Author Archives: Sarah Flannery

Global Awareness and Ending World Hunger

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Global awareness is the first step in understanding the problem of world hunger and how to combat it. According to the World Health Organization(WHO), “An estimated 820 million people did not have enough to eat in 2018, up from 811 million in the previous year, which is the third year of increase in a row. This underscores the immense challenge of achieving the Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger by 2030…” That is out of a population of 7.592 billion people in 2018, meaning that roughly 10.8% of the world’s population was suffering from hunger that year, and the numbers keep increasing. In 2018, the EPA also estimates that 63.1 million tons of food waste was estimated in the United States alone. These two statistics together paint a very grim picture, roughly 11% of the world’s population was starving while a single country threw out 63.1 million tons of food. It is very easy to see one area of attack in combating world hunger: eliminating food waste.

The Feasibility of Solar Power

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Solar energy is a very popular source of alternative energy. It’s made leaps and bounds in technology in recent years, and it is frequently discussed in the media. When someone brings up green/alternative energy, solar power is most likely one of the first powers to come to mind. Today, I am hoping to examine the details of solar power, and break down whether or not it deserves its status as the face of renewable energy, or should we look elsewhere?

Currently, solar technology is a pretty expensive. To produce the panels and set them up properly costs a large sum of money, and the returns on solar energy can be a little lacking, as seen by the solar energy generated by a  10 x 10 m. solar panel over the course of one day.

This energy cannot compete with the energy necessary to run a car, much less a flight. However, a 10x10m. solar panel is the size of  an average roof, and this would just be the amount of energy generated for one house for one day. When combining this energy with that of a solar panel farm, these are the energy returns.

More than enough energy. I think that it’s important that we use solar in conjunction with other types of renewable energy, as the advantages of solar power isn’t it’s ability to generate a lot of power all at once, but a large amount of stored power over a long time. Using solar farms in conjunction with wind and personal solar panels can generate more than enough energy for just one day, and putting time and effort into storing that energy to use over a long time could be very advantageous, and create more than enough energy to be used in a green and renewable way.

SOURCES:

http://www.withouthotair.com/c6/page_38.shtml

CO2 Emissions Per Capita Per State

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The graph I created is one that shows the annual CO2 emissions per capita per U.S. State with data up until 2017.

(I couldn’t get the chart to upload with better quality for some reason, so please use this link instead to view it as a PDF)

In metric tonnes, this data helps to show the amount of CO2 emissions produced per state per person. When looking at this graph, it is very easy to see where the high amounts of CO2 emissions per capita are found: states like Wyoming, North Dakota, and Alaska stand out as the worst offenders for CO2 emissions per capita. This is in contrast to states like New York, California, Oregon, and Maryland who comparatively have very small CO2 emissions per capita.

This could lead people to believe that states like Wyoming, North Dakota, Alaska, etc. are more responsible for the large CO2 emissions put out annually by the U.S. as opposed to states like New York, California, etc., but that would be incorrect. What this chart tells us instead is that states on this chart that appear to be putting out gargantuan amounts of CO2 are instead putting out large amounts of CO2 in comparison to their population. A state like Wyoming that has a relatively small population but large amounts of farming/agriculture could appear to produce extreme amounts of CO2 compared to a state like New York, when in reality New York could be putting out much more CO2, but due to its large population it doesn’t appear to be as extreme of a CO2 emitter as Wyoming.

 

WORKS CITED

https://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/state/analysis/

The Superyacht Phenomenon

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The superyacht is a phenomenon that has emerged in recent times. While building large yachts became a trend in the early to mid 20th century, owning a superyacht hasn’t really been a trend up until now. As wealth disparities and class divides continues to grow, the rich grow from rich to super rich, allowing them to buy things like superyachts that they previously could not. The chart below shows the growing number of superyacht projects, and how the vast majority of these projects end up being motor style, a more commercial style accessible only to the super rich.

2020 Global Order Book

The most egregious example of this is Jeff Bezos’ custom superyacht, Y721, which he commissioned in 2018 for $500 million from the Dutch company Oceanco, and was recently completed. The specs on the superyacht illuminate the vast wealth Bezos has to throw away: “This support ship measures 246 feet in length and accommodates 45 additional crew and guests. It will also feature a helipad and meeting space and have a vast amount of storage for Bezos’s endless number of water toys, with diving and snorkeling gear, jet and water skis, waterslides, and surfboards among the bunch.”

The average superyacht costs $275 million. If we assume that out of the 619 motor superyachts were average superyachts, around $275 million each, then the cost of all those superyachts and Bezos’ would total $155,250,000,000. With that kind of money, the U.N.’s plan for Elon Musk to end world hunger could be completed almost 26 times. That cost could cover a little over 1/2 the lower estimate to end climate change, and that is only for the money spent on purchasing motor superyachts in 2020. Over 2 or even 3 years? The money would definitely cover the lowest estimate, and then some.

Just something to think about when we see reports of Leonardo DiCaprio, the U.N.’s “Messenger for Peace for Climate Change” riding around in a superyacht.

 

SOURCES:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/aliciaadamczyk/2015/04/08/how-much-does-a-superyacht-really-cost/?sh=718973bf36bc

https://www.boatinternational.com/yacht-market-intelligence/luxury-yachts-on-order/2020-global-order-book–42403

https://www.mynewsdesk.com/us/brandessence/pressreleases/superyacht-market-statistics-2021-industry-analysis-3072167

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57079327

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.architecturaldigest.com%2Fstory%2Fbezos-mega-yacht

https://www.globalgiving.org/learn/cost-to-end-climate-change/

Earth Day Origins

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The holiday of Earth Day was inspired by a 1969 oil spill in Santa Barbara, California. In that catastrophic and well-known oil spill, between 3.5 and 4.2 million gallons of crude oil were spilled into the Santa Barbara Channel. The very next year, the first Earth Day was hosted to raise awareness for this event, as well as spark more support and visibility for the growing environmentalism movement.

Since that initial oil spill, between 1969 and 2017 there have been 44 more oil spills in North America, every single one of them over more than 420,000 gallons, according to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. That means that since the initial 3.5-4.2 million gallon oil spill that caused Earth Day, at the very least 18.48 million gallons of oil have been spilled, and that’s a low estimate that excludes the past 5 years, which have seen a large uptick in oil spills.

Hopefully, we can muster up a renewed interest in taking down oil companies within the environmentalism movement, and ensure a healthy future for the ocean for us and the generations that come after us.

Sources:

The History of Earth Day

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/california-spill-52-years-historic-oil-disaster-80400250

https://response.restoration.noaa.gov/oil-and-chemical-spills/oil-spills/largest-oil-spills-affecting-us-waters-1969.html

CO2 Emissions Rise

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Continuing a blog topic from 2 posts ago, I wanted to zero in on the rise in CO2 emissions during my lifetime. I was born in 2002, where global CO2 emissions were 26.04 billion tonnes. Fast forward to our most recent data, with the 2021 global CO2 emissions were 36.4 billion tonnes. That’s a total change of 10.36 billion tonnes. The percent change of that data would roughly be a 40% (39.78%, to be exact) increase with a growth factor of 1.4.

While there has been some fluctuation in recent years due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, on average the increase in emissions has remained steady. It’s scary to think about, but the total change, percent change, and growth factor could all possibly be even larger if the pandemic hadn’t happened. It’s important to reduce our personal, every day CO2 emissions, and hopefully we’ll live to see a time where the CO2 emissions have a decay factor instead.

Sources:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissions/

Bottled Water

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This week’s theme of water had me thinking about bottled water and the growing popularity of reusable water bottles within my generation. It got me thinking about the waste produced by bottled waters–how much CO2 would it take to produce enough bottles of water for each student on campus to get their necessary daily intake of water?

The average human needs to drink 3.7L of water per day, and each plastic water bottle is around 1L of water. There are 2,050 students at Union, and if everyone drank the recommended amount of water per day, that would total 7,585L of water, and 7,585 plastic water bottles. According to Luqel, to produce 500ml of a single use plastic water bottle it takes 82.9g of CO2. How much CO2 would be produced to create 7, 585L of plastic water bottles, then?

Well, 500ml is equivalent to .5L. .5L produces 82.9g of CO2. .5L doubled is 1L, and 82.9g doubled is 165.8g of CO2. To produce one 1L plastic water bottle, it takes 165.8g of CO2. For all of the 2,050 students of Union to drink 3.7L of water per day, it would take 1,257,593g of CO2(7585 x 165.8).

That is just for one day of water. For a year of water? It would take 459,021,445g of CO2.

This is just something to think about when considering reusable vs. one use plastic water bottles. Not to mention the microplastics!

On Current CO2 Emissions

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Thinking about units, numbers, and measurement of CO2 led me to think about current CO2 emissions, and especially how much we would have to decrease them by and when. According to the Presidential Climate Action Project, “In order to stabilize CO2 concentrations at about 450 ppm by 2050, global emissions would have to decline by about 60% by 2050. Industrialized countries greenhouse gas emissions would have to decline by about 80% by 2050.”(There are a lot of really good numbers and statistics in this document, and they’re all stated very clearly, so I urge everyone to check out the link above.) Basically, to only stabilize CO2 concentrations(not even decrease them!) we would have to globally reduce CO2 emissions by 60%.  In 2020, according to the Global Carbon Project, 36.4 billion tonnes of carbon were emitted. To cut back by 60% globally, we would have to go from 36.4 billion tonnes of carbon per year to 14.56 billion tonnes of carbon per year, if my math is correct. Emissions haven’t been that low since 1970, according to the Global Carbon Project chart I previously linked. Definitely a big step to take in just 28 years!