Category: Civic Issues

Over the past decade, the ongoing climate change crisis has been a highly-debated concern for many people. Individuals’ stances on this issue often differ based on what political party they align themselves with, as climate change and global warming were, and still are, very politically charged topics. In fact, in 2013, 85% of Democrats said that they believed that there was solid evidence supporting global warming, while only 48% of Republicans responded in this way. In 2022, however, roughly two-thirds of Democrats (65%) say addressing climate change should be a top priority for Biden and Congress, compared with just 11% of Republicans. Evidently, there’s a declining trend for support over the past few years, but why’s it the case? Although both parties differ on various topics prevalent in our community today, they agree that other “high-demanding” concerns like abortion rights, healthcare policy, immigration policy, and taxes to name a few outweigh the crisis. Some people believe that such issues are problems of the present and should be resolved as quickly as possible, while putting other long-term issues like the climate change crisis “on the back burner” to be dealt with at a later time. However, it’s crucial that we take steps beforehand towards alleviating its effects because who knows what life on earth will be like in the future if we don’t take rapid action to cut emissions.

97% of scientists say humans are the cause of global warming, mainly attributed to the increased burning of fossil fuels. Ever since the Industrial Revolution, there has been 40% more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And right now, we are adding 70 million metric tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere on a daily basis. Given these harsh realities, President Biden outlined a bold plan a few years back — a Clean Energy Revolution — to address this threat and lead the world in addressing the climate emergency. There are nine key points to his plan: (1) take executive action to not just reverse all of the damage Trump has done, but go further and faster, (2) work with Congress to enact legislation that puts us on an irreversible path to achieve economy-wide net-zero emissions no later than 2050, (3) rally the world to urgent and additional action, (4) make investments in clean energy and innovation, (5) accelerate the deployment of clean technology throughout our economy, (6) make environmental justice a priority across all federal agencies, (7) hold polluters accountable, (8) create 10 million good-paying, middle-class, union jobs, and finally (9) fulfill our obligation to the communities and workers that have risked their lives to produce fossil fuels that made it possible for America to win world wars and become an industrial superpower. While creating such a plan is encouraging, not everyone will, of course, share similar views and be supportive of this initiative. And so, will President Biden’s declaration affirming the reality of the crisis be enough to convince the general populace to take action?

According to a recent Pew Research study done on Earth Day 2022, a 54% majority of adults under 30 believe the crisis should be a top priority, compared with smaller shares of Americans ages 30 to 49 (42%), ages 50 to 64 (36%) and ages 65 and older (39%). But why do older populations fail to realize the severity of the crisis? Some say that other health concerns consume their minds, while others argue that they are “on their deathbed” and, consequently, can’t do much.

In order to make any significant progress in reducing emissions to curb climate change, it is imperative that the general public become more informed about the topic, and recognize it as a serious threat to the human way of life — perhaps not right away, but definitely a threat to the quality of life experienced by our children and our children’s children. Moreover, people need to forget the polarizing politics associated with the issue. Once these things are accomplished, it will be possible for individuals to take action and collectively bring about a positive change. Additionally, once political stigma surrounding the issue is reduced and dissolved, policymakers will be able to move forward and carry out the necessary steps to pass legislation for a positive impact.

Take Antarctica as an example. Antarctica is rich in precious natural resources like ice, coal, metallic minerals, petroleum. A rise in global temperature has led to the warming of the Antarctic Peninsula, breaking the continent’s ice sheet and, consequently, decreasing the continent’s local species populations. Realistically speaking, human-caused issues put at risk the last pristine continent in the world, containing the world’s biggest source of freshwater, huge potential oil and natural gas reserves, and the key to determining how climate change will affect the world through rising sea levels.

Many organizations worldwide have already taken measures to combat the issue and alleviate the effects. For example, in the automotive industry, Tesla has already produced nearly 1.91 million electric vehicles since 2009, in accordance with its mission to “accelerate the world’s transition into sustainable energy.” Additionally, at least 92.7 billion solar panels have been installed across the world today, producing cleaner energy (i.e., electricity) that keeps us from burning fossil fuels. Some proposals for the future involve cooling Earth’s surface by spraying artificially-made, reflective particles into the planet’s atmosphere, scattering and reflecting sunlight back into space. Other proposals involve sowing the oceans with iron to cause large-scale phytoplankton growth, thereby removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. Such methods could potentially work but require further research.

The climate change crisis is certainly a widely-overlooked issue in today’s world, though a minority does realize its importance and severity if left alone. Therefore, it’s of great importance that everyone is informed of its effects, especially our children who will carry on this mission into the future. All in all, everyone, regardless of political affiliation, has a responsibility to limit climate change, no matter how big or small of an impact it makes.

---

“Climate Change.” ITU, https://www.itu.int/en/mediacentre/backgrounders/Pages/climate-change.aspx.

Clement, Scott. “How Americans See Global Warming – in 8 Charts.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 26 Nov. 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2013/04/22/how-americans-see-global-warming-in-8-charts/.

According to the World Health Organization, the number of people globally affected by starvation rose to as many as 828 million people in 2021, an increase of approximately 46 million since 2020 and 150 million since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the Green Revolution taking place in the 1960s and advances in novel genetic engineering techniques to expand our food supply, the numbers still paint a grim picture of our current situation. While most people shrug off worrying about the world’s current progress in food production, why is the world hungrier than ever?

One of the biggest and most obvious reasons is the staggering human population — in fact, the annual increase rate is estimated at 67 million people. Needless to say, there’s a long history associated with the effect of rises in the human population on food supply, starting with a bold, groundbreaking claim made by English economist Thomas Robert Malthus. In 1798, Malthus wrote an essay (An Essay on the Principle of Population, as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society) predicting that mass starvation would result if humans did not check their fast-growing numbers. He believed that pressures placed on our resources could lead to potentially famine and war. A debate over Malthus’ gloomy outlook sparked during his lifetime and is still occurring today. While most Anti-Malthusians believe that resources aren’t becoming scarcer, there’s still a small minority of Neo-Malthusians who believe that our resource supply won’t be able to cope with the ever-increasing human population. China and India, the world’s two most populous countries, have both relaxed their one-child policy for quite some time now, but these troubling policies created many side effects at the time. In fact, Neo‐​Malthusian policies aimed at limiting family size increased female infanticide and sex‐​selective abortion, skewing the world’s sex ratio at birth to 107 boys per 100 girls.

Another cause of the rapid decline in resources is global conflicts, with nearly 60% of the world’s hungry people living in areas affected by war and violence. Recent events such as the Russian-Ukrainian war indicate how conflict feeds hunger, ostracizing people out of their homes and erasing their sources of income entirely. Such conflicts inflict extreme conditions on civilians and survival becomes challenging.

The ongoing climate change crisis is also another source of the rapid decline in the world’s current food supply. Natural events like droughts, greater CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, floods, hotter temperatures, and water scarcity affect crops around the world. For example, corn and wheat production has declined rapidly in recent years due to extreme weather events, plant diseases, and a global water crisis. Poverty-stricken countries like Africa and India contain most of the world’s arable farmland, but if natural disasters continue occurring frequently, the incredible effort put in by farmers in plowing their acres of farmland will be in vain. Furthermore, unpredictable harvests aren’t within the control of farmers — they can only do so much in a day. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, 80% of the causes behind an unpredictable harvest for crops in areas like Africa’s Sahel fall down to climate variability. In other areas of the world like Bangladesh and Vietnam, increasing sea levels create a different threat to food security. In such areas, coastal farmlands are frequently flooded by saltwater, which kills off rice crops. With half of Vietnam’s national rice production centered in the Mekong Delta (i.e., imagine roughly the size of Maryland), even a minor flood can have major consequences to wreck the country’s agricultural output. As one might naturally expect, given the unpredictable nature of natural disasters, climate change can also increase food wastage.

The amount of food wastage is also another huge concern. In fact, some people argue that the rate of food production today isn’t the problem behind growing starvation numbers — rather, it’s the amount of food wastage. Just take our dining halls as an example. There’s so much food wastage that they have to flash figures on the amount of daily food wastage above the dustbins. On a global level though, roughly 17% of total global food production (or 1.3 million tons) is wasted on an annual basis. People are encouraged to take small portion sizes and take full advantage of leftovers, so anything left can be frozen (to avoid spoiling, of course) or added as an ingredient to another dish. While most people subconsciously know that their uneaten food could have gone to a poor family in a poverty-stricken country in the world, most people waste it anyways. They’re not at fault, for we have an improper system. Though some exist, we don’t have as many nets or organizations in the world to facilitate the process of sending uneaten food to starving families. Logically speaking, it makes sense why we haven’t made much progress towards achieving this goal because most food items are perishable. Nevertheless, we will need to figure out a workaround in the near future. Understanding food labeling is also another important idea, specifically the difference between “use by” and “best before.” “Use by” indicates the date up to which food is safe to be eaten, while ‘best before’ signifies that the food’s quality is best prior to that date, although it is still safe to be eaten afterwards in most cases.

As the human population is likely to continue increasing rapidly, it becomes ever important to unlock new ways to accelerate food production and encourage people not to waste food meaninglessly. Any excess food can also be donated through in-person donations to food banks or beneficial mobile apps like Olio. There are multiple ways we can reduce our food waste print, yet some choose to actively ignore these suggestions (as indicated by the growing food wastage figure). Each little step can make a gradual impact on significantly reducing starvation issues in our world to ensure every person, regardless of financial conditions, receives a proper meal.

Towards late 2019 and early 2020, the coronavirus disease spread rampant across the world and drastically transformed most aspects of daily life. It changed the way we communicate, care for others, educate our children, work, and so much more! Over the past few years, the world has indeed seen a permanent shift in various forms of life, the economy, medicine, and beyond due to the pandemic.

For one thing, some increasingly turned towards using video-calling platforms such as Google Meets and Zoom to combat loneliness and social isolation. Recent research studies suggest that many such platforms have design flaws that exhaust the human mind and body. Terming this condition as “Zoom burnout,” experts have taken the medium apart and assessed its individual technical aspects, identifying a few causes behind exhaustion in prolonged video chats. As one cause, spending hours resolving technical bugs like sound issues, glitches, and screen freezes can disrupt our ability to interpret messages and add to our unease, leading to increased mental strain and exhaustion. Additionally, in-person meetings and audio phone conversations allow one to walk around and move wherever they please, but with videoconferencing calls, many desktop computer cameras have a fixed field of view, meaning one has to remain in the same position for the entirety of the conversation: sitting at a desk and staring at a computer screen for hours can naturally take a heavy toll on our well-being and, consequently, lead researchers to believe less mobility and physical activity as one of the biggest reasons for increased fatigue. Nonverbal communications like waving to a friend or indicating how many apples you want by holding up three fingers are interpreted subconsciously in face-to-face meetings, but it’s not as obvious to interpret in a video call setting — more mental processing is required to understand the message. Understanding nonverbal cues and gestures like facial expressions, voice pitch or tone, and body language are harder to process online. According to Stanford University researcher Jeremy Bailenson, “If you want to show someone that you are agreeing with them, you have to do an exaggerated nod or put your thumbs up. That adds cognitive load as you’re using mental calories in order to communicate.”

This pandemic was the first pandemic in which online resources and social media were used extensively to push forward policies and keep people connected, informed, productive, and, most importantly, safe. At the same time, however, the technology we rely on is enabling and amplifying an infodemic that undermined the global response and threatened measures to control the pandemic. Misinformation costs lives, for without the honest dissemination of information, diagnostic tests went unused, vaccine promotion campaigns did not meet their targets, and the virus continued to thrive. Already suffering from mental health issues because of social isolation, people have reported feeling worse due to confusion, conflict, and conspiracy theories spreading quickly in the news media and online. Experts from Stanford University have developed a machine learning model to track the spread of misinformation in social media. The program relies on using individuals’ “susceptibility” to false information as an initial score and their likeliness to spread it to others. They discovered that older adults, youths (especially those highly active on social media), and those with minimal years of educational background seemed to be the most prone to falling for false information. Individuals at political extremes are also more likely to believe information that confirms pre-existing biases. This effect is of particular concern when the information comes from a well-trusted source. Indeed, preventing the spread of misinformation is largely a challenge, especially with the advances in modern technological capabilities. However, in the meantime, it’s important that we consider making progress now towards alleviating its power to twist some of our minds.

Right now, we’re at the precipice of a new technological age that will have amplifying effects in the following decades. Using novel CRISPR technology, genetic engineering can enable researchers to program biology. This technology powers the very vaccines that have been used to inoculate the world from COVID-19. Researchers have developed a vaccine in record time—a source of inspiration for them to create vaccines for other diseases faster. Momentum behind this technology will push research into resolving new diseases and enabling superhuman capabilities. In fact, experts are currently exploring ways to fight cancer by using the messenger RNA (mRNA) technology within the COVID-19 vaccine: mRNA can stimulate the body’s immune system to identify cancer cells and attack them. See this link for more information.

In the following year, the US and other countries will hopefully realize that working together will help solve problems that are on a global scale. Through seeing the origin and spread of the Delta variant in India or the Omicron variant in South Africa, countries will realize that this is a global problem, not an Indian or African problem. Past events like the Atlanta spa shootings in March 2021 show how inequality and violence will likely increase against East Asians, for people who have lost their loved ones will direct their frustration towards them; in fact, recent studies show that Americans rate East Asians lower in multiple characteristics than otherwise identical East Asian Americans. However, people need to let bygones be bygones since more violence will only breed more violence. Employers will institute more remote-working policies for productivity gains. We will also see more economic safety nets put in place like the COVID stimulus package so that citizens will be less stressed and have more support through their financial hardships.

At a first glance, it may seem as if people will remember how the pandemic caused an alarming number of deaths (6.3 million worldwide), a global recession, and other negative impacts. However, that is not the case — the pandemic has reshaped the world, making us aware of ideas never considered before and the faults within our own system. This should ultimately be a lesson for us.

---

“Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19).” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 19 Dec. 2022, https://www.cdc.gov/dotw/covid-19/index.html.