IHSS B 2021-22

  Rachel Baker Government’s Responsibility to Us and Our Planet All of us at some point have thought about the eventual mysterious worldwide crash (although maybe not expecting it to come so soon). We know about the climate crisis, the resource shortages, the pollution, and the systemic problems in countries around the world, and how they’ll all eventually catch up to us.  As an individual, or even as a massive group of people, these issues are impossible to solve. Governments will need to work together to change policies to comply with regulations encouraged by environmental scientists and activists worldwide. So, the big question is: Are governments around the world playing their part to counter the eventual global crash? And more importantly for us: even if we do all we can, will it be enough to flatten the curve- or at least give us a soft landing?   We have the answer to the first question. According to both articles we read in class and numerous other sources: no....

 Why Trying to Clean Up All the Ocean Plastic Is Pointless Alexander McGill     I read the article called "Why Trying to Clean Up All the Ocean Plastic Is Pointless". Its main focus was explaining why even cleaning up millions of pounds of plastic does not help the environment was much as you think. According to this article, there is billions of pounds of plastic in the ocean. The article gave a metaphor that helps you understand. The metaphor is "you walk into your bathroom and your bathtub is overflowing. Do you, a) turn off the tap, or b) get a mop? I mean, eventually you’ll do both, but you better turn off that tap before you start mopping up or you will never stop mopping up and you will never catch up to the water spilling out." The article says that cleaning up trashes on beaches and in sewers to stop clogs is very good, but to clean the overall ocean, it's best to try to raise money for better waste management disposals and other things to stop people f...

Indigenous lands are not getting the correct housing they need to survive the incoming change in weather conditions. Heat is rising and is affecting the homes of many indigenous communities. As temperature increases, houses need to be refurbished for the sake of providing habitable places for indigenous communities to live. The main reason that the government is not able to meet these needs is because, supposedly, they have not gathered enough funds to refurbish the houses.Some governments ignore the fact that they need to help these communities,not giving them enough attentio. The actions that these governments are taking could lead to deaths of many indigenous people on their land. To avoid this from happening, these governments have to take action to help save these people. Not only that, if they actually do not have the money to build these new (needed) houses, they would need to create a separate fund specifically for this issue and also petition the federal government for funds.O...

 The article I read consisted of an interview between Molly Taft, a Gizmodo reporter. And Max Liboiron, a Canadian researcher in plastic pollution. Throughout the interview they talked about plastic and trash pollution in the ocean. one of the key points from the article was how taking plastics out of the ocean didn't help get rid of the problem of plastic pollution in our oceans. Because even if you take 100 million pounds of plastic out of the ocean there are still 17.6 billion pounds of new plastics in the ocean per year. But there are also many beneficial ways of plastic and trash cleanups in the ocean. For example taking trash and plastics out of sewage drains so they don't get backed up, or beach cleanups that make it so that you can use the beach. A better way to take care of our plastic problem would be to stop plastics from getting into our ocean. We could do this in many various ways, like finding an environmental alternative to plastics. We could also implement laws ...

Talulah May  IHSS Mr. Roddy  19 Jan 2022 The Government  The government's role in society is to keep us organized. We’ve had forms of government throughout history, such as monarchies, that keep people in line. There are many important jobs the government has, such as distribution of income, providing public needs, protection of land and people, and much more minute jobs. There are different branches of government, each tasked with a specific job, these are the judicial, legislative, and executive branches. For issues like climate change, the government’s legislative branch makes rules, regulations, and organizations to help. They've made organizations like the EPA, which sets limits on air pollutants. They've also enforced federal laws such as the clean water act, safe water act, clean air act, the national environmental education act, and more. They have an importante role in protecting the environment, because of how bad it has become. We need much more than individual...

The article that I read centered around a group of researchers at the University of Tokyo. They saw that the widespread production of concrete is one of the largest sources of carbon emission in the world, largely contributing greatly to global warming. In fact, about 8% of carbon entering the atmosphere comes from this specifically. These researchers came up with a solution that would have the potential to make concrete go from producing an abundance of carbon to being either carbon neutral or possibly carbon negative. This would have a huge impac t on the state of global warming and eliminate a gigantic contributor in it. They made this new concrete using discarded scraps of old concrete and the calcium from it. Then they mixed that with " carbon dioxide pulled from the air".  They haven't been able to make very much yet because it is a relatively new idea, but the researchers say that by 2025 they want to make a full structure from the material. I think the government ...

  Nate Savarese Mr. Roddy IHSS 18 January 2021 Why  free parking is killing cities      In my article, a journalist interviews Donald Shoup, who is an American economist that taught urban planning at UCLA. He specialized in parking. Donald Shoup believes that no parking should be free. he thinks that instead of having free parking there should be paid parking, and the revenue created from the paid parking should go to other infrastructures such as free wifi, cafes, bike lanes, or even something as simple as vending machines.      In most cities in America, cars are almost necessary to everyday life. This means that if you have a car, then you have to park it somewhere. Most cities have free parking in a lot of places. It is considered a normal thing to benefit community members. But Shoup argues that instead of having free parking, we need to have paid parking as well as better planned parking setups. In America, there are about 250 million cars h...

  Jayla Balderas  Mr. Roddy  IHSS  January 19, 2022                                              A Concrete That’s Climate Change Friendly  All of the articles mentioned were connected to climate change in one way or another. The one I read, talked about how concrete is one of the most widely used materials used to build either buildings, sidewalks, or parking spots. This is the cause of the 8% of the carbon emissions released into the atmosphere. With this new formula for climate change-friendly concrete, its key material is reused concrete. There are a lot of landfills in America and specifically, half of the billions of tons of demolition end up in these landfills each year. This means once more research is placed into this project wit...

  Sabrina Gubbels-Wingo Mr. Roddy IHSS 18 January 2022 Indigenous People Are Feeling the Burn of Climate Change The indigenous people of Australia are going to be some of the first peoples to feel the burn of climate change, a recent study shows. However, some aid could be provided in sustainable housing and housing management. This aid is not being accepted in any form as governments are creating excuses surrounding expense, ignoring the fact that in the long run, this would actually save money. The issue of indigenous housing and land has been ignored and pushed away throughout recent history and contributes to the long-standing neglect of indigenous people by governments. This is likely due to the history of indigenous people, the loss of their land, and the lack of respect for their people and nations. It has been written time and again throughout history, the story of governments claiming native lands. In most - if not all- cases, there is no real reason for their land to be...

 Alexandre Maciel Mr. Roddy 18 January 2022 IHSS Why Free Parking is Killing Cities      Donald Shoup, a professor at the University of California in Los Angeles believes that free parking is destroying economies, especially in big populous cities. In his book, The High Cost Against Free Parking, he underlines his concern towards the government giving away so much land towards free parking. There is an estimate of 250 million cars in the US, and over 2 billion parking spaces. That's over 1,000 square feet of parking for a car owner vs. 800 square feet of housing land for a person. Somehow, cities such as Manhattan and Brooklyn, still have incredible problems with free parking. This is because parking spaces are not distributed evenly amongst the population. Therefore, this can create crazy traffic situations, and a lot of pollution. One of Professor Shoup's studies concludes that over 60% of the pollution on Earth happens due to cars, and they are parked 95% of the t...

Everest Leo Mr. Roddy IHSS 18 January 2022 Combating Phoenix Heat and Other Global Warming Issues     The article that I read was about the extreme heat in Phoenix, how it correlates to impoverished areas and how trees can help. The basic gist is that the city wants to plant more trees in areas with lower income to have the plant distribution across the city become more equal by 2030. This would be a significant help towards cooling areas down as trees can make differences in temperature of up to the double digits of degrees. The discussion that we had in class was very relevant to this topic and mainly covered global warming and technologies or predictions regarding it. One topic that came up however, was global production and industrial manufacturing. There is no doubt that these two things are necessary to daily life as we know it, but of course there's also the flip-side that these things heavily contribute to climate change. Now, an issue that was brought up was that...

Many flood prone cities are spending huge sums of money on flood prevention infrastructure such as storm tunnels and storm tanks in addition to developing greenspace that allows for the water to filter into the ground directly. In addition to these being incredibly expensive there will still always be parts of cities where pavement is a necessity and the storm infrastructure is simply not expansive enough to prevent the increasingly intense flooding that has come with climate change.  These kinds of situations are where permeable concrete comes into play. A startup called Aquipor has developed a new form of concrete that contains millions of sub-micron pores that allow water to filter through the concrete and into the ground. An additional benefit of this particular brand of concrete are the size of the pores. Smaller than other permanent concrete pores they are less likely to clog and prevent pollutants from entering the groundwater. As for the role of government I think that this...