Alex Zhao
English 1A

MY stereotypical essay on le future goes like this…

Everyone remembers their high school days and who they hung out with. Be it the nerdy kids or the jocks, each individual finds that group they seem to best fit in with. Some may argue this is simply a trait of western society; if this were the case, however, similar stratification wouldn’t take place world wide. From Costa Rica to Russia, kids seem to fit into different groups. When we think of the nerdy kids what do we imagine? - Anti-social, glass wearing, dorky, pocket protector yielding brainiacs who love video games. Same classification goes for Jocks, with different parameters of course. Is this really what all nerds are like? No, all we see is a stereotype. Personally I don’t mind stereotypes. All they prove to be are judgmental classifications. Do I get stereotyped? All the time; are judgments made? You bet; should this happen? It doesn’t really matter. When reflecting on my own life, past, present, and future, this is one thing I wish to make sure; I will not allow myself to fulfill given stereotypes and would rather concentrate on doing what I enjoy and defying these judgments. Stereotypes can be really cool. Most people assume stereotypes are denigrating and a mislabel of things.

We see it everyday, everywhere. The media uses it as a way of portraying political views and we use it as a form of simplification. Why is it everywhere? Well, there are just so many types of stereotyping; it’s literally in every subject. That is to say, whether the topic of discussion is about Asians (smart in math, stupid in English, drives an import, skinny eyes, short, geeky), Blacks (thugs, gangsters, criminals, rappers, carries a lot of jewelry, talks slang), or Whites (spoiled, arrogant, useless, racists), there will be an element of stereotyping. If you compare the lyrics of music by Blacks (guns, gangs, chrome, Mercedes, hood, chrome rims, etc) and Whites (punk, skater, emo) you’ll see that they often stereotype themselves and it’s the listeners who are blind to that fact. Stereotypic thinking is just a natural way of making connections. Sometimes, for example, stereotyping can simplify the demands on the perceiver. Stereotypes make information processing easier by allowing the perceiver to rely on previously stored knowledge in place of incoming information. Another reason why stereotyping is beneficial is motivation. It can be promote a cause for the stereotyped group to change.

There really is no logical downside to stereotyping. Sure, some people, - myself included, defy many stereotypes, - I am terrible at math and can drive very well. Ignorant tree-huggers have just given it a bad name, citing it as unjust, immoral, and just plain rude. Kindergarten teachers tell us that stereotyping is a “big no-no.” Actually, come to think of it, EVERYONE likes to say “don’t judge me,” as if there were no greater sin in our world. In reality, it is a natural mechanism used by people to better understand the world. This is why when someone says “hockey player” you think of a white guy, or “rapper” and you think of a black guy, or “city” and you picture of a bunch of skyscrapers. Positive and negative alike, stereotypes always have been around and, for that matter, always will be. And this brings me onto my view of life…

Stereotypes surround us, affect us, and quite literally, define us. Expectations are then formed, not only to others, but for ourselves. We picture a teen and what are they doing? - Experimenting, enjoying themselves, truly living life. On the contrary, when we stereotypically view the elderly we often see the opposite. Stereotypical 45 year old? - Midlife crisis. What I am leading to is that I do not wish to meet these stereotypes. One of my favorite songs, “The Future Freaks Me Out” has a great tune but I find myself reflecting most on the title. When it comes down to it, the future really does freak me out. I don’t have a damn clue of what’s in store for me, whatsoever. Kids are often asked what they want to be when they grow up. Why? That is the most pointless question of all mankind because we humans always change. I have a general idea of what interests me, but that’s it. I don’t know what jobs I would be the most successful at. I don’t know what jobs would make me the richest. My only way of going about this situation then, is by living life one day at a time. I don’t want to wake up one day when I’m 45 years old and find myself in the midst of a 50 year routine, halfway to retirement, with a crappy job and no social life. Living life to the fullest is what I’m about and if something is an obstacle, I’ll just run it over.

I see myself in the near future as a healthy person with a great job. We’ve all got to live life to its fullest because after age sixty, everything suddenly becomes very slow. If you’re five years old, a year is a fifth of your whole life, which is why it seems to go on and on for an eternity. This is why kids always ask “are we there yet?” on the way to a restaurant. But if you’re 45, a year is a 45th of your life, which is why it passes like a winter’s day in the Arctic. When you’re 45, time passes by quite literally nine times faster than when you’re five. When you’re 75, time is hurtling by at such a rate that driving a car is like plunging through a tear in the space-time continuum. The gas pedal is a hyperspace button. This is why old people drive so slowly; because 20 mph to a senior citizen is like 200 mph to a teenager. When you sit behind them at an intersection wondering why on earth they won’t pull out, it’s because the approaching truck that, to you, is moving at 9 mph is coming at them like the Starship Enterprise on combat power. They say that the fun ends when you hit age 30. Not for me, it won’t…

I look at each new day as a chance to deem myself worthy of living here. Whether I made somebody laugh or someone miserable, at least I can say that I had an effect on someone. The future could be a good thing and it could be a bad thing for all of us. The future holds that special secret that nobody knows of. The future freaks me out.

Here is my English 1A final essay. I didn’t quite make the six pages, but here is the bullshit I whipped out in a few hours.

Alex Zhao

English 1A

Don’t blame the car! (How the automobile relates to global warming and climate change.)

In 1997, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) produced a treaty called the Kyoto Protocol. Sixty percent of countries globally have signed this act, which aims to reduce carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases. This treaty runs through 2012, with talks already in progress to extend, or significantly revise it with stricter standards. (”Projections of Future Climate Change, The Scientific Basis”) In 2006, the United Nations sponsored a report on the culprits of global warming. It outlines cows farting and burping, as well as cars being gross polluters. (”Global Warming Culprits: Cars and … Cows”) In the United States, we have a gas guzzler tax affixed to the price of new automobiles. A car that averages less than twenty-two miles per gallon is charged a $1000 fee, which increases dramatically for each mile per gallon less than that (up to $7700). (”Legislation Affecting the Renewable Energy Marketplace”) Governments all around the world are imposing new regulations, laws, and taxes, greatly exaggerating the impact that automobiles place on the environment. The car should not be held to blame, as global warming theorists have been doing.

Sure, automobiles do produce carbon emissions, but the many plans that the government has been implementing are significantly flawed. As the U.N. report stressed, cows were a huge contributing factor to harmful greenhouse gases and carbon dioxide. Who would have guessed that in one flatulent, a cow would produce more “emissions” than a Range Rover will in one year! The new Porsche 911 Turbo only produces 300 carbon dioxides. Driven around a really polluted city, such as Los Angeles or New York; the gas coming out of the exhaust pipes is less toxic than the air going into the engine. (Top Gear S09E04, BBC) What this shows us is that the car now acts like a huge vacuum cleaner.

Pollution is related to global warming through what’s known as the greenhouse effect. In basics, the greenhouse effect is what keeps the Earth inhabitable. Without the greenhouse effect, the average surface temperature of the Earth would be well below freezing. But how did the air become so polluted? Well, The third assessment report of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) stated that when averaged over 100 years each kg of CH4 warms the Earth 25 times as much as the same mass of CO2. (IPCC third assessment report) Clearly then, it is methane levels that we need to address, not CO2. Cattle and sheep are some of the biggest methane producers. Australian scientists are trying to give kangaroo-style stomachs to them, in an attempt to aid the emission of greenhouse gases. “Thanks to special bacteria in their stomachs, kangaroo flatulence contains no methane and scientists want to transfer that bacteria to cattle and sheep who emit large quantities of the harmful gas.” (Eco-friendly kangaroo farts could help global warming, Yahoo! News) Australia, the only country not to have ratified the Kyoto treaty, attributes fourteen percent of emissions to enteric methane from cattle and sheep. New Zealand, which has a much higher agricultural base, is up around fifty percent. If a simple modification to a cow’s genetics can accomplish so much, then why expend so much effort on everything else? How moral such a practice is, can be left up for debate with the PETA group.

According to PERI’s (Political Economy Research Institute) Toxic 100 report, the top two toxic companies in the United States are DuPont, a chemical company and U.S. Steel, a steel producer. Only two automobile companies; Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp. were ranked in the top 100. Plainly then, air pollution is dominated by large factories and resource corporations, not cars. Furthermore, the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) reports that the number one cause of global warming are coal-burning power plants; producing 2.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year.

How do we even know that the warming is a result of the buildup of Greenhouse Gases in the atmosphere from human activity, and not the result of natural causes? Well, the Coalition for Clean Air, a group that focuses on cleaning up the air in California, admits that the search for the “Greenhouse Fingerprint,” is still going on. What this means is that the issue is still uncertain and up for debate. “In its first assessment, in 1990, the IPCC concluded that we could not yet tell with any certainty that humans were responsible for the observed warming.” In late 2004, the Daily Telegraph, the most popular British newspaper, published a column titled, “The truth about global warming – it’s the Sun that’s to blame.” The article states, “A study by Swiss and German scientists suggests that increasing radiation from the sun is responsible for recent global climate changes.” “The Sun is in a changed state. It is brighter than it was a few hundred years ago and this brightening started relatively recently - in the last 100 to 150 years.” As I explained earlier, the Greenhouse Effect is where heat is trapped under the Earth’s atmosphere. It is very possible that the Sun’s increased heat output has simply caused the Earth to have more trapped heat. One way for cars to take advantage of excess sun is to use solar power as an alternative energy.

Many environmentalists look at the car as Satan’s own creation. They look at SUV’s, sports cars, and get sick to their stomachs with jealousy. There have been numerous incidents of eco-terrorism, - countless numbers of Hummers and Chevrolet Suburbans getting vandalized at dealership lots and people’s driveways. The Washington Post reports a Hummer owner in Washington D.C. has his vehicle being damaged on tape. Two masked men took bats to the body and knives to the tires, scrawling an angry message. These types of hate crimes are actually counter-productive to the goal of environmentalists. The owner now must have countless repairs done to the body and must purchase a new set of tires.
The Coalition for Clean Air states, “three-quarters of the human-caused emission of C02 is due to the combustion (or burning) of fossil fuels.” This is not true, as proved wrong by common sense, and even if it were true, it is so insignificant that we should not even worry about it.

So what are the effects of global warming? Well, the Coalition for Clean Air claims that the Earth’s average temperature has risen one degree Fahrenheit over the course of the 20th century. Again, the claimed rise is so trivial that one can just cite faulty measurements. And besides, it is normal for the temperature to vary globally. The Earth has seen hotter days even in pre-human time. Even if we examine pre-car periods from documented temperatures in the 19th century, it is clear that the industrial age has done nothing more than improve and extend people’s lives.

Why must we place all fault on automobiles and speak of them as the devil? The car has done so much for mankind. For example, the ambulance has saved many lives, transporting someone’s injured mother to the hospital on time and saving her life. Without it, she would have died. The fire truck; putting out building fires and saving human lives and putting out natural fires, saving trees, wildlife, and preserving the environment. The automobile has allowed us to visit otherwise impossible places and do research on the Arctic and Antarctic areas. Come to think of it, without automobiles, we probably would not know so much about climate change. There has never been so much progress made by mankind as in the 20th and 21st centuries. And much of this advancement would not be possible without the car. Obviously technology will never decline. As time goes on, we will have reasonable alternative energy sources such as solar power, electricity, and hydrogen that will reduce or even eliminate C02 production from our exhausts.

Massachusetts’s senator and former presidential hopeful John Kerry once suggested that we should implement a huge tax increase on gasoline “so people drive less.” This was his idea of reducing energy use, as if we all go out to drive for no reason. In Great Britain, “congestion … has become so bad that government official are proposing a dramatic measure.” “Busy roads at busy times of day could cost as much as $2 per mile, according to preliminary proposals. Small rural routes would cost just a few cents a mile. The idea, set to be formally unveiled Thursday in a speech by Transport Minister Alastair Darling, would be unprecedented. Several countries have talked about road pricing, or variable pricing, for decades, but nothing on this scale has ever been considered before.” (Christian Science Monitor) What governments around the world are trying to do is price us off the road. This is all in an effort to produce more money for the government. It is ridiculous for others to tell us that we are driving too much. We drive because we have somewhere that we need to be. We have congestion in the morning and evening because people need to get to and from work. In a way, blaming global warming on the car is no different than blaming global warming on the cow. Why aren’t we doing anything urgent to reduce emission from livestock anuses? The benefits of a car far outweigh the negatives in the same manner that the benefits of a cow (dairy, meat) far outweigh the negatives.

In conclusion, cars contribute such a petty amount to global warming, that we should be refocusing efforts on other significant sources of pollution. Progress is being made daily to advance basic transportation with alternative energy sources being the leading force. Countless abbreviated environmental groups are wasting time and effort targeting cars, as if awareness wasn’t high enough already. The effects of climate change are greatly exaggerated by politicians, tree-huggers, and are destroying the freedoms of others.

Alex Zhao

Works Cited

1. Executive Summary. Chapter 9: Projections of Future Climate Change. Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis. 15 November, 2005.

2. ABC News. “Global Warming Culprits.” 13 December 2006.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/GlobalWarming/story?id=2723201

3. Energy Information Administration. “Legislation Affecting the Renewable Energy Marketplace.”
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/legislation/impact.html

4. “Top Gear.” S09E04. Prod. Andy Wilman. BBC. 18 February 2007.

5. CNN. “Pollution adding to severe global warming.” 26 October 2000.
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/NATURE/10/25/global.warming.ap/index.html

6. United Nations Environment Programme. “Climate Change 2001.”
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/248.htm

7. Yahoo! News. “Eco-friendly kangaroo farts could help global warming: scientists.” 5 December 2007.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/australiaclimatewarmingkangaroooffbeat

8. Political Economy Research Institute. “The Toxic 100.” 2002.
http://www.peri.umass.edu/Toxic-100-Table.265.0.html

9. Natural Resources Defense Council. “Global Warming Basics.” 9 February 2007.
http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/f101.asp

10. Outside the Beltway. “Eco-Terrorists Vandalize Hummer.” 19 July 2007.
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/2007/07/eco-terrorists_vandalize_hummer/

11. Washington Post. “Hummer Owner Gets Angry Message.” 18 July 2007.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/17/AR2007071701808.html

12. Coalition For Clean Air. “Global Warming FAQ’s.”
http://www.coalitionforcleanair.org/air-pollution-global-warming-faqs.html

13. The Daily Telegraph. “The truth about global warming – it’s the sun that’s to blame.”
17 July 2004.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/18/wsun18.xml

14. Resources For The Future. “Look beyond fuel taxes.” 11 April 2004.
http://www.rff.org/rff/News/Features/Can-We-Curtail-Driving.cfm

15. The Christian Science Monitor. “Every British Road May Soon Have Its Price Per Mile.” 9 June 2005.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0609/p01s04-woeu.html