Response #4

Reading Dryzek's The Politics of the Earth really sparked my curiosity about the media. I was so confused as to why experts (scientists) are not trusted in the claims that they make. The main scientific experts who are conducting these experiments and giving the white house advice are obviously the best scientists in the country and have been trained extensively to conduct reliable studies that uncover the truth of an hypothesis. Even I, a student of science of only three years can distinguish concrete scientific studies from others. With this in mind I am trying to determine why the american public has so much trouble believing these scientific experts (people who have dedicated their entire lives to discovering the truth of climate change). I realize that there is another group of people who are dedicated to hiding the truth of climate change and their disagreement causes doubt in the minds of the general public. It truly terrifies me that the knowledge distributed by the media can not be trusted. This is so terrifying because the general pubic does not question what is said to them by a "trusted" source. To me this is one of the main reasons why change is so difficult. There is not any way to make your voice heard on this issue without there being a debate or questioning, even if you graduated from M.I.T. with a PhD in geology. How this can be changed is beyond me. Some ideas I have are emphasizing science in education so there is a better understanding of its validity, having sources reviewed by the government to ensure reliability (of course this runs the risk of a particular administration altering truth), or punishing those who claim truth to national level publications when they have no real basis for it.

Although, even if climate change was a cold hard fact that the entire world agreed on, would change happen? Considering the heart of America is the economy, would people be able to sacrifice growth for the future of people on earth? I sincerely question this and honestly do doubt that people would change. However, I am going to continue to try to believe that things can change and having truthful media is a good place to start.

Response #3

When reading The Politics of the Earth by John Dryzek, I was overwhelmed by his account of both the Promethean and the Survivalist thought. I felt like both of these were the extremes on the environmental spectrum. I personally believe in the principles behind the survivalist thought, however I do not think it is right to abandon other countries in light of this. Furthermore, I think the survivalists are being too gloomy about limited amounts of resources (at least that is how I feel Dryzek portrays them). Yes, I agree that we are going to run out of resources eventually, but there are other renewable resources (sun, wind, earth, and ocean) that we are never going to run out of. With that in mind, the survivalists need to push for developing ways to capture these renewable resources. The use of renewable resources would significantly reduce emissions, preserve the nonrenewable resources, and save money on a long-term basis. Furthermore, I think it would be amazing to see these things not only developed in industrialized nations, but in developing nations as well.

On the other hand while reading the chapter on Promethean thought I was of course angered at how much the United States government been involved in this movement. I can’t believe how selfish this country is being in terms of the environmentalism. I understand that people may not believe that we are causing global warming, but it is a well- known fact that we are causing ozone depletion, acid rain, forest destruction, etc. Furthermore, our country is demonstrating that they do not care that our country’s industrialization is hurting other nations all over the world. The country obviously cares more about economic progress than human safety and the environment. The worst part is that the decision to be this way sits heavily on the president and the administration he chooses. I am not ok with the president and congress having the power to decide whether environmentalism is important or not. I think it would be an interesting move to have Americans vote for those people. Even if someone were chosen that I didn’t like at least it would be my whole country that decided. I know this will never change, but I think it is an interesting idea to consider. I hope that when things start getting worse this country will step into the big shoes it has to fill, but for now I think we are stuck arguing about whether the mid-Atlantic snow storm was caused by global warming.

Respone # 2

While I was reading Speth’s, Red Sky at Morning, his mentioning of the United States emitting the most greenhouse gases intrigued me. It made me think about how much damage we, as an individual country, have done over the past century and how that relates to the call for action today.

The question hanging in the air is how much should each individual country do to reduce emissions? Since the United States has been emitting a substantial amount of greenhouse gases for an extended period of time should they have to reduce emissions faster? Furthermore, since developing countries have emitted less should they be able to emit more so they can establish themselves as a developed nation? The solutions to these problems are complicated and ultimately there is no one way this can be answered. However, in my mind I think the best way to solve this problem is to evaluate how much emissions an individual country is outputting and develop goals based on that value. Despite the fact that a developing country was not involved in the initial industrialization period and did not get their chance to emit substantial amounts of gases does not mean that they should be able to now. I understand the unfairness that some countries might see in this, but if major developing countries are given free range the amount of emissions in our atmosphere could be deadly. In order to help these developing countries along, the United States needs to be an example. We need to apologize for the harm we have caused to the world and commit to rectifying ourselves. I would hope that if the United States started making environmental progress other countries would follow. I say this because the United States is a major world leader and also has a way of making things look enticing. However, we are currently not doing this and have yet to even sign the Kyoto Protocol. Hopefully with Barack Obama in office more can be done to change the way the United States is acting in this regard, but our fate is still lingering in the air.