My Environmental opinions

Here is my report that I wrote for social study at BC during summer.
That's something about environment, so I post it right here.

Analysis of "The High Costs of Doing Nothing"

The article describes the environmental and economic problems of climate change. In environmental area, problems are extreme weather, increasing the size and intensity of forest fires, increasing the frequency and severity of flooding and drought, damaging crops and property, new exposure to pests, disasters and diseases, and so forth. In economic area, government have to raise budgets for the related departments fixing the frustrated outcomes and taxpayers have to pay the environmental bills. The author urges that the government should do something to fix the damaging outcomes and prevent the predictive disasters.
American government plays an important role on fixing and preventing the environmental problems of climate change. If the government do more work on it, not only benefit to the country, but also benefit to the whole world.
Government should work on business, the work is divided into two parts. First, deregulation over business. As the article mentions "energy-efficient economy is less than the costs of doing nothing", one way can reach energy-efficient economy---perfectly competitive market. According to economic theories, perfect competition reaches resources-efficiency, but monopoly, monopolistic competition, and oligopoly exist waste, especially monopoly. Because the companies in the perfectly competitive market under a heavy pressure, if one of them cannot reduce the costs as much as possible (reach or close the lowest costs in the market), then it faces the risk of collapse. But the other types of markets are less or not under the pressure of competition, so they don't have to survive by reaching the lowest costs. To encourage energy-efficient economy, government should promote perfect competition by lowing the barriers for companies to enter those markets. So, I support deregulation on business, giving more freedom to capital market.
Second, government should regulate the environmental area in varied industries. As the article mentions "clean energy can reduce the costs", all types of industries not only should use clean resources (including energy and productive materials), but also product clean wastes. However, the regulation of using clean resources and producing clean wastes by the government is not enough. Government also have to reduce and control the industries of heavy pollution, but I oppose moving those industries to other counties.
Through the article, I found Americans are still hesitant on environment-protective projects. I understand that executing those projects have to raise mass budgets and increase tax, both of the government and taxpayers suffer from financial problems. However, I support the view of the article "spending money now to mitigate and adapt to climate change is an investment." If we spend money now to support environmental projects, we only lose those money, but we can get a healthy environment. If we choose to spend money later (when the environment was destroyed), we not only have to pay much more money, but also suffer from miserable consequences of environmental problems. The costs of the second situation are so high---but don't forget, we can avoid.
I appreciate the environmental projects by Theodore Roosevelt during the Progressive Era, I think he has foresight. The health of the environment becomes worse and worse, climate change is only one of the environmental diseases, but we already suffer from many natural disasters and feel more miserable with the weather, especially in summer. More and more unusual things happen to us. Do you meet more and more spiders in summer? That's one of the consequences of climate change.
Government---should act.


Source:
The High Costs of Doing NothingA dirty little secret of climate change is that somebody wants us to pay much higher taxes and higher energy bills. But it's not the advocates of climate action. It's the other guys.Make no mistake: The costs of switching to clean energy and an energy-efficient economy are far less than the costs of doing nothing.A study released by the University of Maryland last October helps bring the cost issue into clearer focus. It concludes that the economic costs of unabated climate change in the United States will be major and nationwide.Climate change will damage or stress essential municipal infrastructure such as water treatment and supply; increase the size and intensity of forest fires; increase the frequency and severity of flooding and drought; cause billions of dollars in damages to crops and property; lead to higher insurance rates; and even increase shipping costs in the Great Lakes-St Lawrence seaway because of lower water levels. And that's just a sampling."Climate change will affect every American economically in significant, dramatic ways, and the longer it takes to respond, the greater the damage and the higher the costs," lead researcher Matthias Ruth told ScienceDaily.How big are those costs?Much more work is needed to quantify them, and the national Climate Change Science Program should give more emphasis to both the social and economic costs of local climate impacts. But recent experience gives an indication of how large the costs could be. The University of Maryland study puts the combined storm damages in the U.S. since 1980 at more than $560 billion, even though the impacts of climate change are far from fully felt. Various estimates project that the maintenance of Alaska's infrastructure will cost $10 billion; property damage from rising sea levels will cost as much as $170 billion by 2100; and upgrading drinking and water treatment facilities will cost up to $2 billion over the next 20 years. Two federal insurance programs also are a harbinger of pain. Since 1980, taxpayer exposure under the Federal Crop Insurance Program has increased 26-fold to $44 billion (PDF). Several of the predicted consequences of climate change -- drought, wildfires, extreme weather, new exposure to pests -- will make that liability much worse.Our liability under the National Flood Insurance Program will increase, too. Taxpayer exposure in that program has quadrupled since 1980 (PDF), approaching $1 trillion in 2005. The program had to borrow more than $17 billion from the Treasury to pay claims following Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma, and it's likely that taxpayers will have to foot the bill."The national debate is often framed in terms of how much it will cost to reduce greenhouse gases, with little or no consideration of the cost of no response or the cost of waiting," the University of Maryland's lead researcher, Matthias Ruth, told ScienceDaily.We can expect the demagogues to continue stressing that carbon pricing will mean higher energy bills, while aggressive federal action will mean higher taxes. They will continue to argue that climate action will ruin the economy. We shouldn't let them get away with it.The truth is that spending money now to mitigate and adapt to climate change is an investment. Spending money later to cope with public health emergencies, drought, crop damage, and natural disasters is a waste.It's climate change, not climate action, that will break the economy and burden the nation's taxpayers, and that liability gets bigger every year we delay.

Music's effect on the Climate Crisis

We all know that music plays an important part in most all people's lives, but do you think it could do more to further issues, especially the global climate crisis? Now, as us music conesseurs will tell you, music that's too preachy is really awful, but it doesn't necissarily need to be preachy in order to get the point across. Any opinions? In what way can we use the arts to bring awareness to key issues?

Recycling Club

Our poster was about recycling today, and we got to thinking with Dr. Singh... We are going to start a recycling club if we can get enough people to join. Does anyone have any ideas of what we could do for the club or to start the club?

GLOBAL WARMING

assuming there is global warming, can we as Amercian's stop global warming???  yes or no.

and if we can, how long would it take, and what do we need to do specifically???

What "Global Warming" Really Means

Study says humans not heating up the planet
Jim Brown
OneNewsNow.com
December 11, 2007


A new peer-reviewed study disputes the claim of former Vice President Al Gore and other green activists that global warming is caused by human activity and constitutes a "planetary emergency."

The study -- conducted by climate scientists at the University of Rochester, the University of Alabama, and the University of Virginia -- finds that atmospheric warming patterns, or "fingerprints," over the last 30 years are not caused by greenhouse gas emissions. The report is published in the December issue of the International Journal of Climatology. Results from the study greatly contradict the findings of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Dr. S. Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental science at the University of Virginia -- and president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project -- says he is "fairly" sure that the current warming trend is due to changes in the activities of the sun. "The sun is constantly active, emitting particle streams that carry magnetic fields; and they in turn have an influence on the climate of the earth," he says.

Singer says he and other global warming skeptics have grown accustomed to claims that they are beholden to the oil and gas industry. "Of course that's not only untrue, but it's completely immaterial," says Singer. "In other words, we are using the data that is furnished by the IPCC. They are published, we use only published work. What we are basically doing is to make a comparison of model results and observations."

The report concludes that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant and therefore "attempts to control CO2 emissions are ineffective and pointless -- but very costly."

Facing A New Frontier

The earth is our home. It provides us with the natural resources that we need in order to survive and flourish. However, as our civilizations have advanced, so has our technology, population, and poverty number...and the land that was once abundant has become scarce, diseased, and polluted. Can we begin the road to life and protection?

Here's an idea. Why worry about the world's problems, when we can just go to the moon? That will solve all of our problems, right? We can start all over! New land, new life, new explorations, new reasons to visit the moon... Or would we rape the moon, just as we have destroyed the earth?

NASA is coming up with more reasons as to why we should continue travel to the moon (check out Lunar Exploration Objectives @ nasa.gov). It will help with our space exploration and provide for global partnerships. Machines and robotic vehicles are currently testing the living environment on the moon to prepare them for the future of "earthlings". Scientists believe that by the year 2020, we will have set up permanent colonies on the moon. After that, we take over Mars.

What do you think? Is it too risky? Are we going to deplete another environment on the moon? Or will this be one more step towards advancing the human race? Can we save the earth before we begin the process of moving to the moon? Or will we avoid population issues and continue to evacuate millions to the moon? When will we begin to conserve our resources, population, and hunger for MORE, MORE, MORE!?? Or is NASA really finding new and innovative ways to learn and grow as a specie.

Visit this site and watch the video on Human Civilization on the Moon.

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/on_demand_video.html?param=http://anon.nasa-global.edgesuite.net/anon.nasa-global/exploration/human_civilization_psa.ram&_id=&_title=Lunar%20Exploration%20Theme%3A%20Human%20Civilization&_tnimage=75

Human Footprint

Our footprint on this planet is scary. We are using more of the planet that we need. What can we do? Or what can you do to reduce your footprint on Earth? Give ideas, and be creative!!!

Sustainability?

One of the idea that is mind boggling is that we wonder about our sustainability on this planet. This planet is not going to be there for ever. Half of its life is gone and half of its life is left. The issues of human population, global warming, food production, energy crisis, and air pollution are just few of the main issues that we are facing to extend our life on this planet. There never was any species on our planet that was as intelligent as us. We are trying to control every aspect of the Earth and to our amazement we are finding out that it is not doable. It is a very fine balance and if you mess with it you will have to pay the price.

What can we do to sustain human life on this planet? What can you do as a person?

Just on a totally different line of thought, do we really have right to extend human life on Earth. I mean if our life means the death of every other species, do we really have the right?