Letter to Future Student

Dear Future Student,

    I’m writing you this letter in the year 2016, we live in a very modern world that is reliant on technology, but not as modern and technology driven as the world you are going to be living in. We are studying the climate and really narrowing down our studies into individual sections. My section was the history, so I researched things like major climate crisis in America, or the beginning of the push for a cleaner and healthier environment. My research was very interesting to do, and pretty straight forward, I find the history of this topic very interesting because it is currently such a discussed topic among politicians and just the everyday person. Before my research I knew a little about the history of this topic, but now that I have had some time to research this, I feel educated enough to be able to brief people on this topic.

    In the first half of the 20th century, there was really no discussion about the topic of how we need to be aware of climate change and what we can do to be an environmentally cleaner society. Industrial areas with factories, machinery, and vehicles were all polluting our earth and beginning to impact the environment in a bad way. Rachel Carson, an American marine biologist and conservationist, published a book titled Silent Spring (1) in 1962. This book is what ignited the environmental awareness movement. She discussed things such as pesticides that were being used on our crops that were harming the consumers. In her book, she used data that had already been released, but but it all together in a way that the public had never seen before. She drew conclusions that nobody had ever thought of, and presented ideas to the public that changed their opinions and views. She was not only an author, but an active participant in the movement. In 1963 she testified before a senate subcommittee on how the pesticides that were being used were not safe. Without Rachel Carson’s drive to educate the public on this topic, the society that I live in could potentially be an environmentally different place.

    Once I studied Rachel Carson, and heard about her view on pesticides, I decided to do some research myself. I found a lot of information, but the most interesting thing that I came across was an experiment (2) that took place in San Joaquin Valley, California. A group of mothers agreed to participate in a controlled case study where they were all exposed to the same element that involved a certain pesticide. This took place from 1997-2006, and 569 of the mothers had children with heart defect cases, and 785 had malformed cases. After actually seeing the damage that pesticides could do, I realized why Rachel Carson pushed so hard to educate society about this issue.

    The most common type of pollution to our environment that I came across was air pollution. I found this very interesting to read about because a company named TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) is a company that is in the area that I live in, and was the largest electricity producer in the US after WWI. One of the ways that this company produces energy is with coal fired plants.(3) Electricity producers are coals largest customers, but many of the coal fired electricity plants, are being shut down. The plants that have been closed over the year are 5% of the total coal generating capacity in the US. The area that TVA is in, was an depression era entity that was brought to life by TVA bringing coal generated electricity to this area. TVA began to build many coal fired plants after WWI, and in the 50s started to build even more. TVA first began to stop using coal in 2011 when the federal government said the plants were too environmentally dirty. By 2018 TVA has to shut down 18 of its 59 coal fired plants. TVA now has started to use more natural gas, which is much cleaner for our environment.

One of the reasons that TVA has started having some trouble with their coal fired energy plants, is because of the “Global Warming Pollution Act.” (4) This act was first introduced to senate in the beginning of 2007. The act sets provisions concerning global warming pollution emissions. It says that electricity generating units have to meet an emission standard. The most interesting thing that I found in this act was that it said all models of cars made after 2016, have to meet emission standards. I think that this act was very necessary because it helps make sure that the large companies are keeping their energy producing units as clean and safe as they can be, which is very necessary.

The society that I live in is aware about our changing environment, but doesn’t do as much as I think we can do to keep our world a clean place, but the few people that take action and actually do something about it make a big difference. By the way our country is headed when it comes to this topic, I think that by the time you’re reading this letter, y’all will have much stricter regulations and rules limiting y’all from what you can and cannot do when it involves this topic. I think the reason that you will live in a society like that, is because of the way we act right now, but I’m not sure if enough people are considering the future for us to be able to do anything to make a change. 

1.  NY Times Magazine, article named "How Silent Spring Ignited the Environmental Movement" by Eliza Griswold, published September 21, 2012.
2. Beyond Pesticides, a "pesticide-induced" disease database," I looked in the birth defects section.
3. Slate.com was a news site that wrote an article on the TVA coal plant issue, article published by Daniel Gross on October 2, 2015.
4.  Congress.gov is a government website that talks about the senate issues and acts that are introduced.