For this week’s blog post, we were instructed to look at the recent events that occurred at COP26 in Glasgow and our thoughts on the conference. One of the most interesting things I saw while doing some research was that Russia and China didn’t attend the conference. Obama came out publicly and critisized them for not attending stating how there was “an absense of urgency”. If two of the world’s biggest countries aren’t willing to attend the conference, then that is a major red flag. How is the global body supposed to get smaller countries to get on board with making their economies green, when some of the largest polluters in the world aren’t willing to do so? Ultimately, I think the Glasgow conference needs to address the problem of capitalism. So long as certain corporations and countries around the world continue to profit off of the use of fossil fuels, they will continue to use these reseources to make as much material wealth as possible. As a result, we will continue to pour emissions into the atmosphere. We need to come up with a way to make our economies function without the use of fossil fuels.
Author: Chris (page 1 of 1)
Personally, I don’t know too much about nuclear energy. I think the idea is good, but I would have to know more. After doing a bit of research, I found that while nuclear energy is renewable itself, some materials used in nuclear power plants are nonrenewable. Uranium is the main material in nuclear energy plants that is unsustainable. One of the downsides of Uranium is that it can become highly radioactive and hazardous to human health. In addition, nuclear power plants are quite costly, and they can cause major damage if a meltdown occurs (Chernobyl). These things make nuclear power plants a risky option. Overall, I think that keeping people away from using fossil fuels will be difficult. While fossil fuels are convenient and plentiful, we can’t rely on them due to their effects on the climate. Not enough people are aware of the environmental impacts that will come as a result of this. Nuclear power is one potential alternative to the issue of nuclear power. There would need to be other ways in which nuclear energy could be used that don’t require Uranium or other harmful resources.
For this blog post, the website I decided to look at was Vox. First, I went to the “About Us” section on the Vox website. The first big statement they had was “Vox explains the news”. I thought this was interesting because based on who you ask, the news can be interpreted in different ways. The about us section said little about their own personal bias, but it did lay out the topics they cover. After this, I went to the “How we make Vox” section. One of the sections talked about how Vox tries to use visual graphs and charts to capture the reader better. Ezra Klein, the founder of the website said that “journalism focused on readers’ needs and interests won’t necessarily cater to the tastes of other media pros”. This is interesting because it shows that Vox is willing to be unique in how they go about doing journalism. When I clicked on the “politics and policy” section, there was also nothing about media bias. I found this interesting because normally I think of Vox as a more left-wing news cite.
The liberal agenda is a problem for our communities. Switching to clean energy has a multitude of consequences for our citizens and the middle class. Propane is essential to everyday life within our communities, and many poor folks will be unable to afford wind and solar alternatives. This in turn will force the middle class to help pay for the poorer people, which will also hurt the middle class in the long run. Although switching to clean energy can help reduce our environmental footprint, the consequences outweigh the rewards.
As an alternative to the clean energy issue, one thing we can do to improve our community is mass recycling. This will serve as an alternative to the propane issue. By improving our recycling practices, we can improve our environmental footprint while also maintaining a strong and stable middle class. We can also start slowly limiting our use of propane rather than getting rid of it all at once. In the future, clean energy will need to be implemented, but as a solution in the short term this serves well. This is a solution that doesn’t hurt the middle class, while also helping to protect our environment.
Today I had three classes: Chinese, Political Science, and First Year Seminar.