Assignment #5 Part 2 and 3

Part 2
1. Do you think that currently developing countries have the right to exploit forests (and other natural resources) as Europe and the U.S. did to increase their economic well-being?
a. Why or why not?
I think that developing countries should exploit natural resources including forests as developed nations did to enrich people’s lives. Developed countries have huge capital and technologies to use less carbon-intensive energy sources such as wind, solar, and hypo power. On the other hand, developing nations don’t hold sufficient technologies and money to utilize renewable sources of energy and develop alternative sources of energy such as hybrid car. According to the logic of “the Tragedy of Commons”, because natural resources is not unlimited, in order of the developed and developing nations to survive together, developed countries, which are able to decrease the use of natural resources by using substitute energy, should reduce the exploitation and supplement the decreased part with alternative sources of energy through high level of technology.
If this trend to consider each country’s development level continues, the “Tragedy of Commons” will not happen and the equity among countries in using natural resources will not break up. Instead, both of the developed and developing countries’ economy will improve. Particularly, the environmental technologies development of developed nations will more gain momentum by focusing on technologies rather than resources exploitation. Developed nations can export the eco-friendly technologies to the developing nations. In the long run, guarantee the right to developing nations will lead to coexistence of all countries in current environmental risk.

2. What expectations do you think industrialized nations should have for developing nations in the climate change debate?
The relationship between them is expected to be positive if industrialized nations, that have more responsibilities in climate change due to the environmental pollution by earlier economic development, take the initiative in enhancing the relationship. Industrial countries should expect that developing nations can follow international laws of climate change such as United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This expectation will be able to improve the mitigation of environmental conflict about resources utilization between both of them. Global issue such as climate change can not be solved without cooperation among all countries. The developed nations to hold high-eco friendly technology should show concern and support to developing countries in order to maintain the collaborative relationship.

a. Should equity between industrialized and developing countries be a goal in this debate?
The equity can be divided into procedural equity and distributive equity. I think that the procedural equity between industrialized and developing countries should be considered as goal in the debate, but distributive equity is not necessarily required to all industrializing nations. Even though there is difference of significant capacity in technology and knowledge level between wealthier countries and poor countries, the developing nations have the right to participate in the environmental negotiations and assessments in democratic causes because they are entities in the whole world as small alienated groups within developed countries can not be neglected in the policy process by pluralistic perspective. However, it is difficult of distributive justice regarding how climate change affects people to be applied to all developing countries. Currently, major developing countries such as China and India are coming under increasing political pressure to abide by greenhouse gas (CHG) reductions unlike smaller developing nations (Vig, p.280). Major developing countries should in balanced way deal with the impact of economic development on environment as well as the development because poverty has improved and environmental technologies are substantial. Nowadays, the poverty problem of smaller developing nations is very serious, so that their economic development can be prior to environmental concern. But, they also need environmental support such as technologies transition from industrialized nations.

b. What if a developing nation values economic development more than slowing down global warming? In this case, should they be required to participate in reducing emissions? Why or why not?
Developing nations should make an effort to reduce the emissions because many poor countries as nations in Southeast Asia with low-lying coastal areas, such as Bangladesh and India, will experience a lot of negative impacts of sea level rise and intensive storm (Vig, p.280). They don’t have better management power of sea level rise than wealthy countries such as Netherlands and North American countries. The possibility that the developing countries will become the first victim of the global warming is very high now. Therefore, they will have to seek for the way to do more investment in adapting to accelerating climate change as well as in economic development.

c. Conversely, what expectations should developing nations have for industrialized nations?
Developing countries can expect that developed nations will make an effort to reduce the negative impact of climate change. For example, president Obama had pledged to regain American leadership in global climate negotiations by reengaging in talks under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (Vig, p.355). Also, EU leadership to reduce the CHG emissions can be a example to developing nations (Vig, p.272~5). We can expect that the endeavor will contribute to alleviating global environmental conflicts between developing countries and developed nations. However, the expectations will persist when the intention should not be displayed by just the specific country, but cooperative attitude from many countries including developing nations should consistently maintain.

Part 3 H.R.391
The bill name for my paper is H.R.391: To amend the Clean Air Act to provide that greenhouse gases are not subject to the Act, and for other purposes. U.S. Representatives in Tennessee’s 7th District, Republican Mrs. Marsha Blackburn introduced the bill in September 1, 2009 in the first session of 111th congress. The bill consists of two sections. The first section as greenhouse gas regulation under Clean Air Act is that the term “air pollutant” shall not include carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, or sulfur hexafluoride. The second section as climate change not to be regulated by Clean Air Act is that nothing in the Clean Air Act shall be treated as authorizing or requiring the regulation of climate change or global warming. 153 persons including U.S. Representative in Alabama’s 4th District, Rep. Robert Aderholt participated were recorded as sponsor of the bill.
The bill was referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce. As latest major action, the committee was discharged by Mrs. Blackburn in July 23, 2009. However, this bill is in the first step in the legislative process. Introduced bills and resolutions first went to committees that deliberate, investigate, and revise them before they go to general debate. The majority of bills and resolutions are not reported by committee yet.
As bills may have multiple titles in this and previous sessions of Congress, we need to track the status of provisions of this bill by looking for an omnibus bill. H. R. 4396 indicating “Save Our Energy Jobs Act” introduced in 111th Congress and now dead H.R. 6666 in 110th Congress is same to the H.R.391.