POLS 1301 Short Answer Assignment Literature & Language Research Paper

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October 30, 2018
Political Science Short Questions
1 In Unit 3, you learned about climate change, and in Unit 4, you learned about the Executive Branch. First, identify which executive branch and bureaucratic agencies might be involved in the work to combat climate change. Second, explain how climate change might constitute a collective action problem, which you learned about in Unit 1, and how it can be difficult to encourage individuals to fulfill a social responsibility of this type.
* Climate change has been one of the biggest and most immediate problems that the world is facing right now. In the international level, different agencies such as the UN, WHO, and the IPCC has been active in the reduction of its effects and the mitigation of further damages to the environment. However, at the state level, these efforts are embodied in the policies and laws and are enforced with the help of different institutions and law enforcement agencies. In the US executive level, for example, some of the branches that have collaborated and are directly working and responsible against climate change are the; Department of Agriculture, Department of Commerce, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of the Interior, Department of State, Department of Transportation, Environmental Protection Agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Smithsonian Institution, and the US Agency for International Development CITATION Glond \l 1033 (GlobalChange.Gov). Together with the different programs that are all intended for the reduction of the carbon emissions and ecological footprints of the whole state, these agencies are hoping to reduce the effects and progress of climate change. However, despite the efforts done in the state level, another problem that the country would have to face is asking for efforts in the individual level. This problem arises from what is called the Collective Action Problem, or the phenomenon where individuals fail to cooperate effectively due to their opposing interests CITATION Ryd00 \l 1033 (Rydin and Pennington). For example, while it was easier to ask for environmental activists to help protest against the cutting of trees, the same could be said as true when asking a CEO or a businessman, whose primary source of living involves raw materials that come from trees. All in all, this shows that laws and ordinances should be effective enough to overcome the collective action problem CITATION Pot04 \l 1033 (Poteete and Ostrom).
2 In Unit 6, you learned about the Median Voter Theorem and how politicians will ...