Top 3 Environmental Issues - Post reading comparison

Comparing my "Top 3 Environmental Issues"

My pre-reading picks for top three environmental issues were:
1) Energy, 2) Clean Water, 3) Global Climate change. Jason Mark’s article in Earth Island Journal listed the top three issues as 1) Superstorms,  2)Draught, and 3)End of peak oil (or rather “We’re not going to hit Peak Oil anytime soon.”
 
Conversely, Julia Whitty wrote a more positive piece in a Mother Jones article, outlining some positive news about environmental issues. Her top three picks were: 1) “Huge Drop in PCB Levels in Norwegian Polar Bears,” 2) “Amur Cats get their own park,” and 3) “Half Billion Dollars Funds Most Ambitious Conservation Programs Ever.”

My picks #1 and #3 were swapped with Mr. Mark’s choices. If I were to re-phrase his picks and say that “Superstorms” and “Draught” are simply the side effects of anthropogenic global climate change, and that “Peak Oil” is really about energy, then we aren’t too far off from each other. I would argue that energy is the basis for our modern civilization and that regardless of its woes, human’s ability to harness and manipulate energy is one of its greatest assets and an answer to many of its problems, if it can be done cleanly. (Example: Clean energy (lots of it) = clean drinking water from desalinization.) Revamping to clean energy is the basis for “fixing” the global warming issue. (Or at least stopping continued damage.) This is also the first in Brown’s four priorities in Plan B 4.0 (Brown, 2009). Mark may be correct in saying that these extreme weather events are going to be what is in front of us to cope with in the coming years.  My list is more of a “what we need to address first” in terms of priorities list.

Mark’s article was insightful, however. The fact that fossil energy is not in short supply and that, “Mother Nature won’t force the issue for us” (Mark, 2012) is eye opening. My view was that easy fossil fuels have been depleted, and that may be true, but it doesn’t mean that fossil fuels aren’t still in big supply. Enough to “fry the planet” (Mark, 2012) means the initiative must be self-motivated. In other words, the economic self-leveling idea of supply and demand won’t work here. We’ll foul the nest before we run out.

Whitty’s article reflects 1) Environmental Policy IS working and 2) Protection of natural resources are gaining ground. All in all, I find this very positive. If we, as a collective society, can do those things, then we just might be capable of fixing the problems of energy (global warming,) water, and climate change.  I especially enjoy hearing, as an aside on her page, “Phoenix Islands Protected Area conserves one of the Earth's last intact oceanic coral archipelago ecosystems” (Whitty, 2013). The size of California. Awesome!

 References
Brown, L. R. (2009). Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to save civilization.
Mark, J. (2012, December 25). The Top Ten Environmental Stories of 2012. Retrieved from http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/the_top_ten_environmental_stories_of_2012/
Whitty, J. (2013, April 20). 5 Pieces of Good News From Planet Earth. Retrieved from http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/04/good-news-stories-earth-day