Is My Community Sustainable

I live in village called Kenton which is located near Exeter in Devon. I live in the super output area of Teignbridge 002E which I found out using this website. I used this website to determine whether I live in a Sustainable Community, this is the definition provided by the communities and local government website "Sustainable communities are places where people want to live and work, now and in the future. They meet the diverse needs of existing and future residents, are sensitive to their environment, and contribute to a high quality of life. They are safe and inclusive, well planned, built and run, and offer equality of opportunity and good services for all."

By definition I would personally say I don't live in a sustainable community. The main reason for this is that I can't see myself living and working in this area in years to come, firstly because it's a small village there are not that many jobs around anyway, and secondly there is very little to do and it's a severely boring place to live. Having said this however I believe it to be a very safe place to live with little crime and accidents occurring, also the recycling is very good in the area as you can pretty much recycle anything that can be recycled.

Some statistics suggest that it's a sustainable area to live in, e.g. only 5 people are on job seekers allowance. The majority of residents are in good health with 1164 people out of 1615 are in good health. Another way in which it's sustainable is that 807 people out of 1151 are economically active however many of these people commute between 5km - 20km for work which suggests that in the super output area itself there aren't a great deal of jobs and I imagine most people are commuting to Exeter to find work. I believe many people in the area have a high quality of life more than half of the people in the area find themselves in the AB to C1 social grades, which normally means higher income.

To conclude I do think my community is fairly sustainable one to live in, the only reason why I wouldn't want to live here in the future is because I find it boring, however I think it's a safe place to live, it's easy to commute to and from Exeter there is very little crime around and generally is quite quiet.

Education For Citizenship

I live in a village called Kenton which is around 10 miles away from the nearest city which is Exeter. Kenton is in a county constituency called Teignbridge and is represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Richard Younger-Ross is the current MP and he is a member of the Liberal Democrat party which dominates Teignbridge District Council, as shown here.

I personally do not have a huge concern with people not voting in the general election. If people do not want to vote then they don't have too, obviously in an ideal world everyone would in the country would vote so there is a majority decision between everyone. However I do feel that if their reasons for not voting are because they don't know what each parties policies are then maybe they could do some research and find out. After all the vote is there for your benefit so you may as well use it as it does not take much effort and it could benefit your life in the long run.

This web-page shows the turnout of each constituency at the 2005 General Election, as you can see the highest percentage was in Dorset West and that was only 76.3%, this shows that there are many people not voting for various reasons. Interestingly my constituency of Teignbridge had a fairly high turnout of 68.7%. However that's still 31.3% of people not voting if all those people voted it could mean there would be a totally different party in charge which could therefore mean different policies come into place.

As a student my main concerns regarding voting are mainly financially based. So therefore if parties have policies regarding cheaper student travel for public transport things like that. In the small village I live in when I'm home from University it does cost a lot of money for me to get the bus into Exeter so revised student fares would definitely be something I would approve of. Also because I live in a village, there is not much congestion or crime so they're things I'm not too fussed with.

Sustainable Travel

So...what are your views? Is there really a transport problem? Do the benefits of motorized transport outweigh the costs? Are there any minor (or perhaps major) changes you personally feel could make our present transport system more sustainable?

I do personally think that there's a problem with the worlds global usage of motorized transport. It seems as technology is continuing to develop new ways of making cars more efficient more people probably feel less guilty about driving so they avoid walking or riding a bike. This graph from the environmental protection agency suggests this, http://www.epa.gov/oms/invntory/overview/vmt.htm. It's good to see that car companies are trying to make cars more efficient but surely they're just working in vain if people are just going to drive more anyway?

As a student at University, transport is very important to me I live down in the South West so I am a good 4 hour drive away from home and the fact that I'm student means I'm not the richest of people at the moment. So when I search for train tickets and find out that it's going to cost me almost £100 there and back I can see why so many people have their own forms of transport. Firstly cars these days are very reliable, you can drive them when you want, you can easily transport a lot of stuff and it's probably cheaper in petrol costs as well. Public transport is often overpriced, unreliable and not a very comfortable way of travel.

When just commuting around Northampton town I use the bus service, I find here that it's very reliable and the fact that it's free also helps. However if I could afford to purchase a bike I would definitely do so, it's free to run, can get you from A to B quickly. you can travel when you want too and it keeps you active. I can't understand why more people don't choose to cycle, there are enough warnings in the media about how obesity is becoming a national problem so you would think people would turn to cycling to try and reduce it.

There are websites that are trying to get people to cycle more, like this one for example http://www.bbc.co.uk/bloom/actions/cycleandwalk.shtml#quickjump. It's a good website to look at if you want to find out how you can make a difference to yourself and to the world by just changing the way you travel.

Having said this I do think the benefits of flying are very good, even though it's very unsustainable I believe the freedom created by being able to travel to any country in the world is amazing plus. There was recently a debate caused with Heathrow by adding another runway to the airport, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jan/27/travelandtransport.carbonemissions1. As I'm not a regular flyer I can't really see it's needed as there are enough flights as it is.

I think the government has to try and make more people use public transport as it's obviously far more sustainable than people driving everywhere. This report from the government on climate change and transport has some interesting statistics on the public's perceptions on the topic, http://www.dft.gov.uk/adobepdf/162469/221412/221513/4387741/climatechange.pdf.

The Sustainability of Christmas

Christmas can undoubtedly be seen as unsustainable for a number of reasons. The main reason it could be seen as unsustainable is because of the amount of waste created. Over the holiday period a lot of food is bought for Christmas and New Years and subsequently a lot of it is thrown out. Also according to the Greeting Cards Association it is estimated that 641 million cards are sent over the Christmas period, http://www.greetingcardassociation.org.uk/info-resource/market-info/facts-and-figures. A lot of people will throw those Christmas cards out resulting in a high amount of waste. Plus the high amounts of wrapping paper and packaging used will also result in high waste.

This article from The Independent in 2006 http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/high-environmental-price-of-a-very-merry-christmas-429635.html shows just a few statistics about how much waste is created over Christmas. According to this article 40% of food bough of over Christmas is wasted it also states that out of the 6 million Christmas trees bought only 1.2 million of them are recycled. Another website also has some facts about waste over the latest Christmas period in 2009 http://www.recyclenow.com/christmas_09/festive_facts.html.

However unsustainable Christmas might be, it's a time of the year that everyone looks forward too and the fact it's unsustainable won't stop people celebrating it and to continue wasting as much as they want. I couldn't see Christmas ever being a sustainable event however there are more and more schemes being put in place to try and make it more sustainable. This government run website shows some of the schemes put in place to try and make Christmas a more sustainable event, http://www.recyclenow.com/christmas_09/christmas_cards.html.

Christmas will never be sustainable event because I think people don't care enough during the Christmas period as it's a time for giving and having a stress free good time. However I do think that once Christmas is over it's easy to recycle cards and trees and as a result attempt to make it more sustainable.

Newspapers and Serious Issues

Looking at the top five highest selling newspapers in the UK, you can only really say that one of the papers; being the Telegraph, covers stories about serious issues that are effecting our world. It covers political, environmental, social and economical issues in detail. The other four papers being The Sun, Daily Mirror, Daily Mail and The Daily Star mainly cover stories about the latest reality TV star or gossip about who's dating who in the celebrity world. These are stories that basically have no effect on the reader's lives and yet people still buy these papers. If you look at The Sun's website's homepage which contains stories about celebrity big brother, Jordan and Ndubz, http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/. If you then look at The Telegraph homepage which contains stories about the Haiti earthquake, financial issues and the conservative's latest plan's if they were to win the general election, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/.

I believe as because papers like The Sun are being read by three million people on a daily basis then surely they should have a responsibility to be covering serious issues in more detail so people are better informed and educated about issues that could seriously effect them. Because they mainly cover issues about celebrities and so on, people aren't being informed about the serious issues and it means that they probably don't think it's as important as it actually is. Having said that The Sun's main aim is to try and sell papers, and therefore they only put things in the paper that people want to read. This means that if people don't care enough about global issues such as climate change then tabloids won't print as many articles about it.

I do believe that tabloids and low budget entertainment have too much power because it influences a high number of the population. If it's in our papers in the morning and on our tv's in the evening then it's very hard to get away from it. However if these thought un-provoking programmes weren't so popular then our screens wouldn't be filled with them. It might be because they're in the papers so much that they are popular in the first place, either way papers will continue to try and sell papers instead of printing factual information on global topics and issues.

Are We Informed

I believe as a citizen it's very important that I should be informed. If we're all informed we're more educated about serious issues going on in the world around us. As a result of being informed we know what we need to do to try and combat certain issues for example global warming, turning of plugs etc. Also recycling we know it's important to recycle because it tries to prevent the exploitation of resources that are running out. If nobody was informed on these issues then we wouldn't be able to do anything about it which could then have serious detrimental affects on our environment and society. The more people are informed the easier it is to understand why such issues are important to us and the reason why they could or will affect us.

I do feel that I'm pretty well informed however that's probably because I read the newspaper regularly and look at news websites to keep myself updated with what's going on. Some people could easily avoid being informed by not watching television or listening to the radio. I think I'm more informed out of choice than anything. I believe that I have a good understanding of current issues, like global warming for example. This is because I'm being informed about it regularly and being informed of why it's an important issue in today's world.

I feel i get informed mainly through the media, Internet, TV, radio and newspapers. I also get informed through education as well. As I've studied geography for quite a while I've been informed about serious environmental issues, development and poverty. People who don't study a subject which has relevant information about current affairs may feel that they're not as informed as they'd like to be.

I think serious global decisions should be made by the people who have the most knowledge on the subject matter. However I also think that the people who are going to be most affected by the decision should have a say as it will be them who will have to deal with it and they probably know what's best for them.

Al Gore - Nobel Peace Prize

The reason for the Nobel Peace Prize to be awarded is as follows: "One part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresse." This extract coming from the will of Alfred Nobel.

Looking at the reason as to why the Nobel Peace Prize is given then I don't believe it was right to give it to Al Gore who is an essentially an environmentalist. I do think climate change is very important and the evidence that Al Gore brings up in An Inconvenient Truth has been very important in making global warming more widely recognised as a serious problem with governments and the public. However by definition the Nobel Peace Prize should be given to someone who's bought peace between nations, or someone who's managed to abolish violence in a country. I can't really any peace made after this documentary, which sort of defeats the point of it being called the Nobel Peace Prize.

Having watched the video for the first time, I was definitely impressed with the information and evidence that was bought up throughout the video. I also thought that Al Gore did a very good job at communicating the information across, with a series of graphs and clips which showed how bad the effects of global warming could be for everyone. Having said that however, after the film's release a school Governor appealed for it not to be taught in schools as some of the "facts" were inaccurate. A judge scrutinised it and found 9 Errors in the film. One of which was that sea levels would rise over 20ft in the near future, however it would take over a thousand years. Having read the errors of the film then you begin to think that Al Gore was probably using scare tactics to try and make as much money out of the film as possible.

I think the film was very effective as it set out what it wanted to do, in raising the awareness around the globe about climate change. I think there's been a lot more news about global warming since the video, and there's been more government initiatives on trying to combat climate change for example TV advertising telling us to ride bikes as opposed to cars and switch off appliances by the mains etc. I think it also made people realise that it was more a man made problem as opposed to a natural one, and as a result made more people think they could do something about it and change their lifestyles.

I do believe that the video has the ability to change people's minds about how they view their role in climate change. However if people read about some of the inaccuracies about the video then people may not care so much as a few of the scary points bought up were found to be exaggerated or just a lie. I don't think the video changed my view on climate change. I already knew climate change was happening, and that it's a serious global issue before watching the video. I also still believe that my role as one human being won't make a big difference whatsoever. Having said that I still think the video is definitely worth watching and that it's an very informative video despite having a few bogus facts.