How Europe can save the world - (Summary 3)

Part 1:

In this article about the EU initiative, the writer says that the European Union has taken one of the most important commitments in Brussels. According to the writer, the aim of the meeting was to think up an ambitious commitment on tackling climate change and energy security. A brief description follows.

27 countries have decided to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions by 1/5 within a decade to their previous level of 1990. In addition, these countries are already increasing their demand on the renewable energy like water, air and biofuels. It was settled in Brussels that any new power station must be in a superior category level after 2010. One of the good examples was France, since they are depending on nuclear power which is clean and renewable energy. On the other hand, renewable energy will cost the European companies a lot compared to their competitive countries, which might force them to reallocate there operations to different areas which will dramatically affect the European economy. In the end, although renewable energy is expensive, EU countries don’t want to depend on oil and gas forever.

In this summary, if EU and other countries co-operate together to solve the massive problem then, we will be successful to reduce the increases of temperatures and our greenhouse gas emissions.



Part 2:

In this article from The Observer, 2007, the writer talks about 27 countries from EU who decided to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions to the 1990 level in Brussels as well as the other meeting which is to be held in Indonesia. The aim of the meeting was to encourage more countries to co-operate with the EU to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions.


Part 3:

I think this topic is very interesting because it talks about a remarkable movement of some countries to solve a massive problem so, the new generation will be less effected by increases of temperature and the earth will be cleaner. In my opinion, the article is well organized. In addition, the writer mentioned the positives of using new energy and he also mentioned effective use of new energy by the companies. I agree with what David Miliband said if one country starts truly to solve the problem, then the other countries will follow an equivalent strategy. The idea in this article reminds me of a movie called The Inconvenient Truth which talks about a similar project. In contrast, I would like to know how GCC countries are contributing to solve the problem.

Carbon Footprint

Task 5

What does carbon footprint mean?

A carbon footprint is a measure of the impact our activities have on the atmosphere mainly climate change which we individually produce. In other words the amount of greenhouse gases produced on a daily basis through burning fossil fuels for electricity, transportation and from other well known issues.

I measured my personal carbon footprint at http://footprint.wwf.org.uk/ which shows an average of 3.17, which makes clear that it is a high figure. The major ways I contributed most to greenhouse gases were:

a) Travel: 39%
b) Stuff: 25%
c) Food 20%

On the other hand, the average figure for my class CRB is 3.778 which is almost same as my figure. The worst contribution was for my colleague Mubarak Al Mansoori which was 6.67. Frankly, every single person, company, institution, college including ADMC which I am studying at and even the other countries have carbon footprints which badly affect to the environment. Indeed, the U.A.E has the largest per person footprint in the world.

We are all part of the problem, should we not also be part of the solution?

Although it seems hard to believe, the actions we take and the things we do in our daily life are so opposite and negative. If we don’t all do our part to reduce our carbon footprint, we’re in for hot weather and likewise our children and grand children.

Truthfully, we have to take some serious steps to reduce our carbon footprint. Firstly, we can reduce our carbon dioxide emissions by saving energy as well as saving water. Secondly, we could cut down on waste. For example, we can re-use the things that can be used for more than one time or we can support the companies who recycle the waste. Moreover, we can buy recycled products such as toilet tissue and stationery. Lastly, don't travel by air if you can avoid it or don’t travel much if you can.

Overall, I believe it is a serious matter and we have to do something about it. Even though we are blamed, we are concerned to solve this problem.

An Inconvenient Truth: (Part 2)

Task 4

Brandon Fibbs, http://brandonfibbs.com/2006/05/24/an-inconvenient-truth/

According to Brandon, the film proved that global warming is no longer a theory. In addition, the writer believes that Al Gore has massive information which includes evidence like pictures and pie charts which show and prove how the earth is getting affected badly by global warming which is caused by humans and no one can challenge the evidence which was provided by Al Gore. In addition, the scientists agreed that the earth is being affected rapidly by the global warming and the weather is changing. In the writer's view, the film is well organized and it ends with advice how to get as good weather as it was in the past. Last of all, the writer states that although humans were blamed in this movie, but they were also highlighted to be heroes who can help to solve this problem along with the government.

Scott Nash, http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/inconvenient_truth/articles/156/

On the other hand, in a more negative way Scott said how come Al Gore wants the others to stop contributing to CO2 emissions and giving the audience plans to stop these emissions while he is the first who can be blamed for contributing to CO2 emissions while he is promoting his movie and traveling here and there. The writer outlined from the program that Al Gore is quite often saying negative comments about Bush which gave you the impression that Al Gore was looking for something else like his political ambitions rather than educating us about global warming. The writer believes that although Al Gore gave a good speech, he tries to make an effort to influence the audience with that fact by talking about his family loss.

In my opinion, I do agree with Brandon that global warming is no longer a theory, since we are seeing the earth is getting warmer and ice is melting. I do agree also with Scott saying that Gore has a mass of scientific data because he used charts, pictures in addition to diagrams in order to convince the audience as best as he could. However, neither Scott nor Brandon mentioned any figures about people who agreed or disagreed with their own opinions about this program. However, although Gore sensitively was controlling the audience sometimes, but I diverge with Scott seeing Gore is trying to win people over to his point of view. Overall, I believe that the film is about Al Gore's efforts to educate the public about global warming not about his personal concern to win the next election or any similar interest.