Environmental Changes have become one of the major threats to the world in the last decade. Climate change, for instance, does not only impact a single state at a domestic level, but it also influences nations’ well-beings at an international level. Therefore, it is significant for scholars, and politicians to have a valid understanding of the relationship between human and nature, since humans are one of the influencing variables that cause environmental changes. Many studies have been done to explain the causes of environmental changes including sea level-rise due to excessive green house gas emissions in the atmosphere, wasting mass natural resources, or international regime’s failure to take environmental problems into account. However,
Scientific evidences and data can suggest a proof of the sea level rise, species extinction, or deforestation. We know that environmental changes have been taking place for many years, but what factors cause these changes? I will take climate change as an example. Climate change can be defined in many ways, but the main one has to be the change in the temperature. This can happen either naturally or by human actions. According to Environmental Protection Agency, “The historical record shows that the climate system varies naturally over a wide range of time scales. In general, climate changes prior to the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s can be explained by natural causes, such as changes in solar energy, volcanic eruptions, and natural changes in greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations” (EPA, 2009). The following graph shows the “estimates of the earth’s changing carbon dioxide”, and we can see the historical analysis of 800,000 years (EPA, 2009). As we can see, the CO2 concentration is varying from 180-300 parts per million. When the Carbon dioxide is lower, we tend to see the earth as ‘glacial’. On the other hand, when the CO2 is high, the earth is in the ‘interglacial’ period (NOAA,
For this reason, when CO2 reaches a certain point, meaning exceeding the safety zone, it starts to be harmful to the world, including humans, species, every living things. According to science, the safety limit for carbon dioxide concentration is on average 350 part per million (Hansen, 2010). However, as of 2010, it has reached 390ppm. For instance, Figure 2 shows the annual atmospheric CO2 concentration and that in some part of the United States, the CO2 level have once reached 510 ppm (Elzen and Vuuren, 2010). In addition, we can see that the supposed upper safety limit is on the minimum line on the graph, which is definitely identification for the increase in the temperature. Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are a threat to the