Environment:Science & Policy

The wedges are a good idea in general, but they are not entirely realistic. In order to accomplish Pielke's climate change mitigation goals, each wedge would have to be accomplished. This is highly unrealistic, because it would be difficult to get every country to agree to and enforce these wedges. Many of these wedges, such as the wedges pertaining to CCS, would require a lot of scientific advancement that would be difficult to achieve. Additionally, some wedges like #14 are completely unrealistic: it is nearly impossible to stop all deforestation. While many of these wedges are unrealistic, our group identified a few that could possibly be accomplished and be beneficial for the planet. #3 (cutting electricity use by 25%) is possible to achieve and would save a lot of energy and money. We also liked #10 (displacing coal power with wind power) and #11 (displacing coal power with solar power). Certain countries and regions are already starting to use more wind and solar power. It w...

What wedges do you find so important? Why?

My carbon footprint as an individual is 24 tons per year, which is 50% worse than average. I was not surprised when I saw this result, mostly because of where I live and how often I travel. I come from a very rural area, which means that we have to drive everywhere. On average, it takes about 20-30 minutes to get anywhere, even just to run basic errands. In addition, I live 5 hours from school, which means I also frequently travel long distances on the highway. Because my car gets very average mileage, I spend much more time on average than the normal person, which means I also will have higher carbon emissions than the average person when it comes to travel.  In the last year, I have also spent a significant amount of time on airplanes, because when I spent a semester abroad I traveled almost every weekend. My carbon footprint in the last year is definitely much higher than usual for this reason. One section that surprised me was that I am significantly better than average in t...

. My family’s carbon footprint is 50 tons per year. While this is lower than average, there are ways that we can reduce our emissions. My family commutes quite a bit to and from work each year. My mother used to commute from Lancaster to Hershey and back for her work. My father also drives to his workplace, which is closer, but he nonetheless produces emissions by driving his car. To reduce emissions, they could carpool with some of their coworkers, which actually live fairly close to us. My father and I also drive cars that do not get many miles for gallon. My father drives an SUV that gets 21 mpg, and I drive an older car that gets 22 mpg. We could invest in more fuel-efficient cars to reduce our emissions.  However, my family also does some things to keep our carbon footprint down. This summer, I interned in Philadelphia and had to commute from Lancaster to Philadelphia each day. Instead of driving, I took the train to my internship and back five days a week. Because I worked...