to alter the current status quo of ambivalence toward climate change action. It was said to be the largest march for climate action in all of history, but what did the general public think? Did the march, and the media surrounding it, sway any opinions on the importance of climate change? USAToday asked the same question. The company asked their twitter followers to tweet their reactions on how effective they thought the rally was in urging action on climate change, and published their responses in an article two days after the march (LINK TO ARTICLE). The responses varied greatly, yet of the ten tweets published, only four of them were positive reactions. One person tweeted: “The march is very effective when people organize peacefully for a common cause. The news media cover it, and politicians are on notice.” Yet, another said: “Having a march to solve global warming is like trying to solve poverty with a concert. It's not going to work.” Another person agreed, tweeting: “Did Occupy New York change anything?” USAToday’s article proved that, unsurprisingly, proposing a societal change such as climate change action is more difficult than it seems.

The success of an international environmental regime is dependent on the nature of the issue itself. Furthermore, the level of entrenchment of the societal customs that caused the issue to arise in the first place largely dictates the ease with which the regime can solve the issue. The fundamental issues causing climate change stem from our society’s cultural habits, which make the problem extremely hard to solve. The People’s Climate March was a step in the right direction toward not only gaining media and political attention, but the public’s attention as well. Although the general public’s responses to the march were not overwhelmingly positive, I believe that people are slowly beginning to change their individual actions, which will eventually have a ripple effect in changing our global society’s attitudes toward climate change action.