Mrs. Eisenkolb: AP Environmental Science Teacher
1.Recently there has been a significant amount of progress in spreading awareness, educating, and starting the halting of climate change. Is there a environmentally friendly practice/practices that you do daily. If so, can you expand on one of those practices.
Yes, there are many. I compost mine and my birds' food waste, and that helps reduce methane emissions because it does not go into a landfill. I also recycle, hopefully preventing more trees from being cut down for paper. I eat less meat as well. The other day, I went to the cafeteria, and I was feeling peckish but did not want a full meal, so it is always on my mind that I do not want an animal to die just for me to eat around senselessly. So, I chose a banana purposefully and consciously because animal agriculture contributes significantly to methane and greenhouse gas emissions. This is not to say that I have entirely cut my meat consumption, but I am just very conscious about how much I consume. I never eat beef, however. I stopped eating it about six years ago because of how much methane emissions come from meat production. Also, I try to save water because California is in a drought, and even pumping water is a lot of energy used. On a monthly basis, I am good about not shopping and not buying items solely because they are fashionable. I am part of a buy-and-sell Facebook group that exchanges goods. When I do not need something anymore, I post it on Facebook, and if I need something new, rather than ordering it on Amazon, I try to see if somebody else has posted something that I need. That goes again into reducing energy production from making new materials.
2. Is there a piece of advice or recommendation that you would give to us and other high schoolers that don't have the same resources as an adult may help contribute to stopping climate change or any subset of it?
Some of those easy reduction examples I stated are great examples of things people can do without needing any resources. The younger generation is doing a great job of delivering the message that this is also their planet and that they will have to deal with most of these consequences. Joining a movement where young people do an excellent job speaking out for the environment is something else you could do to feel less alone. By joining others passionate about this cause, you can form a community that forces more attention towards environmental issues.
3. LA is one of the most, if the not the most polluted city in the United States despite its efforts to reduce carbon emissions. If you were in charge of the environmental policy of LA, what two things would you incorporate to lower emissions.
I do not want to claim that I would be the best in creating a solution, but one of LA's biggest challenges is the issue of public transportation. Traditionally, LA has a large car culture, and the city is very spread out, so many people have to travel for hours to get from A to B. If you think of other cities like New York City, for example, it is not that far spread out, and it is much easier to use public transportation. I know there has been much concern about earthquake safety from building up higher. However, we could build higher to reduce individual transit and focus on creating underground transportation. Also, we waste much water in Los Angeles on outdoor landscaping because we like the look of certain plants. We are fueling carbon emissions because we need to pump water for plants that do not naturally grow here, nor do they help the environment and native species. I would try to curtail that movement.
4. Statistically, the more industrial powerful countries cause a lot more damage to the environment than, say, a poorer, less industrialized country, yet these economically challenged countries have to deal with the effects. Do you think it is or should be an implied job of these wealthier countries, like the U.S to allocate more funds towards the global issue?
This is an issue of environmental justice. This idea of environmental justice is that one group contributes more to an issue than another, yet the first group suffers less from the impacts. For example, if I am a very wealthy person who orders products from Amazon all of the time, producing much trash that goes into a landfill, I will likely also be the person not living next to that landfill. I would live in a house that is very far from that landfill. Some people can only afford to live next to that landfill. There is a discrepancy between the amount of damage being done by a person and the amount of harm from that damage endured by the people living in the vicinity. Climate change has that problem between nations on an international scale. Some countries produce more CO2 emissions but are wealthy enough to air condition their spaces and not suffer that impact as much. I think from a moral perspective, we are obligated to look at that, and also, I do not think that the issue of climate change can ever be solved if we think about it as "me vs. them." So, I am answering this question with a yes and no because I do not want to think about this issue as a particular group of people vs. a different group and weigh who is contributing. Everybody should be doing whatever they can to stop this as a global issue that needs to be solved.
