'Green Shopping'

An article I found on CNN.com, emphasizes on how America is creating environmental damage. "One American's consumption of resources is equal to that of thirty-five Indians" and one American creates thirteen times than a Brazilian in environmental damage. To go 'greener', encouraging Americans to buy less wouldn't be a great outcome. But by encouraging people to buy energy-efficient products, people bought more. Also, there are an increase of shopping online. Though, the question was if the Internet is helping or hurting the environment. Helping the environment is not necessarily the case. The shops are getting their vans to deliver the products to the consumers. In this case, it took the vans to travel four times more than before which in turn increasing the greenhouse gas emissions. Though according University of Sydney, studies say that "Shopping habits represent such a large part of greenhouse gas emissions that even if every household switched to renewable energy and stopped driving cars tomorrow, total household emissions would fall by less than 20 percent."

AOD Blog

The issue I will be focusing on is the preservation of the earth while sustaining economic growth.

There was an article in CNN about the shipping industry. Ships have a big impact on air because from consuming two million barrels of oil a year, it emits 1.2 billion tons of greenhouse gases (20% sulphur dioxide, 30% nitrogen oxide, 1.2 billion carbon dioxide). Also, its resposible for about 60,000 pollution-related deaths per year. The need for more goods will raise the level of ships consumption on oil which will also give more negative impact on the environment. By 2020 the pollution will double. Earth Justice says that NGOs and Environmental Protection Agency have legal authority to enforce strict pollution standards (fuel efficiency and cleaner fuels) on both US and foreign ships within 200 miles of coastline.

AOD Blog #12 - Creative Conflict

I went to Hawai'i over the break for Christmas and New Years to visit family and friends. I wanted to hang out with my friends because I didn't see them for awhile. I called up my friends if they have the time to hang out with me. Though some were grounded and some were busy with work and family. Our conversation wasn't much of a "fight" but we listen to each other to figure out the conflict, a time to hang out. We listened to each other what, when, where and how. Like what days we're available, what will we be doing, when we'll meet, where we'll go, and how to get there. We broke down to similar answers and we decided that we would go to a place near where we live because of transportation issues. We were all available in the afternoon and we decided to walk down to Kapolei Shopping center and check out the new stores.