This article mainly talks about sustainable living. It states that many people “believe that the power and goods you consume are changing the climate but do not believe in your ability to stop it.” This article shares some hard facts with the people that  each family has a carbon bill of about “7 tons for transportation, 14 tons for housing, eight tons for food, six tons for services, five tons for goods,” and states that “our societal footprint is the most urgent problem of our era — and perhaps the most intractable.” These are alarming facts, and as the article continues, it states some steps to reduce the carbon footprint. Some steps include decarbonizing the grid (cutting electricity), electrifying the transportation sector and regulating industrial production, replacing gas-burning furnaces with electric heat pumps, updating building efficiencies, and banning air-conditioners and fridges that use hydrofluorocarbon. These are some of the main ways to reduce the carbon footprint, but the article shares the sad fact that this isn’t enough to change climate change. The article states, “All around the world, developed nations have locked themselves into unsustainable, energy-intensive lifestyles.” Continually the article goes on to talk about Uruguay and his journey, and the experiences he learned there. He talks about how people have built their societies on unsustainable living, governments being involved, and how the community needs to focus on the goal that “Goal shouldn’t be carbon neutrality, but how to make it sustainable,” 

This article shocked me because of all the alarming facts stated in the first half of the article. The story is about him traveling to Uruguay and learning how their society works and how their government was and has been involved in reducing carbon emissions. The quote that stood out to me the most was, “The goal shouldn’t be carbon neutrality, but how to make it sustainable.” This stood out to me because the author talked a lot about how our society is built on unstable living, and it’s hard to change that. For example, eating meat is a massive problem, but people love meat, so we need to find a solution so that people can eat it and not add to our carbon footprint. This article was excellent, and I learned a lot.

This article is about sustainable jewelry and Christina T. Miller’s story. It mainly talks about how she started becoming interested in making jewelry with her uncle when she was about 18 years old when he questioned her about the origins of the materials from jewelry. Through her uncle’s knowledge and Millers’ eagerness to find a more sustainable way to get fine jewelry, her ultimate goal is to create a sustainable way to make fine jewelry; she said she “wanted help defining our goals and standards so that we could implement better practices moving forward.” Miller now owns her own consulting agency. She works “with designers, suppliers, and others within the jewelry industry’s supply chain, as well as with nonprofits and other organizations,” to achieve this goal. She is currently working on a project that is supposed “establish a conflict-free supply chain for gold, centered on miners in the eastern part of the country working manually or on a small scale.” Overall, Miller is a leading person in our society who will change the fine jewelry business.

This article surprised me, and this spoke to me because I feel like jewelry is never really talked about when talking about climate change. This is why Millers’ story stood out to me. Amazingly, she has created a sustainable jewelry business; she is definitely a leading businesswoman in the jewelry department, helping our earth by creating this. I also find it important that Miller does this because many women wear jewelry. Even making jewelry more sustainable will help with climate change in the long run, even if it doesn’t seem to have any significant positive impact. 

This article discusses sustainable vacations and just sustainable living in general. The article mainly talks about how many people travel, and many places where people travel to are trying to make it more sustainable for the earth(hotels, communities, etc.)Many developers of businesses are “planning and building both individual homes and communities.” Additionally, the article states that developers are trying to “shape and improve local communities rather than simply develop the land and hire the local population for a workforce.” Continually, the article gives three specific places where sustainability practices are in the full cycle. The three places are Costa Elena, La Cruz, Costa Rica, Club Ki’ama, the Bahamas, and Oil Nut Bay, British Virgin Islands, where they are going out of there and specifically focusing on sustainable homes and vacation spots.

This article made me very happy that places are trying to make things more sustainable. They are going out of their way and focusing primarily on sustainability. Doing this proves to people that luxury and sustainability can be done. I think this will make other places start incorporating more sustainable practices and change how people run their businesses. Additionally, I believe people will start choosing sustainability over luxuries because climate change is becoming more and more prevalent, and we need to stop ignoring it. Lastly, some of the sustainable practices that the places in the article stated are very interesting; for example, at the Oil Nut Bay, British Virgin Islands, “The development’s mandate calls for 50 percent of the land to remain as open space with nature trails and land preserves,” This makes me so happy and makes me believe that many people have changed their mindset of only running a money business to also helping the earth while running a business because that’s what’s going to matter in the long run.

This article is about Arizona’s water cutoff and the effects of the people’s unsustainable practices. 500 to 700 people’s water was shut off because Scottsdale wanted to conserve water. People and the place were chaotic people were trying to find ways to install drinking filtered systems. They also talk about recent events of rainfall ad how even that much rain cannot “undo a 20-year drought that has practically emptied Lake Mead.” Ultimately the article talks about how Rio Verde Foothills’ situation is showing us some of the hard decisions we need to make because of the unstainable practices we have been doing these past decades that have caused climate change to become very bad. Lastly, they talked about how people who didn’t receive water trucks would deliver the water to their homes, but it continued to get more expensive, getting up to an unaffordable $1,800 a month.

This article made me sort of happy (making people face the problem) in a way because we are at that point where people are taking action and shutting off the water because of the drought and its severity of it. I feel like this event in Arizona should start making people aware that they should be more cautious with water. This could also happen here in California if people don’t begin changing practices and wasting water. In my opinion, drought is very scary because water is necessary, and without it, we can’t live. This scares me because California has been in a drought for a while, and we should be discussing it more rather than just pushing it aside. I’m also super thankful for the recent amount of rain we had.

This article focused more on climate change, but I believe it still goes under sustainable development because it is essential in reducing society’s impact on the earth. This article talks about the recent weather and how we have had tremendous amounts of rain here in California. However, we are not and were not prepared for that rain because the Californian society is desert-based (meaning our infrastructure and farmers are focused on things that will work in a place where there is little rainfall.) Additionally, the article talks about how our summers continue to become hotter, and our winter weather is becoming more severe; however, since the earth is heating up all year round. In the winter, the rain is not turning into snow; it’s just rain and more destructive. This is an issue because most of the water we use is stored with snow (the less snow, the less water we will have.) This continues the drought we have in California. With climate change not becoming better, things will continue to become worse. The article talks about how farmers need to find better sustainable practices using water with growing crops. The article also states that we are trying to implement sustainable ways (different infrastructures) to collect more rainfall. Ultimately the article wraps up by saying we need to find sustainable ways to protect California because the costs of these floods and droughts are tremendous.

We need to act fast because climate change will continue to get worse. We must find sustainable ways to build better infrastructure to catch more water so that we are not in a continuous state of drought and worry here in California. As it was stated at the end of the article, Gavin Newsom believes we must make difficult decisions, and I believe that is what needs to be done to save the earth. Additionally, our society needs to practice more sustainable lives. If people live more sustainably, climate change will become less of an issue, but we need to start now because climate change is becoming worse yearly. Societies need to start being more aware of how profound climate change is; people need to get educated. Ultianetlyvthis article made me scared. I’m shocked that we are still in the drought because of how our communities are built, and we might not be prepared for this next round of winter.

This article talks about automated cars and how they are our future. This article highlights the problems of traffic jams and how they affect our environment and increase the levels of CO2. There is a lot of traffic now because few cars are automated and can prevent accidents. As stated in the article, by 2030, every vehicle will have some type of automatic feature, which would potentially help get rid of this problem because the goal of automated vehicles is to keep cars flowing safely, which would decrease the amount of CO2 released by cars and benefit the environment.

This article has to do with environmental science because it shows the significant impacts of cars now and what the future might look like with automated vehicles. I was shocked that traffic releases so much CO2, which was one of the significant ways cars cast a carbon footprint. This article taught me that this problem of traffic jams could potentially be solved in a few years because of the automated vehicles and how they work, and how it would get rid of some or a lot of the cars’ carbon footprint. 

This article talks about when people build infrastructure, they think about the most sustainable way to do it. They include ways they could maybe restore nature and still be able to create things but not destroy nature because that is essential in our world. It talks about the shift from just creating infrastructure to making it more than just an amenity. The article talks about the many benefits of this: “more natural shorelines, filled with plants and natural beaches instead of concrete bulkheads, will resist water and wave damage better.” Ultimately this article highlights the benefits of creating infrastructures with people who care about the environment because they do not only care, but they want to restore it.

This article is related to environmental science because it shows how future infrastructures the government or people build they think of it as more than an amenity; they think of it as a way to restore nature. This is very beneficial to the world because it could help the carbon footprint of infrastructures become slightly less harmful. This article shines a light on the future and shows how much people do care for the environment while still moving forward and creating new things.

This article talks about how India banned the use of plastic bags. The article states, “Tamil Nadu’s ban is far from an absolute success.” This is because many people thought not using plastic bags was way too expensive and just straight-up inconvenient. Continually the articles talk about how bad plastic bags are for the environment, and the process of getting rid of them is a long process, and it doesn’t just happen overnight. It states, “Any government-led program can only be successful if it becomes a people’s movement,” which shows how everyone needs to chip in. It also talks explicitly about how authorities are going to take this ban more seriously, and local authorities will become more strict because this is a severe issue in our world and without taking it seriously.

This article is related to environmental science because it discusses the pros and cons of getting rid of plastic bags. We ultimately need to find a solution to getting rid of plastic bags because it’s so harmful to the environment and society. This article doesn’t shock me because it isn’t going to be easy to get rid of plastic bags. After all, they are used so much, but this article does highlight the effects of not using plastic bags and what we need to do to get rid of them. I learned that it takes not only authorities but it takes the public as a whole to get rid of plastic bags.

This article talks about the generalizations made about wine bottles and how most people think glass bottles or wine bottles don’t harm the environment when in fact, they are very harmful. This article also talks about the problems we have in the American system with recycling glass bottles. After a bottle of wine is finished, the bottle is thrown out. Making a glass bottle takes a lot of heat and energy, which leaves behind a giant carbon footprint, therefor not recycling the bottle or throwing it out after using it adds a larger carbon footprint. The article, in the end, talks about ways we can try to recycle these bottles, like giving people incentives for returning them. People are trying different ways to use reusable containers to reduce the carbon footprint of wine bottles.

This article is related to environmental science because it shines a light on how one small thing in our world adds so much to the carbon footprint and pollution in our world. This honestly shocked me. This article shows a lot how not only not recycling a bottle is harmful, but even the production is very harmful. The transportation, making the glass bottles, and then not being able to reuse bottles. The ending of the article shows the way we can change wine bottles, and instead of making them harmful to the world, we could even ultimately benefit from them.

 This article which includes a video talks about the goals of 2022  with sustainable developments and the adverse effects and setbacks the world has encountered. This article tracks the latest data and estimates to create progress in saving the world. The article/video specifically talks about the significant setbacks that have happened due to Covid 19, including the alarming fact that “4 years of progress in alleviating poverty has been erased by COVID – 19”. The article also talks about what things are being affected, which includes not only us people economically but our environment. Our oceans are endangered, temperatures are rising significantly, and species are becoming more extinct. Other current events like the war in Ukraine also play a significant role in setbacks.

 This article relates to environmental science because it shows how current events like Covid 19, the war with Ukraine, and our emissions affect the world. Many would think it only affects one category, but that’s not the case; these things affect multiple parts of the world, including the environment. These things have a domino effect as many people become homeless due to a pandemic and war; this affects the environment because people are really poor people turn to cheap options that don’t help the environment and don’t support sustainable developments. This is shocking to me and sheds a lot of light on how these events have hurt us.