Speech Tommy Gardner

I’m going to come right out and say it. To be as blunt as possible, I suck at writing, and public speaking.

I’m going to be talking about the environment and what we are doing to it for you all today. The same topic as my brother before me. Hmm… Too much like Star Wars? Oh well. Anyway…

Look outside. It doesn’t look like there is any obvious pollution out there. But in other parts of the world there is a rather large difference. But in China, yes we care about china, there is a lot of pollution. So much pollution that most people wear surgical masks to avoid breathing it in. And with those people, there are those who have resigned themselves to the fact that the pollution can’t be fixed, and they no longer bother wearing the masks.

This is a problem for the world. The world is at a precipice. A tipping point so to speak. We can fix it…

MAYBE…

OK. Let’s get down to business. Our first example of pollution (don’t hate me) is coal power. I’m not completely against coal power. While yes I realize that coal power is a great source of power and income for our great state, nobody can argue that it doesn’t produce smoke and pollution. Kentucky ranks fifth in the United States for amount of coal power, and only dropped 1% on the number of GW(gigawatt) hours between 2005 and 2011. Why is that drop important? Because a lot of other states dropped 5-20%. There were some outliers. Nevada for example dropped its coal power output by 71%. Maine dropped by 93%. Maine didn’t put out much coal power to begin with though.

Now that I have talked some about pollution, let’s talk about a result. Global warming. We hear about it all the time. People saying that soon coastal areas of the planet will be underwater. This idea has a point, but is somewhat of an exaggeration. In our lifetimes’ it is likely that we will see/experience a rise in the water levels of the planet’s oceans. But judging from what we can see of our generation, we will find a short term solution, then leave it for our offspring to deal with.

Even though the results of global warming are showing all over the world, there are still those who deny its existence. Oklahoma senator Jim Inhofe brought a snowball into congress in an attempt to prove that there is no global climate change. Little side note here, Senator Inhofe brought the snowball into congress on February 26th of this year. On that day the lowest temperature was 21 degrees. He called it “Very cold out. Very unseasonable.” Anybody else not see his logic? February is the tail end of winter. During the week of the 22^nd to the 28^th the low temperatures never got above 25 degrees. Sounds like the kind of temperatures one would expect from that time of year. Hmm… Looking back, that wasn’t really a side note.

Ok. Now that I have talked about global warming, let’s go back to pollution for a short while. In Beijing an artist walked around the city with a vacuum cleaner, vacuuming the air for four hours every day for 100 days. After doing that he took all the particles that had been collected from vacuuming the air, and made a brick with it all. That should tell you something about what we are doing to the planet, but if not, that is a problem. In many of the countries around China, people are being affected by China’s pollution.

Some people are saying that global warming is causing changes in weather patterns, and that it is causing storms and natural disasters to be stronger and more frequent. An example of one of these claims is; because of global warming, temperatures have been rising causing droughts, which in certain areas lead to destructive wildfires. This makes sense, but droughts and high temperatures have always been causes of wildfires.

Another claim about global warming affecting the weather is; that global warming is causing ocean temperature increases all over the world, and this is making it easier for category 4 and 5 hurricanes to form. The number of category 4 and 5 hurricanes per year has grown a lot over the last 30 to 40 years. Recently, as in the last 15 years, we have had lots of strong storms, and hurricanes. For example; Hurricane Sandy, that hit a lot of the east coast of the USA, and did 75 billion dollars of damage, making it the 2^nd most costly hurricane in US history.

Let’s go back a little further. 2005. Hurricane Katrina. The most costly hurricane in terms of damage in United States history. 3^rd deadliest in US history. When Katrina happened there wasn’t as much concern about what global warming was doing to the environment and the weather. Though the increasing temperatures could have had an effect on strength of Katrina.

Now that I have talked about the environment and what we are doing to it, global warming, and pollution, I have a question. What do you all think we should do?