Green Development: Case of Turkey, Norway, and China

Introduction

Nowadays it’s a well-known fact that since the First Industrial Revolution (FIR) we have pumped million tons of carbon dioxide and other harmful gases into the earth’s atmospheric layer to which all the living things, human, animal and plants are dependent. The negative effects of the FIR and the climate change prove that we are living in a quite fragile earth. This fragile planet has been used as a huge garbage can for many years. Industrial pollution, global warming and climate and environmental changes have now an unpredicted economic, social, and political effects on 7 billion people throughout the world. However, recently there is a growing demand towards a more green, sustainable and environmentally sensitive way of life since the beginning of twenty-first century. This demand is being supported by renewable energy sources and technological improvements. In twenty-first century, may be in a very near future, it is expected that the fossil fuels have been dominating life of humankind for many years will be replaced by energy-saving way of life in terms of consumption and production.

In the last century, especially inability to avoid the use of fuel and the petroleum based energy sources and greenhouse gasses from carbon emissions have caused the drastic changes in weather patterns never witnessed. The World’s being surrendered by fossil fuels since the FIR has made our planet extraordinarily hotter and polluted today.

In addition to these destructive weather changes, the World’s poorest countries have had to face many problems such as drought and famine related to the more polluted plant from many aspects. These problems made these countries more fragile than the others.

Today, some developed and developing countries, especially Scandinavian countries in the north Europe, are trying to change their production methods from traditional and harmful techniques, mostly depending on fossil fuels, to the sustainable methods based on renewable energy sources without serious damage to the nature and our planet. Furthermore, the environmental damage that is a result of fossil fuels has been taxed in some industrialized countries. For instance, in Norway contemporary generation is paying a tax for using the next generation’s share from nature and environment.

Despite some international environmental regulations such as the Kyoto Protocol, and despite the increasing importance of green and sustainable development in the twenty-first century, we have not yet reached to the desired levels for the sake of our planet in terms of a clean and habitable world. It is, however, potentially seen that in the future environmental pollution based on usage of fossil fuels will face various penalties for non-compliance to the environmental regulations. The Paris United Nation Conference in 2015 represents a powerful commitment to solve the problem of raising greenhouse gas emissions, with the contributions of the action plans of both developed and developing countries throughout the world.

The rest of this chapter is organized as follows: The first part of the chapter introduces the Green Industrial Revolution; the second part is on the innovative green development. After the explanation of the green development we handle some country examples in the third part of the chapter including Turkey, Norway and China. The chapter ends with the evaluation and suggestions as concluding remarks.