What is plan B? What parts of it do you think would be successful/accepted in your culture? Which parts will not be so successful to achieve/accept? Give your reasons.
In answering this, you should be sure you explain what Plan B is (it has different parts). You should identify your cultural group. Please note, I did not say your national group. You need to define your cultural group. For example, if someone asked me to define my cultural group, I might say the people in my group are liberal, Christian, middle aged, white women. How you define your cultural group is YOUR business, but you do have to define it. Then explain which components of Plan B will be most accepted by this group and which will be the hardest for them to work towards. Give your reasons based on your own experience with that group. I'm NOT asking if YOU personally are going to find some part of Plan B easy/hard. I'm asking you to think about your group.
Remember to cite and to edit and spell check. Be sure to post a response to one other person's paper.
28 comments:
“The plan B goals – stabilizing climate, stabilizing population, eradicating poverty, and restoring the economy’s natural support systems – are mutually dependent (Brown, 2011, p183). So, I would like to say Plan B has four different parts.
The first part of Plan B is stabilizing climate. The main reasons of unstable climate are burning coal and carbon, and usage of oil. People do not recognize, and respect sustainable yield limit, and they overuse the natural resources (Brown, 2011, p185). So the first part of Plan B is to build an “honest market”. And “honest market” is an economy that prices everything at full cost where people need to pay both external and internal costs. Plan B also includes closing coal-fire power plants to save Greenland ice sheet, and replacing them with renewable energy (Brown, 2011, p193).
The second and third part of Plan B are eradicating poverty and stabilizing population, which include universal primary education, reproductive health and family planning, universal basic health care and the like (Brown, 2011, p199). They require additional expenditure of $75 billion per year (Brown, 2011, p198). And Brown argues that this $75 billion should come from cutting military expenses.
The forth part of Plan B is restoring the economy’s natural support systems. By recognizing and respecting sustainable yield limit, and building honest market, the demand for natural resources would be likely to decrease. It is because people need to pay extra money for the external cost. As a result, the decrease in demand of natural resources would help restoring natural support system.
I am majoring in finance and economics. So, I would say people in my group are concerning about the global economy, mentioning cost-effectiveness, and are money-oriented. So I think the honest market would be successful in my culture group. Honest market is an economy that prices everything at full cost. Let me use gasoline as an example. The cost for driving a car to work is $10 per day in our current market, but the cost for driving in honest market might be $20 per day. People in my group would think that the opportunity cost increased, then they will find out other alternative methods to go to work such as taking bus or subway. This would help reducing emission of CO2 and stabilizing the climate too.
On the other hand, I think the eradicating poverty will not be successful to be accepted in my culture group. People in my group are money-oriented. We use every penny prudently, and we have to pay tax. People in my group are not happy to see government pays $75 billion per year to feed and educate hungers because this $75 billion is coming from tax that we paid. If using that amount of money in military, we can at least benefit from safety by making the army stronger, but using that money to feed hungers have no benefit to my group of people, so I think people in my culture would not accept this plan.
Reference
Brown, L. R. (2011). World on the edge: How to prevent environmental and economic collapse. New York: W.W. Norton.
Plan B is about a method with different parts that we proceed to build a new economy. This new economy is “powered with carbon-free sources of energy – wind, solar, and geothermal – one that has a diversified transport system and that reuses and recycles everything” (Brown, 2011, p.183). According to Brown, “The Plan B goals – stabilizing climate, stabilizing population, eradicating poverty, and restoring the economy’s natural support system – are mutually dependent” (Brown, 2011, p.183). Each of them can be done or not, is relying on the others.
In other words, Plan B is about restructuring the economy. Full-cost pricing and recognizing and respecting sustainable yield limits of natural system are keys to restructure the economy. Full-cost pricing means putting a tax on things that are polluting and destroying the environment; for instance, government should put a tax on burning fossil fuels, so factories have to pay more and know their costs of harming the environment. This policy sounds as penalizing factories that pollutes the air and omits too many greenhouse gases. Besides, Brown termed this market with full-cost pricing as an honest market. “Full-cost pricing that will create an honest market is essential to building an economy that can sustain civilization and progress” (Brown, 2011, p.184). As a result, there will be a decreasing number of fossil fuel used. In order to recognize and respect sustainable yield limits of natural system, Brown gives an example of overpumping of aquifers. He uses the point of falling water table to show that people nowadays don’t recognize and respect the sustainable yield limits of natural systems. If people continue to neglect the sustainable yield limits of the water table, water-based food will be affected and it will reduce harvests (Brown, 2011, p.186).
The other thing that Plan B carries out is to redefine security. Brown claims that the military expense seems to be too high now. “Since there is no other heavily armed superpower, the United States is essentially in an arms race with itself” (Brown, 2011, p.188). During the war time in the early 19th century, weapons were important to a country to self-defense. But countries nowadays are basically competing on technologies and to develop good economies, so weapons might have limited use. And it’s the reason why Brown thinks expanding food production, filling the family planning gap, building wind farms and solar power plants and building schools and clinics can more effectively achieve the goal of redefining security (Brown, 2011, p.188).
People in my cultural group are educated capitalists. Educated capitalists are grown up with the concern of global warming. They heard of this environmental issue since they were small and along with the education system, they understand that the full-cost pricing policy could help to save the environment such as reducing air pollutants. So they will be happy to have cleaner air and water. Also, the full-cost pricing policy just increases cost of factories that burns fossil fuel or involves any kind of activities that harm the environment. There is no negative impact to capitalists too. However, capitalists may not happy with the thought of recognizing and respecting sustainable yield limits of natural systems. Capitalist always want to maximize profit. If there is still room for making profit, they will not stop doing that business. They prefer obtaining more profits instead of waiting for the next chances. So, they will not be willing to recognize and respect the sustainable yield limits of natural systems.
Reference
Brown, L. R. (2011). World on the edge:saving civilization. New York: W.W. Norton.
In response to Kingsley Wong’s comment, I agree that people who are money-oriented focus on what kind of returns they will get once they have contributed something. As what I mentioned in my response to the question, my cultural group is capitalists. They also have the goal to maximize profit and get higher return with what they have paid. However, as what Brown said in the book, I don’t think that our cultural groups will rely on the benefits that come from the army. Military expense is relatively high in the United States, and those are way too much for self-defense. So, people should not demand benefits from the military, because it seems like encouraging the government to spend more on that. You may say they want to obtain benefits from better living environment or improved technologies that the government offers, instead of the homeland security benefit, so they are not happy with their tax expenses will go to the pockets of poor people.
In response to Karman Poon’s comment, I think her opinions really make sense. People in her cultural group are educated capitalists, so they would have some knowledge on the issue of global warming and its impacts. As a result, they are very happy to implement honest market because this can help reducing the emission of greenhouse gas. On the other hand, I like her opinion about recognizing and respecting sustainable yield. Before looking at her post, I think educated capitalists know the impact on overusing the natural resources, so they would like to recognizing and respecting sustainable yield. But her post reminds me that capitalists want to maximize profits. Although her opinion is different from mine, I still agree with her opinion.
A book by Brown (2011) indicates that Plan B is the given title of a four part plan with the sole mission of changing the course of the economy of western industrial societies in order to build an economy which better synchronizes itself with the Earth and its natural support systems. The four parts consist of stabilizing the climate, stabilizing the population, extirpating poverty, and restoring the economy’s natural support systems (Brown, 2011, p. 183). Each part is considered to be vital and mutually dependent of each other for the success of Plan B. My cultural group consists of young adults who are slightly more prone to be conservative, twenty to twenty-five years of age, educated, Caucasian male and female students. The components that would be most accepted by this group are stabilizing the population and stabilizing the climate because increase in population due to the failure of other countries creates unwanted competition for jobs, area, and resources, while making a movement to change our lifestyles in recycling and promoting going green in daily life (in numbers) can have a great impact for our future environment. However, accepting the eradication poverty and restoring natural support systems may be more difficult. At the moment, many students pay enough as it is for fuel sources at subsidized prices, and I feel that most within my cultural group would be displeased for further raised taxes on gas and oil regardless of the fact taxes would lower in other area of goods. Students in this era are more on the move traveling in automotives and with increased prices it takes a toll on what little money they make. As for restoring natural support systems, we as a group are not against a more efficient energy source with the potential to aid our environment. However, the change in taxes would hinder our support for a change in our economy. Also, being conservatives, opinions tend to be swayed towards the opposition of more government spending. Brown (2011) said that worldwide $200 billion of funding would be needed for solving poverty and restoring damages to the natural environment, not to mention we would be investing a lot of money on energy sources that are not as familiar as fossil fuels, untapped, and in the opinion of those in disagreement (p. 200).
Reference
Brown, L. R. (2011). World on the edge: How to prevent environmental and economic collapse. New York: W.W. Norton.
In response to Poon’s comment, I totally agree her opinion that government should put a tax on burning fossil fuels, so factories have to pay more and know their costs of harming the environment. I also think this is a good point. If government should put a tax on burning fossil fuels, the factories would think about using green energies instead. Also, her cultural group is educated capitalist. She mentioned that capitalists may not happy with the thought of recognizing and respecting sustainable yield limits of natural systems. This is also a good point because capitalist prefer to maximize their profits. My cultural group consists of young adults who are slightly more prone to be conservative, twenty to twenty-five years of age, educated, Caucasian male and female students. The components that would be most accepted by this group are stabilizing the population and stabilizing the climate because increase in population due to the failure of other countries creates unwanted competition for jobs, etc. Accepting the eradication poverty and restoring natural support systems may be more difficult because many students pay enough as it is for fuel sources at subsidized prices. I am impressed after reading Poon’s comment. However, I think if you give more reasons why your cultural group will be the most accepted and the hardest of components of Plan B, your paper would be more specific and stronger.
Plan B is a given title of a four parts plan to help us build a new economy and to save civilization. It is one “powered with carbon-free sources of energy” and has a “diversified transport system and that reuses and recycles everything” (Brown, 2011, p.183). “Stabilizing climate, restoring the earth’s natural support system, stabilizing population and eradicating poverty” are four components and the main goal of Plan B (Brown, 2011, p. 96). Each part is considered to be important and indispensable for the success of Plan B.
My culture group is defined as young educated adults, twenty to twenty-six years of age students who are creative and have respect for liberalism. The people in my cultural group are grown up with the concern of global warming, because we heard and learned the concern of global warming issue in the education system. Therefore, the four components that would be most successful to accept by our cultural group are stabilizing climate and population. For instance, my cultural group people in China are almost the single child in their family. Due to the low income in wages, high consumption in products and high housing prices in the market, many Chinese young adults indicate that one child per family is a big pressure and impetus for them to work harder. Furthermore, my cultural group are stabilizing climate because we are cutting emissions in the energy sector, principally in fossil fuels. Gasoline is a good example. If the price of gasoline increases rapidly, I think many young adults will take bus or subway that instead of drive their car to go to work or school. This would help reducing carbon emissions and stabilizing climate. However, restoring the natural support systems and eradicating poverty are more difficult accepted by my cultural group. The restoring natural support systems include “reforestation, soil conservation, fishery restoration and aquifer stabilization” (Brown, 2011, p. 96). These seem like are not relate directly to my cultural group’s life and job. Hence, people would not pay attention to these parts. Restoring the earth’s natural systems will help us eradicate poverty (Brown, 2011, p. 96). As a result, accepting the restoring natural systems is difficult for my cultural group, as well as the eradicating poverty.
Brown, L. R. (2011). World on the edge: How to prevent environmental and economic collapse. New York: W.W. Norton.
In response to Poon’s comment, I agree with you to build a full-cost pricing and recognizing market. Government should increase the tax on things that are polluting and destroying our environment. Helping industries to know destroy the environment to improve the product efficiency is not a good way to do. This policy may reduce the carbon emissions by using fossil fuels. Moreover, I do not agree with your point about educated capitalists will happy to stabilize climate. You said always want to maximize their profit. If there is still have room for making profit, they will not stop doing business. Using fossil fuels in energy sector is because of fossil fuels are low cost for producer. Hence, due to your logic, educated capitalists will not stabilize climate because they will lose many profit by replacing fossil fuels.
Shoji Hama
There are some factors driving the world toward the edge. In order to get rid of these factors, Brown suggested us a Plan B. This plan is basically made to save civilization from “the destruction of the economy’s natural supports and disruption of the climate system” by (Brown, 2011, p16). Plan B is consisted of four components; carbon dioxide emissions, population stabilization, poverty eradication and restoration of the earth’s natural support system (Brown, 2011, p96).
I am an international student from Japan at a four year university. However, I believe there is one of the components of Plan B will be carbon dioxide emissions. The reason is this component requires the most political influence, which can be changed done by becoming politically active group. It is simply because of the benefit of living in the democratic society. Everyone has chance to change politics.
On the other hands, there is one component that will be hardest thing to work toward. That is poverty eradication. As is mentioned by Brown, eradicating people will end up stabilizing population as a result but it is “depend on our success in meeting [other] Plan B goals” (Brown, 2011, p97). Stabilizing population will be the last thing that we will be dealing with. We cannot work on this component first because it requires steps. If we skip steps, we will not have better outcome. Same thing can be said about learning a language. We cannot read book without knowing any word and grammars. We need to learn step by step.
Reference
Brown, L. R. (2011). World on the edge: How to prevent environmental and economic collapse. New York: W.W. Norton.
Shoji Hama
In response to Kingsley Wong’s comment, I slightly agree with you for the first part. However, you are not supporting your opinion about the hardest component of the Plan B for your group. I am guessing you are in money-oriented group, so you do not have any interest in supporting poor people? I think book says that eradicating poverty will help to stabilized population and this will again help more poor people break out of poverty(2011,p96-97). In my opinion, if you do not want to eradicate poor people, there is no way you can actually stabilize population. If you cannot do so, there will not be the success of the Plan B.
Plan b is the plan of restructuring the global economy and society with four goals which are “stabilizing climate, stabilizing population, eradicating poverty, and restoring the economy’s natural support systems–are dependent”(p.183). According to Brown (p.183), we need a new economy with no carbon emission and replace the fossil-fuel-based energy by renewable energy-wind, solar, and geothermal. Carbon emission is one of the issues on plan b. “Carbon emissions could be cut in scores of countries by simply eliminating fossil fuel subsidies” (186)
United States did not focus a lot on environmental, poverty and population growth. As this reason (200), so plan b should be implement. According to Brown (187), development renewable energy will help stabilize the earth’s climate. He points out that high-speed intercity rail construction is one of ways to do with stabilizing climate. High-speed intercity rail can increase mobility, reduce travel costs, and lower carbon emissions. On the other hand, War is one of the ways to reduce population in a short period. However, there is no other heavily armed superpower competitive with United States, also the weapons will be limited to use. “Eradicating poverty helps stabilize population”(200), but how do we eradicating poverty. According to Brown (200), $1522 billion have been spending on global military expenditures in 2009. If they can spend $200 billion of additional funding per year, we can solve hunger, illiteracy, disease, and poverty problem.
People in my cultural group are young, educated, economic major. I think stabilizing climate- reduce carbon emissions is the one that we will be most accepted. Some of our cultural may not have their own car. We should choose bus as our transport. As we do not have car and we do not drive, so we are very successful on reduce the emissions of carbon. On the other hand, eradicating poverty is hard to accept by my cultural group. As we are economic major, we will always think how to maximum our profit. For a simple economic concept, we do not sell goods below the market price. So, I think no one can get benefit from our culture group.
Reference
Brown, L. R. (2011). World on the edge: How to prevent environmental and economic collapse. New York: W.W. Norton.
In response to Kingsley Wong’s comment, I agree with you said that people in your group are money-oriented. However, my culture has a similar thought that about the eradicating poverty. My culture group always thinks about the economic benefit, how we can maximize the profit. As you said that government spend $75 billion per year to feed and educate hungers. Why do we pay taxes feeding them? They have ability to work, but they do not want to work. I think government so do some more research. The money should be give to someone who really need or, use the money for developing our country, such as wind farms.
The four goals of Plan B are to move human life onto a sustainable progress by stabilizing climate, stabilizing population, eradicating poverty, and restoring the economy’s natural support systems (Brown, p.184). All four goals are interdependent to each other’s success.
First part of Plan B is climate change. Burning fossil fuels and oil to produce electricity increases carbon emission which leads to temperature rises and may cause unpredictable natural disasters. Secondly, universal primary education, reproductive health and family planning, and universal basic health care are doable solution to stabilize population in order to achieve social goal in Plan B (Brown, p.199). As the world population is under control, natural resources such as aquifers will not be over pumped, and then we can begin to create a rational economy. Thirdly, to have a poverty eradication effect, earth restoration effect also need to be accompanied (Brown, p.198). After we get most of the trend headed in the right direction such as lower oil dependence can reduce carbon emission and air pollution, eradicating poverty helps stabilize population, reforestation reduce carbon in the earth, increase aquifer recharge, and reduces soil erosion, then they can reinforce each other (Brown, p.200).
People in my cultural group are young educated adult majoring in finance. Studying in Finance is about how to maximize profit, time management, and risk management. I think tax shifting would be successful in my cultural group. Putting a tax on carbon to reflect the full cost of burning fossil fuels and offsetting it with a reduction in the tax on income are not appropriations; eventually, this can reduce risk of global warming and prevent jeopardizing long term fiscal solvency (Brown, p.184). Educated financiers understand that solving climate change problem now will cost less and take less time than in the future.
However, financers may not be happy with the additional $75 billion expenditure per year to eradicate poverty and stabilize population because they always want to maximize profit. Financiers may think $75 billion can be invested in a more profitable way with a better rate of return.
Reference
Brown, L. R. (2011). World on the edge: How to prevent environmental and economic collapse. New York: W.W. Norton.
In response to Kingsley Wong’s comment, since we have a similar cultural group, I agree that honest market would be successful in your cultural group. The real costs for the price of gasoline need to include many indirect costs to society such as oil industry tax breaks, oil spills, treatment of auto exhaust-related respiratory illnesses etc (Brown, p.184). Your cultural group is able to understand that someone will bear the indirect costs to society someday if we don’t solve the problem now, if not us, our children. And the choice will have to be made by our generation either stay the same to destroy its natural support systems, or change our moving direction to a path of sustained progress.
PART A:
Basically, plan B is a plan that includes variety of environmental problem solutions; it is created for the society to refer to since many of us do not know what is happening to our environment now. The purpose of plan B is to help change the climate and global warming issues. There are mainly five parts in the plan B: building advanced technologies and energy efficient global economy to reduce the energy use; utilize some new energies (wind, solar and geothermal energy) to save the use of fuels and oils; restoring economy’s natural support systems by reforesting the earth, protecting topsoil, stabilizing water tables, etc.; reduce poverty, stabilizing population and rescuing failing states by initiating education, health and family planning to people; and improve our food security and supply by reducing some excess waste in grains and change the practices to raise productivity (Brown, 2011, pp.99,116,136,151,165).
If I were to define my cultural group, I would say the people in my group are liberal, young, have college level education with not too much Asian cultural behavior. The reason I defined my cultural group as a “not too much Asian cultural behavior” is because the city (Hong Kong) I raised in used to have a British colonial era, even after British turned back our land to China, we are still running the “one country, two systems’’. Therefore, I defined my cultural group as a group that is with modern urban who willing and easy to adopt or try new things.
PART B:
In general, I did not see many huge problems with approaching plan B’s solutions to my culture, especially when we are living in a civilized society. However, there are still some parts that I do not think my cultural can reach it or will not be so successful to achieve. Talking about the most successful part that I think plan B can approach to my cultural, it would be building energy efficient economy and utilizing new energies. In the past few years, the society has been focusing on being green. I could see the behavior of using new energies have been increasing a lot in my country, from using solar energy in little things such as calculators to the electronic supply. They have been used in many electronic devices too; it is easy to approach in everywhere now. Therefore, accepting new energies that could save us more not only in cost but environment problems would definitely succeed in my cultural.
On the other hand, some parts of the plan seemed to be unreachable for my cultural group to work towards. For example, restoring the natural support system and improve our food supply, it is hard for my cultural group to work toward this plan because the area we live is very small; we basically import everything from others, we do not have the technologies or places to produce crops and agricultural products because our culture are more based on businesses and economics. Since we are more based on businesses and economies, it becomes harder for us to reduce the use of water, papers or any natural resources without producing any of them oneself. Although there aren’t many huge changes we can do or help in restoring the natural support system and food supply, I do think we would like to reduce some waste on water and papers; it just need time for people to accept it because it is hard to suddenly approach a plan that would affect their cultural.
Last but not least, the hardest thing in this plan to achieve in my cultural group is reducing poverty and stabilizing populations. Hong Kong has been an international business city with lots of investment opportunities, forces many people aimed on this and have been trying to immigrate to Hong Kong especially people from China. With more and more wealthy people and elites, competitions became more intense in this tiny place with more than six million people, the gap between the rich and the poor therefore has been widening. In this situation, rich people are getting richer and poor people are getting even poorer, furthermore, their next generations have become the victims of poverty. Most of them would have less opportunity to develop their merit and have higher education. It becomes a tough plan to implement to our culture since then. As I know, the government has been trying to control the growth of immigrants but that does not helped much at all. Therefore, overall I would say to reducing poverty and stabilizing populations will be the hardest thing for my cultural group to work towards.
Reference:
Brown, L. R. (2011). World on the edge: How to prevent environmental and economic collapse. New York: W.W. Norton.
In response to Karman Poon’s post, I agreed that overall capitalists are not happy or likely to cooperate with respecting sustainable yield limits of natural systems because they just want to maximize profit. I think capitalists need to fulfill some of their social responsibilities sometimes too, based on the amount of pollution and wastes their businesses brought to our environment are more comparing to us. It is very hard to have capitalists to do businesses with conscience and without harmfulness, all people can do is to rely on their government’s policies and regulations nowadays. It is very important to have a responsible government after all to be able to stay away from failing states.
According to Lester R. Brown, the author of World on the Edge, Plan B is a plan named by Earth Policy Institute that describes what human beings can do to save civilization (2011). The ultimate goal of Plan B of feeding eight billion people is a task which would depend on successful implementations of four Plan B goals. “Plan B has four components: stabilizing climate, restoring the earth’s natural support systems, stabilizing population, and eradicating poverty” (Brown, 2011, P. 96).
Since my friends are mostly around the age of 22 with all sorts of education backgrounds. I would describe my cultural group more on the diverse side. Although my major is economics, I have the tendency to be delighted by financial models and financial markets, so I would definitely consider myself as a financial economist.
The hardest to accept component of Plan B for my cultural group would probably be stabilizing climate. The reason for this is a big part of stabilizing climate if to reduce carbon emission, which in turns would reduce the convenience my cultural group is having now. For example, most of my friends do not like the idea of having to take public transportations. In addition, some of them do not even realize their laziness and ignorance of not recycling and reusing would cause more garbage in the landfills and consequently increasing CO2 emission.
Nevertheless, stabilizing climate should also be the easiest for my cultural group to accept. The reason for this is because there are also a lot of CO2 emissions not coming from cars, but produced by industrial plants and caused by deforestation. As technology improves and reduces the current usage of fossil fuels, the goal of reducing CO2 emissions can be much easier to attain. With more and more fuel-efficient cars on the road, the harm my cultural group can cause is lessen. For that matter, if my cultural group is educated more about the consequence, start to reuse and recycle, and become less ignorant about the environment future, the issue of excessive CO2 should be solved in the future.
Brown, L. R. (2011). World on the edge: How to prevent environmental and economic collapse. New York, NY: W W Norton & Co Inc.
I think it is interesting that you think carbon dioxide emissions would be an easier fix because of the fact it requires more political power. With too many people with different incentives and values, I think it can be quite difficult for everyone to agree upon certain resolutions simply because the effects of resolutions have on their benefits can be really discouraging to changes.
However, I really like you giving the example of taking a task bit by bit as learning a language. The example is not obscure to me as I have taken this process a long way. Whenever I want to jump ahead, I would now always remind myself to maybe taking a step back and not get lost by going too fast. It is important to always get back to the basics and fundamentals.
Saleh post 1.
Brown (2011) presents at the end of his text an argument for achieving a stable climate and population, ending poverty, and rebuilding the natural components, such as resources, that support economies around the globe (183). These focuses are hoped to be achieved after implementing his Plan B. In deconstructing what Brown’s (2011) plan B, the parts consists of re-assessing the economy and giving goods and services a true pricing, which involves adding costs for their affect on the environment or for the amount of natural resources they consume, redefining security so that eco-risks and food production are points of emphasis, and restructuring economies to be reliant on eco-friendly energy sources instead of non-renewable energy sources that harm local ecosystems (pp.183-192).
While each of the proposed components of Brown’s (2011) Plan B is feasible and should be done in an attempt to reverse the man-created global catastrophes that are affecting every corner of the globe, different cultures are likely to embrace certain steps of Plan B easier than others. In evaluating my culture group, I found myself struggling to identify with a group because in my culture, I am somewhat of an outsider. As a young, educated Saudi Muslim, I belong to a cultural group of many. However, most of my peers are extremely conservative and tend to oppose progressive approaches to important issues, which usually works to leave me feeling alienated whenever I share my honest thoughts and opinions in discussions with others who are Arab, Muslim, and from the same age group.
Saleh post 2
If I subtract the difference in ideologies, I feel that I can represent this group and comment on what steps would be easier for them to accept and what steps would be rather difficult for them to support. In my opinion, my cultural group seems to realize that the oil industry has its limits and that other energy solutions need to be explored and eventually adopted, which will result in the restructuring of Saudi Arabia’s energy economy. Already, there has been efforts to explore solar technology and several important Saudis government officials have commented on solar energy being an important component of Saudi Arabia’s energy future (Watkins, 2011, p.22). Therefore, my cultural group would probably have the easiest transition towards supporting an economy that was purely dependent on renewable energy, which would likely be solar energy. At the same time, I think there would be some uproar over reevaluating costs of goods of services based on their true costs. The primary reason that I believe this is because most of the food that is available in Saudi Arabia has been imported from food producing regions of the world. Because these regions have not fixed environmental costs into actual costs, not only would adjusting for true cost affect Saudi’s ability to purchase food, but the costs involved in transporting it to Saudi Arabia would add another significant increase. Of course, I strongly argue that Saudis can achieve food independence within our borders, but doing so means that we need to think outside of the agricultural box. Because a cost effective food solution means completely rethinking how we obtain food, I can see this necessary step meeting the most opposition from my cultural group. This reaction is supported with interactions that I have had recently with Saudis from my same cultural group, who realized that our country faces a great food crisis, but has no answer for how to fix it. Perhaps a true cost being applied to food grown elsewhere would be an important step into encouraging innovative thinking needed to support vertical farms.
Brown, L. R. (2011). World on the edge: How to prevent environmental and economic collapse. New York: W.W. Norton.
Watkins, E. (2011). The Saudis go solar. Oil & Gas Journal, p.22. Retrieved July 16, 2011 from LexisNexis Academic
In response to Howard's post, I tend to agree that a temporary feeling of convenience makes it difficult to change individual’s behaviors and therefore, a true economic cost may help them to see that their habits are not most convenient/cost effective. It’s hard to get a sense of what cultural group you belong to, because a young economist group is not very specific. However, I was wondering if you think that they might most oppose implementing a true economic cost, since the economist academic background students I know seem to really be focused on cost effectiveness and efficiency. Having to reevaluate the price of everything might turn their world upside down, as their education has instilled in them a fundamental sense of old economics, which would need to be completely revolutionized. Just a thought. Also, I was wondering what solution do you think they are most likely to accept? I enjoyed reading your post!
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