Joey Trakansuebkul

02/11/15
ENGW 1111
Context Note
I decided to do a commentary on how people are not aware of the
environmental health for this assignment. The reason that I wrote
this was because even though a lot of people agree to the fact that
global warming is not a myth, they are still not doing anything much
to fix this problem. The main audience for this commentary would
be men and women of working age, since this group of people has
the most contribution to the environment. This commentary would
then be published on news website under the category of Op-Ed, as
it would be accessible to most of its audience.. The purpose is to
warn them to change their perspective and action. Since the article
is trying to convince the audience to change their perspective, there
are statistics, logos, and ethos to achieve the goal.
Reflection
In this assignment, there were some parts that went really
well. Because it is a commentary and I get to write on a topic that I
am passionate about, I felt like I can relate to a lot of situations that
are happening in the society. I was able to think find a lot of
interesting facts that improve the argument of this commentary.
Due to the reason that it is a commentary and I want to
persuade the audience, a lot of information would have to be used
here. However, the hard part was to arrange all the evidence in a
logical sense that would support the main point of the commentary.
At first, I was not able to spot my mistake on not arranging all the
information in a logical order. This was because I was familiar with
the situation that is going on. But during the peer review, a couple
of my classmates were able to spotted this. As they point out, I then
start to see most of the confusion that is on this commentary and fix
them.
By writing this commentary, it gave me a chance to learn
about this genre in a deeper detail. Before writing this, I thought I
knew what commentary is like. But once I started to think about how
to write, I then have to think very carefully about the structure of
the work. As a result, I have improved my understanding of this type
of genre.

The Misconception of A Famous Indicator

By Joey Trakansuebkul
November 22, 2015
Op-Ed

Picture1: This illustrates the amount of pollutant that factories

produced

Our economy has been growing at an alarming rate that

caused people to be twice as rich than they were 17.67 years ago
(Clemens). According to World Bank Organization, the world average
of GDP is growing at a rate of 3-4% per year. With these impressive
statistics, the majority would assume that they are living with a
better quality of life. However, the use of this famous indicator is
hiding one crucial fact to our well-being; it does not mention about
the effect that humans are causing to the environment. A great
economic indicator needs to include all the important variables that

could affect the economy. Unfortunately, economists are not doing

this when it comes to global warming. All of this happened because
most of us do not understand the environmental condition that our
planet is facing.

Graph1: This graph shows the world per capita GDP from 0 to
2015 B.C

Economists decided to only include the amount of goods and

services that are produced in the country to measure for its wellbeing. However, they left a lot of important variables out. In the
case of America, their GDP is at $16.77 trillion, which makes it to
have one of the highest GDP in the world. With high GDP, it means
that there is a huge growth in economy, which implies that the
quality of life is great. But this implication is true to a small extent.

The reason is because with more economic activities, there would

be more pollution. Last year, the amount of pollution that was
emitted into the atmosphere cost about $500 billion or 3.5% of the
GDP, which is equivalent to entire agriculture industry (USDA). It has
been estimated by Oklahoma University that 1.2 trillion gallon of
waste are dumped into the U.S water sites. This is one of the biggest
global killers that affected more than 100 million people around the
world. This amount of waste that is produced is not calculated in the
GDP and people are assuming that living condition is improving.

It can be seen clearly from examples above that GDP is not

showing the real condition of the economy and disregard the
consequences to the environment. This indicator shows how the
economy is growing and at what rate it is growing. But it does not
show how many resources we are using and in what proportion are
we using them. All these materials could help spur the growth
currently, but what about the future? When we calculate the GDP,
there should be an additional variable that take into account of the
long run of the economy to let people know about the
environmental situation. British Petroleum has estimated that there
is about 53.3 years worth of oil left on this planet. However, the
majority did not even know about this fact and think that there is a
copious amount left to use. Due to this human are living in a world
of illusion, where they think that everything is starting to get better,
but in reality, its the opposite.

Most of the scientists and 58% of American agreed to the fact

that global warming is happening. Even though a great portion of
people believes that this is real, only 8% of American was able to
truly understand what is going on (Yale). Due to this, there are
misconceptions that cause doubt to climate change. The majority
will then misunderstand the concept, and be unaware of the
consequences. Because people over look the fact that they are the
main source of pollutant, it is very obvious that they would concern
about problems that seem like immediate crisis rather than those,
especially global warming, that might effect the environment in the
future.

When people care less about global warming, it is problematic

to implement rules and regulations to increase sustainability.
Businessmen would dedicate more resources to economic growth
rather than focusing on saving the environment, something that
they believe is not a major crisis. Opportunity cost between
economic growth and environmental protection is then a
controversial topic in the politic world today. Most of the wellestablished companies believe that moving away from fossil fuel is
very inefficient for them to maintain the same level of production.
Fossil fuel is one of materials that give out the most energy. By
switching to other alternatives, it would slow down economic growth
as they are going to produce fewer products.

But to look at this problem, people should look at it from the

environmental perspective. The real question should be about the
cost of not switching to an environmental friendly alternative, not
the cost of changing. To invest now on saving the environment
might be better than just worrying about the economy in the short
run. This is because the climate change could impose a lot of
environmental disasters that may destroy the entire economy. An
estimate was made by an organization that by 2055, $116 billion
worth of property in Florida would be damaged by the raising in sea
level. Further more, the hurricanes could cause a loss of more than
$193 billion in U.S. This is the cost of inaction for not taking any
approaches on protecting the environment. The trend is currently
increasing in a linear line. But if this is to continue, the positive
feedback loop will trigger the planet to warm fastest, which would
change then trend an exponential increase.

The change in climate will also affect economic activities

directly. The raising in temperature of the country is making labors
that are working in the sun to face many consequences from the
heat. This reduces the potential of labors to work at their full
capacity, which could slow down the level of economic output.
Furthermore, more than 2,000 people in the United States are killed
every year because of heat related issues (Berko). As a result to this
the Pentagon claimed that climate change is the biggest national

security threat. It even causes more problem than the threat of

terrorist attack or political instability (Scarborough). The reason is
mainly because of the amount of people that climate change could
affect is more than those of any other threats. If the sea level raises
or the ozone depletes, those people that live in that particular area
would be affected to a large extent. This is like bombing the entire
village, as it would have the same result of destroying citizens
belongings.

The indicators needs to have variables that could give a more

general picture of the well-being of todays society as a whole,
rather than making it very specific on the economic activities. There
are important variables that are missing in this indicator that make
the statistic to be somewhat misleading. Even though there is a high
correlation between the growth of economy and the well-being of
the society, it is not always true. This is what causing a huge debate
over the world about this global warming issue because everyone is
not access to the same information. To make the debate to be
clearer all the variables need to be included so people could be on
the same page and understanding the real issue about the
environment. The government could fix this by coming up with a
new measurement on both the economic growth and the
environmental condition in one indicator.

Further more, the government can also directly fix this

problem by reallocating some of the fiscal budget to deal with
climate change. Even though this might cost an enormous amount
of money, but it is better to invest now to prevent climate change
from happening than dealing with it when it happens. People should
also ask companies to see how they are dealing with their pollutant
and waste. Companies should show how they are dealing with waste
management. This is because investors should have the right to
know who they supporting. No one wants to support companies that
are causing damaging the environment. As a result of this, these
companies will be likely to change their behavior of how they
produce their products and use machines that are more
environmental friendly.

However, it is best to stop this problem from even happening,

people should not make any assumption about the growth of
economy before they are entirely sure about the outcome. The
danger of assumption had led people to be misled and did horrible
stuff to the environment. All the little detail in the indicator should
be examine carefully before a certain conclusion is made. If all the
variables were included in the indicator, there would not be a big
controversial about the existence of climate change. As a result to
this, people should be more aware of their actions and how it could
contribute to the environment. We have one planet to live; it is
better to protect it now before it is too late.

Work cited
Berko, Jeffrey. "National Center for Health Statistics." Choice Reviews
Online43.07 (2006): n. pag. CDC. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.
Clemens, Michael. "Double World GDP." Open Borders The Case. N.p., 10 Mar.
2012. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.
USDA. "USDA ERS - Ag and Food Sectors and the Economy." USDA ERS - Ag
and
Food Sectors and the Economy. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.
World Bank. "GDP Growth (annual %)." GDP Growth (annual %). N.p., n.d.
Web. 23
Nov. 2015.
Yale. "Americans' Knowledge of Climate Change." RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Nov.
2015.