I would define success as setting a major life goal and achieving it, as well as being in a position in life where you enjoy everything about where you live, where you work, and the people you spend your time with. I believe that I am on the right track to being successful from my point of view and will strive to live a life where I am content with everything about it.

The story of electronics talks about how the electronics industry is purposefully creating products that are meant to be thrown away around 18 months which creates E-waste to make more money. Companies use "Moore's Law" which states that designers can double processor speeds every 18 months, however, companies use this theory as an excuse to create electronics filled with toxic materials that break easily and become obsolete over a short period of time which leads the consumers to throw away their old electronics and but new ones because it is more economical to do so, which in turns leads to all this waste to contaminate the environment. The video poses some possible solutions to this problem such as redirecting all the waste that is created towards the company owners and encouraging engineers to create greener electronics.

"The Story of Bottled Water" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se12y9hSOM0&ab_channel=TheStoryofStuffProject

This video goes over the misleading and abusive marketing that the bottled water industry has employed to trick consumers into buying their product. Bottled water companies were having a hard time competing with tap water because it was much more expensive, so the only way they could effectively market their product was to scare consumers into thinking that tap water was unhealthy, and that bottled water was much safer to drink and that it tasted better, which is not true. Their plan succeeded and now bottled water is consumed much more than tap water, however, all the waste that these bottles is creating is extremely harmful for the environment, and most of the bottles that we believe are being recycled and reused for other products, are simply being thrown into landfills or incinerated in other countries. Thankfully, people are beginning to uncover the lies behind the bottled water industry and embracing tap water again with the use of reusable bottles.

Reflection

As a global citizen, consumption affects me directly because I am also a consumer that uses products and have fallen for some of the traps that the industry has created, which in turn hurts the planet that I live in which makes it a less suitable place to live for everybody. Most of the time it is more convenient to do what big companies want us to do, but thankfully we have begun to uncover some of the lies that we have been led to believe over the years and are forcing industries to change to protect our planet. We all have a duty to take care of our planet and ensure that it is a safe and healthy place to live, so we must make better decisions when it comes to consumption.

Watching these videos has taught me about how much big industries have been manipulating us into buying more of their products which as a result ends up hurting our planet, but now that I am aware of these traps, I will try to reduce my consumption and make a difference to the planet. I am a big fan of consumer electronics so I sometimes get caught up in the hype of new technology which leads me to throw my older stuff away in order to upgrade, however, now that I am aware of how that impacts the environment, I will try to make better use of the electronics I own and attempt to purchase less, same thing for bottled water, I drink a lot of it but now that I know that tap water is just as if not healthier and tastier, I will begin to carry a reusable bottle with me to reduce the amount of bottles I throw away.

One resource that was shown off in the meeting that truly intrigued me was the Miami-Dade County Initiatives website which contains many resources on problems that are going on in Miami-Dade County and how the county is trying to solve these problems. I think this is a great resource for this topic because all the information present on the website is very specific to our community and covers a wide variety of topics that affect the daily lives of our citizens.

Work Cited 

Inklebarger, Timothy. “Miami Ranked 2nd Most Expensive City for Housing.” South Florida Agent Magazine, 29 July 2020, https://southfloridaagentmagazine.com/2020/07/29/miami-ranked-2nd-expensive-city-housing/.

Farming and Agriculture have a much greater impact on climate change than we think, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, Agriculture accounted for 10% of the United States' greenhouse gas emissions in 2019 (Potter). Farmers are making efforts towards restoring the soil in their farms which reduces their carbon footprint, there are companies developing new technologies, and replacing as much equipment with electric ones and installing solar panels. The articles mention many specific efforts that farmers are making towards limiting their effect on climate change such as Leslie and Gawalt and their replanting plans, Joshua Faulkner experimenting with management of large dairy farms, and Norah Lake reducing her carbon emissions by 90%. These efforts are truly making a difference in the long run, not only to the environment but improving agriculture.

Jharkhand’s solar pump scheme aims to improve lives of farmers by increasing irrigation potential

Many farmers in Jharkhand have great plots of land for agriculture, however, they are not using the full potential of their land to grow crops due to lack of irrigation. Thankfully, the government has been working on distributing solar power operated irrigation pumps to famers this will no longer be an issue which has been working greatly, allowing farmers to use much more of their land and producing many more crops than they could before, even to the point where they can grow crops during times of year when they could not have been able to before. One issue that has arisen from this solution however is the excessive extraction of groundwater by farmers, so the state has devised their own version of these irrigation schemes which focuses on water conservation.

Reflection

Agriculture has been part of life since ancient civilizations, and just as we have evolved, so has our methods of agriculture, whether it be for better or worse. Many strategies that were implemented in the past to be more efficient may have seemed like the best solution at the time to produce more, but as we can see now, those solutions are creating a much biggest problem by the way of climate change. Thankfully, the world is noticing these issues as more serious and taking action that will improve the situation, we are in without sacrificing any of the productivity that modern inventions have helped create. I did not know about how much agriculture affected the environment prior to doing this research, and it is truly great to see an effort being made around the world to keep the world in a good condition, as well as learning of all the creative ways researchers and farmers are using modern technologies to make this happen. Reading about these issues through journalism compared to other media make them feel much more personal since they focus on more specific areas and mentioning people that are working hard to find a solution and make a difference, they also go into detail about how these issues were first discovered and how much they are truly impacting the world. 

 Works Cited

Potter, Claire. “Upper Valley Farmers Use Variety of Strategies to Limit Contributions to Climate Change.” Solutions U®, Valley News, https://solutionsu.solutionsjournalism.org/topics/un-global-goals.

Chaudhary, Srikant. “Jharkhand's Solar Pump Scheme Aims to Improve Lives of Farmers by Increasing Irrigation Potential.” Mongabay, Mongabay, 29 Oct. 2021, https://india.mongabay.com/2021/10/jharkhands-solar-pump-scheme-aims-to-improve-lives-of-farmers-by-increasing-irrigation-potential/?utm_source=Solutions%2BStory%2BTracker.

This video spoke about the impact that agriculture is having on our planet. More than 40% of the earth's land has been cleared for agriculture, 2,800 cubic kilometers of water are used to grow crops every day, and agriculture is one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases in the world. With the rapidly growing population, it is becoming harder to balance feeding everybody, maintaining a stable water supply for drinking, and keeping the planet alive which is already showing great consequences such as the Colorado river not leading to the ocean anymore and the Aral Sea being dried up and becoming a desert now. We must work together to change the way we grow crops so that the planet may live longer and that we may not have complications in the future.

Source: https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_foley_the_other_inconvenient_truth

Video #2: The next agricultural revolution

According to a recent 3-year agricultural study, they concluded that "humanity now poses a threat to the stability of the planet..." which requires an agricultural revolution to make a change. One of the biggest ways we could combat this issue is by shifting the way meat is produced, over the years, scientists have been attempting to lead consumers away from consuming meat because the way it is being produced is hurting the planet, with climate change, and with bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics which are causing many deaths around the world. Scientists suggest that we shift to creating meat directly from plants and from plant cells instead of slaughtering animals which consumes more resources and is hurting the planet, we have been making strides towards this change but require strength from the government and from big meat producing companies for the better of the planet.

Source: https://www.ted.com/talks/bruce_friedrich_the_next_global_agricultural_revolution

Reflection:

I have learned a great deal about the impact that agriculture is having on the planet due to climate change, excessive use of land and water, and the use of antibiotics and pesticides that is causing mutations that can cause harm to us in the long term. Most people think of vehicles and industries as the greatest producers of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and fail to realize that agriculture is having an even greater impact than those simply because it feeds us and thinks that it is only natural since it is feeding us, instead of realizing that we must find a smarter way to grow crops and raise animals since we are hurting the planet more than ever. Working towards this change is a group effort between the people and industries, changing our diets, changing the way we water crops to be less wasteful, and one of the most innovative ways is to find different ways to obtain meat. Instead of killing animals like we always have, we now have the technology to find alternate methods of obtaining meat such as making it directly from plants and growing animal cells which can solve a great problem that agriculture is posing on the planet. These presentations have truly opened my eyes to the issues of agriculture which have been largely ignored over the years.

Reflection: This video puts into question all of the companies that use "recycled ocean plastic" in their marketing in order to make their products seem much more environmentally friendly and that purchasing their products is making a positive difference for the environment when in reality, these companies are exaggerating their marketing. Although some companies are using recycled plastic in their products, most of the time it is not from the ocean and is instead "ocean-bound" from countries with poor waste management. The video does a great job in explaining the procedure of gathering plastic from the ocean, how much it costs to obtain, productions costs compared to other forms of plastic, and the steps that need to be taken in order to make this recycled plastic used for consumer products.

The video goes into each step of gathering the plastic from the ocean and how expensive it is to make a product out of it, and since it is more expensive and requires more work to accomplish, companies simply use smaller amounts of it than they advertise. This form of advertising is very misleading and although it may slightly beneficial for the environment, it does not justify tricking consumers. The amount of plastic waste in the ocean is staggering and is something that we should make an effort towards improving in the future.

Works Cited

Why recycled ocean plastic is (often) a lie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4o9-FkSHGWA&ab_channel=DWPlanetA

One assignment that changed my perspective on a specific topic was CAS1 where I specifically wrote about a video titled "The Story of Bottled Water" which detailed the rise of bottled water companies and why their business practices are harmful to us, as well as the environment. Before watching the video and doing some research on the topic I always believed that bottled water was always the better option over tap water for being cleaner and tasting better, I am more of the type of person to buy bottled water instead of drinking tap water for those exact reasons, however, that video opened my eyes as to why most of us favor bottles water, and that is because the industry has tricked us into believing that tap water is unhealthy just to make more money which in turn hurts the environment by creating large amounts of waste due to the bottles. In that same assignment, I wrote about a video titled "The Story of Electronics" that explains how companies create electronics that are meant to die out quickly so consumers buy more of them, and I have been a victim of this since I was always been prone to falling for this and upgrading electronics as soon as possible which creates E-waste. 

A topic I knew very little about was agriculture, however, thanks to CAS2 and CAS3 I was able to research a large amount about the impact agriculture is having on the environment, as well as efforts that certain individuals are taking in order to remedy these issues. I had a lot of fun investigating about this topic by watching videos, reading articles and learning more about this topic than I had ever done before such as the insane amounts of water that are being wasted in agriculture every year due to growing population, the overwhelming amount of land that is needed to feed our population, and how ecosystems are bing torn down in order to grow crops. What I learned about this topic was very different from what I expected to learn, thankfully I was also able to learn about many systems and actions that people are taking to decrease the impact that agriculture is having on the environment with things such as creating our own meat so that we reduse the amount of farmlife being slaughtered for food, solar pump schemes aimed at reducing the amount of water used for irrigation, and changing the equipment used for agriculture to be more environmentally friendly. These assignments really opened my eyes to the issues we are facing in the world and have made more more consentious about the things I do and consume.

Overall, all of these assignments have changed the way I think in some way in a positive way and I have a learned a great amount about different topics. Before doing research for these assignments I thought a certain way about these topics but now that I have been educated more about it I feel more confident in being able to discuss these topics and make changes in my daily life that make a positive impact.