political science

Help me study for my Political Science class. I’m stuck and don’t understand.

This assignment is designed to give you a chance to find out more about the consequences of personal and household decisions for greenhouse gas emissions. You will be asked to develop and carry out a personal program of greenhouse gas reduction, and report on the results. On the basis of this experiment with your own lifestyle, you will analyze whether we as Americans can change our behavior in time to prevent dramatic climate change and its consequences. By most accounts, this goal requires at least a 75-80 percent reduction in annual emissions from the United States by the year 2050. Projections of emissions under lockdowns due to the Coronavirus crisis suggest a 17 percent drop over the last few months, although the evidence is still out as to how far this has actually occurred.

In this assignment, you will assess your own lifestyle before and after the lockdown, and consider far you can go toward reducing your emissions through personal choices. Your paper is designed as a report on this exercise.

Your Personal Sustainability Report counts for 20 percent of your overall course grade. A paper of 2-4 double-spaced pages of text. The paper should describe and reflect on your lifestyle analysis and the initial experiment you are required to undertake to reduce your emissions. In addition, you will be asked to provide a brief summary (150-300 words) to the rest of your Section in a class discussion posting.

Here are recommended steps for going about this experiment, and analyzing the results:

1) As an initial step in the exercise, identify areas of your personal consumption that are promising for you to pursue reductions in your own greenhouse gas production. A helpful, up-to-date guide to this is the required reading from the Union of Concerned Scientists, Cooler Smarter: Practical steps for low-carbon living (Washington: Island Press, 2012). Pages 3-22 give a quick overview of how reducing global warming comes down largely to the choices of households and individuals like yourself. Pages 51-178 contain an extensive guide to places you should look for greenhouse gas emissions in most aspects of your lifestyle, and myriad suggestions for making cuts.

A crucial component of this exercise is the use of greenhouse gas calculators, which estimate your emissions automatically when you enter selected data. Over the last several years these have proliferated, but they vary widely in precision, accuracy and general usefulness. Since there is variation even among reputable calculators, more than one is usually necessary to establish what the emissions are. Some of the best calculators target only a specific product or activity, such as travel, rather than all sources of emissions.

We will review procedures for making these calculations the week of July 1 as part of the class section. To calculate your emissions and reductions for purposes of this exercise, we have selected two of the most comprehensive and precise calculators, plus at least one other. To calculate your emissions and reductions for purposes of this exercise, you are required to use two of the most comprehensive and precise calculators, plus at least one other. You can use any combination of calculations, as long as two of them are from choices a, b, or c below. (For example, you can choose the Nature Conservancy Calculator and the Cool Climate Calculator, and then the gas mileage calculator).

a) The Conservation International calculator, maintained by an environmentalist interest group,
b) The Cool Climate Calculator maintained by the UC Berkeley Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory,
c) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency calculator, maintained by the chief environmental agency of the federal government, and
d) At least one other calculator of your choice (e.g, the gas mileage calculator at EPA).

Web links to the first three calculators along with an assortment of others may be found at the back of this assignment sheet.

Use the calculators first to estimate your rate of greenhouse gas emissions, both 1) up to the time of the shutdowns (roughly March of 2020), and 2) during the height of the shutdowns (May 2020). To see what difference you can make, experiment by entering in realistic alternative behaviors or products. Results will generally be given on an annual basis (i.e. pounds of carbon per year if you use your stereo a certain number of hours a week). This gives you a chance to assess the cumulative results of any change in behavior over time.

To be comprehensive, your assessment should at a minimum include data on transportation choices (Chapter 4 of Cooler Smarter), heating and cooling (Chapter 5), electricity and appliance use (Chapter 6), eating (Chapter 7), and product purchases and recycling (Chapter 8).1 Widgets and your own experimentation with the online calculators provide ways to estimate contributions to your overall emissions as well as the effects from specific reductions (e.g., driving a specified number of miles less on a weekly basis, or eating 50 percent less red meat in your diet).

2) For the future, develop a plan of action to carry out greenhouse gas reductions. This plan can be based partly on any reductions you carried out during the shutdown, but also on additional measures you did not do before. You should carry out your plan as a further experiment, during a period that should last no less than two days (48 hours). (A week-long program is recommended). Using the calculators and any other sources available, try to maximize your reductions.

3) As you carry out your plan, make sure you keep track of the kinds of reductions, the obstacles you encounter, and any other ideas that come to mind. It will be a good idea to keep a running diary of your reflections as you go along, to generate material for your report.

4) Finally, write up the report on your exercise. There is no required format for the report, but it should include answers to several questions:

NOTE: If you live in a dorm room or apartment you will probably find that some calculators for household consumption, such as those for air conditioning cannot be applied. In this event you have several options:

A) You can focus your analysis of your lifestyle and your experiment on those aspects of your lifestyle for which you can calculate the emissions and emissions reductions. In this case, you will still be expected to discuss what contributions you make to emissions that you cannot calculate, and take this into account in your program and the analysis of your experiment.

B) You can enlist one household of a relative as part of your exercise. If you choose this option, you will still be expected to carry out the exercise for your own behavior at the same time, and to persuade members of the other household to participate in the program of greenhouse gas reductions.

a) What were the main components of your greenhouse gas emissions, both before and during the shutdown as well as in your personal experiment? Be as specific as possible, taking into account the variations in the calculators. A table of your emissions according to the different calculators is highly recommended for this part of the exercise.

b) What sources of emissions did you succeed in reducing, and how much difference did it make? How much were your emissions reduced? (Compare cumulative annual rates before and after to assess this.) Again, specific figures (even if estimated) should be used to assess your reduction.

c) A critical analysis of the two experiments and their implications is crucial. What does your experience in the exercise say about how difficult it will be for Americans to attain the reductions that will be necessary to address the greenhouse gas problem? Did you encounter obstacles in accomplishing your reductions (e.g., in finding a product that would make it possible, or using a more sustainable form of transportation)? How could those obstacles be overcome?

Were there aspects of the exercise that were surprisingly easy or fun, or that had other benefits (e.g., saving money)? If so, what does this suggest about what might make reductions easier for everybody?

On the basis of your experience, can we expect that Americans will be able to make many of the changes that are necessary through personal choices alone?

d) For a sustained program of reducing your greenhouse gas emissions, what other measures does your experience suggest you should undertake?

5) Assessment. Grading will be based on
a) the thoroughness and accuracy of your assessment of possible reductions,
b) the seriousness of your program for reductions,
c) the thoroughness and reasonableness of your reporting of the results,
d) the critical thinking you demonstrate in your answers to questions 4(c ) and 4(d), and e) the style and organization of your report.

You are required to use a standard bibliographic form and scholarly citation form for the references to your paper, including listing in a bibliography at the end. You will be expected to use a standard citation form (the American Psychological Association is the standard form in many of the social sciences, but University of Chicago or Modern Language Association forms are permissible) and to apply it consistently. Attach printouts from calculators used in your research to the back of your paper.