This lecture is mainly about the global warming and the emission of green-house gas. As we know, global warming is not a simply environmental problem. In fact, there are a number of people existed who are not believing what scientists are saying. Based on this background, three lecturers spread this topic in different parts, to analyze this problem through different angles.
The first lecturer, Prof. Andrew Palmer, from Civil engineering, showed us global warming is an indisputable problem and proposed several methods to deal with this problem. In his first part, he showed that green house gas is coming from the heat engine like car, and burning fossil fuels. His main concept is to fix the carbon dioxide gas into another form. It can be stored CO2 into certain containers made by high technology, and then remove them to a suitable location. Most possible spot is the bottom of Deep Ocean. Maybe outer space is possible too.
In the end, professor also left some questions for us to think, like whether the idea of storing CO2 is practical possible or not.
The second lecturer, Dr. Sowacool is from Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. As a social scientist, he mainly talked something about the relationship between public policy and global warming. He pointed out that sometimes our technology is able to solve global warming ideal, if some ideas like renewable energy and electric car can be used largely. However, the fact is opposite; the policies made by the government sometimes are aimed to protect some groups’ interest which may contribute a lot of waste gas into the atmosphere.
The last presenter, Rajasekhar Bala, showed us some serious effects of global warming and gave other methods to solve this crisis. For example, he stressed the clash between large population and the limited natural resources. If human want to reduce the effect of global warming, he has to control human population to reduce the need for natural resources and the pollution to the environment.
From this lecture, I have realized that technology is improving, but the policy and the consciousness of protection environment needs to be improved at the time.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Policy about environmental protection
From the video, an inconvenient truth, global warming is a serious problem which may threaten the survival of our next generation. Since I am from Chinese, there are some rules made by the government to reduce the environmental pollution.
It is known as China is the center of world manufacturing industry which means that its strong economic power is on the base of high pollution cost. The government begins to worry about the negative effect on its economy from environmental problems, so a series of policies have been made to limit some industries’ behavior, like heavy air polluted industry. In 1983, Chinese government passed marine environment protection law. In 1989, Chinese government has produced the environment protection law, covered with water, air and land, and forbidden any activities engaged into environmental pollution. These laws are all aimed to prevent the environment pollution. From 2000, Chinese government introduced another critical word, “green GDP”, which means that government will focus on the results of the green GDP to judge local governors’’ job (normal GDP minus the cost of environment pollution during the current year)
Even though Chinese government has always tried to make some effort to reduce the environment pollution in water, air and land, its effort seems to be a bit weaker since the high speed of Chinese economic development. Chinese government has signed the Kyotol protocol to reduce emission of green-house gas from domestic factories. However, this will hurt the interests of local factories due to the high cost spent in the waste gas treatment. That’s why American refused to sign the contract.
Though there is a group of people whose interest may lose some, in general this is a good thing, air condition is critical to local citizens. If Chinese government can finally reach the goal of reducing emissions from heavy industry, it can improve air quality greatly. For example, in order to host Olympic Games, Beijing decided to remove all the polluted factories from the city. This affected Beijing’s GDP in the current year, but it did improve the air quality and it was welcomed by local citizens. From this example, it is surely that if Chinese can make a effort to reduce global warming, the overall benefits are greater than the loss during short period.
It is known as China is the center of world manufacturing industry which means that its strong economic power is on the base of high pollution cost. The government begins to worry about the negative effect on its economy from environmental problems, so a series of policies have been made to limit some industries’ behavior, like heavy air polluted industry. In 1983, Chinese government passed marine environment protection law. In 1989, Chinese government has produced the environment protection law, covered with water, air and land, and forbidden any activities engaged into environmental pollution. These laws are all aimed to prevent the environment pollution. From 2000, Chinese government introduced another critical word, “green GDP”, which means that government will focus on the results of the green GDP to judge local governors’’ job (normal GDP minus the cost of environment pollution during the current year)
Even though Chinese government has always tried to make some effort to reduce the environment pollution in water, air and land, its effort seems to be a bit weaker since the high speed of Chinese economic development. Chinese government has signed the Kyotol protocol to reduce emission of green-house gas from domestic factories. However, this will hurt the interests of local factories due to the high cost spent in the waste gas treatment. That’s why American refused to sign the contract.
Though there is a group of people whose interest may lose some, in general this is a good thing, air condition is critical to local citizens. If Chinese government can finally reach the goal of reducing emissions from heavy industry, it can improve air quality greatly. For example, in order to host Olympic Games, Beijing decided to remove all the polluted factories from the city. This affected Beijing’s GDP in the current year, but it did improve the air quality and it was welcomed by local citizens. From this example, it is surely that if Chinese can make a effort to reduce global warming, the overall benefits are greater than the loss during short period.
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