Hello K.Smithy,
Initially I was thinking of doing something in environmental science but then I realised that doing environmental science wouldn't have immediately guaranteed me a job after my graduation from university. If I had done environmental science then I would've have gone into research afterwards. The problem with me going into research is that I didn't want to discover or research more about climate change, I wanted to act on climate change. This is why when I realised this potential with doing environmental economics and data science that I could save the planet, I had a light bulb moment with these two career fields. My light bulb moment came in the form of a passage that I had read in a magazine in my school library, the magazine was titled, 'CareersWithSTEM.' In the passage it stated how one person was doing a job in which they were tracking the satellite data of carbon emissions around the world using data science. The same goes for environmental economics, I read another passage from the magazine that showed a person who was helping governments and businesses with making significant environmental decisions through environmental economics. Even though I may not find a job in Business and Information Technology that will directly help me stop climate change straight away, these two career fields will definitely allow me to help people which is one of my other goals. Besides technology is all around us and it is ever changing which is why there is so much potential for it to be used for stopping world problems such as climate change.
You can read one of the passages from the magazine here (it is on page eight): https://issuu.com/refractionmedia/docs/cws_economics_2019
Thanks for replying,
Kind Regards
JerryMouse2019
Wow, you really have it all thought through! People my age talk about wanting to stop climate change all the time, but it is refreshing to see someone who has put a lot of thought into how they can achieve that. But hey! If you are super keen about it, what's stopping you from making a difference now? Maybe you could talk to your school's principle about potential ideas in regard to making your school more environmentally friendly. I'm planning to talk to my principle in the next coming weeks. Some ideas I have come up with are:
- improving my schools waste management by introducing worm farms and composting (this allows for organic materials in the form of food waste to be used for something good. This also means that less organic material ends up in landfill, thus decreasing methane production. Fun fact (or maybe a not so fun fact): ~50% of greenhouse gas emissions from landfill is methane, which is much more dangerous than CO2. Landfill establishes anaerobic conditions which allows for methane-producing bacteria to begin decomposing organic material and generate methane.)
- Introducing a community garden
- Introducing an environmental committee (allowing for many students to get involved)
- Introducing aquaponics
- Reducing plastic in our tuck shop
...
Those are just some ideas. I would also love to get my school to start supporting charities such as Envision Hands (they take caps from milk bottles and produce prosthetic limbs from them).
If you're interested in finding out how your school sits with CO2 emissions and stuff, you can check out this link below (it will only work if your school is registered with "solar schools" however).
https://www.solarschools.netIf you ever want to read more about the climate crisis, I really recommend IPCC reports - those are extremely eye opening and insightful. Also, I found the 2018 Global Report on Internal Displacement very interesting. It really paints a picture of how climate change is affecting people around the world.
Also, if you're interested, there is this petition that will go to the Australian Government and if it gets enough signatures, parliament will declare a climate emergency. So yeah, if you want you can check that out.
https://www.aph.gov.au/petition_sign?id=EN1041Anywho, that's enough of my ramble
I wish you the best on your journey through the ATAR system. Thank you for caring about the planet