So, this is for my writing course, but I’m intending it for a general audience, so it’s not going into my academia filter. That’ll be for my memo discussing agenda setting as applied to the gay marriage debate. Buzzwords will abound.
This is not my final draft. Even as I was posting this, I identified an element I dropped between the free-writing and second edition that really ought to stay in there. But here is my revised brainstorming:
First and foremost, we have a moral obligation to clean up our act, because when we emit waste into the air, we are harming ourselves and everyone nearby. Secondly, reducing our emissions benefits us directly and indirectly. Thirdly, no person, no state, and no country can clean up the air alone; we must work together to produce meaningful results.
Every time we burn something we produce air pollution; and we are always burning something. We burn coal to produce the electricity which lights and cools our houses and our workplaces. We burn natural gas to heat our food, our water and our houses. We burn various oil derivatives every time we commute to work, ship a package, or take a trip on a plane. We rely on fire to maintain our current way of life, and the smoke is choking us.
Emissions from these millions of fires invade our bodies, disrupt our climate, and cloud our skies. Everyday fuels produce carbon monoxide, particulate matter, and other toxic emissions that invade our bodies, where they interfere with our metabolisms, cause asthma, and produce cancers. Other byproducts, such as carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide spread out through our atmosphere to trap the sun’s heat, raising temperatures and increasing climate volatility, freezing Moscow, thawing Minneapolis, interfering with food production and increasing the frequency of events like Hurricane Katrina. Still other emissions, like unburned hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides contribute to smog formation, creating locally unhealthy airconditions and obscuring our skies. We have been changing our atmosphere, and we are not making serious efforts to slow down these changes.
Taking the initiative to clean up the atmosphere would benefit the United States in particular and the world in general. In the long run, the potential damage due to climate change and other emissions effects could produce great harms. Additionally, working on an issue that benefits the entire world would build better international relations while repairing damage wrought by prior U.S. Foreign policy. Finally, any scientific advances made in producing technology suitable for sustainable development could provide great opportunities for foreign trade. Working towards a common goal unites people and can bring us together at a time when we seem to be falling apart. Taken together, the potential rewards from improving air quality might well represent a tremendous social return on our invested effort.
Reducing our emissions poses major challenges. First, our market is built from autonomous, profit maximizing corporations, which profit by selling products and minimizing production costs. Unless it is cheaper for the company to control its emissions, it will have no reason to do so. Emissions reductions require changes in the way that governments regulate markets and businesses conduct their operations. Markets must be regulated to produce environmentally sensitive corporations; otherwise, producers have no reason to take the effects of their operations into account.
Secondly many categories of emissions, most pointedly carbon dioxide, are a global problem. While many emissions stay in the local area, greenhouses gases spread worldwide. Per person, United States citizens contribute more to global warming than citizens of any other country. This represents an opportunity, as it leaves us with the greatest potentials for reduction per person. However, the United States can’t reduce other countries’ emissions for them, and even if the United States immediately stopped all emissions, 75% of the green house gas problem would remain. Successful emissions reductions require international cooperation.
Finally, the diffusion of interest relating to global emissions concerns limits people’s political power to change the situation. Emissions and their damaging consequences spread out geographically from sources large and small, creating problems globally and locally. It is a death by a thousand cuts. No single action damages any individual enough to inspire a personal, self interested response. We are all contributors and we are all victims. Some will have resources defend themselves from harm and delay the personal impact, allowing them to ignore the costs to others. And just as the United States holds the record on both gross domestic product and emissions, those with the most resources will use the most energy and produce the most emissions. Like the international problem above, this highlights the importance of cooperation.
Correcting our course requires fundamental changes to our way of life. We must make raise our own awareness of the issues we face. We must reduce our energy dependence and learn to do more with less. We must think more of our neighbors both down the block and around the globe. We must work together for the common good and realize that these benefits will not arise from individual self-interested action. Only together can we produce a healthy, happy future.