Many universities around the world have put attention to various environmental issues. The most prominent one will be to go green and play a part in protecting our environment, as well as passing this message around to other communities. It is a very encouraging act. Young people from the universities will most probably become the top leaders or elites of a particular society. Even if most of them do not turn out to be leaders, these people are going to the ones to contribute significantly to the economy. The values and views of these young people are important as their perceptions will eventually shape the future society and environment. As such, it is wise to first begin an act in the universities and instill certain values and knowledge into the undergraduates. It will then be easier to encourage environmental preservation and awareness to the rest of the population. As learned from the lecture, universities are the nursery of tomorrow’s leader and educate most of the people who develop and manage society’s institutions. Therefore, the sector bears profound responsibilities to increase the awareness, knowledge, technologies and tools to create a sustainable and better future.
Economic growth and development are often the main concerns of people. Education and policies always revolve around the aim to achieve promising economic prospect and goals of economic development. Using Singapore as an example, the education system is yearned towards equipping students with a very well defined syllabus to support the technological and economic development of Singapore. Everyone has to start off with a compulsory six years primary education, comprising an initial four-year foundation stage and a two-year orientation stage from primary five to six. The core curriculum consists of English, the Mother Tongue and Mathematics. Science is included from primary three onwards. The curriculum also comprises of other supplementary subjects like Music, Art and Craft, and Physical Education. The core subjects are those that will come useful to equip people with the basic requirements to develop the manufacturing based economy. You do not see subjects retaining to education on environment all the way up to the pre-university education, not unless there is seriously abundance amount of time to spare. School will sometimes organize field trips outside the curriculum to green landscapes to expose students to the nature, but this is only optional during school vacation and when circumstances allow. Is it only when people enter the universities that they have the opportunities and freedom to take modules relating to environmental issues, as well as to expand their concern and interest on the environment by doing research and coming up with events and organization. Therefore, the universities are where many environmental self sufficient group, and conservation and preservation actions are initiated.
Even when environmental activities and awareness are more active in the universities, many still keep an indifferent attitude towards protecting our Earth. I have seen plenty of people who have either ignored emails to gain support for environmental events, or are just simply not interested in playing a part to help make our environment a more sustainable one. The National University of Singapore (NUS) actually has many events to create awareness to preserve and love the environment more. A few examples are the Green Day, Tree-Planting Day, NUS Green Carnival, and some green movements by the NUS Second Life. However, how many students are interested and have participated in these events? The environment is just not yet one of the priorities of many people.
Reflection on Lecture Eight- Carbon Management
This week’s lecture has introduced more theoretical concepts of physical geography as compared to the previous lectures. This is required in order to have a more define understanding of the carbon cycle which is so closely and directly linked to the carbon management in any region. Why is there a need for carbon management? There is rising concern on the increasing amount of carbon emission in recent times. Not only is the value increasing rather rapidly, it is expected to increase in the next twenty years. This growing rate of carbon emission is posing threats to the environment we are living in. As mentioned in the previous lecture, climate change and global warming is damaging the Earth and universities are taking role in encouraging the public to start to protect the environment. One of the main causes to these problems is the large emission of greenhouse gases, with carbon dioxide top on the list.
There is the greenhouse effect, and then there is global warming. The greenhouse effect is caused by certain gases and clouds absorbing and re-emitting the infrared radiating from Earth's surface. Water vapour is the most important contributor to the greenhouse effect but human emissions of carbon dioxide are driving this climate change. Carbon dioxide constitutes a large portion of the total emission of greenhouse gases. It is still responsible for two-thirds of the additional warming caused by all the greenhouse gases emitted as a result of human activity. As such, it is quite obvious that people should be very careful in the amount of carbon dioxide they are emitting into the atmosphere due to their human activities such as economic production, commuting and the clearing of large area of green landscape.
Other than the global measures as mentioned during the lecture, I feel that is more effective if everyone is to play a part in reducing their own carbon footprint. If everyone can reduce their footprints even just by a small extent, it can in fact reduce the total world carbon footprint by a large extent. Instead of investing and putting in so much effort and money into implementing large scale measure to cut carbon emission across the world, isn’t it much easier for everyone to cut meat consumption to one portion every two days, and to take the public transport instead of to drive more frequently? After all, many of the global measures that are carried out are for pragmatic reasons. There are limitations to what the environmentalists can do. In order for preservation measures to be successfully implemented, these people need financial and community support from the government and people. There has been debate going on which argues that the government and public play a part in dealing with environmental issues mainly for pragmatism and due to political pressures. As such, the results of the preservation measures will not turn out to be very effective and efficient. However, it is a different story when everyone is truly concern about the environment and wants to do something to protect the preserve the Earth.
Therefore, it is better to educate the public on the environmental problems the world is facing to make people understand their roles. Nations should also put more emphasis onto environment issues and create more awareness in the public to how beautiful the Earth they are living in is. Only when people are more familiar and have a closer interaction with the wonderful nature and environment then they will begin to appreciate the place they are living in. It’s futile to just impose tax on for instance petrol consumption and the purchasing of vehicles when people do not understand the intention and meaning behind the measure. Instead, people who can effort to pay may in turn exploit the resources and environment by using it inefficiently and being wasteful as they feel that the resources belong to them once they have paid for it.
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