Environmental Awareness
Environmental Awareness
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José Cruz: How do you feel about environmental issues?
Vasco Ferraro: Environmental Issues? I-I quite like it here, to be, to be honest. Like the whole recycling system as well. Like, In England as well. It’s very like, fairly done. But in Italy we don’t really do that. (Why not?) So they, in my region there’s a lot of issues like that. It’s like, we have for instance there is this huge national park next to where I live which is called, Parco Nazionale della Sila and it’s full up of rubbish, and it’s like something that should be like taken care of, but nobody does. It’s like, all of it goes back to politics and stuff.
José: Is there, is there an attitude about taking care of it, and nobody does it or it’s just, there’s no attitude even of, like, “Oh what’s the problem? I don’t see anything wrong? Just litter is litter, right?”
Vasco: I think, it’s just like a recent thing, like there is there is the awareness about the environment and stuff is growing so it’s like kind of getting better but still fi- people like they don’t really care. (Really?) They still- Yeah I think like, they don’t do- it all goes back to school and the education system like, I don’t know what you call it to be honest, (Mm hmm) but, “educazione civica” like education, (Civica) education to the society, or the environment.
José: Civic- civic education or Social Studies.
Vasco: Civic education. That is barely taught in Italy
José: Uh (Mmm) it’s interesting that you say there’s not a lot of interest and not a lot of awareness. Wo- would there be a lot of awareness about other issues like let’s say climate change (Mm) in Italy?
Vasco: I think that is not even a thing in Italy. Nobody thinks about it. (Really?) Mm hmm. “Climate change? I don’t know, What is that?”
José: Wait but wa- you’re not telling me- you’re joking, right? You DO know what climate change is.
Vasco: At the moment I am.
José: OK, good good good good. OK.
Vasco: At the moment I am joking. But, I was- going back to school, never even heard anyone talking about that. As well as like, recycling. I’m talking only about my town now. But, it’s like it’s a thing relatively new, I think we started recycling like, last year or two years ago, in my town.
José: So when you say going back to school, let’s see you told me you’re 26 so maybe about six years ago, when climate change really started getting into the headlines, wasn’t discussed wasn’t…
Vasco: It wasn’t at all. It wasn’t part of a, Latin programme.
José: How is climate change affecting the Mediterranean? Do you have any idea like um is- are there a lot more storms, a lot colder winters, or a lot warmer winters (Hmm) in the Mediterranean?
Vasco: I’m not sure about it. I’m actually not sure. (Hmm) It might be. How is it affecting like Japan, for instance?
José: OK well, for example right now, what have we got? This past week, We’ve had nothing but cloudy weather (Yes) But what’s interesting to me, is that this is now what, the third week of October and normally about this time we‘re going to get highs on a normal day- The average highs would be about 18, 17 degrees and the normal lows would be about ten (Hmm) or maybe 11 degrees, and we’re about three de- on both sides, high and low about three degrees higher than that And it’s been that way very consistently, from the beginning of October to now so, because climate change- I think about it a lot, and I talk about it with my students, I-I don’t know if I’m wrong, you know this is still just personal perception, but it seems to me this is a very warm October.
Vasco: Mm. I felt like that too, when I came here, it’s like the humidity is very high as well here in Kitakyushu. (Yup yup) And and I feel like I’m sweating all the time.
José: Yup yup. Even when you’re cold right?
Vasco: Yeah sometimes it feels like it should be cold, but I’m still sweating.
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Environmental Awareness
Speakers
José Domingo Cruz
Canadian
Vancouver, British Columbia
Vasco Ferraro
Italian/English
Calabria, Italy
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I’m so surprised that climate change isn’t known among Italian because everybody knows about it in Japan. Affect of climate change has been discussed since 1970s, but even now, past about 50 years, specific solution is carried out and climate change is getting worse recently more and more. In Japan, in summer, temperature reaches more than 30℃ and in winter, it doesn’t snow than before. Natural disaster also often happens. When I listened to Mr.Vasco’s opinion, I thought the reason why climate change isn’t improved is that there are still many people who don’t know what is it. Climate change is a big issue and people in the world should stop developing, so I think at first everybody in the world has to understand climate change and the solution. After that to solve this issue include global warming, people in the world should cooperate each other. Such a big issue, we cannot solve it without cooperation.
That is, what I want to say is everybody in the world have to have an environmental awareness. I think this awareness lead to the solution of climate change.
The environmental issue attracts people all over the world. Just like Mr.Cruz says, abnormal weather happens in Japan for these past several years. Environmental measures in Italy is not late, I think we must understand that there are various environmental problems in different regions. For example, in Japan, Typhoons land every summer, but the damage is often severe. In China, air pollution has negative impact on people’s respiratory organs.In Europe and North America, acid rain is causing acidification of lakes and forests. If we leave untreated environmental issues, it will become more serious inevitably. First of all, we must increase people’s interest in the environment. As familiar, we can do 3R of garbage and buy eco-friendly products as much as possible. As Japan, companies began to look again their behavior after the law for environmental protection was administered during the period of high economic growth. However, it is meaningless unless each person takes action. It is important for each person to think and act. And it’s important to convey this issue to people around us, such as family, friends, and relatives. By doing so, we may be possible to get closer to solving environmental issues.
Recently, environmental problems such as SDGs have become a global issue. Therefore, I thought that developed countries like Italy have a lot of environmental education, so I am very surprised. Climate change is a major issue in environmental issue. The Earth Summit, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement regulated the amount of carbon dioxide emission, which cause climate change and global warming. Climate change has been a problem since the 1990s. In the above agreements, development countries were particularly strict. In Japan, laws for environmental protection was established during pollution problem in the 1970s. In addition to climate change, pollution from waste dumped into the sea has become a problem. Plastic garbage is a particular problem. There are many cases in which creatures mistakenly eat waste and die. There are no cases that have had a harmful effect on the human body yet, but there may be some. Returning to climate change, abnormal weather has been confirmed around the world. As it is, creatures cannot live on the earth. This is not a story for the distant future, so I want to live in an environmentally friendly way.
Now, the environment of our world gets rougher and rougher. This is why we should understand what we should do because we save our planet. However, I think that some people in every countries do not know and is not interested in the environment problems. And I think that some people in every countries do not try to think solutions of these issue. However, I am very shocked by this article. I do not know that the most Italian do not know, try to think and is not interested in the environment problems and their solutions. In the country that we live in, Japan, there are also some people who do not try to think solutions of environment issue. They are not constantly conscience of danger about environment, so they calmly do what is bad for environment of the earth. For example, littering, wasting energy and things, and so on. Solutions of environment issue lead a problem good, but another problem bad. However, this is not an excuse for trying to know environment solution. We should know the solutions more and teach people who do not know problems the fact and solutions.
After reading this article, I thought that environmental problems were still serious. Activities such as energy-saving are carried out in Japan. I also thought that other countries are working on this problem in various ways.
However, in this article, I learned that there are countries that are not working on environmental issues, such as garbage being thrown away. From this, I thought that I had to take proper measures in the world regarding environmental problems. To solve the problem, people from all countries need to know about this problem. Global warming is still in progress. I hope that activities will be carried out around the world to solve problems.
Furthermore, it is important not only to leave it up to the country but to think about what we can do individually. The actions of each person may have little impact on environmental issues. However, if the whole population thinks and acts, the impact on the problem will be greater than the national measures. Therefore,
Use public transportation when moving.
Be careful not to overuse the air conditioner.
I think this kind of thing can be done easily. I hope that global warming will be suppressed for people in the future.
There are many environmental problems in the world. However, this article made me realize that there are many people who are not aware of this fact. In order to solve environmental problems, it is necessary for everyone to know about these problems. I believe that what we can do to achieve this is to spread education. In developed countries, more and more people are aware of environmental issues and are trying to take action. There may be many problems in the efforts of developed countries, but they are at the first stage of solving environmental problems. Some people in the developing countries, who are not able to access education, and they do not have the opportunity to learn about environmental issues. There are a lot of people in the world who do not have access to primary education. This is mainly because war and poverty. The world should make more efforts to spread education at the same time to deal with environmental problems. By doing so, it will help to solve environmental and other world problems.