Bottled is not Better!

There are many misconceptions that come with the use of tap water versus the use of bottled water. The individuals who often chose to buy and drink bottled water over tap believe that is going to be much healthier and regulated than that of the municipal tap water that they could be drinking. In reality, these claims could not be more untrue. The website, Food and Water watch, is dedicated to combat these exact misnomers for the general public. The website highlights the major issues in a comprehensible bullet point manor with extensive information on each point available if the individual choses to investigate. They are able to highlight numerous statistics that will draw the readers eye and influence them in the future to no longer buy and drink bottled water over tap water. The overwhelming environmental issue with bottled over tap is that it adds to the plastic that is disposed and added to the world. However, with the material that they provide one can see that it does not make much of a difference to choose tap water over bottled water. For instance, “more than half of all bottled water comes from the tap.”(Food and Water watch) Immediately this fact sticks out to anyone viewing the page not to mention that it is followed up with the fact that, “in the United States, our drinking water is continuously monitored and treated according to federal standards.”(Food and Water Watch) Meaning that higher standards are actually held to the municipal water that comes from the tap than are held the private company water that fill the plastic water bottles that many drink. Past the information determining the difference between the qualities in tap versus bottles water, one can look into the plastic that is used for packaging and distribution of bottled water. The website, Band the bottle, serves as another interesting, fun and fact filled website that can account for information on the issues of tap versus bottled water. In this case however some of the major bullet points highlighted are those surrounding the plastic used. Of the many that one could pull from this site to highlight its negative environmental effects I think that, “The recommended eight glasses of water a day, at U.S. tap rates equals about $.49 per year; that same amount of bottled water is about $1,400,”(Ban the Bottle) stands as a jaw dropper for most American’s. I could not believe this statistic when I read the website and truly believe that this would stop man from choosing bottled over tap. In the future, I will be sure to choose tap water over bottled knowing the large issues that it causes environmentally and the lack of health regulations that are misconceived by most Americans.

Mathematics, Global Learning, Sustainability

Recycling has been going on for centuries even though many people perceive that the action began in the latter half of the 20th century. Victorian, financially stable 19th century women recycled clothing from the standpoint that they sent valuable dresses back to the designer to update the clothing item when styles changed. The idea of recycling just changed at the end of the 20th century to manage the vast amount of garbage humans were producing. Istanbul, Turkey recently implemented vending machines in subway station to help with recycling. They are especially valuable because those who do not have the means to buy a subway ticket can recycle bottles in exchange for a trip. Plastic bottles and aluminum cans are accepted, though aluminum has a higher yield. The city plans to have more than 100 machines throughout subway stations to both maintain environmental health and to inform people about the urgency of recycling.

The first step to global learning is global awareness

The first aspect of global learning is that of global awareness. It is the step you must take in order to be fully globally educated and fully globally aware. It is the foundation of all global learning, as one must be aware of something in order to act upon it. 

Global awareness is being able to understand these relationships and analyze how they affect our planet. For example, in this class, we talked a lot about global climate change, the impact that humans had on this detrimental process, and how to calculate it. On several of my blogs, I talked about how the factory farm industry has a massive negative impact on our environment, and I used math to support my answer.

I used what we learned in the breakfast foods project, as well as my own research, to discover what kind of impact eating meat and dairy has on the health of our Earth. In one of my blogs, I stated that “Right now, it is estimated that 30% of the planet’s landmass is set aside for  factory farms, a.k.a. for meat, dairy, and egg production.” I went on to talk about that “Livestock production causes an even larger contribution to climate change than the transportation sector worldwide.” It turn out that it is very simple to use math to make sense of concepts like these, and that is all part about being globally aware in order to globally learn.  

Gender Equality, Especially Now, Appears to be Reliant Upon One Major Issue…

Essentially I focused on the goal of gender equality in my report. And mostly surrounding the thought that sexual violence, and violence in general, towards males and females is essentially what is going to hold that goal back from being achieved. I reiterated the fact that we need to greatly decrease or eliminate entirely the practice of victim blaming and need to institute a safe way for survivors to come forward. We have all heard this statistic, but its worth repeating that 1 in five women will experience rape in her lifetime, and 1 in 71 men will experience rape in their lifetimes. Sexual assault and rape cases are America’s most expensive crimes, costing the country around 127 billion dollars, and even then that number doesn’t nearly include the amount of cases that are un-reported. Because, the truth is, we won’t be able to start on gender equality in earnest unless we first handle the issues surrounding sexual, and non, violence towards women and men.

Not an Intersectional Feminist? Misogyny it is then!

The whole world benefits from gender equality. The rights of women are important on the basis of human equality, regardless of an individual’s gender identity, and using up all of the world’s human potential to tackle big issues. Women are constantly over looked as sources of power in the military, in politics, in STEM fields, and in everyday life. We need to stop boxing women into roles that do not allow them to reach their fullest potential. Our global society will reap the benefits that women will be able to produce and contribute in every field they are underrepresented once this potential is encouraged and allowed to flourish.

Often times when I tell people I’m a intersectional feminist they look at me like I have three heads, but intersectional feminism=gender equality. When people, including women, argue with me and tell me that we are post sexism I simply break down all of the areas of oppression women currently face for just identifying as female (that global goals has conveniently outlined for everyone in the form of goals here: https://www.globalgoals.org/5-gender-equality):

  1. Discrimination against Women and Girls-seen in the wage gap (which is present in every country in the world except Iceland right now), day-to-day gendered micro aggressions, the over-sexualization of female bodies, the glass ceiling, etc.
  2. Violence and Exploitation of Women-women and girls are disproportionately trafficked as sex slaves, and slaves; women and girls are disproportionately abused in homes and in public spheres, femicide(: a gender based hate crime–>”the killing of a woman or girl, in particular by a man and on account of her gender.”
  3. Forced Marriages and Genital Mutilation
  4. Unpaid Care and devaluation of the Domestic Responsibilities Women take on or are forced into at disproportionate rates compared to men
  5. Disproportionate Amount of Female Leadership and Decision Making-this is seen in and out of politics, and in the gap of  venture capital women have. In 2017, only 2.2% of all venture capital in the United States went to companies founded solely by women, only 4.4% of transactions went to female-founded companies and only 11.3% of partners at venture capitalist firms were women according to Forbes.
  6. Lack of Access to Reproductive Health and Rights- reflected in the number of Planned Parenthoods that have been defunded all across America, and the all male American female reproductive health board that is single handedly attempting to control the bodies and choices of women in America.
  7. An Unequal Amount of Female Property Owners- seen in farmlands, financial services of the family unit, etc.
  8. Lack of Women having access to technology
  9. Lack of Global Legislation to Eradicate the Above Issues ^^^

Everyone should identify as an intersectional feminist if they want to see the Anthropocene thrive, if they believe in human rights, and if they believe in freedom and equality for all. If you don’t identify as an intersectional feminist….de facto, the word to describe you is a misogynist.

 

 

Mathematics, Sustainability, and Global Learning

The Earth’s natural systems provide an environment for living beings on Earth. However, overtime, the human population has grown at a very fast pace, especially over the past hundred years. Human societies, up until recently, have not been very environmentally conscious due to a lack of understanding and technology regarding sustainable living and treating the Earth respectfully. Human society, at out large current size, is at a global overshoot—this means that we are using more resources than we have, and eventually our environment will run out of means to sustain the human population. We calculate how to reduce overshoot by either linear or exponential change, depending on the rate at which governments could potentially set goals to reduce our extravagant and careless use of resources. Global learning needs to occur, and for this to happen it is important that humans work as a team to live more sustainably—this means that all humans need to recognize that there are significant issues with our environment and the way that we are living. Governments need to be the leaders that they are supposed to be, and implement policies to work towards this goal, and also to implement mandatory learning about our environmental crisis. There are clear relationships between our human activities and destroying the Earth’s natural system, and the biggest issue that I see is our amount of waste and our lack of properly dealing with our waste.

Global Engagement

One aspect of sustainability and our global impact I focused on and have been thinking about throughout this class is the importance of education. I believe that so many of our goals to reduce waste, increase economic sustainability, etc., are realistic, but only after we get more people involved. I think that one reason many people do not think about or want to acknowledge their global carbon footprint, for example, is because it seems very difficult to change effectively. However, if everyone were educated on small things, such as what types of plastics are recyclable and which are not, for example, a big difference can be made. I believe that most people would be more willing to make positive changes if they were more aware of the great impact those changes could make. One example could be if someone is renovating their house and considering which toilet/ faucet/ shower head to buy. If they are informed about how efficient flushing greatly impacts our water footprint, they might be more willing to buy a toilet that uses less water per flush. If this water-saving toilet uses 2 gallons per flush and a not-as-efficient one uses 6 gallons per flush, even for a household of one person that saves around 24 gallons of water a day. I think many fo the goals outlined on the 17-goal list will become more feasible once we get everyone on the same page about how we can easily change our individual impacts on the world.

Global Awareness about Clean Energy Sources

For this paper, I focused on the use of clean and affordable energy sources as one of the global goals in the Mathematics, Sustainability, and Global Learning unit. I found this an incredibly useful topic to focus in on due to the fact that it is such a needed topic for people to know more about and for them to utilize in their every day lives.

Throughout this course, we have talked a great deal about the importance of utilizing renewable resources to create the energy we need for our everyday lives. However, the reason I am now choosing to focus in on the “awareness” aspect of the paper is because I feel as though this is not fully known to so much of our planet. The United States has one of the larger carbon footprints when compared to other countries, showing that we are in overshoot and are not living a sustainable lifestyles. With this in mind, it is impossible to imagine that our planet will be able to survive if we keep up these actions. For this reason, I think awareness of alternative, and clean energy sources is an incredibly needed tactic in order to help save our planet and move towards a more sustainable lifestyle, in which we utilize other forms of energy.

Global Sustainability

Global long term sustainability represents one of the most complex and difficult challenges that will need be solved by the human race in the decades to come. The steps that will need to be undertaken, will alter the current environmental, political, economical, and societal norms everywhere. For this reason, it requires broad and willing participation in reducing our carbon footprint, limiting the release of greenhouse gasses, and transitioning away from fossil fuels and natural gasses. The latter of these three options will prove the be the most difficult task in my opinion. While countries have taken dramatic steps towards reducing their carbon footprint, removing the dependence on fossil fuels and natural gasses will face much opposition due to it’s deeply ingrained status within societies. To prove this point, Europe has spent just under 80 billion dollars this year importing over 50 million tonnes of fossil fuels and natural gas. This number is very significant; as it accounts for 37% of the European Union budget.

Looking at this issue of removing dependence on fossil fuels another way, Saudi Arabia relies extremely heavily on their ability to export and sell oil on the international market. Accounting for 42% of their GDP, oil and natural gas profits and hungry markets all over the world have been at the heart of many political decisions and actions undertaken by Saudi Arabia. This should reflect how important natural gasses and oil are in the well being and prospering of Saudi Arabia.

Whether you view the issue of burning natural gas and fossil fuels as a sustainability issue or an economic one, one thing that remains constant is the significant grasp that these products have over almost all nations on earth. If we, as a people want to transition away from this source of energy in favor of renewable it will mandate complicit communication on a political, economic, environmental, and societal level.

Mathematics, Sustainability, and Global Learning

I honestly think certain issues are best understood through specific, smaller-scale examples.

For instance, there’s the broad issue of global warming and climate change and human use of fossil fuels and all the corresponding problems that arise as a result. Yet instead of trying to tackle the issue broadly, I think it best to start small and work your way up. Which is why my paper focused on the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia, a relationship centered almost entirely around 2 fundamental, core values: cheap oil and defensive guarantees.

For too long, in fact since the end of World War II, the United States of America has guaranteed Saudi national security and defense in exchange for a reliable supply of cheap oil supplies. We have overlooked Saudi offenses and atrocities time and time again, to the detriment of our own values and the sacrifice of American lives.

The issue, of course, is U.S. reliance on Saudi oil supplies. On a daily basis, Saudi oil supplies represent roughly 5% of U.S. oil consumption (U.S.E.I.A.).  Obviously, this dependence results in an unwillingness to abandon Saudi Arabia’s record of abuse in favor of what we believe.

As a result, we sacrifice our own values as well as the present and future of our environment in order to maintain the status quo. Clearly, this trade-off is unsustainable to say the least. It requires necessary and immediate change, in both U.S. energy and foreign policy.