Climate Change Debate | Kriti Joshi | Opposition

[Music] [Music] and now look to critty Joshy Hartford College to open the case with or without beatboxing for the opposition thank you Mr President it was the best of times it was the worst of times one of the most iconic quotes of English literature and also from one of my favorite novels tonight ladies and gentlemen I would like to share with you briefly Not A Tale of Two Cities but a tale of two planets Earth and Venus are essentially the same size essentially the same distance from the Sun and both have exactly the same amount

of carbon the difference is that over time on Earth the carbon has been trapped in the ground in the form of coal oil natural gas whereas on Venus most of the carbon is in the atmosphere the difference is that on Earth the average temperature is around 50° whereas on Venus it is around 850° not just because it's slightly closer to the Sun Mercury is the closest to the Sun and is around three times cooler than Venus this is vaguely relevant to our current strategy of especially developing nations of taking as much groundbased carbon and ejecting

it into the atmosphere ladies and gentlemen we must responsibly consider what we will be debating over tonight the climate crisis is something where the consequences are not local they are global it affects all of us and particularly as I hope to show you in the next few minutes the developing nations themselves when Shashi came to address the union he stated that the industrialization of the West was based on the de-industrialization of countries like India and I agree but we have to see see what's at stake here the climate crisis is causing reduced growing Seasons changing

range of disease droughts species extensions severe storms if anything as Jack said the West ow to developing nations such as India to work together share Technologies and strategies that can help them not mirror the same mistake the British made in the industrial revolution of the 20th century but before I take us further into this nightmare on St Michael's Street it falls upon me to introduce the members of the opposition I mean I tried we have just had the pleasure of hearing Jack wet's fine speech Jack who studies engineering at pemrick college is one of the

most genuine and kind people that I know and became a very close friend of mine during the two whole days he spent at the union over the back so I struggled to find anything particularly juicy for Miss friends to bring up tonight Jack your speech was great but I will have to explain to my family in India who will listen to this debate on Audible that the lower voice on the recording is actually mine next in proposition we have Peter Lily who is a British conservative party politician who has been a member of parliament since

1983 he has served as Secretary of State state for trade and Industry under Margaret Thatcher and currently serves on the environmental audit select committee and is extremely qualified to speak on this debate I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this very current topic and finally we will have the pleasure of hearing from Dr Paul oist who has served as a minister of the government of Nicaragua and Secretary of public policy he's been all over the world working in Colombia Vietnam the Philippines and is a leading expert on climate change therefore I'm very excited to

hear you speak later on this evening Mr President these are your speakers and they are most welcome so I guess the first question is do the developing countries need to change Jack claimed that India ranked 22nd with respect to emissions well the last time I was in India which was in January I was sitting with my cousin on our veranda and she was painting the God she point of information all right go ahead Jack the ranking wasn't a missions the ranking is for um uh progress towards changing climate I accept that misquote of your statistic

but it still applies to my case she's 3 years old my cousin so she did like the classic thing of with her painting she left out the sky and I as a proud art a level student said to her you know why don't you just fill this whole place this white space here with color and she literally turns to me and she's like KY I don't have enough Brown and I'm like okay the Indian sky is not blue it's gray it's opaque you can literally go outside and feel the pollution filling your lungs we think

of the sky as a vast Limitless expanse but the reality is it's just a thin shell which continues to crack under the blunt Hammer of our daily emissions the accumulated amount of man-made global warming pollution that is up in the atmosphere in that thin shell is trapping the energy equivalent of 400,000 Hiroshima class atomic bombs exploding every 24 hours 365 days a year just picture that that is a lot of heat and it's mostly in our oceans resulting in newer more catastrophic storms than we have ever seen before the effect is everywhere Houston last July

it rained for 2 days 162 billion gallons of water that's that's someone picking up the Niagara Falls and putting it allowing it to flow for 2 days on top of a very populated city of course there are devastating results for example George foran's delayed visit to the union I mean pretty devastating now 14 of the 16 years that have comprised the 21st century have broken temperature records the global warming is resulting in microbial diseases from countries around the E equator to spread to Western countries in higher latitudes that previously sustained temperatures that were cool enough

to be hostile to these diseases while places like North America and Britain have better Public Health systems women in some regions of South America are advised not to get pregnant for 2 years that is a red flag for something that we need to realize as a serious problem that requires a global effort towards fixing I'll stop talking about how terrifying the situation really is because I presume that I've scared you all enough thus far and if you're not scared then you don't really understand where we are as a species the fact of the matter is

from an economic perspective the cost of the climate crisis is building up Central Bankers like Governor Mar Connie says that the vast majority of the carbon reserves are unburnable this is a great risk to global economy and if developing nations are not held to strict environmental standards now they will develop their infrastructure around unsustainable practices thus to prevent the locking in of outdated environmental actions equal environmental standards must be enforced internationally the proposition will take offense that the W impose there is an alternative of working together with these developing nations to provide a more sustainable

set of environmental standards however in the history of global crisis humans have been incredibly shortsighted leaders of industrializing countries will place their country's immediate priorities before the vague undefined future of climate change in this world this means that the cheapest fastest method of industrialization will be more preferable to one that is possibly slower but in the long term more safe for the environment as a whole we cannot afford to look locally anymore we have to look at the big picture in a report by the organization for the economic cooperation and development it is has argued

that the potential economic and social impacts of environmental degradation are particularly serious for developing countries given their dependence on national natural resources for economic growth and their vulnerability to energy food water security climate change and extreme weather risks populations in developing nations are more Reliant upon connected to and impacted by the environment than populations in the developed world the most at risk populations for negative impacts from environmental degradation are the rural poor and developing nations proponents of equal environmental standards for developing nations argue that it is in the best interest of developing nations to put

in place strict environmental policies in order to best protect their populations so I can say with the definitive stance that environmental standards indeed should be imposed but I am in no way suggesting that the West have a right to impose these standards on developing nations and just leave them to manage it alone the fact of the matter is that most of these nations lack the infrastructure and expertise to implement the standards that are likely to be set many developing countries also have established some form of governmental structure that seeks to address their environmental problems however

there are inherent barriers Within These governments such as corruption bureaucratic inefficiencies and lack of political willingness that are preventing visible differences from being seen which is a classic a classic case study would be my home country India and all the while our world is dying of course it is Western Nations that have capitalized on Industrial technology that have incurred these problems they did it first so it may well be thought of hypocritical of Western Nations to demand developing nations who are struggling to improve their economies to maintain those standards that will probably hinder their economic

progress but we need to tackle this problem if anything the environmental standards placed on developing countries should serve as the global Baseline setting a precedent for more industrialized countries to take the lead in the path to sustainable future it makes no sense to say the West have industrialized irresponsibly and therefore the developing Nation are allowed to just go ahead and do so as well these nations have negatively contributed to the environment through high populations draining resources and heavy pollution causing Havoc all over the planet climate change is a global problem and hence it is a

global Duty developing nations have the least incentive to commit to this which is why the West must come in and Aid in any way that they can to ensure that there is a safe environmental standards that are everywhere there's no denying climate change is a serious threat if we continue at the rate that we're going at Bangladesh the most crowded Nation on Earth is set to submerge under the oceans by the end of this Century all of us sitting here in this chamber today will probably still be alive to witness the fate of 150 million

people as the sea reclaims the land on which they depend it doesn't matter how developed or undeveloped this country is there is no country we must oppose this motion the real debate here is not whether or not there should be environmental standards but how they implemented and imposed thank you [Music]