Week Eight

This week we spent our focus on discussing the important topic of climates and climate change and policies relating to climate change. We read two interesting articles written by our professor as well as Mahony. Both articles discussed very valuable information relating to climate change and climate change related policies. Something that I found enjoyable to discuss was the idea of how we need to listen to and take the information that well educated scientists present to us and use this information in order formulate important environmental policies relating to climate change. This makes a lot of sense in my mind. Why wouldn't we listen to the people who know the most about climates and changing environments when government and legislators are making policies? I think that it is a no brainer that scientists who actively are studying the issues first had should have more input into the decisions regarding environmental policies that will effect us all as opposed to a government official making the decisions on their own when they may have no prior knowledge or experience with studying the processes and effects of climate change. The IPPC should take as much information as possible from scientists when discussing environmental policies in my opinion. If this is done, I believe that the best overall outcome for everyone will be achieved. I don't believe that we should allow our capitalist society and focus on expansion as well as development be taken into account before the effects that these expansions are having on our climate are taken into heavy consideration. We need to make stricter environmental policies in an attempt to lower total emissions on our climate. We only have one planet earth to live on, and if we screw our environment up too much we will not be able to reverse these effects and will be forced to live with the consequences of our actions.

Week Seven

This week we discussed a lot about inequality and development in terms of climate change. We also had to pick our topics for our white paper. I choose to write on the issue of how climate change impacts animal populations and the ecosystems around them, making it harder for animal populations to survive. I have always had a passion for animals so I found that this topic would be a very interesting one for myself to research and I look forward to doing so. We need to look at how our emissions not only effects us as people, but also how it affects the things around us such as our ecosystems and the plants and animals that need these ecosystems to be functioning properly and at certain stages in order for them to be successful and be able to live and thrive. We also had a couple of interesting readings in which we learned about REDD+ and policies regulating emissions. Something that I found was interesting was the idea of land tenure. The concept of having the right to use the land but not physically owning the land or having the land as private property was strange to me. I was a little confused about what this meant specifically in regards to whether or not other people are allowed onto the land since the land is not private property and so on. We also talked about land development and what should be done in regards to this issue and how this should be handled. I believe that when it comes to land development we should not get greedy in terms of what we develop and always be sure to not take more than we need. We as a world need to make sure that we don't overstep our boundaries as caretakers for the land and ensure that we always make sure that we leave a large area of undeveloped land for the plants and animals that need such areas to live and survive.

Week Six

This week we discussed a lot about computer models and the "politics" of climate change . We talked about the IPCC which stands for the Inter government Panel on Climate Change. We discussed what this is and what it stands for. It was interesting to learn more about the government and its take on climate change. I don't' personally believe that a priority should be given to making money or an type of economic gain over the negative effects or impacts that it may potentially have on climate change. We only have one planet in which we are capable of living on and this is our only option to live so this should be our number one central concept in our minds with every decision that we make, whether a personal decision or a large scale nation wide decision. We also read an article about climate change anthropology. This was an interesting article because it focused on the on humans and the effects that we have on our environment. We as people need to look at ourselves in terms of our wasteful, high emission cultures and work to limit the emissions that we have in our daily lives moving forward.

Guest Speak Jean Lavigne

This week we had the privilege of having Jean Lavigne come and speak both days to our class. Jean is very well versed in the topic of climate change among many other areas in relation to our climate or environment. A great deal of what we talked about was climate change, and more specifically as to why there are certain groups of people that will firmly deny that climate change is even a thing that we should be concerned about at all. We talked about how a lot of the people do not believe there is climate change nor do they want to believe that climate change is real at all. A very large reason that Jean gave us while she was speaking to us about why there are climate change deniers is that certain groups of people believe that climate change is a hoax or a scam. She told us about how there are large groups of people that believe that climate change is a made up concept in order to generate. While addressing this she elaborated on how some people believe that climate change is made up in order to raise large sums of money that will be put into the economy in attempt to better benefit our economy overall. Another large part of the climate change deniers philosophy was a belief that climate change is being made up by the scientists in order for them to generate large sums of money for themselves in order to be able to do further research. I personally believe that there is clearly shown evidence that essentially proves that climate change is not being "made up". We as a society need to convince all of the climate change happenings and dangers in order to show them that it is real, and alert them of the great dangers that lie ahead in our future if we do not change our harmful ways we act toward the environment. If we are able to do this, I believe that this will a great step in reducing our overall consumption and climate change causing actions because we all need to be on the same page when facing this very eminent problem.