Pineda 1

Erick Pineda

Becky Hsu

CW R 1 A, Sec. 14

18 September 2019

Brighter Future

People have always discussed building a climate-safe future, but are not willing to take

action to work towards this goal. In Jonathan Foley’s lecture “Building a Climate Safe Future”,

the ideas he suggests are undoubtedly realistic because educating women and investing in

renewable energy will decrease climate change. Climate Change has been an issue for decades

because people continue having more children, producing greenhouse gases, and the rainforest

isn’t protected as it needs to be. Yet people have not paid enough attention to this issue and

causing one to believe if it is too late to take action? Problems contributing to the issue are

population growth, industrialization, and deforestation. According to Foley, the most efficient

way to build a climate-safe future is by educating girls, protecting the rainforest, having family

solutions such as recycling, using renewable energy and advocating for a better future. These

solutions are great ideas, but are not entirely possible at this given time in our nation due to the

lack of support from the government leaders to execute these ideas. In addition, Foley provides

reasonable ideas; however, he fails to propose a plan that presents the ways how his proposed

solutions will be approached and executed.

According to Foley, population growth is an issue that affects climate change. He

believes that this issue is one of the most important when it comes to building a climate-safe
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future. Foley is convinced that if girls are being educated this will reduce population growth. To

emphasize, this will reduce population growth because girls will be informed of the impact they

contribute to climate change. However, educating girls is not enough to create global change as a

remainder of the population which plays a pivotal role because third world countries don’t have

the funding to educate their girls. In order to create change, girls should not be the only ones

being educated. Instead, we should be encouraging the entire population to become educated

about the impacts they are making on the environment and what steps can and need to be taken

in order to reduce the risk of increased complications of climate change.

Moreover, population growth is not the only issue that impedes this nation from building

a climate-safe future. Industrialization is human activities that have contributed to the rise of

earth’s surface temperature and also the greenhouse gas emissions. This factor affects the planet

in ways that obstructs the population from building a climate-safe future. In fact, Foley agrees

with industrialization being an issue and affecting climate change more than people could think

of. In other words, Foley believes that industrialization needs to be reduced to build a

climate-safe future. however, he does not present a plan on how to reduce industrialization. For

example, he could have proposed a plan that is realistic and which will actually bring attention to

world leaders, such as encouraging individuals to stop cutting down trees, using less

transportation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and restricting humans from excessively

abusing the use electricity. Additionally, Foley assumes that people will care enough to protect

the rainforest though it’s been clear that protecting the rainforest is not as important to the

population as he had hoped for. For example, “the Amazon fires” have been going on for almost

over a month and leaders have not taken action against the president of Brazil. Considering the
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lack of actions from world leaders against the president of Brazil, it is unlikely that world leaders

will take Foley’s ideas into consideration.

Population growth and industrialization are not the only factors that affect this issue

because this nation contributes as a whole to climate change through the abuse of electricity,

greenhouse gases, and deforestation. The damage people create is immense and it should be

necessary to set regulations to reduce the impact being made on the environment. In addition,

being educated about these issues will bring new solutions like hopefully relying on hybrid cars

and becoming more oriented of the long run benefits that solar panels contribute to saving

energy. As can be seen, Foley doesn't propose a plan on how to execute these ideas as a nation

together. For this reason, these ideas are not realistic when attempting to convince world leaders.
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Works Cited

Foley, Jonathan. “Building a Climate Safe Future.” Scott Institute for Energy Innovation, 15

May 2019, Carnegie Mellon University,

Lecture. ​https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=588&v=ZhJfl1jVB5Q

Foer, Franklin. “The Amazon Fires Are More Dangerous than WMDS.” ​The Atlantic,​ August 29

2019.