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- How do these simulations relate to your community? Do any of them feel irrelevant to your context?
They simulation for the most part made complete sense. Though I was unsure how it calculated total water usage with such little data. Personally I think my water usage was lower that what I was given. As I am conservative with my water usage. Along with my house uses a rainwater collection system.
- How do these simulations help you (or not help you) find your place in combating climate change?
These simulation were relatively useless for me. I was not surprised by anything or shocked. I understood that I am using more than I should going into this. I reduce when and where I can though there are limits. I'm apart of many groups dedicated to combating climate change by promoting ecofriendly practices. We do this by advocating for better practices and applying them where we can.
- Have these simulations changed how you think climate change should be tackled?
The simulations have no changed my opinion. There are three ways to combat change each which become more progressively extreme. The first is what i believe we should be doing and what we are currently doing. Which is slowly but possibly exponentially decreasing carbon emissions. We do this by promoting green technology. Encouraging social change slowly with programs such a recycling reducing. Educating students on the environment and global warming.
The second way is a bit more drastic but more effective and a lot more improbable. This would be forcing major change on everybody. This would be costly and disagreed quite heavily. This would things like forcing people to use less. Making everybody pay for entire grids to be switched to green power overnight. Putting severe carbon taxes on those who are no environmentally friendly. Whilst this could be justified as saving the world. This method could be seen as a removal of freedoms and amoral.
The last one is very drastic, incredibly effective but is very improbable. That would be decreasing the global population. The equation for earths needed would likely look like carbonfootprint*globalpopulation/maximumcarbonproduced. If you decrease population you decrease the numerator thus decreasing the number of earth's needed. If everybody like me, we would have to decrease the population of earth by 75%. There are two ways of doing that, slowly and fast. To slowly do this we would have to decrease global birthrates. Such as the law China passed and then receded. That enforced a law that a family could have one child. This method would be hard to enforce and even harder to morally justify. Then there is the fast way. This would be killing large amounts of population. There would be no way of justifying this ever as is unthinkable. Though the worlds governments likely could do this if they saw fit. I doubt this option will ever see the day of light in political discussions as it is amoral and unpractical. Due to the strong opposition of both the second and third option it makes the first option the best. Even if the change to more green practices is slow. Its the best option we got.
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2 Comment(s)
Hi Noah,
Thank you for your great submission! Like Elliot said, the data is based on the average usage of water by the people in your neighbourhood-what ways do you think you could engage and empower them to be eco-friendly like you? Could you compare your situation to maybe another one (it can be in your province, in the country, or even in another country) and their statistics; from here, you could learn about how we're doing better/worse, and what we should take action on to improve (or what other countries should learn from us).
It's great that you're involved in different groups, but what practices and projects do you undergo? Has it been effective? Have you shared this with your class so more students could learn about their situations?
I like how you mentioned we should educate people about this...but the issue isn't that people aren't aware of the climate crisis. Do you think companies and governments don't know about this-they know it better than we do. The problem is the will to act and how to harness that-do you have any thoughts on how we can influence our city, provincial, or national governments to invest in climate change? Although carbon taxes could help, have you considered the cap-and-trade system? Which one is the better option and why? You can never make people do anything-you must encourage and back up your idea with reasoning so there's long term change.
Killing people is definitely not the way to do this-can you think of any other ideas such as switching to green energies and how to deal with the people (e.g. working in the oil or coal industry) who are concerned about their employment, the feasibility, if it's guaranteed...as I think that's the best way to get more people actively involved so it could appear on the agendas of our governments.
Cheers,
Helen
It is great to know that your household uses a water collection systems to harvest rain water. It is worth noting that the data is based on the average usage of water by people in a community. Although you may be conservative with water usage, your neighbours misuse of water resources may factor in the overall calculation and eventually influence the average usage in your community which may affect you. This is the more reason why you should advice your neighbours on water usage. Suffice it to say, the data used in the simulation is based on statistics gathered from reliable sources and are considered as accurate as possible.
Kudos for being part of an eco-friendly group, that is a good move. I would like to believe that you learned and reiterated things you already knew through the video. More so, the simulation provides us with opportunities to play with decision/data and see the impacts of our choices even before we venture in real life. As a result, we are able to make better decisions in real life when issues concerning water, carbon, etc. come up
Your comment regarding recycle is a good point. "Encouraging social change slowly with programs such a recycling reducing. Educating students on the environment and global warming" - Well said.
Your last point will certainly reduce population, but killing people is not the way to go. I like the fact that you later pointed out that it would not be helpful to do that. Like you said, family planning is the best thing to do.
Helen Chen
Sep 22, 2017