A gift from a star

In the book Our Choice comes a quote from Albert Einstein that got my attention. “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until coil and oil run out before we tackle that.” The sun is a star which provides great amounts of heat to our planet Earth and is necessary for the living organisms’ life. With the intelligence of humans, they have noticed that the heat can be transformed to use it as energy, and then electricity. This would reduce the amount of CO2 released to the atmosphere and that could be a way to solve global warming.
With the quote I realized that people have had this idea of using the sun since a very long time ago, but still, a small amount of people use this alternative. Why are we not using it, if it is “free” as a gift?

I think that it is because this source of energy is very expensive: the equipment and installation, but after this is all the energy received from the sun is free. You don’t have to pay for it, and it can be used for a long period of time. So it will be a benefit to the owners. I think that if all the people or at least some countries start implementing this, the price will lower, and more people will be able to obtain it (price-demand). And less pollution will be produced.
Also I think that another way of taking advantage of the sun is that the houses should have the ceilings of window. As in the United States, some of the buildings have plants in the highest floor so they can receive solar energy. With this type of ceiling not only plants can be in there, but also people could use that solar energy instead of light bulbs. Or maybe it can also be stored and used.

We must be responsible for our home. The sun will always be there while we are living, so why don’t we are a little selfish and start using it for our and Earth’s benefit? Let’s start using it!!

The Earth is an Island

WHAT? REALLY? WHAT IS HAPPENING? HOW IT WILL PASS? Tell us! ATTENTION!





They said that when the pieces of Earth move they have three choices to make:


1.- move


2.- adapt


3.- die

Now at days even though we aren't thinking about any type of things; we are faicng with a problem that is named: "Dilemma of Survival". Why because we are seeing if we are going to survice or die. In our world we are having lots of problems with the human population that is causing great disturbances like: the destruction of a habitat or a cycle that gets affected by all this enormous machine, we aren't going to.

Earth Strikes Again

During the month of February, one huge iceberg loose off Antarctica’s Coast. There was once big iceberg that separated from the rest of the ice land and joined another one that was already floating in the ocean. The collision of these two ice pieces created a loose iceberg the size of Luxembourg, around 97 kilometers long. The first iceberg separated from the ice land because of the warm water currents that had reach it since several years ago. Reading this shocking news made me realize that global warming is not near, it’s here.

I think Earth has tried to warn us throughout the past years about the catastrophes that could happen. Let’s just take a look about what happened with the Hurricane Katrina, the tsunami of 2004, and most recently what happened in Haiti and in Chile. I think mother Earth gave all the possible warnings that we should take this planet seriously.

All these natural disasters can affect our way of life in each and every sense. Scientists say that if this huge iceberg melts down, the sea level will rise and parts of the world that are barely above sea level may disappear. Also, he said that the iceberg melting will change sea currents and the amount of oxygen in the sea, affecting all types of marine species. This could affect the economy of many countries in which the sea provides a large part of their GDP. The supply of the product will decrease affecting the equilibrium.

I find very interesting what we saw at the last class about considering the effect on the environment in economics. If we had considered nature before, maybe today we wouldn’t be suffering all these natural disasters. The companies that take into account the effect of their actions on nature, are very responsible because they don’t only care about themselves and money but also about the world they are living in. We should all consider the effect on nature of all of our action. Think twice before throwing oil on water, or before throwing plastic bags into the garbage.

We humans can do better. We were given a powerful brain to do whatever is best for us. I hope we realize that we are only harming ourselves by not caring about the world. We should do everything we can do now. Maybe tomorrow will be too late to start caring about our seas, our land and our air. Who knows where mother earth will strike next.

Our home: Earth

Yesterday another natural disaster occurred in America! Chile suffered an earthquake of 8.8 in the Richter scale, and it had 90 replicas and one of them of 6.2 in the Richter scale. At the moment there had being registered 708 deaths.

We know that Chile is in seismic zone as Mexico City and humans can’t control when it occurs one. But maybe all of us are responsible for some of the natural disasters that had been occurring in the past years. I think this because we don’t care about Earth, and we are damaging it more every time. We are contaminating ocean, air, and land; we are overexploiting our resources; we are deforesting; we are not recycling. So the earth is reacting to all the changes we have made.

There have being ecological campaigns but they include just a small percentage of the human population. If every person could join them, we could avoid problems, and maybe reduce global warming. We should all get involved so we can have a better home called Earth!

Society Vs. Global Warming

Few days ago I was asking myself about how many generations will live after us. Then my grandmother took some disposable glasses, and I told her that we shouldn’t use them because they affect our environment, while we’re suppose to take care of it (environment) and I also explained her the way they affect it, but she denied to stop using them because she said that she is going to die, soon. I was like surprised because, obviously, I don’t want her to die soon and because of how come that people don’t care about their environment and their future generations.

I also asked myself about how can we like, make a conscience on others, to stop doing things that affect our environment like using disposable glasses or dishes, hair sprays, throwing water, don’t caring about separating trash (organic, plastics, etc.) and all those kinds of actions that deteriorate our planet because It won’t be forever. I have been wonder this for several weeks and trying to find out a way to make my family take more care about what surrounds us.

But I found that, for one is very difficult to make a change, but a group has more probabilities of doing it. Because I find society as many brains together and if you convince one, he will change another and so on until the whole society is changed of mind, just like a chain. If a group does this will be much more easy. That’s why I joined this group called “Greenology” in my school to gather some ideas and imply them in my house (family).

Who is Going Greener?

A couple of days ago, I found an article about China being the leader at developing green tech. The article mentions that Asian countries are the ones developing this type of energy quicker. Countries like China, Korean and Japan have invested a lot of money in different types of clean energy, like wind turbines, solar energy, etc. I thought that the United States was ahead of every other country. But the fact is that it is not anymore. The article explained that the USA has focused its investments in recovering from the economic crisis. Since Asia was not affected by this crisis, countries like China focus their money on making these types of energy grow.

I think this has a lot to do with the class because we can see another way the economic crisis affected certain countries. Green technology is the technology of the future. In the next years, we will be needing technology that not only satisfies our needs but also that helps us save our planet. This was mentioned by a report of Breakthrough Institute. This really called my attention because the Breakthrough Institute is a think tank in Oakland. It was nice to find a term learned in class applied in the outside world.

I think it is really interesting how economy shapes everything in a country, for instance its technology. The United States has always being very competitive at being the first at developing something. For example, the arms race, the space race and now the green race. I think they have made a race out of it because it is urgent to find ways of not harming our planet anymore. The sooner, the better. We do not know how much time we have left before it is too late.

Mexico is trying its best to go green. Unfortunately, our economy and our culture are the ones stopping this movement. Economy is a matter where neither of us can do much. On the other hand, we can change our culture. Obviously it is not going to be easy, but we still have to do our best. If we care for our planet, it is up to us to make the rest of the people conscious. At school, we have the student group Greenology. As a member of this group, I have the responsibility of inviting the rest of the students to care about our world.

Everyone is trying to do their best to help the Earth out. But how do we know that what we are doing is enough? The truth is that we cannot be sure that our actions will work; but at least we can try. Asian countries may be the ones finding the solution to our problem. Whatever they discover or invent will benefit humanity and everything that lives on Earth.