Journal Entry #6

After reading these articles it has become more evident that Congress is well aware of the effects of climate-change but not one representative has the courage to go through with a bill that will help us start to reverse the dangerous effects of global warming. The proposed spending of 1% of our GDP to help our planet from warming to 2 degree Celsius, in my opinion is a great idea. The first thing we need to look at is our budget. The United States has a $15 trillion economy and in my opinion the United States is spending tremendous amounts of money on areas that don’t need that much money. For example, health care; health care is still an extremely important subject but If we do not act now to help reverse the effects of global warming there will be no planet for us to even live on, let alone have any hospitals for our health care programs. In other countries they spend much less on their health care programs than we do and they have successful results. I believe that if we cut money in our health care budget we can use that money towards climate change.

From the article We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change they quoted Winston Churchill; “Sometimes doing 

your best is not good enough. Sometimes, you must do what is required.” I think that this quote is something that the US can use when pressuring other countries to curb their emissions. In the end, we are all a part of one world and everything that we do affects others on our planet. No matter where you live, everyone around the world is experiencing the effects of global warming, with increases in drought, floods, and more snowstorms. The one way that I believe that we can gain other countries support is to educate their people and their representatives on the long term effects of global warming.

In the next five years we most definitely need to curb our level of emissions so our planet does not reach a tipping point and we reach a point of no return. After reading the article As the world Burns it extremely aggravated me that K.G.L (Kerry, Graham, Lieberman) were working so hard to pass a climate-change bill and none of their colleagues were supporting them. It also frustrated me that all of these nonsense games are going on in Congress and no one is really sticking to the point and passing a bill that will hopefully start to reverse this ever growing problem. I learned from the video that Obama’s two platforms, when running for president was health care and climate control. He has achieved his health care platform but has not yet achieved a bill that will help reduce our emissions. In the video he encouraged legislation to come to him with ideas. It is very difficult for congresses who are not all for a reductions in emissions to come up with an effective bill. I believe that Obama has taken a back seat to climate control and I just hope that our next president will realize the importance of reduction and will act fast to help prevent global warming. Lieberman was interested in a pollution-control method called cap-and-trade which the “government would set an over-all limit on emissions and auction off permission slips that individual polluters could then buy and sell.” I feel like if we were able to get our top pollution companies to agree to this plan then we could significantly reduce our emissions.

In my personal opinion, the best way to start reducing emissions at home is to educate. Before this class I had no idea how bad our environment really is and after our first class I began to change my habits to start helping our environment.