BP Oil Spill - Oh No!

On a British Petroleum oil rig off the Gulf of Mexico, on April 20th, there was a series of explosions, killing eleven workers, and destroying the rig. It was caused by a gas leak from a punctured pipe. After the explosions, it was found that the reason for the leak was that part of the cap for stopping the oil from going out of control had simply been destroyed and there were chunks of rubber floating in the oil samples. This should have been reported to the company, but someone decided against it. Oil has been jetting out of the site ever since at an alarming rate. Just a few weeks before the leak, the company’s senior staff visited to celebrate seven years of safe and successful business at the site. The spill has had a nightmare affect on nature. There is oil on the bays of southern USA. The spill has sent oil all around where the site is, and has completely contaminated the water around, killing most of the marine life in the vast area. This has an effect on not only the marine life, but the birds that hunt the fish, and fishing companies. Towns on the coast of surrounding countries that were famous for fishing have lost most of their tourists and income. An extensive amount of money has been spent on trying to stop the flow of oil, but nothing has worked. The only positive thing that came out of this that I can think of with the oil spill is that now drilling companies know to take as much care as possible to prevent this from happening again.

274 Words

The Three Sectors Of The Economy

There are three main parts of the economy. The Primary Sector, the Secondary Sector and the Tertiary sector. The Primary Sector produces materials that can later be manufactured and sold, like minerals and metals, or farm produce. The Secondary Sector is where the products get made into a product that can be sold – the metals get turned into cars, or other metal items and the farm produce gets packaged. The Tertiary Sector is where these products get labelled and sold to customers.

Australia’s labour force consists mainly of people working in the Tertiary Sector, even though our largest exporting sector is the Primary Sector. Australia imports the Secondary Sector the most, because we can’t seem to produce enough ourselves in that area.
The Tertiary Sector doesn’t produce the most, but it has more people working in it than the other two. The Tertiary sector doesn’t require as much hard labour, so there are more people that want to work in it. The Primary Sector produces a lot of produce, but hasn’t got as many workers. This is because there is so much machinery that can help the workers move a lot faster. But, not many people want to work in the Primary sector, because it’s just so much more physically demanding (usually). Australia simply doesn’t have as much produce coming out of the Secondary Sector, so we import a lot.

Australia has always been close trading partners with USA and the UK, but in recent years, this relationship has slowly deteriorated. But, what could this mean for Australian society? I think it means more independence, as we start ‘befriending‘ countries other than the two bigger ones that have almost controlled Australia in the past.

The amount of unstable values of substances and currency that is the Commodities Boom could well damage any economy greatly. If Australia found itself in a situation of a Commodities Boom, we would be in trouble. Because our economy relies so much on things like coal, iron ore, uranium, and all other mining produces, if these things were to lose value, the Australian economy would crumble, crash and burn.

If we didn’t import and export so much, Australia’s economy would need some help because the economy wouldn’t be balanced, with so much produce coming from the Primary Sector, and so little from the Secondary Sector. But, because of the amount of importing and exporting Australia is a part of, I think the economy is sustainable, and could keep going on and on the way it is, for quite some time.

424 words.

Annother Interesting Post

This week, the main learning topic was renewable and non-renewable energy. It turns out, that energy is a very important thing in all of our lives, but it isn’t always produced in the best ways.
Renewable energy is energy that’s source doesn’t run out. At one stage during the week, Neil noticed that renewable is an extremely self-explanatory word I also realised this about a day earlier, but failed to mention this to him). Looking at the word, renewable energy has the ability to be new over and over again. Exciting stuff.
I think that Australia needs more renewable energy. If Australia could find a way of relying on Ethanol, Geothermal Energy and Solar Power, our emissions would plummet. But, these three energy sources may not produce enough to power Australia. So we need another alternative. Nuclear Power is often thought of as an ecological nightmare. But, with the new technology, and new ways to build cheaper plants, it could be the answer. By new technology, I mean the idea (that has been shown to work) of putting the nuclear waste into graphite balls, which can be buried, or stored, without leaking waste. The cheaper alternative is simply assembling the parts of the plants in factories, then putting the together at the site, like a giant, nuclear Lego set. Genius.
If Australia is to become more ecologically friendly, we need to put things like these into action. But how? The government could start building the plants, funding Ethanol production, encouraging the use of more solar panels, make solar energy more of an option for people and enforce geothermal energy. But are the people going to tag along with this? Would the government do this? Citizens are more likely to approve and enforce something they come up with, like a bottom up solution. If the people could make, purchase and apply more solar panels and energy, farm more sugar cane to make more Ethanol and push for ‘clean’ Nuclear Plants, we would be on our way to a future with some sort of an eco system.
You can do better, environmentalists!!
350 words.

Virtual Water & Water as a Resource

1.
Virtual water is water that goes into the production of things*. Personally, I don’t believe virtual water is exactly accurate, but if I could find just a bit more proof that it’s genuine. It has certainly given me something to think about, but it hasn’t altered any decisions yet.
*‘things’ is a broad term, covering almost all food products, and everything that is made out of anything that has ever consumed water.
72 words

2.
There have been wars fought over recourses, like oil, but water seems a tad absurd. One day, if countries ever run out or start running extremely low on water, there could be wars fought, but not in my lifetime. Of course, if things like desalination plants and wells work properly, there shouldn’t be a single war over water for thousands of years. (That is, if we survive 2012)
68 words

3.
If Australia can find a way to make desalination plants work well, by keeping the salt produced, and using less energy to harvest the fresh water, then desalination plants should work just fine, and we won’t need to worry about water quite so much for a long time. The water should be used for the closest areas, and the areas further inland can use the water that is currently being sent to the cities.
74 words

Total words: 214

Week Three Questions & Response

1. Do we all have the same sized eco-footprint?
Not everyone has the same sized ecological footprint, because everyone lives in a different way. There are heaps of reasons why some people have large eco-footprints, some people live with huge eco-footprints because of their job, flying and driving around a heap, some people aren’t aware, some people don’t care, some people can’t see themselves changing for a better environment, but some people live like hippies or are just well aware of the consequences.
74 words

2. What have you found out relating to how Ecological Footprints differ?
I’ve found out about how every day things, like meat products greatly affect the size of someone’s eco-footprint. If someone is a vegetarian or a vegan, their eco-footprint would angrily be much lower than someone who eats meat on a regular basis. Things like how often you buy new clothes, house hold items and appliances greatly affect someone’s eco-footprint, so if someone hasn’t got enough money, or doesn’t find it necessary to buy these things very often, their eco-footprint would be smaller than others. The smallest things can help with someone’s ecological footprint, without anyone even noticing, like recycling a bit more often, or using air-cons & heaters less. So, if a vegan were to buy second-hand goods & clothes, not own heaters or air conditioners, and recycle everything, they would be a hippy. (and they would have a very small ecological footprint)
143 words

3. What affects the size of the Ecological Footprint?
I covered pretty much covered that while answering question 2. But, here’s a small list.
Meat & animal products (eggs, milk etc.)
Processed, packaged or imported food
Amount of waste generated
Materials used in your house
Electricity/energy consumed
Renewable electricity
Use of public transport
Use of cars
Use of motorbikes
Use of aeroplanes
All of these things make differences to your ecological footprint
63 words

What are some practical things we as individuals, groups, businesses, and countries all do to reduce our Ecological Footprint?
As individuals, people can try to eat less animals & animal products, drive less, use less electricity and water and try to use renewable resources (renewable electricity, recyclables, etc.) to make a good start for a sustainable future. As groups, we can travel together, widen awareness for the matter, mass recycle & help others to do so. All these ideas can also be a very good help for the world. Businesses can mainly rely more on using less recourses, and countries can make a push towards using less, recycling more, using solar, wind & maybe water power. If all of these things could be done, we would be well on our way to being able to sustain the world.
119 words

Total words: 399

An Inconvenient Response

Section 1: Personal Impact

For me, An Inconvenient Truth was a bit of an eye-opener. I already saw global warming as a fact and as a problem, but Al Gore’s extensive work shows that it is much, much more. The most memorable parts include the clip from Futurama, explaining what global warming is, and the first graph he put up, that showed natural warming for thousands and thousands of years, going up and down slowly and steadily, and then the past 50 years. It came as quite a shock, and it should help him get the message across nicely. Also, the fact that giant masses of ice can be destroyed as quickly as he told us, and the affect that it has on us is very scary. A lot of the solutions that Al told us about do seem very difficult to put to work, as using extensive amounts of resources is just what we do, every day. I think we can dramatically slow the warming down, but, at the moment, it doesn’t look like we can help ourselves very much now.

178 words

Section 2: Deepening the Learning

Mainly, what I learned from An Inconvenient Truth was how quickly this is happening. Huge masses of ice can be destroyed in a matter of weeks, and the atmosphere is getting destroyed at an alarming rate. This film has given me enough evidence that it is all real, because temperatures are higher than ever, at the same time as the carbon emissions are skyrocketing, because of all of the human habits, like burning coal and oil, and using very large amounts of energy. I would like to hear some more proper scientists going public about the matter, but I am sold because it is such a widely believed thing, and there is just so much evidence to back it all up. I, like a lot of other people don’t pay too much attention to everything, like the small details and I just believe convincing looking graphs. Of course, some people who are looking at global warming in many different ways, and have been for a very long time would be the right people to trust.

175 words

Section 3: Moral and Future Considerations

My personal values and morals already included some stuff about sustainability and environment, this movie has just confirmed it all in my mind. The movie has somewhat made global warming more of an issue and a value for me. The economic system largely relies on things that are bad for the environment. In Australia, if something were to go wrong with the mining system, the economy would suffer greatly. In order for the economic system to work, we need to keep these things up, unless we stop relying on mining and oil so much. There are some roadblocks in making change to save us from too much global warming. The whole world relies on things that are bad for the environment. There would be millions of jobs lost, and an unimaginable amount of money lost if we were to stop all environmentally unfriendly activity, not to mention people being completely lost and not knowing how to live anymore. Our style of life relies on things that are destroying the world. If everyone were to be completely honest, they would say that they could live without some of the ridiculous things, or do small things like consuming less, but as I have said, we rely too much on these things and would be completely lost without them. If we want to make a difference, the leaders for our counties should all see this film, and so should people deeply involved in things that are bad for the earth, like mining executives. Of course, lots of people should see this, but everyone that does watch An Inconvenient Truth should make sure they understand everything said, otherwise, it could be interpreted wrongly or wasted. If this could happen, there would be much more awareness of the problem, and we would be much closer to a solution.

303 words

Total Words: 656

Sustainability in The Lorax

As we all know, before the Onceler came along, the home of The Lorax and his friends was a beautiful place, choc full of resources and strange, dancing bear things, singing birds and humming fish. When the Onceler was coming through in his horse drawn carriage, he saw the rare Truffla trees, which could be used to make his precious Thneeds – something everyone, EVERYONE, EVERYONE needs, so he decided to set up a shop containing these Thneeds. The problem with this was that the Onceler didn’t know about the art of sustainability. The Onceler was one of those people who thought that there was an endless amount of resources, so he just kept chopping down more and more truffle trees. Before too long, he built a factory with his extended Onceler family, and they started to pollute the environment. Soon, there weren’t enough trees to feed the strange, dancing bears, the factories smog smothered and choked the singing birds, and gunked up the humming fish’s ponds. This beautiful land was suddenly uninhabitable for its native and weird animals. All of this is still relevant today, because there are many, many different factories, logging sites and places that are destroying the environment. People are taking way more than the earth can produce, and in some parts of the world, the story of The Lorax is happening all over again. If the Onceler had known about sustainability, or could have another shot at his Thneed business, he would have to make some changes. First of all, he would have to limit the amount of Truffla trees being cut down, while constantly planting more, to keep a habitat for the native animals, and to be able to keep his business going. He would need to make much less, if any waste to keep the native fish alive and not mutated, and he would have had to burn less stuff, and make less smoke to not kill the singing birds. The main message behind the story of The Lorax is, that you need to be able to sustain a good living environment and keep resources alive, without using them all at once, while looking after the environment…..

Looks like SOMEONE should have listened to the Lorax.

That was the best 372 words that you will ever read.