Topic:
Country: United States of America
Delegate Name: Jonah Mechtenberg-Berrigan
Model UN Position Paper
United States of America
GLIMUN
WHO Climate Change and Public Health
Climate change has been an issue plaguing the world for a long time. When industrialization began in the 18th century, nations all around the world became dependent on fossil fuels, without knowing the effects of them. In 1938, climate change was discovered as a result of this dependence on fossil fuels. These fossil fuels have created an excess of carbon dioxide in the upper atmosphere, which traps heat on the surface of the planet. This causes a plethora of environmental issues. As the United States of America, our goal is to help the world lower its climate emissions. We would like to keep the global temperature change beneath 1.5 degrees Celsius, and to eliminate global climate emissions by 2050.
Personally, the United States has set goals to reduce carbon emissions within the U.S. by 50% of the emissions in 2005. We are also quadrupling support for developing countries, and plan on adding even more support in the coming years. Much of this progress came from the IRA (Inflation Reduction Act) passed in 2022. The United States carbon emissions have decreased ever since its high in 2007 of about 8 billion metric tons. Over the pandemic, there was a sharp decline in emissions due to a drastic decrease in travel around the country.
Of course, there have been many previous UN actions on climate change. The most significant was the Paris Agreement of 2016. 195 parties are a part of this agreement, including the United States.
The Paris Agreement sets in place a plan to keep the global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees celsius. Each party has individual 5-year goals they are expected to meet, and submit a 5-year Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) report. This is a report on the country’s emissions, actions they are taking to reduce emissions, and actions they are taking to build resilience to the higher temperatures climate change is bringing.
Although the United States is the largest overall contributor to climate change, and has the second highest annual carbon emissions, we are committed to helping reduce climate change. We have seen the effects of climate change: higher average temperatures, more extreme weather cycles including some of the coldest and hottest recorded temperatures, and a large increase in deadly storm systems like hurricanes and tornadoes.
With the highest GDP and the most donations towards the carbon-neutral goal, the United States places extreme importance on this meeting. We would like to find the most efficient and effective way to use donations to reduce carbon emissions. The U.S. also has goals to encourage many countries to take increased loans from the World Bank to build sustainable climate infrastructure, and share climate data. The goal at this meeting is for all countries to convene, survey the effects of climate change so far, and determine how to proceed to best reduce carbon emissions and keep the global temperature index within the 1.5 degrees celsius goal.
