Through this diagram I decided to show how the recognition of climate change as a serious issue lead to the drafting of the Copenhagen Accord and eventually lead to realization that new climate mitigation is essential to create a more sustainable environment.  Once the Copenhagen Accord was created, all countries did not immediately adopt to the ideas of the Accord and therefore lead to the United States and the BASIC’s to look for allies to support them for their own personal benefit.  In order to gain other countries support these countries had to use a variety of tactics and methods.  The problem in this, and as I showed in my diagram is that some of the methods used by these countries lead to countries questioning how much trust they can put in other countries.  Some questionable tactics used by the U.S and the BASIC’s include cables, spying and threatening.  An example shown in this diagram of how cables came in handy is how US was informed that Saudi Arabia needed to move their economy away from petroleum which lead the US to commit to help Saudi Arabia with its “economic diversification efforts would ‘take the pressure off climate change negotiations’.”  Other ways of gaining allies was to spy, which was used by China through spear phishing as well as countries providing money to others in order to gain support.  The US also at one point used the method of threatening especially in the case of Ethiopia and basically made an ultimatum for Ethiopia forcing them to sign the accord.  In the end, 116 countries ended up joining the Copenhagen Accord however overall the accord resulted in failure mostly because of the lack of trust between countries.  I ended off my diagram by showing that if greenhouse gases continue to reduce i will be because of climate mitigation, or in other words, new methods of reducing greenhouse gases.

One of the biggest and most important things to take away from this module is what causes climate change.  It is common for people to believe that climate change is caused by temperature increases and the increase in radiation from the sun.  Unfortunately, these people are misinformed, and need to be aware that the reason for climate change is mostly due to greenhouse gases from human activity and not from sun radiation.  Another important idea to take away from this module is understanding that we are trying to “foster collective action among all of humanity” or in other words, have collective action on mitigation.  The reason this is so hard to come by is because different areas of the world have different languages causing a language barrier, people are aware to different extents of climate change and people have different values which cause debate in every major issue.  To show how values could come in the way of negotiating mitigation, I recall reading a section of this module that outlined the difficulty in reaching agreements between poorer and richer countries.  The small and poorer countries would become bothered by the larger and wealthier countries asking them to watch their use of fossil fuels when they don’t use nearly as much fossil fuels as the bigger country.  Looking back on so many failed attempts of reducing greenhouse gases, in this particular case it could be beneficial to instead of, for lack of a better word, “calling out” smaller countries in order to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases, to make it a national requirement to be informed of the damage the excessive use of fossil fuels can be detrimental to the earth especially since we are burning up fossil fuels at a much faster rate than they are regenerating.

I live in a central New Jersey suburban town called South Brunswick.  South Brunswick is a decent sized town and would most likely be considered an automobile suburb.  Although some neighborhoods have sidewalks, mine specifically does not and I know of others that only have the automobile road as well. I’m not sure that there is one specific place to be considered the metropolitan area however the town has around 37,734 people living in it.  That being said my transportation mode for most of my childhood was by car, being driven to friends houses across town or to the mall which would usually be somewhere about fifteen minutes away.  There was always an occasion where I would ride my bike to a friend that lived close by to me, however that was rare, as my parents did not find the roads safe enough to ride my bike on especially with the lack of sidewalks.  The same goes fro many other kids in my town however you do see a decent amount of bikers during the warmer seasons which I would guess keeps our resident health up.

The first city I chose is Rochester, New York.  Rochester is an automobile suburb with a variety of neighborhoods just like Boston and like my hometown South Brunswick, New Jersey.  Specifically in Rochester the urban density does not seem to be very high along with my hometown South Brunswick and especially in my own neighborhood.  My neighborhoods urban density recently slightly went up however, as they turned one of my neighbors houses into a place for two families. Overall much like Rochester, there are few sidewalks and to get anywhere you use a car, very rarely does anyone walk to get anywhere unless they are down the street.  Reading about Rochester makes me realize that perhaps if they had more sidewalks the traffic would be much calmer and the same goes for South Brunswick.  As it says in the module transitioning into sustainability takes a lot of work and a lot of rebuilding, who knows, in Rochester sidewalks could be the first step.

The second city I chose is Detroit, Michigan.  Detroit, as said in the module “makes a good case study for “urban agriculture”.  Downtown Detroit did not previously have grocery stores offering fresh produce prior to them having urban agriculture and it has reshaped diets in Detroit and across the country.  This has allowed Detroit more affordable and healthier produce for the people in its environment.  It allows more people to make a living off of selling their produce.  On top of that it reduces their ecological footprint.  To connect that to my hometown there are a couple of houses that have their own garden near me but enough that there would be a time for them to sell at a market.  If more people went out of their way to be involved in urban farming it would improve resident health, because of the physical aspect of being outside and physically farming as well as reducing our ecological footprint.

Growing up I have always been extremely open to trying new foods.  At I young age people would always comment on how peculiar my taste in food was, as I was enjoying lemon salads, brussel sprouts and fish at a very young age.  However, at school I would dramatically change my eating habits because I was in a lunch room surrounded by my peers who were all still in the phase of wanting chicken fingers and french fries for every meal.  I spent most of middle school eating hot lunch or fries and a chicken patty a lot of the times with a side of corn which I now know to receive the largest subsidy at about 4 billion dollars.  This social norm became apparent to me through the socialization that occurred while sharing meals with them.  Feeling out of place when I did not eat the same foods as them made me change my eating habits at school.

Looking back at the situation I was in during middle school I realize how dangerous that outlook on my eating could have been on my life if it stuck through high school.  If I continued to eat the typical burger and fries hot meal lunch every day my body would have definitely started taking a toll.  The sad part is, this happens to a lot of teenagers, and obesity becomes an issue, especially in public schools.  Not only could obesity become an issue but a lack of eating, also known as anorexia, as a result of the lack of healthy options could also become an issue.  It is widely known that the food options in public schools are not usually the healthiest, and it can become detrimental to the health of teenagers in the United States.  First of all, the food offered in public schools is not healthy to begin with, but of the food offered the healthiest option should be the social norm of what students are eating.  According to the module a basic nutritional need is to eat animal based food less frequently than plant based foods, and in a school cafeteria that is not an option.

This case study describes the development of Indonesia through Colby- Sustainable Development under the topic of agriculture and using the specific study found at http://personal.colby.edu/personal/t/thtieten/ag-ind.html.  The goals of this development were based off of their concern of their food self sufficiency in rice.  This goal was once reached before however it “came at the expense of the sustainable agricultural development”.  In the past in order to increase the rice output a lot of money was spent on products such as fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation.  The use of all three of those things increased dramatically and by 1986 the cost of the input subsidies reached 725 billion dollars.  As said early on in the module, often a place having a lot of money (or spending a lot of money) means better health.  Later on, years after the constant and inappropriate use of pesticides lead to development downsides.  The downsides from the pesticide included pesticide resistant pests and the “elimination of natural predators that help control pests”.

This case study describes the fertilizer that helps Peruvian Coffee growers improve livelihoods through a global coalition for sustainable agricultural development called Farming First found at http://www.farmingfirst.org/2011/01/credit-for-fertilizer-helps-peruvian-coffee-growers-improve-livelihoods/.  The goals of this development was to benefit the families of coffee growers with the higher income but the development of this program that “provides credit for purchasing fertilizer” lead to even greater developments.  Of course the increase of money often means better health as stated in the first case study however the amount of income was not the only thing that benefitted from this program.  Some of the environmental benefits includes the better habitat for the surrounding trees from the recycling of the pulp residue of the fruit and promote biodiversity.

I have grown up and lived in a central New Jersey town for most of my life and throughout those years I have lived in the same house in South Brunswick next to a corn farm.  Most of my observations of this farm were because the mass amount of corn stalks that would blow over to my yard around the fall season I do remember a significant development that occurred over my time living in the house next door.  There are a lot of deer in New Jersey that cause many problems among farmers and planters.  Although deer do not exactly have an appetite for corn they trample over the beginning stages of it growing. The farmers decided it was a good idea to put a pesticide down on the field.  In their favor, although it costed more to buy the pesticide, in the end it made them more money by being able to sell more corn in the end.  Unlike the pesticide in the first case and very much alike to the second case the pesticide worked in the farmers favor.

1.  Is it more important to be a good person or to perform good acts? (virtue ethics vs action ethics)

I believe that it is much more important to perform good acts than to be a good person.  Everyone has their own limits and abilities however our job is to try and perform good acts within our capabilities.  For example, if you know that there are people in your city going hungry you can support there being a soup kitchen nearby for the people to go to, which is an example of being a good person since you want those people to have help.  Turning it into a good act would be volunteering at the soup kitchen, so that you are being a part of the action of giving food to those in need of it.  If, for example, you were under critical care and were not able to walk, then perhaps your ability to help the soup kitchen falls under the umbrella of perhaps donating money instead of physically helping out.  It all falls under what your capability is.

2.  Do the ends justify the means? (if a goal is morally important enough any method of achieving it is acceptable)

As talked about in the beginning of this module we all have intuition, which leads and helps us to decide what is ethically wrong or right, good or bad.  If we always believe that a specific goal is important enough that any achievement of it is acceptable then we put blinding parts of our intuition at risk.  A lot of the times it only takes one person to convince countless amounts of people to believe something is so morally right that any method of reaching the goal is acceptable. One of the biggest examples in history of the ends not justifying the means is World War 2.  One man came into power and convinced people that humans that were not of the aryan race were not meant to be alive and were known as vermin.  Just because these people thought that only people of the aryan race should be alive does not mean that killing the people that weren’t of that race was justified.  Just because something happens to be a shared moral does not give cause to stop at nothing to pursue that moral in the case of World War 2.

5.  Do the pleasure and pain of non-human animals matter as much as the pleasure and pain of humans?

Although I would like to say that the pleasure and pain of non-human animals matter as much as the pleasure and pain of humans, it is simply not true in the present day.  I realize that some people believe that becoming a vegetarian is working towards the equality between humans and non humans but it has barely even made a dent.  Anthropocentrism radiates through our every day life at such a high intensity.  We have non human animals as pets and locked up in zoos and many even still tested on.  We live in an extreme anthropocentric environment.  If you were to turn on the television and watch the news or even log onto a news website, the content is constantly about the effect everything, including the ecosystem has on people.  In a different time period, perhaps the prehistoric era it was much easier to have a very non speciesism view on environmental ethics however a lot of progress in human evolution has occurred.  We became discriminatory towards other species the more we developed as a species which caused us to be a speciesism based society.