10.30.2008

I feel for this..

In class today, we were asked to read and answer questions about the article that we read. Basically the article was about the ten problems of the world. I couldn't find it online but here was my response...i went a little over board tough..

=]

“A belated, apologetic commencement address”

Frank Sanitate and I could possibly have a wonderful friendship. Him and I would have the best conversations and could possibly get things done together.

  1. Are there any concerns you disagree with and why?
  2. What other concerns might there be?

No. I agree with all ten problems of the world. The second point he made was “There are still 800 million malnourished people on the planet.” I believe that the way we can fix this is to stop this useless war and instead of funding that wasting billions of dollars and killing our soldiers, our government should use that money to feed people that are dying every day because they can’t afford food. Our government should also help the homeless, it would not cost that much to do this.

For numbers 5, 6 and 7, I couldn’t agree with Frank more. First of all, we need to stop cutting down our trees because it just causes a domino effect. I first noticed this problem a few years ago when my mom and I were driving down to Homestead on the expressway. I noticed that they were clearing all this land to build more houses. To begin this domino effect, I will start off here. Number one, if agencies are constantly clearing land to build tons and tons of houses, when will they decide to build schools? Since they’re not building schools, they are causing over crowding in our schools, which leads to children not getting their full education, which leads to lower test grades which then leads to bad school grades, which could A) possibly want the parent to send the child to a private school which they would have to take out loans to pay for or B) cause the school to close down because of poor grades and not enough resources. Causing the parents to possibly fall into debt even before their child goes to college, and a closure of a school, which causes students to have to go to another school, and the whole process goes in a circle.

Continuing with the previous numbers, I strongly believe that we should stop cutting down trees just to make more buildings and condominiums that do not sell (for example Downtown Miami), and these condo’s stay empty for months. Yet again, it’s like the domino effect. The people get loans to buy the condo’s, but become late on the payments and then payments eventually stop causing them to fall into foreclosure. Then the banks own the condos again but they are in debt because the person has stopped paying them, then the banks run out of money to continue financing these foreclosed properties and they go down in the dumps and then hello recession! Then the banks have to get their parent banks or the government to bail them out causing the people’s taxes to rise, the same people that first bought the condo’s and fell into foreclosure in the first place. And how is that same person going to be able to pay higher taxes?

Furthermore government agencies need to stop allowing companies to build knowing that not many people can afford to buy to rent at these outrageous prices, and that it is just a never ending cycle that will not end until we get a better Commander in Chief; Barack Obama.

On the other side of clearing our trees, let’s think about the science of it all. Fewer trees equal less oxygen, right? No trees equal less wildlife, which equals an over load of insects and other pests because there will be no birds migrating down to eat them. This would also probably cause infestations of little pests that could have probably been eaten by these other animals and/or birds that would now be missing, gone, or extinct because of the clearing of their land. Think about the biological pyramid, we eat meat, meat eaters eat birds, birds eat insects etc. This process would be very messed up if we continue the way we are now.

Everything is affected with the clearing of our trees.

For bullets 8-10, I agree with him 100%. It’s about global warming, if someone doesn’t believe this, then they probably have been naïve for the last 5-30 years. Global warming is real. Any person who has been able to go outside would be able to figure that out. Watch “An Inconvenient Truth”, it is the truth, and it may be inconvenient for some folks. This is proof that the world is physically changing, and not for the best. How is it that this Earth has lasted so long, and once we get into the 1980’s things start to run downhill? One major proof of global warming is the melting of glaciers which leads to two things: First is the extinction of polar bears and other cold water animals. Second is the fact that we have to say goodbye to most or all of the costal regions such as our wonderful state, Florida. Florida just for your information is already below sea level.

“Let’s look at our only nonrenewable source of energy – oil and gas. Production of these, even with new discoveries will peak about 2008, then decline to zero. We are wasting these as fast as we can.”

This article was written on July 2005. And Frank Sanitate was exactly right! It is now 2008, and oil is at an all time high! I’m sure that our inventors have thoroughly thought through this, good thing they’re inventing electric cars! But will everyone be able to afford them? And, how long until electric buses and trains and planes and boats? But good thing gas is slightly going down again, so how long until people should get used to walking?

We need to get smarter about the way we treat our planet, that is only if we want our grand children to see the beauty of our world.