What is it?
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| Fracking — the future? (pp. 51-52) |
In their critical thinking exercise that concludes the reading "Fracking — the future?", Warwick and Rogers (2018, p. 53) invite us to discuss two follow-up questions related to the controversy surrounding the use of fracking to obtain fossil fuels for energy.
This time, choose one of the two topics to respond to. That is, choose only one of the two questions for your initial comment.
Questions
- Based on the arguments in the text, do you think fracking is a good way to meet global energy needs?
- Profits often drive environmental decisions. What can be done to better control this?
You have 10:00 minutes to plan and write a response to one only of the two questions. I suggest you divide your time roughly as:
- planning = 3:00 minutes (Choose your topic. Get ideas. Organize your ideas.)
- writing = 5:00 minutes, and
- editing = 2:00 minutes.
A useful strategy - as usual
Imagine you are writing for someone who has not read the question you have chosen to answer or the article that the question follows up. Your aim is to clearly communicate your response to that reader, so it might help to paraphrase the chosen question at the start of your response to it.
This is also a useful strategy in exams such as IELTS and TOEFL, where it's important that your independent writing response makes sense independently of the question to which it must respond.
Reference
- Warwick, L. & Rogers, L. (2018). Skillful 4: Reading & Writing, Student's Book Pack (2nd. ed.). London: Macmillan Education
It's natural for companies to worry about profits, which is what their shareholders want. Even when it has an impact on the environment, successful companies are naturally going to worry about profits, and as we know from great harm they have often done, and are still doing, such as the annual pollution of the air in Chiang Mai as a result of sugar cane being burnt, or the example of increased bushfire damage in Australia because of global warming, decisions driven by profit are often disastrous for the environment we must all live in.
ReplyDeleteIt would be irrational to expect companies to not worry about profits, so we need mechanisms that make it more profitable to follow healthy environmental practices. I think one effective way to do this is to make companies legally liable for the full cost of fixing any harm that their products cause. For example, if the air in Bangkok is filthy and unhealthy, the companies who sell the oil should be legally required to pay for air purification systems to cleanse the air that has been polluted by their customers using the oil that they sell for cars. This would greatly increase the cost of oil, but it is the fair solution to a serious problem. The cost of enjoying the convenience of driving a private car should be paid by the people who do that, not by people who walk or take buses or other forms of public transport. Also, when a mining company has finished extracting the oil under it, that company should be required to return the environment above to its previous state of nature.
Unfortunately, these just solutions require strong legal enforcement by good people, and companies might find if cheaper to boost profits by engaging in corruption: that should result in long prison sentences for both criminals doing it.
I think fracking is a preferable way to meet our energy needs because this way can provide much of energy sources like extract oil and natural gas from the ground. This way is also convenient although it take several days, but after the process starts, it provides us the large amount of underground energy. However, if we do not control the process of fracking, it might give negative consequences like water pollutants. Therefore, things that our society and the government should do is controlling areas and the depth of fracking and limiting the fracking organization. As a result, although profits drive environmental problems, we can lessen the impacts.
ReplyDeleteIf profits often drive environmental decisions, then we can give incentive to people to motivate them to do the right things for environment. For example, the governments can reduce corporate taxes for companies that invent money to create systems that can clean wastes from their productions.
ReplyDeleteI think the business units don't care about the environment. I mean it's quite hard to change people mind or to motivate them to do things for environment. From your example, I agree that it's a way to control this situation but the business have choices they might not invest to clean waste system as we want, so I think we have to force them by setting a penalty, to make sure that they do something good for the environment such as creating clean wastes system.
DeleteIt is profitable to receive a good quantity of energy because the raw material is from nature and it is free but it affects the sustainability of the environment. We should have a rule to control the limit of using raw materials to have less effect on the environment.
ReplyDeleteI think fracking is not a good way to meet the global energy need. This way must drill down to the level of the shale it can extent to 2000 meters, I am worry about the earth’s surface and the underground would be damaged or the surface can be cracked. And fracking also need to use a lot of chemicals which are known carcinogens, so in the fracking process all the chemicals can leach into the groundwater then it affects the food production and drinking water. In addition, the waste water from the fracking process also contains the pollution. These are the reasons why I do not think fracking is a good way to meet global energy need.
ReplyDelete