Blog Assignment #5 – Midterm Practice

     The World’s Fair provided hope to people about the future. It was called the “American Dream” that influenced the people to believe the future will be based on cars and living in suburbia. Transportation is always growing, Kenneth Button stated “Globally the use of mechanised transport continues to grow”(Button 79). The “American Dream,” is a great idea of molding the future, but I do not agree with the reasoning of positive effects because of global warming. It is difficult to make such an enormous change globally without putting damage to the natural environment. The use of only cars as transportation and living in the rich community of suburbia sounds ideal for the future, but the designers did not realize it fail to show damage that it adds to global warming. The threat of global warming has not effected enough of the population for us to get alert. We are aware, but not too many people are giving a shot at trying to step up. Al Gore wrote the book “ the Inconvenient Truth,” he wanted to bring global warming threat to the peoples eyes. Gore did an outstanding presentation on it, but the hype eventually died down. Based on historical documents, photos and several articles,I will argue that the inventors of Futurama and similar exhibits at the 1939-1940 World’s Fair played a significant role in contributing to today’s problem of global warming by promoting a vision of suburbia that relied on cars and consumerism.

      Cars are one of the greatest inventions thus far. What is not really argued much is the level of emissions cars produce to increase global warming. Kenneth Button, professor of Public Policy and Director of the Center for Transportation Policy, Operations and Logistics wrote the essay, “ Transportation and Global Warming Gases.” According to Button, “ While numerical estimates should be treated with some caution, transportation accounts directly for about 7% of the Natural Incomes of most developed countries” (100). All companies the rely on transportation leads them to expand business adding more trucks and cars to the road. This increases greenhouse effect, Mark A. Saunders stated in “Earth’s Future Climate,” that “ The Earth’s surface temperature is slowly rising due to human activities, which are releasing heat-trapping gases, notably carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere” (Saunders 3459). As we learned from scientist, cars produce carbon dioxide, which it is one of the leading causes listed with many others. Button also stated, “ But it is also a significant and growing contributor to emissions of global warming gas”( Button 79).