why bother lying?

at this day and age only a handful of citizens take sustainability and climate change seriously and do all they can to make their lives more sustainable. Different activities they do include recycling, installing solar panels on their roofs, saving water and electricity, taking to public transport or buying emissions-free vehicles. Most of the populations of people who do recycle only do it if there are incentives laid down, and would only take public transport if it was cheaper; they seldom do these activities due to achieving sustainability.

I believe people do not make changes to their lifestyle unless they know of any actual negative effects on them and the people around them if they stick to their normal lifestyle. for example, a community who is frequently prone to flooding due to rising sea levels would do something about it, but a community that will not be at risk until the 22nd century would do nothing about it, and so would not bother to change their lifestyle.

in conclusion we should try to change the lifestyles of the people who are the most likely to be affected by global warming/climate change by showing them the direct effects on their lives, and also start educating people who are in "safe zones" about global warming/climate change and make them be aware of it. however, at the moment most people are ignorant and are beginning to deny the possibility of climate change despite scientific claims. most people are saying that it in a continuous and natural cycle and the world will return to its normal state in the next several decades. If this is true then we would not have to do anything at all.

blogprompt 3 - An inconvenient truth

I recently watched the first half of a documentary created by former vice president Al Gore called An Inconvenient Truth, which highlights all the causes and consequences of climate change and global warming on humanity and the environment. the documentary appears to talk about the comparison between the historical data of global temperature and CO2 levels from up to a few hundred thousand years ago to the data during the last few years. The documentary effectively points out the dramatic changes that have occurred during the past 100-200 years as a result of human activity, such as comparing images of glaciers at different times.

Although the documentary shows the changes that go on, it does not go deep enough into the causes and consequences of these changes. Also the themes that occur in the documentary are mixed. for example one scene features a public awareness meeting and the next scene shows images of the different natural environments. There are a few areas in the documentary that spark humour in the different situations, such as featuring a clip from a Futurama episode described by Al Gore as a "more detailed" analysis of the causes and consequences of global warming

overall the documentary is easy to understand but is a little mixed up  and does not go into the consequences of climate change deeply enough, but it is informative enough to make me aware that climate change and global warming is occurring and will cause dramatic changes/issues in the next 50 to 100 years

how sustainable is my community?

The community that I currently live in is Kempston North in Bedfordshire. It has a population of over 5600 people with 3007 people per square kilometer. The area features a park, a lower school, a local swimming pool and a Sainsbury's shop.


Kempston North is only a small part of the whole town that I live in but I have been around some areas on Kempston South where the majority of the suburbs are. However I have only Lived in Kempston for just under 2 years after living in Queen's Park in Bedford for around 12 years.

In my view I feel that Kempston is a fairly sustainable community as it is ethnically diverse and has a slightly lower than average crime rate compared to the Bedford Borough area, and also a fairly decent life expectancy of 80 years. However, around 20% of the Kempston North area is Deprived, and having 13% of the population on out-of-work benefits, which is slightly higher than the Bedford Borough area. for schoolchildren in year 6 the percentage of obese children is fairly high at around 18% of the total population of year 6 children.

In conclusion I can agree that Kempston, in General, is averagely sustainable since it has all the mod cons for a sustainable community such as schools, hospitals and shops, however, like the rest of the UK, it suffers from child obesity, urban deprivation and unemployment.

below is the website where i got this information from:
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBYQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bedford.gov.uk%2Fcouncil_and_democracy%2Fstatistics_and_census%2Fidoc.ashx%3Fdocid%3D8c8af03d-8d1c-4833-bedf-ecedbbddb84c%26version%3D-1&rct=j&q=kempston%20age%20structure&ei=I6zlTOaLIIaxhQexqICuCQ&usg=AFQjCNFzC1r7T6Tc2vVCCFTTyAYqS1G94g&sig2=Lz10w7wcfyAXZEslcIjxEg&cad=rja

how sustainable is my lifestyle?

I feel that there are some aspects of my lifestyle that are sustainable, such as my basic needs including the food that I eat and the home that I live in. I do a fair bit of recycling including  milk bottles, cartons and cardboard, but I have used an awful lot of paper in my time, mostly for making origami models that get chucked away later. I feel like I have the potential to keep my educational life sustainable over the 3 years of attending university, although I will need to keep up with assignment deadlines and revise for tests in order to achieve good sustainability.

I recently did a quiz on how sustainable my life is and my result stated I was 36% sustainable. This may be because I usually buy stuff from supermarkets and do not produce much of my own products such as food and organic products.

http://www.connectingsingles.com/quiz-63-how-sustainable-are-you-quiz.htm