I went to the environmental activism presentation earlier today and it was very interesting and concerning at the same time. In the first part of the presentation, various facts and statistics were presented about what the current trend of climate change is producing and the increasingly detrimental outcomes that will come further on. One of the most concerning points was about the massive increase in heat that we have seen. Since 2001, 18 of the 19 years have been the hottest years ever recorded, with the hottest of them all being the previous 5. This is extremely concerning because heatwaves, like the one in Paris this past summer, are more likely to cause deaths in older and younger populations, and there is no effective way to stop a heatwave from coming.
One thing that I found surprising was the amount of implementation that renewable energy has already had. In Europe, almost all of the energy comes from windfarms or solar. However, in the US, over 50% of our energy is still reliant on natural gas. It was encouraging to hear that the University is working to become carbon neutral by 2050 by constructing a solar farm.
All of the solutions I heard related to renewable energy were related to decreasing or offsetting the amount of CO2 that was released. While being carbon neutral is advantageous, and certainly better than current practices, I would also like to see renewable ways that CO2 can be removed from the atmosphere.
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