February 11th, Presentions on Plan B

A Better Future

Cristina- I am definitely thankful we have reached the sections in Plan B that offer solutions rather than simply listing all of the problems. Specifically in chapter 5 we go over the new global energy economy vs. the old and I am hopeful we will turn to cleaner energy sooner rather than later. I remember when I first started hearing about the energy crisis all I ever heard was that gas prices were going to go up but there were no viable solutions. At least now enough research has been done to prove that their are solutions out there that can reduce our carbon footprint and eliminate the large amount of waste that we produce everyday. Out of all the solutions available I believe that wind power seems to be able to meet current and future demand easily. I was also thinking about the old airplanes sitting in empty lots that we read about in chapter 4, maybe we could recycle the materials to build the wind farms. More importantly, the goals that Plan B has are only 7 years away from the deadline.Seven years can fly by very quickly if we are not careful. Hopefully we can start making small changes in our lives to maintain a good future for others.

Melanie- The few things I was able to grasp from this class is that there are solutions that can be accomplished if we all worked together to get stuff done. Plan B does seem unrealistic , but it is doable. Especially when it comes to collecting energy from sources that the earth can provide us without any costs to humanity. It's not only up to the people to start doing something, but the government as well. They hold all the power as to what really will go and won't. It doesn't take that much change to make things happen. Many other countries have been able to change and the US hasn't when our biggest claim to fame is being number one. We aren't going to be number for long if we don't try to make things better environmental.

Meredith- I enjoyed hearing all of the groups presentations this week because there was finally good news.  It was difficult during the last class to hear all of the negative things that are impacting our civilization.  Knowing that solutions have been implemented and prove to be successful in places within and outside the United States makes our situation seem less hopeless.  St. Paul, Minnesota developed district heating by building a combined heat and power plant.  They were able to utilize their tree waste from city parks and industrial wood waste, which now heats 80 percent of their downtown area.  Europe's waste-to-energy plants supply 20 million consumers with heat.  The country with the most plants is France with 128 and Germany following behind them with 67.  It may seem unrealistic for the United States to attain all of their environmental goals by 2020, but we must at least attempt to make changes or we will continue to rapidly decline.

Kristin- I felt that this last class was very productive! I enjoyed presenting our chapter 5 presentation and listening to the other groups as well. I learned from our chapter 5 research that there are many solutions out there. We just need to educate everyone and show them that there is a problem. Once people realize that there is an issue they will be more open to change and innovation to solve our problems. I mean look at all of the ideas our class came up with just in our last class period. Could you imagine if we educated others all the solutions we could come up with? I think that some of Plan B's plans are a little far fetched, but I also think that we could move forward very quickly if we all started to work together.