Can one person make a difference?

The common arguement is that can 1 person make a difference?? The answer is simple ...no. The fact of the matter is that as this word becomes more environmetally friendly in the west and less so in the east 1 person in the west will never make a difference. However if many people think to tryand make a difference even they think that they are only 1 person if many people do this "1person" stratergy then it could ultimatley make a difference. Making a difference can come in may different forms and can be as simple as not taking a carrier bag from the campus express an carrying the loaf of bread, pint of milk and a packet of crisps back to your flat rather then taking a bag when really it is not worth it as it is only 5 minutes away.

It is not things of this nature it is the little things that use up more electricty then normal for example doyou really need your music on the loudness that it is on this uses more power to power the speakers and if it is played at a late enough hour then it could keep people from sleeping and forcing them to watch a movie or play on their compter thus using more electricty. It is like the butterfly effect as one person using much energy by playing their music loud make evryone in close proximity turn there tv sets, laptops or stereo up just to hear what they want t here, all of this uses up electricity. The thing is in university that people dont feel the full force of this becasue you pay the rent and that come inclusive with the electricity however we had to pay the something towards the electricity bill i now the I personally make saw that i switched my laptop off every night before i went to bed and probably when i was out aswell to save money ... and the environment.

U.N Debate

The U.N. style debate was very informative for all the students that were involved in it and i dont think any of the countries/groups have been dissapointed by the task that they were set or the country that they were assigned. So a pat on the back for the lecturer's on that front. I learned more about most countries that i didnt know before esspecially that Denmark was a huge powerhouse in the form of sustainable development. As for my country i realised what a creul old world it is out there with the aid that countries give poorer countries such as malawi is not "free" aid however it has to be paid ack at a extortionate rate of interest meaning that they need another loan from another country to pay off the interest that they have borrowed from a bigger nation in terms of aid. I also learnt that the U.S.A have one of the worst sustainable development policy and the fact that they want to spen more on the military when there is 60 million people every year that go without health care because of the non socialised medicine that the USA of implamented.

The sustianable development development stragies in my country was very easy to find becasue it was mostly on the UN and CIA websites however i know that some people did not find this as easy as i did and some of the webpages on the CIA website were in the language that the country spoke meaning that it rendered these websites useless. I feel there was a huge variety in the decisions of all nations and what they decided to spend the money on. The decisions came with economic wealth due to the fact that economically well ff countries dont need the sustainable devolpment policies that poorer countries need

Recyling

Recycling is a brand new concept to most people and if you are used to putting out just black bin liners full of all your waste for the past 'x' amount of years then 3 recycling bins can be a very confusing time for families. People have do have the best of intentions for the environment and no body would go out of their way to harm the planet or the people living on it, however some people can not be get used to the new system of recycling everything that you have because it takes effort and if it is a choice between just dumping things in the general household waste or thinking about it and put. I myself have only just got used to the concept of recycling everything i throw away due to the fact that as i only live in a very rural part of England the system has only just been introduced and for myself the concept is very new to me. This is just one of the reason why recycling numbers can fluctuate month in month out. However over a period of ten or twenty years there will still be fluctuations however the general trend will be a downward curve. This is for the sole reason that it will become second nature to most people meaning that they wont need to think whether an item is recyclable or not because they will just know via habit.

Recycling rates have can become very low very quick if councils don't influence people and encourage them to be "greener". Therefore cash incentives could be used to encourage people to recycle and make them think about in terms of how themselves may benefit. Also stronger punishments must be enforced for people who blatantly disregard for the "3 bins system" and education for offenders which will ensure them not to re-offend.

Bad News Sells Papers

The statement that bad news sells papers is more true then ever now that we live in an age when stories are boring unless they have an "evil" or horrific twist to them. In the world that everything must have a name that sticks in peoples mind so that can refer to it in everyday speak such as the "credit crunch" instead of mass global recession because lets face it this does not inflict fear in to the hearts of the citizens that the credit crunch does and this means that they do it to gain more profit by people buying papers.

The news papers can also manipulate the data that reaches them to fit in to what ever story they want and it doesn't matter the topic in which it is involved in. This can be used as propaganda in which the editor of the newspaper can tell his/her audience what ever he wants them to hear. Newspapers can also be used to gain power for the people that they want in power even in the "democracy". The picture below was the front page of The Sun newspaper the day before the general election in 1997. This is basically capitalist propaganda and the reason behind this front page is because the owner of The Sun newspaper Rupert Murdoch puts a substantial amount of money in to the labour party

http://static.guim.co.uk/Guardian/media/gallery/2008/jan/25/wapping/SunBlair390-9186.jpg

Private Cars

As the price of petrol increases due to the diminishing natural resources there will become a point where by the consumer will have just had enough of paying extortionate amounts of money for everything under the sun to do with cars. The price of petrol on its own is going up as well as the tax on the petrol that is needed to run the car. Car tax is also on the raise where "gas guzzlers" are charged more for putting more money in to their cars in the form of petrol and therefore giving the state more in taxes on the petrol. Now they have pay more money to the government to allow them to go on the roads.

The increase in this will make the consumer lose confidence in the government and in society in a general. This year i passed my driving test and i was so pleased however it gave me a harsh reality check when insurance was over £1500 (per year) for my recently purchased car (only cost £1250) and the tax on it for one year was well over £100 as well. Not to mention the spiraling cost of petrol which when i was young was hovering around the 75p per litre mark now you will b lucky to get it under £1 a litre.

The alternative to using your own car everyday is of course public transport. As we all know the public transport in this country is shockingly bad in comparison to our European counter-parts and the trust in public transport has also been lost due to late buses and trains or ones that just don't turn up at all. The only solution i can see is to increase awareness in the amount of public transport that is out there and how it can be used effectively. Furthermore the standard of public transport has to improved.