Essay on The Politics of Going Green

Climate change is one of today’s most hotly debated topic. Scientists for many decades have made supposed claims that current energy creation and reliance on fossil fuels will lead to inevitable changes to the planet. Today, climate change denial is still a popular to most of the world despite the mounds of evidence to support that it exists. The climate change issue suffers from being mismanaged by various parties through focusing on the wrong issues and the lack of true commitment from the general public, according to Sandra Steingraber.

The Green Revolution a period of time that genetically modified crops were engineered, pesticides and fertilizer were created starting in the 1940s ending in the 1960s. This period caused a lot of debate on the Green Revolution some stating it positively affected the world and some stating that it negatively affected the world. The positives of the Green Revolution include increasing yields, increasing profit for farmers, lowering prices for foods which then allows the poor afford the food, and crops can be genetically modified to contain specific vitamin. The Green revolution is negative because it caused an increase in global pollution, chemical pollution, and health risks due to the exposure to the chemical produced during the Green Revolution.

As a kid who has cared about nature his entire life, and an avid modern environmentalist for four years and counting, this issue has been at the center of my psyche for quite some time. I have seen public perspective on this issue change before my eyes. From the original rejection of Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth movie on “global warming” to personally marching alongside 300,000 people in our nation's capital to raise awareness on climate change. However, despite all of these avenues the issue is still spoken about as this distant idea that eventually will be a disaster. Many politicians and news networks speak of the need for slow implementation of policies and programs to right our environmental wrongs. The best way to paraphrase the common narrative of this issue would be to say, climate change is going to happen down the road, it will probably be bad and trying to fix it in the near future would be a good idea. That weak call to action shoves climate change onto the long to-do list of the leaders of our world. Not only does it not create the urgency needed to actually curb the effects of our environmental ignorance, but it does not accurately describe the threat of a changing climate. Treating this like a political issue will not allow for the rigorous changes needed to address such a problem in the timely manner that is required.

The North American Drought of 1988 marked the very first time global warming crossed over from scientists to mass media coverage. Following an American professor’s address to the Senate correlating abnormal weather to global warming, European nations addressed the issue, and many countries began to reduce greenhouse gas. The European Union ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 to make it legally binding. In Europe, global warming was acknowledged as a problem, with the only debate centered around how serious of a problem it was- 87% said it was a very serious problem, where around 10%

The problem that the pro- global warming theorists have created is that of social standing and little else. While there may be scientific backing to support some of the theory, the media presents the problem with great sensationalism. Global warming and energy conservation has thus become a trend and losses some of its validity through this. The scare tactics used by the media to “promote awareness” are just that, a linguistic ploy to gain favor. “Awareness of this global threat reinforced public concern and environmental problems and thereby provided environmental activists, scientists, and policy makers with new momentum in their efforts to promote environmental protection.” (McCright, 2000) This statement draws line to the potential benefits that would be received if the pro-global warming theorists were to draw enough attention to the issue. Driven by social empowerment and conviction to environmental protection, these activists misrepresent the actual threat and paint it as being much more

The United States Environmental Protection Agency or EPA was initially proposed in 1970 by then President Richard Nixon. The agency was created to build on other environmental regulations enacted by the federal government and to consolidate those efforts to be managed by one government agency. It was also a reaction to the public’s growing concern over pollution and other environmental issues. Chemical waste was commonly released into bodies of water creating unsafe drinking water and rivers catching fire. Industrial air pollution, such as acid rain and smog, was also affecting manufacturing cities with coal-powered plants. There was little serious regulation on pollution until major environment laws started being passed by Congress in the early sixties.

Since the beginning of the Human Race, gathering a sufficient amount of food has always proved to be a challenge. The Green Revolution attempted to solve this problem by creating and applying new techniques and technologies. The Green Revolution was created out of necessity and caused social changes, discontent with some of the effects, and the overall quality of living to be improved but the improvement of living quality had the greatest effect because this led to higher overall populations which in turn created the need to feed an even greater population.

In the 1970’s there was growing confusion regarding environmental policy due to certain states creating environmental protection laws which were largely ineffective. To ease confusion, fix national guidelines, and monitor and enforce them President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA functions under three federal departments: the Interior, Agriculture, and Health, Education and Welfare departments. The original role of the EPA was to administrate the Clean Air Act which was enacted to reduce the air pollution caused by vehicles and industry. The EPA has since grown to enforce at least 12 major statutes such as: ocean dumping laws, safe drinking water, insecticides, and asbestos hazards in

What does the earth mean to the human race, what do we owe to the world? The food crisis in America is an even balance of 1 billion hungry and 1 billion obese. This means somewhere along the lines we something is going very wrong. We are being mislead and told that we are going green. Is America really going green? Or is it being fed propaganda to hide the true damage of the process of making are organic so-called natural products?

Those who are the most vocal about debunking the science in the United States tend to be mostly to be coming from the right. A recent study by Politifact determined that a remarkable 8 out of 278 republican congress members believed that man made climate change is actually happening. While all other 270 republican congressman in 2014 having a large sense of skepticism against the issue. This is certainly alarming considering that the majority of congress in 2016 are republican and several key environmental issues in the United States require approval from congress. The most notable issue recently was one regarding the congressional approval of Keystone Pipeline XL, an extension of the disastrous environmental pipeline that goes from Texas and into Canada that was vetoed by President Obama. Many of those standing against the truth of climate change in congress include Jim Inhofe, a senator from Oklahoma. Jim Inhofe is arguably the posterboy in the fight for climate denialism. Ironically, Inhofe is in charge of the Senate committee on Environmental Policy, and is infamously remembered as the guy who “proved” that climate change is giant hoax by bringing in a snowball to the senate floor as justification, saying that “this ball of snow” definitely proves that “it is certainly cold outside”. When looking

It is crucial to begin with an analysis of the most current public perspective, using surveys and research done by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and Pew Research Center. This point will be characterized by how environmental issues tie into politics and influence a registered voter’s vote. Will set up the framework for the following point of past trends and laying out why public influence is impacted by events. Prior to the 1960s, environmental issues were not of principal concern or of mass knowledge. (Rome, 2003)

Throughout this article, most of it pertained to how the environmental community has shown that global warming is a social problem, while the public determined that global warming is a legitimate problem and supports policies that work against it. However, during the 1990s, the United State’s policies and beliefs on global warming were put into question. This is a result of the conservative movement challenging the notion whether or not climate change and global warming are social problems. The conservative movement pushes this further by using the media, creating policy forums, and sponsoring press conferences for policy makers in order to emphasize their point on how global warming is not a serious social issue.

There is a divide between the opinions of Republican and Democratic candidates on the topic of climate change. The Republican candidates tend to refuse and ignore the idea entirely while Democratic candidates acknowledge the severity of it and want to make a stand.

i)The most important information that influenced Green & Co’s decision to enter the US market

The green revolution is generally used to explain the application of modern, western-type farming techniques to less economically developed countries. The Green Revolution = == ==