Climate change has always been on the backburner of everyone’s mind. There are so many long-term risks that come along with the idea of climate change, but people are often blinded by the easiness of living the lives they currently live instead of making small changes that will better the environment in the long run. Since climate change doesn’t cause immediate drastic consequences, people often forget about it, or don’t really see it as a problem. Even in PlaNYC, they simply place glaring predictions of the future, with large increases in temperature, annual precipitation and sea level, but they don’t particularly put forth any solutions, at least directly. The government, specifically the Bush administration, as shown in Graham’s “Cities Under Siege: Katrina and the Politics of Metropolitan America”, has kept climate change and urban protection in the back of its mind while it preoccupied itself with post 9/11 terrorism and gathering oil supplies while casting aside important research about the effects of fossil fuels on climate change.

Yet, even though the government has not been paying much true concern to the problem of climate change, the citizens of the world have been pushing through to make a change happen, as shown in Foderaro’s “Taking a Call for Climate Change to the Streets”. It is estimated that 311,000 individuals from around the world came to New York City to walk in the Climate March. The fact that simultaneously, John Kerry had a meeting from foreign ministers of the Major Economics Forum and Todd Stevens held back-to-back meetings, gives hope that changes are going to be made to protect the world from the effects of climate change, or try to prevent further destruction.

Question: Will the government truly create policies to mitigate climate change when a large part of the economy is based in industries that largely contribute to this problem?