Human Rights and CO2 Emissions

• In Event: Climate, Environment, and Human Rights

Abstract

It is obvious that climate change adversely affects the environment and humans. Much stronger, more frequent hurricanes, more severe drought, increased sea level, and unexpected changes in the environment destroy our places and food, and threaten our health. Countries have been aware of the dangers of climate change. They have tried to reduce CO2 emissions which is a main substance causing climate change, but their outcome is not positive.
This paper starts with a comparison of CO2 emissions of China and the United States which are the first and second largest CO2 emitters. The US has been decreasing its CO2 emissions, but the CO2 emissions of China has surprisingly been increasing. Most literature points out that economic growth contributes to CO2 emissions the most and political stability, but this paper argues that an understanding of/ respect for human rights has a significant role in reducing CO2. Since China has human rights issues, the country would be hard to understand the adverse impacts of climate change on human rights. Hence, the argument is that countries with a low understanding of/ respect for human rights emits more CO2 because they do not understand/care about the negative impact of climate change on human rights.
To support the argument, the paper uses multiple regression with 174 countries from 1997 to 2019 or more based on the data collection. Data are collected from diverse data sources. We will look at good human rights contribute to the decrease in CO2 emissions.

Author

• Hanna Shin, University of Texas at Dallas