Environmental Problems-Air Pollution-C02 as Pollutant-Dillema of Policy Regulations..

Today the world is facing the issue of air pollution mostly due to different kinds of human activities concentrated in urban areas. The air is mainly polluted due to two reasons. The primary reason is the heavy emissions of gasses like S02, NO2, CO2, OZONE, in the atmosphere. These are generally emitted from power plants, industries and automobiles. Ozone in the ground seems to be problematic whereas up in the atmosphere is thought to be useful. And other is due to the presence of Particular Matter PM) mixture of solid particles and liquid droplets found in the air. These particular matters lead to pathological consequences to human health and bio- diversity. If we were  to create inventory of consequences due to air pollution and its effects, the list of things we do not know seems greater than the explanation of what we know. Although, there has been a lot progress has been made towards purifying the air in the U.S. still the situation is not so encouraging. Actually, measuring progress of air pollution is very costly, too. The Clean Air Act of 1970 is thought to be the most comprehensive federal law that regulates air emissions from stationary and mobile sources. This basically focuses to regulate emissions of hazardous air pollutants to protect public health and public welfare .Many believe that The 1970 Clean Air Act amendments were a braking point that paved the way for the widespread consensus that air pollution control must be a top priority of the federal government.

It is learned that for nearly 150 years, environmental concerns have been part of the U.S. political agenda. Particularly, in the recent decades, the issues of environment have also been affected by the political support, priorities of government leadership. With massive industrialization our mother earth is facing environmental impacts in a scaling rate. Along with it is the expansion of environmental politics to a wider spectrum of political action, ranging from local level to global controls over CO2 emissions. If am not wrong, Republicans believe that strict environmental standards hurt businesses and hence support reductions in environmental regulations while Democrats have a strong faith that health of families and the strength of the economy depend on proper governance of the environment through strict compliances of the regulations. They are geared to strengthen the laws that ensure people have clean air to breathe and safe water to drink. The Democrats reject the idea that a healthy economy and a healthy environment cannot co-exist, because they believe that a cleaner environment means a stronger economy. They advocate to combat air pollution and improve the economy, and believe that communities, environmental interests, and government should work together to protect the resources while ensuring the vitality of local economies. It is also learned that Republicans are skeptical about global warming whereas Democrats treat it as a serious issue.

If look into the issue of CO2, during the term of George W. Bush–era EPA  staff  found that CO2 is a pollutant, but then administrator of the EPA rejected the recommendation and delayed the process of regulating it, partly due to Bush Administration's lack of  genuine interest towards combating global climate change. The EPA’s finding could play a vital role in nationwide regulation of CO2 emissions by concluding that greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health just like the EPA is require to regulate pollutants like smog-causing sulfur dioxide.

We can see that regulating CO2 will be immensely more complicate the U.S emits CO2 from countless sources and the amount seems to be increasing heavily. For some years  EPA ramined silent about how it might actually regulate CO2 and environmentalists vision that it is too difficult to imagine that the agency would attempt to control every possible source of greenhouse gas emissions. CO2 is in many ways considered as good for plants and human life. Considering CO2 as pollutant may be controversial when we think water vapor produced in the greenhouse chamber. Here, another notion of regulating water vapor may come into play. Another recent issue in this context is the Obama administration’s proposed rule to control greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants the first step could go far toward closing out the era of old-fashioned coal-burning power generation. The proposed rule seems to be rooted in a 2007 directive from the Supreme Court instructing the E.P.A. to decide whether carbon dioxide was a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. It   is learned that in late 2009, the EPA declared that it was, and so had to be regulated.

Among the dilemmas on policy regulation and compliances whichever political parties come into government, the issues are to be dealt so that growing issues get tackled for the benefit of human beings and biodiversity on earth.  If every issues become politically attached , things might exacerbated and may lead to difficulty in resolving them in the future. So, political conesus to better world is should be the deal for the day. We need real actions not much of policy and voice that rarely get implemented. Let polices not create any controversy but tackle real issues of the day.

Bureaucracy and Science..and Policy in dilemma

Bureaucracy as I understand is a group of government and non-government officials that implement the rules, laws, ideas, and functions of their institution. They are usually expected to be loyal, first, to the state and the public good. In addition, bureaucracies follow rules and patterns of administration that separate them from the rest of society. However, sometimes these people do not understand the things the way they are and try to impose their strict concise that does not provide logical answer to the real life situations. Example out of many of such incidents is the recent summer home issue in Colorado. As per the new survey conducted, U.S. Forest Services is claiming that a summer house owned by a private owner for the last thirty years now belongs to them. The officials from the U.S. Forest Services are continuously forcing the owner to vacate this property as they argue that not a single person can have their private property on their land. The lady owner who is Hispanic by race has a strong and logical argument that she had earned her living throughout along with her kids in this home. She strongly claims that the property belonged to county at the time when she bought and she cannot simply vacate her home based on claims made by the U.S. Here the interesting issue is the role played by technology that defined the boundaries differently in course of time. The other interesting point is the inability of the officials in understanding the real life situations of public whom they aim to serve. It totally becomes a nuisance when bureaucrats do not look into a pragmatic solution to a problem. From this activity we can simply assume that lot of politics embedded here can be reflected as theatre. Everywhere we can find controversies as we interpret our ideas differently in course of time.

In another discussion part of the lecture on the of theory of evolution, as proposed by Lamarck, it can be understood as   “purpose” and “process.”  Here the “purpose” is not clear may be it was God’s will and intervention and the “process” reflected science and reason.  As I understand Lamarck’s theory stated that organisms evolve over time due to the environmental factors that act upon that organism. For example, a giraffe’s neck grows longer over time because of the giraffe’s desire for treetop leaves; however, the giraffe’s elongated neck may not be the result of purpose. Instead, I understood that the giraffe’s evolving neck can be the result of environmental situation based on scientific reasoning. While purpose was not inherent in the organisms desires for high leaves and a longer neck, purpose made its way into Lamarck’s theory in that God had created these rules so that organisms could evolve in a certain way.  In his theory, I understand that extinction was not a natural process. The process of evolution was in the form of simple to complex and imperfect to perfect.  Here, the simple reflected the imperfection that does not involve organism with environment and complex reflected perfection in a relative sense that strongly focused the relationship of organism and environment.  The concept of adaptation is inherited here as an acquired characteristics of organism meaning that more complex creatures get adopted to more complex environment. Therefore, more diverse ecosystem is needed.

 If we look into theory of evolution by Darwin, the natural selection and the concept of the survival of the fittest, if we compare and contrast with Lamarck, we see that Lamarck’s much focused on acquired characteristics. He support the transformation of a species through environmental factors, which Darwin’s theory largely does not.  Darwin focuses much on heredity characteristics. Darwin devoted his life to the study of plants and animals, so in his concept of  natural selection and  survival of the fittest,  he argued that  organism with superior physical and behavioral attributes are more likely to survive than their inferiors. These survivors would produce the most offspring, and the inherited attributes from the “superior species” would become the most common. He also concluded that species evolves to adapt to their environment, which is why similar species in different locations may have different traits. Darwin seems to have later read about Lamarck’s theory and used it when developing his own theory of evolution. The natural selection by Darwin was much popularized when Gregor Mendel an influential scientist confirmed many of Darwin’s ideas through his experiments with plants hereditary characteristics. However, we can argue that neither Lamarck nor Darwin talked about social world.  They missed out how society evolved and taking a distinct shape in course of time.

There is an interesting controversy what it means to evolution and adaptation. We can argue that evolution requires a genetic change and if there is no genetic change an organism, we can  simply term it as adaptation.