Category Archives: Human Society

The Sustainability of Electric Cars

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Emissions from cars and transportation are undoubtedly some of the largest producers of CO2 emissions that we can see today.  However not all hope is lost as companies such as Tesla have attempted to become more sustainable and limit CO2 emissions.  These are seen with electric cars that have become very widespread today.  Tesla was founded with long term sustainability efforts in mind as opposed to the current trend of trying to lessen environmental pollution but not get at the source of the problem.  Electric cars charged on a power grid emit 4,000 lbs of CO2 as opposed to gasoline vehicles which emit 11,000 lbs of CO2.  Better yet, electric cars that are charged on renewable forms of energy such as wind and solar emit 0 lbs of CO2.  Despite the fact that batteries for electric vehicles create more pollution during construction than combustion-engine vehicles, because of the lower emissions over the entire life of the electric vehicle, the pollution is less overall than combustion-engine vehicles.  With the average commute to work being 28 minutes, driving an electric vehicle as opposed to a gasoline powered vehicle is the more sustainable choice.  Tesla also states in its website that end-of-life products such as electronics with a size of up to 25cm can be returned to be recycled at Tesla locations at no cost.  To return other products an appointment can be scheduled for the take-back.  Electric cars seem to be a very important step towards a more sustainable future.

Works Cited:

https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/sis/resources/earth-day-ff.pdf

https://www.pca.state.mn.us/air/electric-vehicles#:~:text=Much%20like%20with%20greenhouse%20gases,operating%20and%20during%20power%20generation.

https://www.tesla.com/en_IE/support/sustainability-recycling

https://www.imd.org/research-knowledge/articles/tesla-becomes-a-model-for-sustainable-leadership-david-and-goliath-revisited/

Sustainable Farming Techniques and increasing agricultural efficiencies in less environmentally endowed countries

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One aspect of sustainability that is not as significant as perhaps it should be in the modern conversation about climate change as recycling, or solar and wind energy is the idea of agricultural efficiency. Data from 1991 to 2017 compared the output per worker in agricultural industries by country and found that sub-Saharan Africa is in comparison to European nations, and Asian nations less efficient at producing food. In constant 2010 dollars, the Congo put out $947 dollars and Tanzania put out $675 of agricultural output in the year 2017 and in comparison to Denmark and the UK each put out around $50 to $60000. That means that for every hectare of land in the UK approximately 7 tons of cereal(wheat, rice, barley etc.) was produced in comparison to sub-saharan Africa which produced about 1.6 tons of cereal per hectare of land. In Europe, since 1980 according to Our World in Data, the continent has been able to increase crop yields while maintaining on approximately 132 million hectares of land increasing their yields from that year to 2019 by 132% whereas in comparison Africa has increased their land use from 48 to 112 million hectares while their yield has increased .4 ton basis points from 1980-2019. While this data may not be surprising, it is an alarming statistic since Africa’s (across the entire continent) population is the fastest-growing population in the world with the least amount of educational attainment opportunities internally and the least productive population perhaps in a global comparative manner of analysis. Internally, some African nations like South Africa and Nigeria have been able to triple their agricultural GDP in this same time period. From these statistics, it’s clear that Africa is in an early period of classical growth so when thinking about how wealthier countries should consider their impact on less-developed nations, they should continue to work to improve to share technology and work to benefit not only the endogenous growth of their people but so too improve perhaps the environmental capabilities of certain regions as a byproduct of the positive externalities discovered by some nations.

Sources utilized:

https://ourworldindata.org/africa-yields-problem

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/agriculture-value-added-per-worker-wdi?tab=chart&time=1991..latest&country=ZAF~NGA

https://www.privacyshield.gov/article?id=Republic-of-Congo-Agricultural-Sector#:~:text=The%20Republic%20of%20Congo’s%20agricultural,gross%20domestic%20product%20(GDP).

https://statisticstimes.com/demographics/continents-by-population.php#:~:text=Middle%20Africa%20has%20highest%20rate,growing%20continent%20Oceania%20(1.27%25).

The Dangers of Commuting to Work

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Commuting to work is something that many Americans dread. Depending on the person’s location or job, their commute can be very long or it can be full of rush hour traffic to and from the office. Commuting is not just frustrating, it is also very detrimental to our environment. The average one way commute to work in the United States in 2019 was 28 minutes one way, making a round trip to work a 56 minute hour total commute. This is almost an hour of commuting daily. Almost 3% of Americans walked to work in 2019 and less than 1% rode bikes to work in 2019.  This means that the majority of Americans use vehicles to get to work. Cars release emissions that put fossil fuels into the atmosphere, which is harmful to the planet. Cars and trucks account for nearly one fifth of all US emissions, emitting around 24 pounds of carbon dioxide (and other harmful greenhouse gases) per gallon of gas. There are easy ways to decrease our carbon footprint and negative impact on the environment including carpooling, walking to work or biking to work. Additionally, electronic cars are an excellent way to still commute far distances but at much less of an environmentally damaging cost. Electric cars are an excellent, safe alternative to cars that use gas. There are so many easy ways to reduce our carbon footprint and we can start with altering how we commute daily.

citations: https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/car-emissions-global-warming#:~:text=Our%20personal%20vehicles%20are%20a,for%20every%20gallon%20of%20gas.

https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/sis/resources/earth-day-ff.pdf

A future for our children

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Don’t get me wrong, we are already experiencing a lot of extreme climate these days to know that climate change will impact every single of us on the planet. These extreme climate includes wild fire, ice melts, global sea level rise, high precipitation, high heat, etc. If we don’t save the environment now, it will come back to haunt us without a doubt. people in charged used to say ¨the next generation will figure it out.¨ well, we are the generation they are talking about. We are in our early 20s. We are the generation that will suffer the consequences that our older generation left us. We don’t have the privilege or the entitlement to say, let’s leave it to the next generation.

In addition to that, we also have to move away from the egoistic point of view and think about the next generation to come. The next generation of people deserve a world of better economic equality, development opportunity, and a good quality of life. Depriving them of these resources for a dignified life is irresponsible. Environmental justice can not only be about the people whoa re currently living on this earth, but the people that will inhibit earth. We need to think about them

Join Earth day 2022 on union college and take part in this movement for greater equality!!

Food Security and Sustainable Agriculture

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As the population of the world continues to grow, this increases the demand for food. For every person that is born, it’s another mouth to feed and eventually another family to feed. Also, it’s important that the food being served to the public is safe to eat and good for health.

The main goals of food security and sustainable agriculture are to improve the global supply chain, decrease food losses and waste, and ensure that all who are suffering from hunger and malnutrition have access to nutritious food.

In 2012 world leaders met at the Conference on Sustainable Development and agreed that everyone has the right to have access to safe nutritious food, adequate food, and to be free from hunger. At the conference, the UN Secretary-General created and launched a Zero Hunger Challenge which called on governments, civil society, faith communities, the private sector, and research institutions to work together to end hunger and eliminate the worst forms of malnutrition.

The goals of the Zero Hunger Challenge are: to make sure there are zero stunted children under the age of two, 100% of people have access to adequate food all year round, make sure that all food systems are sustainable, there is a 100% increase in smallholder productivity and income, and that there is zero loss or waste of food.

These are big goals that can be accomplished over time. Some important math that is important for accomplishing these goals is the use of the rate of change. This is important to calculate how fast the population of the world is increasing or decreasing. To calculate the rate of change two important pieces of information is needed. The first is the amount of change that occurred and how long in terms of the time it took for that change to happen. The formula is the average amount of change divided by the amount of time required for the change to happen. This is a good way to calculate how much the population of the earth changed in one day, week, month, or year. Once these numbers are determined they will give a good idea of how much food needs to be produced and distributed.

https://sdgs.un.org/topics/food-security-and-nutrition-and-sustainable-agriculture

Wasting Food and Its Impact

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Composting is a practice employed by gardeners and farmers in which they replenish and enrich the soil with leftover yard/food waste. In addition to enrich the soil and helping plants grow, composting reduces the emissions of methane. This is due to the fact when left in landfills, organic waste generates methane. By separating out organic waste into compost, a significant amount of methane emissions are reduced. Composting also promotes soil’s water retention, which in turn means there is less water waste.

In 2018, an estimated 2.6 million tons of food was composted, which is the equivalent of one person composting .42 pounds of food per day. However, since composting isn’t part of peoples’ daily routine (everyone has a garbage can, but how many people have a composting bin?), we waste about 1.4 billion tons of food. Americans waste the most food annually at a whopping 80 billion pounds. Our food waste could be significantly reduced if we began implementing a steady routine of composting. Normalizing and standardizing composting would reduce the size of landfills as well as improve the agricultural climate.

Before the COVID pandemic, 35 million Americans had food insecurity. Today,  50 million Americans have food insecurity. With over 80% of food waste coming from households and restaurants, there is such a real difference we could be making to reallocate food waste either to those in need and with food insecurity, or to compost facilities to add to long term improvement.

 

https://www.rts.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/RTS_Food_Waste_Guide_2021.pdf

https://www.epa.gov/sustainable-management-food/reducing-impact-wasted-food-feeding-soil-and-composting

Environmental racism

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Environmental racism refers to the idea that environmental destruction has a varying impact on individuals with regards to race. According to a research done by the U.S. Congress’s General Accounting Office, in eight distinctive states, ¨75% of the hazardous waste landfill sites were in low-income communities of color.¨(1) This is caused by the fact that communities of higher income tends to live away from environmentally dangerous areas of the city, and those who live in poverty tend to live in places that are more exposed to different kinds of pollutions, including but not limited to air, land, water pollution etc.

Due to this fact, I decided to look at the income of communities of colour and to compare how they might be disproportionately impacted by the environmental racism. ¨In 2019, median household income for Black households was $45,438 compared to $56,113 for Hispanic households, $76,057 for non-Hispanic White households, and $98,174 for Asian households.¨ Black households are 19% more likely to live in places with hazardous waste landfill (56,113 – 45,438)/56113 = 19% than hispanic households. (formula for percentage change)Environmental racism explains to us the urgency to take care of our environment as a means to fight against racism.

Bibliography:

(1) https://www.sustained.kitchen/latest/2020/6/6/fast-facts-on-environmental-racism

(2) https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/09/poverty-rates-for-blacks-and-hispanics-reached-historic-lows-in-2019.html

Construction’s Relation to Sustainability

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More often than ever, as a nation, we are witnessing forests and woodlands being torn down. The most common reason for tearing down all of these trees is to start up a new construction cites. Although there are a surplus of different reasons that these trees and animals habitats are being torn down, it eventually all comes down to greed. Most of the buildings that are being constructed are money-making entities. Consider some of the following examples; apartment buildings, storage facilities, casinos, etc. In fact, the amount of trees that are being planted opposed to torn down is an incredibly interesting ratio.

Annually, 15 billion trees are cut down. On the other hand, only 1.9 billion trees are planted a year. That means that the ratio of trees that are cut down to planted is 15 to 1.9. Meaning, for every 1.9 trees that are planted, 15 trees are torn down. To help better understand this idea, “For the 15 billion trees that are chopped down each year, every person on the planet could have 3,000 rolls of toilet paper” (Kilgore, 2022). According to Jonah Bader, “President Joe Biden has announced an ambitious goal of net-zero emissions by 2050… The idea of “net-zero emissions” is that any remaining emissions can be fully offset by so-called “negative emissions” — methods of sucking carbon out of the atmosphere. Planting trees is the most straightforward way to do that. Trees absorb CO2 for photosynthesis and store it as cellulose and lignin, the main components of wood” (Bader, 2021). Furthermore, “Planting trees may also be the most popular climate policy. Even former President Donald Trump loved the idea. He championed an international initiative to plant 1 trillion trees, which would be enough to soak up at least a decade of global emissions” (Bader, 2021). The possibilities are endless when it comes to further studying the ways that construction cites interfere with sustainability.

Works Cited:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/10/opinions/climate-plant-and-cut-trees-down-bader/index.html

How Many Trees Are Planted Each Year > Day > Minute

https://8billiontrees.com/trees/how-many-trees-cut-down-each-year/

Climate change and human health

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While we often think about the environmental effects of climate change, we don’t always consider how those environmental changes can affect human health.  Global warming is one of the most prevalent issues associated with climate change and while many people have noticed the effects of this issue, not many know the health issues that come from this increased global temperature. According to the EPA, unusually hot summers with high temperatures and heat waves have become more and more common over the years.  With this increase in hot weather comes an increase in heat related deaths. For instance, the rate of heat related deaths in the United States has increased from 1979-2018.  In 1979, the rate of deaths was 0.240 per million people.  In 2018, that increased to 1.635 per million people, making the total change 1.395 per million people and making the percent change between 1979 and 2018 a 581.25% increase.  With a growth factor of 6.81, you can see the large increase in deaths caused by heat in the last 40 years alone.  Climate change, especially global warming, can have an extreme adverse effect on human health, which we are already starting to see.  If we don’t do something to keep the global temperatures from becoming even more extreme, we can expect to see the rise in heat related deaths become even higher.

 

https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-heat-related-deaths

Carbon Emissions

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The United States emitted a grand total of 5,222 million metric tonnes of CO2 in 2020, which was an 11% decrease following the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, but this downward trend would prove to be only temporary. However, in comparison to 2005 CO2 emission levels, there was a 21% decrease, which I found to be interesting. In 2020 alone, carbon dioxide accounted for  ~79% of GHG emissions, while nitrous oxide, methane, and various fluorinated gases made up the other 21%. 27% of these emissions were caused by transportation alone, electricity contributed to 1/4 of these emissions, and the rest were sectioned off into industry, commercial usage, and, unsurprisingly, agricultural energy consumption. Ten years prior, the overall emission measurement (circa 2010) fell around 5,594 million metric tonnes, which while not a huge difference, really puts things in perspective. If we could somehow figure out a balance between all the above aspects of everyday life, and managed to cut back on energy consumption in a realistic yet sustainable way, it would be for the better.

 

 

 

 

sources:

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/inventory-us-greenhouse-gas-emissions-and-sinks

https://www.statista.com/statistics/183943/us-carbon-dioxide-emissions-from-1999/