When observing the Gap Minder graphs, I noticed a trend between mean ages of first marriage for women and mean number of years in school for women between the ages of 15 to 44.  Overall the trending pattern was the higher the mean number of years spent in school the later woman tended to get married. When comparing this trend with a comparative study done by Josef Bruderl, “Education and Marriage”, some reasons for this trend were given. It says that marriage is delayed by the institution effect and once individuals graduate it is delayed by the human capital effect. The institution effect explains that both genders tend to not get married while attending an educational institute due to students being unprepared for adult roles, a majority of their time is spent with school related activities and that individuals feel the need to be able to financially support them self before getting married. The human capital effect which states that women are less likely to want to get married after an extended amount of time spent in school, since they tend to be more career driven and feel as though opportunities will be missed if they are married. In the gap minder display of this effect the highest average age of marriage of 33 corresponded to an average of 11 years in school. What was also interesting about this graph is that Canada had the highest average number of years in school for women at 14 years; Afghanistan had the lowest at only 0.6 years.

Works Citied

Burderl, Josef. Education and Marriage. Munich Institute of Sociology, May 1997. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. <http://www.sowi.uni-mannheim.de/lehrstuehle/lessm/papers/marriage.pdf>.

Discovering my ecological footprint was very enlightening. I like to think I am relatively green person; I recycle and take the bus whenever I can but my footprint was still massive 4.9 global hectares! When I was playing around with the settings I noticed that by reducing my transportation, even though it was by bus, had a huge reduction on my footprint. The shows that the global hectares per person could be greatly reduced if people lived very close to there work and stores. I also noticed that by having a large amount of people living in a small space, about 2 people per bedroom also reduced my footprint a lot. However even when I reduced nearly all of factors in consideration of my ecological foot print, I noticed that it would still require 2 earths for everyone to live like me. I got an environmentally unfriendly friend of mine to take the test and he scored well above the Canadian average at 7.7 global hectares.  The reason why his footprint was so high I think was partially due to the amount of meat, dairy and processed foods he consumes. By reducing the number of meals you eat with meat and dairy a week also has a big impact on your footprint. Overall I’ve noticed that for everyone on the planet to have similar standards of living we would have to dramatically change our lives and our standards we have come accustomed to such as having our own bedroom and eating meat with at least 1 meal a day.

The Canadian action plan for reducing green house gas emissions is effective in meeting the wedge standards presented by Pacala and Socolow in “Stabilization Wedges: Solving the Climate Problem for the Next 50 Years with Current Technologies”. The goal presented by the Canadian government is to reduce Canada’s green house gas emissions by 17 % from the 2005 levels by 2020. While this is a national objective not a global one, it makes a significant contribution to a wedge which requires a reduction 1 billion carbon tons per year. If other countries employed this approach then at least one wedge would be fulfilled. Green house gas regulations have been enforced in Canada’s transportation and electricity sections, the two largest CO₂ emitters. These regulations include standards for fuel efficiency on new light duty vehicles, which are currently being sold. The description of required car efficiency form Pacala and Socolow’s stabilization wedge requirement is that cars in 2054 be twice as efficient as they are now. The regulations currently imposed for efficiency in Canada are aligned with ones in United States, and the regulation states that by 2016 cars must be 25% more efficient than in 2008. This target has the potential to beat Pacala and Socolow’s goals by 2054 if technology continues to progress at this rate. These standards of efficiency are currently in effect for 2011 to 2016 models, and future plans are in the process of being drafted. This plan is very feasible, since it has already gone into effect. The demand for new cars in the North America is high which will provide significant pressure on car suppliers to meet these regulations for efficient vehicles. Hopefully by implementing this plan other countries will be encouraged to enforce similar regulations and globally we will be able to fill at least one wedge if not more.

A local meeting was recently held to gather thoughts on the current controversial issue of biofuels. The University of British Columbia was flooded with experts in all areas concerning biofuels, from farmers to Politians. The debate mainly revolved around the production of ethanol. A large issue for those against ethanol production was that in order to obtain enough ethanol, we would need to import it form other countries, and that this transportation would make ethanol no longer CO₂ neutral. The idea of CO₂ neutral is that however much carbon dioxide is put into the atmosphere is reabsorbed, essentially reducing all impacts of green house gas through the new fuel source. While this is a good point the team against biofuels failed to provide any ideas of an alternate ways to disperse energy over the globe. The type of alternative energy the anti-ethanol group supported energy produced via solar, wind and water. The heated debate continued and while lots of valid reasons were made against ethanol, there were no descriptions of plans that could be made to use valid alternatives. The pro ethanol groups gave lots of reasons to support ethanol; ethanol has economic benefits, it is a way to reuse our waste products, and the consumption of ethanol will lowering green house gas emissions. However they failed to give a description of how they would set up the infrastructure for an ethanol run society. The debate provided excellent insight to ethanol production, but little was said about other biofuel’s such as propanol. When a fellow reporter raised a question about other biofuels, the panel of experts fell silent. This unconsidered alternative was surprisingly a novel idea. From this meeting both groups seemed to be at the consensuses that something needs to change in our energy consumption, and that we need to re-evaluate the best way to produce energy. While the two groups have a difference in opinion of how we will go about this change, they do have a common goal to protect the environment.