The technological progress of the last several decades enables the humanity not only increase comfort and efficiency, but also to identify and solve problems which come up in the process. Unfortunately, some problems like the cost-efficiency, global hunger, and air pollution do not go away easily. The articles Miles to Go: Why Automakers Don't Sell a Car that Gets 50 mpg by Keith Naughton, Attention Whole Foods Shoppers by Robert Paarlberg, and Lose 300 Million Tons of CO2 in Just Three Weeks by Kate Sheppard explore the aforementioned issues and offer viable solutions. The specified global problems demand a legislative approach: a well-though legal act with clear instructions and practical penalty system will lead to solving the issues.
The first article focuses on the topical issue of the excessive gasoline consumption due to the technical features of cars used in the United States. The price of fuel goes up, which motivates customers and, thus, car manufacturers to seek automobiles that spend less gasoline. However, there are factors that prevent really cost-efficient cars from being popular in the US: some things, including safety, have to be sacrificed in order to make cars smaller in size and weight, so producing such a car is indeed a challenge.
In the second article, Robert Paarlberg discusses the problem of hunger in many developing countries from the perspective of recent food habits in the West. The author points out that “going organic” by making farmers to refrain from using fertilizers and barring them access to international markets with the aim of making food “local” is not going to solve the issue. On the contrary, bringing latest improvements to every farmer's land will allow to increase the profit and vanquish hunger in the world.
The third article explores the regulating the greenhouse gas industrial emission due to the negative impact this substance has on the environment. The solution which the author advocates is elegant in its simplicity: instead of penalizing and punishing, she suggests to start with raising awareness of the businesses that are responsible for carbon emission. Based on the precedent of Toxic Release Inventory, which led to a significant cut in emission from 1987 to 1988, Sheppard suggests requiring companies to document their carbon emission rates and making this information public.
The articles discussed above can be considered similar due to the nature of the issues discussed there. The explored problems are global in nature and emerged in the process of development of human society. Now that one can talk about global society and global community, it is clear that the well-being of humanity depends greatly upon solving the aforementioned problems. This, in turn, demands a lot of focus and effort from the international community.
The solutions described in the articles are closely connected to legislation. I agree that suggested ways out are quite viable in this regard. Requiring car makers to produce cars with higher mileage, controlling food pricing and distribution, and making sure that toxic substances emissions are meticulously tracked and documented seem to be efficient measures in alleviating the specified problems on the global scale.
The problems described above are closely connected to the processes which the modern global society is going through. They are an issue for the entire world, so the effort of the entire world is needed to eliminate them. The legislative approach, if implemented correctly, is the most viable approach because it will allow to cover those issues on the global scope.
Works Cited
Naughton, Keith “Miles to Go: Why Automakers Don't Sell a Car that Gets 50 mpg”
Paarlberg, Robert “Attention Whole Foods Shoppers”
Sheppard, Kate “Lose 300 Million Tons of CO2 in Just Three Weeks”
