There is no doubt that pollution contributes to many of the problems related to climate change in our world today however, the invention of plastics and the widespread use of these plastics make ocean habitats uninhabitable for the plants and animal life that live there. Furthermore, there is evidence of micro plastics in literally all aspects of our lives.

According to The “Past, Present , and Future of Plastic Pollution, an article published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin, the Dutch/Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland invented the first known synthetic plastic in 1907. Since then plastic has taken ahold of the world, its accessibility to everyone no matter economic or political status makes it one of the most used materials of all time.

It seems that everywhere one goes there are single use plastics lying on the ground and in trashcans, this is not exclusive to city environments. Even when visiting the seemingly remote beach and forest there is always evidence of humanity’s carelessness and ignorance.

In todays world the majority of people are aware of the dangers that plastics pose to our health, and our surrounding environment. For example, even before elementary school, kids are taught to reduce, reuse, and recycle their plastics instead of throwing them in the trash.  The idea of recycling plastics came about in the 1960s when people started to realize the dangers plastic pose to the world around us. However, it wasn’t until 1972 when the first plastic recycling plant opened in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. Since then many more plastic recycling plants have opened and we recycle many more types of plastics.

Another large concern with plastics, or in this case microplastics, is that they are in everything we consume. This leads to people having plastic in their bloodstreams, the health concerns from this are obvious. Microplastics are found in newborn babies which means that they are in the womb during the babies developmental stages.

I think that in order to properly convey the message of reducing single use plastics we must educate people from a young age of the dangers we expose ourselves to whenever we consume from plastic bottles, bowls, and bags. In addition we should take steps towards making alternative solutions accessible to everyone regardless of economic situation. For example, the cost of metal and paper straws and bottles should be greatly reduced. Also the reintroduction of paper bags with the goal of completely removing plastic bags from stores should be emphasized.

Uruguay’s former secretary of energy Ramón Méndez Galain explains how he created the system to transform Uruguay’s electric system from a traditional fossil fuel dependent one to a system that relies on renewable resources that make up 98 percent of their energy usage. The speaker has a very powerful method of presenting. He makes sure to keep the audience engaged through changing his tone of voice and by being loud. Also he provides many facts and statistics to keep the audience engaged the entire time

The speaker emphasizes that the way towards a renewable energy future is to start the transition period that calls on the government of whichever country to come together in search for solutions to replace current energy standards. The speaker states that finding the solution to these energy problems can be very complicated it affects many different aspects of life such as ethical, social, and geopolitical dimensions. Ramón also states that it is crucial to have the support of all parties of government in order to be able to make significant, rapid progress.

Once the system was implemented, Uruguay went from relying on 50 percent fossil fuels to five years later using 98 percent renewable resources. The change from fossil fuel to renewable resource was not easy and required change not only in government but also new technologies had to be developed in order to properly manage such a large system.

The change also brought on economic benefits. Implementing this new system brought economic benefits, for example, the cost of electricity dropped from around one billion dollars annually to around 600 million dollars. This may not seem like a lot but to a small country like Uruguay it greatly affects the economy. Furthermore, the creation of new jobs brought on by the system also boosted the economy. 50,000 new jobs were created which makes up around three percent of the total workforce. Lastly, Uruguay received 6 billion dollars in investment from outside sources. This investment of 6 billion dollars makes up 12 percent of the country’s total GDP.

An important idea that is represented in this TED talk is that change is possible. If a small country in terms of size and economy when compared to the US can successfully switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy resources then we can too. All it takes is bipartisan support in the government and for the public to see renewable resources as a long term viable solution.

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The United States of America focuses the majority of its monetary resources on its military compared to any other country in the world. As a result of this, we have become the strongest military force in history. This comes with great advantages such as the prosperous nation in which we live today which allows us to live our lives freely and safely, along with alliance with other strong countries.  However, there are tradeoffs associated with spending such disproportionally large amounts of money on only one facet of our government. Due to high spending on the military the government neglects other important institutions. Approximately 8 billion dollars have gone to funding war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and wherever else the U.S. sends military force to. All of these factors contribute towards a negative impact on the overall U.S. economy, higher taxes for the U.S. citizen, and the underfunding of various other government programs.

According to the Atlantic magazine, the united states spent less that 1 percent of its GDP on police funding. Reducing police spending to such a minimal amount raises concern for a number of reasons. First of all underfunded police departments have less staff because who would work for half the salary they could make by moving to city where they pay police officers more. Also underfunding police departments leads to having undertrained officers that don’t know how to handle situations. People such as George Floyd and Elijah McClain are victims of incompetent policing that comes from incompetent policing brought on by undertrained underpaid cops.

Another disadvantage that comes with underfunded police departments is an increase in crime rate. For example in Dallas there is an abundance of cops because we pay. our police departments well, this means that the crime rate is low. Ten years ago the crime rate in Dallas was much higher because the city was smaller and less affluent than now meaning we had less to give our police. In Puerto Rico the police department is currently underfunded and understaffed. Because of this we have a crime rate that is 47 percent higher than the United States as a whole. There is a shortage of police officers across the nation due to subpar working conditions, decreasing wages. To summarize, police officers have been undertrained, underpaid, and unhappy in a number of places due to adverse working and living conditions which leads to hostility between police officers and citizens and culminates in a strong hate for police and the negative stigma surrounding them.

To resolve the problem, we have to look at where the money that could potentially be used for funding the police and advocate to reallocate the funds. In this case, the solution could be to take from the Department of Defense’s budget and spend money on various re-education efforts in cities that have historically high crime rated. Another benefit that could come from adding to our policing budget is get more benefits such as healthcare, dental insurance, higher pay and overall better working conditions for our police.

Sources:

• https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3252968/biden-signs-national-defense-authorization-act-into-law/
• https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/03/underfunding-police-violent-crime/673314/
• https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-debt/
• https://www.investopedia.com/how-are-police-departments-funded-5115578#:~:text=Spending%20on%20law%20and%20order,of%20U.S.%20Census%20Bureau%20data.

Throughout human history, we have used art to express ourselves, convey messages and feelings, and create individual identities. Art plays a significant role in all of our lives in many different ways. Art plays such a major role in defining our identity as a society that we preserve it in museums for thousands of people to see. In modern-day culture, art is used to express community ideals, values, and ways of life. Because of art, we have a way to record the past and our previous ways of life visually and we have preserved it tremendously well.
Art changes as time goes on, we see this through the changing styles of art along with the changing subjects, and themes. and stories that art tells. For example, art from the 1700s France looks similar to art from Spain in the same era but each has a different identity tied to the art. The art of Monet and Dali are different but may display similar sentiments or messaging in their pieces of art that are a part of the time era.
Modern-day art expresses a variety of different themes and ideals that were not seen in art before the modern day. For example, the amount of murals in honor of famous or influential people that we see today on the walls of our towns and cities is a style of art that was not seen before the modern day. The urbanization of art is something that has caused art to change its formats in never-before-seen ways. Artists such as Banksy have used this to their advantage to reach their levels of fame. Banksy uses the internet to create the idea that he is mysterious and the art he releases is well known across the world for its controversial presentations and allure behind the works of art.
Art brings the community together in many ways. Museums bring people both young and old together to experience art from hundreds of years ago to experience the same thing and to try and understand the art and to internalize its beauty. Art is created by people who seek to express themselves in a way that is different from others and because of this it brings people together by the thousands and creates a community of artists.
Art has brought people together for hundreds of years, each artist that creates art has their own identity that other people come together to love. This is what is so important about art, people connect through artists each with separate identities. This has happened for so long that everyone appreciates art and we learn from it all the time.

In September of 2017, two category 5 hurricanes appeared in the Atlantic Ocean moving towards Puerto Rico. The first of the two hurricanes, Hurricane Irma, passed very close to the island bringing with it damaging winds and substantial amounts of rain. The effects of this hurricane were severe but not disastrous, taking out parts of the electrical grid and damaging the already lacking infrastructure. Thirteen days after Irma, Hurricane Maria, a category 4 hurricane, passed directly over the island. Rain and wind continued for close to two days leaving millions of Puerto Ricans without power, clean water, cellular connection for up to 6 months and in worst case scenarios for up to a year.

This combination of storms was one of the harshest to ever hit the island, due to the conditions of our infrastructure the hurricane easily destroyed roads, homes, the entire power grid, and left many millions of people vulnerable for months. The effects of the hurricane were so severe that areas are still recovering to this day and some areas never recovered at all displacing thousands of people. I will never forget that in the days before the hurricane we had multiple family members come to stay with us in Texas before and after the storms. However, the family I have over there that didn’t leave due to the hurricane suffered for a couple of weeks even though they had all the resources necessary to prepare before and to recover after.

In Puerto Rico there are thousands of people living below the poverty line and in conditions not able to withstand category 4 and 5 storms. It was these people that suffered the most and longest due to the fact that first aid and rescue teams focused on on the more populated areas of Puerto Rico. People living in more rural and hard to access areas waited many months for aid and resources meant specifically for them.

Both the Puerto Rican and U.S. government did not adequately respond to the disaster. findings from a Washington Post poll show that the Puerto Rican people believed that both the U.S. and local government did not respond adequately to the suffering caused by the storms. When Trump arrived on the island to give a press conference he threw paper towels at the people who were there as if that would resolve such a major issue. Government money meant to be used for restoration efforts has slowly made its way to people up to today, meaning that some people haven’t been able to fully repair their homes until recently.

Even though the storms were close to 7 years ago, the effects it had on the people can still be felt. There are still areas where one can see homes covered in tarps whose owners are still waiting to collect insurance money for repairs. The government is still criticized for its lackluster aid efforts and for the way it treated the whole disaster. It is important to understand what not to do when natural disasters like this occur and how to properly help those in need.

Drunk driving is a large problem in our society for a number of reasons. In today’s day and age, driving under the influence is normalized. How many times have we been to a family gathering where adults are drinking and at the end of the night everyone drives their respective families home. Or when at a high school party we saw one of our friends drive home even though we knew they were drinking. Sadly, even though there are attempts to put a stop to drunk driving many people still do and this leads to large amounts of fatal accidents in our motorways.

In 2021 there were a total of 13,384 drunk-driving related traffic deaths. When compared to the total driving fatalities of 2021 of 42,939 we can see that drunk driving deaths made up a very big part of that total. This further proves my point that even though there is a large stigma against drunk driving the majority of people ignore that and continue to drive anyways.

This is all to say that there seems to be a large part of the population that doesn’t understand how dangerous any type of drunk driving is and puts innocent people in danger for the sake of their own convenience. Because of this there are groups of people looking and advocating for new solutions that help fix the problem in a more efficient way.

According to the CDC there are a couple of new strategies that could help to reduce drunk driving and in turn lessen the negative effects of it. Lowering the BAC limit from 0.8 to 0.5 or 0.65 would greatly help to reduce the amount of drunk drivers on the road. I feel like the main reason there is such a large amount of drunk drivers on our roads is that because the limit is 0.8 drivers think they can proceed to get drunk and drive around without consequences. reducing the limit to around 0.6 would help to reduce the amount of inebriated drivers on the road. To prove that this strategy would indeed reduce the amount of accidents on the road, Utah implemented this into their state law and saw a reduction of around 18% in the crash death rate per mile. The fact that this worked in a state like Utah where drinking is a very small part of their culture goes to show the impact a change like this could make in states like Florida and North Carolina which have the highest drunk driving fatality rates in the U.S.

The reason that this issue matters to me is that I know people that have been in drunk driving accidents which thankfully didn’t end fatally but had circumstances been different it could be a totally different story. However I also know of people whose lives have been adversely affected by drunk drivers.

In cities around the world, skyrocketing housing costs, discriminatory practices, and insufficient government intervention have created a housing crisis. Since the stock market crash of 2008 more than 10 million people have been displaced from their homes. This number continues to rise as inflation steadily rises, rent rises, and displacement continues. Historically, people of specific income and ethnic groups have had limits set on the loans and assistance available to them in order to purchase a home. Solutions to housing concerns include; community land trusts, and government funding to help those struggling to find some stability.

The 2008 housing market crash was caused by a number of variables. However, the main one was that many loans were given out to people that were not going to en up paying them back. The brokers that giving up the loans knew were going to fail but they continued because they were maximizing their profits. When these loans were not payed back, the banks failed. People lost hundreds of millions of dollars and recession ensued.

In more recent days, the reasons that housing is unavailable are due to COVID impacting supply chain management which in turn slows the process of home building down. Because of slow home building, people are hesitant to sell their homes which reduces the amount of homes in the overall market. Other reasons that housing is scarce is due to the economy, inflation is increasing which increases the prices of homes. When wages don’t increase to match the rising inflation people cannot keep up and are unable to purchase things. This is also true for renters not only buyers, increasing rents are a prominent factor in people losing their homes.

Throughout the course of the 1900s, discriminatory practices were used to stop people of color and low income from buying homes in nicer areas and leaving.  Redlining is the most recognized form of this discrimination, which is when an area on a map was marked as red so that banks would know which people they were not to give loans out to. This along with many other methods of housing discrimination against our minorities have for the large part kept them from leaving low income areas of section 8 housing and other forms of government aid and housing.

I think that quality affordable housing  for all should be a basic right for U.S. citizens. I don’t see how there are people living in less ideal conditions and the government is ok with it. The problem also lies in our society, there are hundreds of thousands of vacant houses that are owned. and unused by people looking to make big profit from flipping houses. Thankfully there are various government incentives that came from COVID which have helped people fight against rising rents which have displaced many thousands of people

Homelessness is an issue that plagues every state, city, and town in the United States. As of 2022, there were more than 500,000 people experiencing homelessness in the U.S. This means that for every ten thousand people there are 18 homeless. There are many different reasons that a person might become homeless, lack of housing, mental health issues, income instabilty, and physical health are all factors that contribute to homelessness. homelessness affects people of any age, gender, or ethnicity and it can happen to basically anybody at any time.

There are many different groups that are dedicated to getting information out to people and are advocating for government policies geared towards solving homelessness. For example, there is the National Alliance to End Homelessness which is a non-profit organization that has a website where one can read about homelessness and see what the government is doing in order to help push policies that favor the homeless. Not only are there large organizations that help out the homeless; schools and churches hold events such as food drives where anyone can volunteer or donate at a local level.

There are many myths when it comes to homeless people, one of these is that the issue of homelessness is not preventable at a large scale. This is not true because during COVID the government enacted several policy changes in order to keep homelessness at bay when normally it would have gone up. For example, according to the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, “Governments instituted eviction moratoriums, deployed emergency rental assistance, expanded unemployment assistance and the Child Tax Credit.” All this along with distributing cash to many lower-income Americans helped to soften COVID’s impact on homelessness.

Homelessness is important to me for many reasons, firstly I do not believe that anyone should experience homelessness and that the government has failed those that are currently experiencing homelessness. The issue of homelessness is something that can be fixed with help from the government and from those like us who can afford to give time and resources in order to benefit those in need. Personally, I have volunteered many times at various different food drives, also my high school’s choir had a partnership with a local choir where they would go and sing with and feed the homeless. I wasn’t part of the choir, however my sister was and I helped her prepare the food for the homeless many times.

Sources:

Who We Are

https://www.usich.gov/

Recording my This I Believe video essay was simple, the voice thread software is very easy to use. finding what topic to talk about was not that difficult but it was hard to narrow down the overall story I told in the post.