Lingering Questions

April 14th, 2021

Well, it's basically the end. At this point, as much as I'd like to say I have no lingering questions, apparently, I'm supposed to have a few.

The immediate question that comes to mind doesn't have a specific wording but it has to do with going back to the economic side of climate change. I found a wonderful BBC article that reminded me of one of my initial questions: are richer people responsible for the major problems related to climate change that we're facing? I kind of explored that but at the same time, I just gave information on the US for the SDA and didn't really give the comparison to other countries. I'd really like to get another chance to put rich people/countries to shame for how poorly they act with respect to the environment.

Another question I would find interesting to further explore is another environment-related aspect that COVID affected. I focused solely on the effects that travel restrictions had on air quality but COVID also created some negative effects. For example, masks and other protective equipment became another form of pollution found in aquatic and land ecosystems. It'd be interesting to explore the negative effects that COVID had on the environment and contrast them with the positive effects. This was inspired by a BBC video titled "What COVID has done for climate crisis?"

I'll be honest, those are the only two questions that I'm truly interested in exploring. However, following the guidelines of this journal post, I guess I have to have another one as well. I actually recently briefly was exposed to a business video saying that businesses that maintain an eco-friendly image in front of their potential buyers experience more sales. I'm not too well-versed in how far these effects lead to but this was one of my five topic questions from my Top 5 Questions journal post at the beginning of the year.

Additionally, looking back on those questions, I'd be interested in exploring the effects of overconsumption specifically. I believe it's a huge problem in developed countries. Take food, for example; I swear that whenever I eat with my American friends that aren't immigrants or second-generation from other countries, enough food to feed a village in Africa would always be thrown away. I mean, food can be composted so it's not as much of an environmental problem since it doesn't cause pollution problems like plastic does. However, a valid example would be the amount of electronic waste created here in the US (like us getting new phones in short periods of time and the old phone gets thrown away). This is all my personal stance that's based on my personal experiences so I acknowledge I make an incredibly weak argument or claim, but this is why I'd like to research overconsumption even further if had the option so I could be more adept in the topic and create a better argument.