This coming December, important climate talks will be held
among international leaders in Paris. These talks are significant because if
the global community doesn’t act very soon, serious effects of global warming
will be irreversible. The failure of the 2009 Copenhagen climate talks make
people very wary about the success for this year’s climate talks in Paris.
However, as this is the last real chance we have to combat climate change,
hopefully this year’s climate talks will be taken more seriously.
This year, due to the low price of oil per barrel, there is
an opportunity for policy-makers to implement a carbon floor price in order to
increase the cost of pollution and make clean investment a more viable option.
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| UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (left) & IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachuari | Photo credit: Niels Ahlmann Olesen |
In addition, a recent study from the University of
California Berkeley concluded that activities that make people happy are
unrelated to energy consumption. Activities such as volunteering, spending time
with friends and sleeping more are unrelated to consumption but increase our
overall levels of happiness. Therefore, perhaps it’s time for society to
rethink our relationship to consumption. If we stop thinking of consumption of
energy and goods as what will make us happy and instead only consume the energy
and goods to meet our basic needs, we may end up being happier and reduce our
climate impact. If we could bring this mindset into the Paris climate talks,
perhaps we can rethink our relationship to the economy, society, and the
environment.
Source: The Guardian
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