Digital Drawings Kat Daly 20

Kat Daly Digital Drawings

I Miss It

Maria Millette

The friendship we had The way our thoughts intertwined with one another like wire The wire coiling up through our insecurities and deepest thoughts and emotions I hate it I hate that I clung to you for support Threw up all of my emotions thoughts and feelings deep within myself in front of you so you can pick the pieces and put them together I didn’t realize how far it went until I lost you Threw away the key Gave you the space you needed to grow, only to know you’ll be able to get up and spread your wings again I hate that I attached so easily Like a parasite seeping into your skin tearing up all of your headspace You probably didn’t think the same though You never did. You gave me the space to grow and become the person I am today But without you now everything is distant Like a piece of myself that I had purpose for is now locked away inside me forever I miss our conversations I miss that you understood me I miss that you were the only person to hear about my fantasy, there to listen to me tell my story and there to give advice when needed I miss that I miss helping you with whatever bothered you at the moment Because to me that was the biggest friendship I had or will ever had again I might not be able to let people in the same way anymore And it kills me It kills me to know the feeling of heartbreak when a friendship is gone.

Daniel Patrick Galgano

Today we are facing an enormous economic and political problem, which threatens not only our economic systems but humanity itself: climate change. In order for humanity to collectively combat climate change and the undeniable effect that it will have on our species, we must form an international organisation with actual teeth. Climate change must be prioritised and the world must use history as its guide. During the Second World War, international trade all but completely broke down. The cracks in our trans-border financial and tariff systems were shown, and the world powers discovered that without a set of rules to govern international trade and finances, more economic crashes of the size of the Great Depression were inevitable. Thus, the major economic powers came together at the Bretton Woods Conference and laid out plans for the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and International Trade Organisation (which would eventually flop, but the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade would not). Today, the IMF, World Bank, and World Trade Organisation (the 1995 organisation based upon the GATT Treaty) are still going strong, and have even expanded on their original mandates. The first real international dialogue concerning Climate Change took place at the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Ever since then, the issue of the environment and climate change has become increas ingly prominent on the world stage. The most recent significant effort was the 2015 Paris Climate Accords. This agreement was hailed as a great success for the environmentalists and an effective instrument to combat climate change. However, this agreement lacked meaningful enforcement mechanisms, compelling incentives for countries to adhere to it, or a designated structure or organisational hierarchy. Overall, the deal lacked any roadmap for countries to format their poli cies to curb pollution. Even the new ‘rulebook’ developed at the 2018 UN Climate Change Conference, which was intended to supply guidelines for implementing the Paris Agreement, was criticised by environmental groups and Secretary-General António Guterres for lacking structure and concrete guidelines. One critical flaw of the Paris Accords is the lack of enforcement mechanisms or structure to determine if a signatory is adhering to the agreement. Many developing nations, such as China and India, have regulated their carbon emissions output by tying those goals to Gross Domestic Product growth. Their argument is that the West was the primary cause for the buildup of harmful emissions and the subsequent climate troubles, and thus, should be responsible for the bulk of cleanup. Consequently, they argue that developing economies should be allowed to grow. The argument, while somewhat compelling, is faulty. If the world is to really combat climate change, all nations must put aside the ‘blame game’ or the planet will face economic, humanitarian, and political disasters unparalleled by any that history has experienced.

Environmental decisions of these scales should not be left entirely to domestic governments whose mandates, leaders, and economic needs shift. A topic as criti cal as environmental regulation and climate change cannot be deemed inferior to economic growth goals. We are seeing signs of this ideology changing, such as in Germany, where the government has begun to crack down on emissions limits in the transportation industry, despite auto manufacturing being all-important to the German economy. However, the leaders of the largest polluting countries, China, United States, and India, seem to be lukewarm to the idea of environmental regulation. (In some cases, not even acknowledging the scientific premise of the issue.) While the efforts of the European Union to decrease plastic pollution and carbon emissions are laudable, they are not enough to solve the global issue. If we are going to solve climate change, it cannot be entirely left in the hands of domestic governments, who often act selfishly on the issue. To tackle climate change, we must look to the past and see how we created organisations that changed how the world functions, as we did after World War II and the Great Depression. One example is the IMF and its voting share system. One of the reasons why the world’s most powerful countries signed onto and support the IMF is because they were given larger voting shares and more control of the money that was being put into the Fund. However, as the IMF expanded, developing nations, such as China, India, and other G20 nations, demanded more influence. In 2017, the United States lifted its objection to increasing China’s voting share and quota. This action shows that even the United States, which has been historically reluctant to hand over any influence to China, recognised that if the IMF was to remain as an effective international organisation, it had to allow developing nations to contribute and show leadership. This benefits the organisation with more funds from developing economies. Thus, a similar ideol ogy must be incorporated into forming a global environmental organisation. The only way to get powers such as America, China, India, Russia, and the European Union to join on, is to give them a larger voting share. Those countries that have not committed to reducing emissions and have slashed environmental regulations would see their voting rights diminished, and annual fees would remain the same or increase. In short, repercussions and rewards would be put into play. The Paris Climate Accords represented a hopeful vision for the world, in which countries would act in the best interest of the world-at-large and fol low a constructivist ideology and work within the agreement. However, the deal did not include the necessary tools to last. It hasno internal dispute mechanism like the WTO, it has no organisational body to gather data and create benchmarks such as with the World Bank and its Human Capital Index, and it allows nations to flaunt the principles set forth. The international community has to stop thinking about climate change as something that can be solved by platitudes and the hope that national governments will step in. They must organise and act, as they have on trade and economic policies.