2. The issue of the climate accord begins with pollution. As pollution leads to many other issues, one of the important aspect of it is that, pollution cause greenhouse gas to be released to the environment. The release of greenhouse gas effects the climate drastically. Because of this, the world was observing climate changes. To stop this issue, United Nations, UN, proposes the Copenhagen Accord. This agreement will allow nations to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas being released to the environment. However, for this to occur, many nations would have to come to an agreement with the plan. United States wanted this accord to pass but many other nations were not interested because they weren’t causing environmental issues compared to United States. Because many nations were not interested in this accord, United States started to threat and bribe those countries. This information was leaked to the public and countries that were opposing the accord request high amounts of money. Since United States desperately wanted this accord, they compensated those countries that were against the Copenhagen Accord. One reason why United States wanted this accord to pass was that United States is and was one of the most pollution countries in the world. This led to 166 different countries agreeing to the Copenhagen Accord and 26 countries that were willing to join the accord. Because of United States action, the accord was placed to reduce greenhouse emission to the environment to mitigate the climate change that was occurring. Furthermore, Japan did not ask for an extension on the Kyoto climate treaty which gave a huge boost to the Copenhagen Accord.

3. In my view what United States did to gain the votes of other nations was extremely bad. One of those reasoning being is that the money they used to compensate or convince those countries were probably tax monies. I would agree with the plan if there were guarantees that the Copenhagen Accord will somewhat decrease greenhouse gas emission world wide. However, according to www.epa.gov, the greenhouse gas emission since 1990’s till 2012 nothing has changed much and showed a very consistent pattern. United States went out of it way to convince and bribe countries to get the Copenhagen Accord passed but nothing has been improved every since the accord was agreed upon. The controversial issue with the public learning about the bribery of United State isn’t a significant issue. As a powerful nation United States is, I believe that in certain ways they would have gotten a desired result. Thus, we need to develop a method to increase sustainability while decreasing greenhouse gas emission. Because of the greenhouse gas emission there has been temperature shifts around the world. The temperature range are shifting towards the north and the south pole. In my opinion, one of the most efficient ways to decrease greenhouse gas is for less people to used cars as a mean of transportation. If we can develop throughout United States where people have access to public transportation or everything is in walking distance, we can significantly decrease greenhouse gas emission. It will be extremely unlikely that decreasing in animal-based diet will occur to decrease greenhouse gas emission.

1.

My hometown is Cherry Hill, New Jersey, a county of Camden. Cherry Hill is approximately 30 minutes from Philadelphia and has about 71,000 residents. The city is dependent on automobiles as markets and entertainments are not walking distances from most homes. In most cases students rarely walk to school as the school is not near homes. Usually parents give students rides or students take the school bus. Different from other cities, Cherry Hill does not have a near park for people to enjoy a walk. Thus, a car ride to a near by neighborhood is required. In recent days, urban agriculture has been popular in the city. As for my family and neighbors, more and more residents have been farming their own vegetables. Most people farm as a hobby. However, this probably has helped them save couple of dollars on buying food.

2.

The first city I chose was Chicago, Illinois. Although Chicago is pedestrian-oriented because it is a city where most buildings are all within a walking distance from each other. It also has 30 times the amount of residents in comparison with Cherry Hill. At a first glance, it may seem like that Chicago as no relevance with Cherry Hill. However, there is a particular similarity that stands out. In both cities urban agriculture is present. As south Chicago is notorious for its poverty, urban agriculture might be able to reduce hunger rate. If these people have enough space in their yards to start their own small farm they may be able to eat on a regular basis. Bringing sustainable food source may be very crucial for these people. If the city provides urban agriculture food, the poverty rate decrease in Chicago.

3.

The second city I chose was Rochester, NY. Just from the image itself, it shows many similarities to Cherry Hill. In my neighborhood, there aren’t many sidewalks like in Rochester. However, Cherry Hill does have some sidewalks because of elementary school. Like Rochester, people that live in Cherry Hill needs automobile transportation to get around the city. Like Rochester, it is very unlikely to see people walking around the neighborhood or to get to the grocery store. I think that Cherry Hill should more sidewalks and develop a more pedestrian-oriented city. This allows high school students to go to convenience store to grab food when their parents are at work. It might encourage people to walk more to save gas.

As I have spent several earlier years of my life in South Korea, I have experienced different food cultures and norms compared to those have been raised in America. In certain instances, the foods that Koreans eat is socially unacceptable in the American society and vice versa. In both cultures, octopus is a socially accepted food and many people enjoy eating them or more accurately it is not out of the social norm. However, one particular Korean dish serves a living octopus. This is a special case in which there no inputs in the livestock, because the octopus is served fresh from the ocean. I have never ate a live octopus in my times in America. When I have visited Korean for the past two summers, eating live octopus has become one of my favorite dishes because most people eat it without any hesitations.

Although eating live octopus is a social norm in Korea, it poses a significant health issue. Eating live octopus does not pose any health issues as people who have eaten them hasn’t suffered any serious health problems. However, it is extremely danger to eat live octopus. As most people are aware of the stickiness of octopuses tentacles, they tend to eat them nonetheless. When a person intakes the entire octopus as one bite, it has a decent chance for the octopus to lay in the esophagus, that allows us to breathe with our mouths. If this occurs, the person is chocked out of air and faces death. I think that any food that is consumed should not be alive. Although they are many foods that impose serious  health issues in a long term, but live foods such as octopuses should not be a social norm as it causes immediate death.

http://personal.colby.edu/personal/t/thtieten/Biopower.htm

This case study takes place in Kettle Falls, Washington in which they wanted to implement new system of producing energy. The purpose was to remove the classic energy supply by burning fossil fuels with biopower plant. This is special case a biopower plant was to benefit the Kettle Falls Wood-Fired camp because of the abundant bio-supply available to them as their location was in the woods. Furthermore, disposal for unwanted wood waste was to burn them. They took this idea and invested $85.9 million which turned out to be a great investment because of the amount of support they got from the community. Sustainable energy is of great importance in today’s society. In the United States, we have depleted most of the fossil fuels that are available for us to use. It is important for our future and future generation to have a reliable source of energy.

http://www.biomasscenter.org/resource-library/case-studies/housing/dartmouth-college’s-sachem-village

This cas study takes place in West Lebanon, New Hampshire or better known as a small village near Darthmouth College. McNamara learned that this little village outside of Dartmouth College was full of renewable resources. Both the middle school and high school in that area were using woodchip-fired heating system. However, the chip system was less cost efficient in comparison with pellet system. He fine tuned the system in which 95% was from the pellet and 5% from the propane burner whenever its needed. This would only take place if the weather gets too cold. The amazing thing of this system is that it had has no visible air emission. Furthermore, this system allowed to burn other biomaterials. As mentioned above, as McNamara realized that fossil fuel was a limited source he searched for a different solution for energy sources. He invested in a sustainable energy system for his house.

In both cases, people in those area realized that they were not using readily available energy sources. They took advantage of this and built a cost efficient alternative to the fossil fuel energy system. Neither of these cases are developing in my hometown of Cherry Hill, New Jersey. This is because the city does not readily have as much wood for the entire city to sustain on in comparison with both of the above cities. I don’t believe that my hometown has even considered starting a sustainable energy system. Cherry Hill completely relies on a fossil fuel energy system. Our town can learn from these cases that investing in a sustainable energy system is very good in the long term because we will eventually run out of fossil fuels to energize our daily needs.

1-A.

In my hometown, Cherry Hill, which is southern part of New Jersey, uses a subterranean water well. While each household doesn’t have its own water tank, each neighborhood uses 3 common water tanks. In basements of all houses has a jet pump to pump the water throughout the houses. To conserve energy on the supplier part, the water tanks are relatively built on higher grounds to allow gravity to use its energy to send water to the pipelines. After the used water gets drained, it goes to the sewer. From here on, it goes to one of the two waste water treatment facilities that is regulated by the Camden County Municipal Utilities Authorities (CCMUA). CCMUA treats about 58 million gallons of water on a daily basis at Delaware No.1 Water Control Facility, located in Camden, and Winslow Water Pollution Control Facility. Once the water has been cleaned and purified, it repeats its cycle throughout the day.

1-B.

1-C.

The areas of water use was only in drinking. I have had decent amount of experiences in parts of the world where water is not available on a daily basis. Because of this experience I have had an easy time managing this experiment. If only 2 gallons of water is given, the highest priority is to put in consumption. It has been possible for people to survive for about 3 weeks without food. However, many predict that people can’t go longer than a week without water. In the cases for sanitary, toilet, laundry, dishes and sanitizing, is something that I did not care about. I realized that even without these necessities, it was possible to live. The strategy I took was to prioritize that absolute necessities in a day-to-day living. I concluded that drinking was my only priority. This experiment was a huge success to me. I think spending couple of weeks in Haiti during summer has helped me finish this experiment with a success. Because I was eating and drinking less, I did not use the bathroom in comparison to my regular routine. This experience is not comparable to my daily routine. Normally, I spend about 135 to 160 gallons of water. I had to cut down on mostly sanitary. Although it was a bit uncomfortable for a day, I realized how valuable is to have water whenever I need it. Geography is an extremely important factor. Because if there is a limited source of water, most peoples daily lives will change.

1. Virtue ethics vs. action ethics doesn’t pose a serious issue in our daily lives. However, it may bring heated arguments those who believe in their respective beliefs. Lets suppose person A, CEO of company, and person B, a cashier, believes in virtue ethics and actions ethics, respectively. Recently, person A in a news interview says that we should donate to the poor. But ever since the interview, person A has never donated a single cent to charity or to the poor. In most cases, when a third person observes the actions of A, it can be concluded that person A’s words does not have genuine meaning. While person B, never has told to his friends or family that he believes people should donate to the poor has consistently donated 10% of his income to charity. In this case, although person B never tells anyone of his belief, he is directly impacting the poor while person A is not. From this scenario we can conclude that action ethic has more value than virtue ethic. I believe that it is far more valuable to directly impact someone’s life instead of just saying the words.

4. I believe that the ecosystem is here for the sake of humans. If anyone looks to                    history of any country, there aren’t any cases in which the ecosystem built itself to              its current state of the country. Any buildings, technologies, educations and                        governments were’t built from animals such as dogs, cats or cows nor trees, fungus          or plants.  Some may argue that the ecosystem is there for its own sake however,              by having an ecosystem is a great significance to the human society. The                            ecosystem is present so that humans can use the resources that the ecosystem                provides for us. The ecosystem provides humans foods, clothing and houses. It may          hurt some peoples moral beliefs that killing animals and plants so that humans can              have source of food, But if we were to believe that the ecosystem is there for its own          sake, it would be hard for humans to live as we would have to turn into cannibals. I              think that most people would believe that being a cannibal is much worse than eating          what the ecosystem provides.

6. In a moralistic point of view, my life, in fact any persons lives are the same.                          However, we can make certain circumstances in this question of is my life more                valuable than others. If we exclude any moralistic point of view in this argument,                  many can argue that some peoples lives are more important than other people. In the          instances of CEO of big companies and research professors, they contribute to the            society more than I can in the current state. What they contribute in daily lives most            likely impact someones life directly in a much greater impact than I can ever do,                  whether that is by money or education. We can use this argument for anyone. In the          instance of me, I can value my life more than others. I believe that the researches              that I am doing is impacting to the current society more than a high school student              can. I am not saying that the high school student life is invaluable but circumstances          make it that way. That high school student may or may not contribute to the society            more than I can in the future. But in its current state, I can do much more than certain          people. I think that everyone to certain extent has this belief because of wages that            people get paid with certain jobs. Everyone agrees that doctors get paid more than              cashiers. This is because we value the skills that doctors have in comparison with a          cashier.

In Gerry Marten’s “What is Human Ecology”, he illustrates the relationship between the social system and the ecosystem. He demonstrates that increase in population increases the amount of cooking fuel. This eventually leads to deforestation. Deforestation is an issue because the Earth only provides limited amount of fire woods. Similar to his figure, my figure mainly demonstrates the same idea that we need fire woods to fuel the fire to produce edible food. However, I have added some details that he have left out in the diagram. One of my core idea is that biogas generator have given women in India to start a business by selling the compost to the farmers. The farmers would than produce food that humans can consume. This causes an feedback loop in which they save the environment and increase profit. In other words, there would not be any waste created in this type of system. Initially, this causes a positive feedback because the integration of biogas generator in the society leads the women to do more work by selling the compost to the farmers. Furthermore, I believe that Marten left out a crucial information in his entry. He has left out the fact that the children who are helping their parents collect the fire wood is losing time on education. This is an incredibly important factor in any social system because children are the people who will eventually lead the next generation of people. There are differences in the two figures because many people think differently and value certain ideas more over other. We can learn from these comparisons that, we need many other view points because it is easy for others to forget certain aspects that might be important to the society.  

Hello classmates, my name is David Youn and I am a chemistry major. I am expected to graduate this semester and planning on going to graduate school for biomedical engineering or biochemistry. Currently, I plan to pursue a career as a research professor at a big institution like Penn State. Answering unanswered scientific questions is a great interest to me. I love studying proteins and trying to find a applicable use for it. I currently live in State College, PA and attending the main campus. Most of my life I grew up in a small town called Cherry Hill, NJ, which is located about 30 minutes from Philadelphia. However, I was born in Seoul, South Korea, where I lived my first 9 years of my life. Both United States and South Korea have their pluses and minuses, but if I were to choose a place to live, I would choose United States because of there are more easy going people. I have a decent interest in this course because I know that lot of human actions effects the environment. I want to develop methods to reduce chemical wastes to prevent further harming the world.

Ever since I was a young kid, I had lot of interest in the environment. I was fascinated by what the nature was showing, especially the mountains. However, there were many incidents in which humans were destroying the nature by mountain fires, oil spills, and not efficiently decomposing waste such as plastic. I believe that in recent years, humans have been taking advantage of what the nature is providing. In the near future, it is projected that we will run of coals and oils to power the every necessities that we need. It was so shocking to see that Lake Folsom completely dried out within four years. It could be possible that due to climate changes the lake dried out, but I believe that human interactions had more effect on it. These are all things that we can change, but we have not. It is easy to prevent wildfires by not throwing away cigarette butts and not bring fire prone materials. We should be more considerate of the nature because without it the world won’t be the place that it used to be.