In Ziba Kaschef’s article, “Environmental and health impacts of U.S. healthcare system”, it is revealed that the U.S. healthcare sector contributes about 10% of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions. It uses mass amounts of energy in the form of heating, electricity, and energy-intensive goods and services. In addition, indirect emissions are generated by the suppliers that deliver the energy, goods, and services used at healthcare facilities. These emissions are connected with several specific environmental and health outcomes including global warming; ozone depletion; respiratory disease from air pollutants; cancer from chemical exposure; and the environmental effects of acid rain. Furthermore, according to new research, the U.S. healthcare system would rank 13th in the world for greenhouse gas emissions, ranking it “ahead of the entire United Kingdom”, as researchers estimate that these emissions increased over 30% in the past decade (Kaschef). This does not include emissions from other pollutants from the healthcare sector.
The impact pollutants from the healthcare sector have on public health are mostly estimations as the environmental effects are not often reported by healthcare providers. Though due to the U.S. healthcare system being closely connected with industrial activities that emit much of the nation’s pollution to air, water, and soil, their effects on the environment can be calculated. In 2013, the health care sector was responsible for 12% of acid rain, 10% of greenhouse gas emissions, 10% of smog formation, 9% of criteria air pollutants, 1% of the stratospheric ozone depletion, and around 1-2% for carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic air toxics. These pollutants account for estimated health damages of 470,000 DALYs (disability-adjusted life years), which is a measure of years lost due to ill health, disability, or early death. This number corresponds with the 44,000 to 98,000 people who die in U.S. hospitals every year as a result of medical error (Eckelman and Sherman). As these health burdens are indirect, they are not attributed to our health system even though it has profound impacts on public health.
In addition, a lot of the waste produced by the U.S. healthcare system is inevitable due to efforts to safely care for patients (Kashef). Most of the tools and materials used for patient care are single-use to prevent the spread of infection but this practice increases discarded materials as a consequence. Therefore, it is no surprise that the U.S. healthcare system contributes so much to the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions as a lot of the practices within the medical field are designed to protect the safety of the patient by using the materials involved only once.
It is vital to bring to light the pollution that the healthcare system contributes to our nation’s total. Improving the safety and quality of our nation’s healthcare can be included in concentrated efforts to improve the environmental impact of the U.S. health system. Adopting strategies that improve hospitals’ access to renewable energy through environmentally friendly operational and building solutions such as the use of solar panels will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Also, small changes in how medical supplies and services are utilized can result in substantial decreases in waste production. Furthermore, implementing water conservation efforts, using environmentally preferable supply chain management, safer cleaning chemicals, and serving healthier foods all will improve the ecological footprint of the healthcare sector. Resource conservation actions and education are extremely important to bridge the existing gap in the medical community and the indirect health consequences of wasteful practices and improve the U.S. health system as a result (Eckelman and Sherman).
References
Eckelman, M.J. and Sherman, J. 2016. Environmental Impacts of the U.S. Health Care System and Effects on Public Health. PLOS ONE 11(6): e0157014. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0157014.
Kashef, Z. (2016, June 9). Environmental and health impacts of U.S. healthcare system. Retrieved January 29, 2020, from https://news.yale.edu/2016/06/09/environmental-and-health-impacts-us-healthcare-syste.
Language will always play a role in my life. Language is the key to communication and explaining our thoughts. Words are meaningless without language. Though language does not need to be communicated verbally. There are a variety of means that your thoughts can be carried across, such as through body and sign language. In the podcast, a story is told about a deaf man who would only ever sign what others signed to him. He never realized the association between words and objects and how you give symbolic meaning to anything if you just give it a name. When this man realized this, a whole new world opened for him. Putting meaning behind words makes what they name important and combining words into sentences that have significant as they are able to explain anything going on.
The ability of language is remarkable. I use it to convey my feelings, emotions, and thoughts. Within school, I use it to discuss my knowledge of subjects and ask questions to learn more about areas that I have difficulty in. Furthermore, language allows me to communicate with my family. My grandparents, who still live in Germany, do not speak English, rather they speak German. If my parents had never taught me German, everything I would say to them would be meaningless. They would only hear words, not my thoughts. We would be unable to have conversations with significance, rather it would be an empty exchange of words. In spite of language being able to be conveyed in a variety of means, not every way is comprehensible by everyone. Therefore, it is vital that a method of communication is used that can be understood by those that you want to connect with. And when that method is found, the beauty of language can be demonstrated. Language can be used to interact with people coming from all different backgrounds as a way to tell our stories. Without this ability, we would never be able to understand one another as we could not put symbolic meaning to different aspects of our lives and share what we are going through. Take my situation as an example; despite being separated by an ocean, language gives me the ability to communicate with my family so they know and understand my story and I am able to comprehend theirs. Though attaching meaning to words also can have damaging effects, especially emotionally. Describing others using cruel vocabulary always internally impacts other. Whenever I hear others talk about me in a negative light, I never know how to respond. Those people chose to associate those awful words with me because for some reason, that is how I mean to them in their lives. And I think to myself, I could change myself so that these people would change their perspective of me but then I realize, I do not want to become a person I am not in order to please the thoughts and emotions of a few others.
Before Revisions: Art allows us to think beyond reason and make sense of the unknown, especially in science. Jonah Lehrer claims this within his essay “The Future of Science…is Art?”, developing Ma’s argument in the process. He explains that “it’s clear that solving the deepest mysteries of the brain-what the philosopher David Chalmers calls ‘the hard questions of consciousness’- will require a new scientific approach, one that is able to incorporate the wisdom of the arts.” According to Lehrer, art will offer a new perspective because they exceed what is thought possible of reality. It is vital to bring together the arts and sciences as it is the only way in which ideas surrounding each can be exchanged with one another. When they become intertwined, critical and empathetic reasoning are linked together creating a balance between thought processes that allow us to answer questions addressing the remaining mysteries in the world.
After Revisions: Art allows us to think beyond reason and make sense of the unknown, especially in science. Jonah Lehrer claims this within his essay “The Future of Science…is Art?” and develops Ma’s argument. He explains that “it’s clear that solving the deepest mysteries of the brain-what the philosopher David Chalmers calls ‘the hard questions of consciousness’- will require a new scientific approach, one that is able to incorporate the wisdom of the arts.” According to Lehrer, art will offer a new perspective because they exceed what is thought possible of reality. It is vital to bring together the arts and sciences. It is the only way in which ideas surrounding each can be exchanged with one another. When they become intertwined, critical and empathetic reasoning are linked together. This creates a balance between thought processes, allowing us to answer the questions addressing the remaining mysteries in the world.
Reflection on Revisions: Klinkenborg suggests writing shorter sentences within essays to ensure that they say do not include words that would complicate the subject of the sentence. While making revisions to this paragraph within my essay, I made sure to do just that. I shortened sentences, especially those containing two independent clauses, and created multiple sentences out of the initial one. These revisions made my sentences flow into one another and be more concise as they went right to the point. This resulted in this paragraph as a whole to be more understandable to readers as the subject of my sentences was not clouded by surrounding, unnecessary verbiage. When making revisions to my final essay as a whole, I will keep Klinkenborg’s advice in mind and look for sentences that can be shortened, leading to a more concise and comprehensible essay.
In They Say/I Say, I decided to read chapter nine which discusses how to write academic papers without losing your voice. The chapter states that “academic writing is often at its best when it combines what we call ‘everyday speak’ and ‘academic speak’ (Graff and Birkenstein 119). It is essential that academic language is used in order to accurately describe the topic being written about. Though including parts of your everyday voice has the power to make your paper more accessible to readers as it adds tone to it, making them able to understand your thoughts and have a more precise view about your position on a certain topic. Blending academic language and with your voice enables you to reinterpret challenging subjects, demonstrating that you are able to understand the topic you are writing about by putting it into your own words.
This has always been one of my struggles when I am writing. I focus too much on the evidence that I often forget to relate it back to my own thoughts and incorporate my opinion within my paper. This is the current case with the multimodal paper I am writing right now. I included facts from three different articles that support how art has the power to improve access to education around the world, but I neglected to include my own thoughts about the impact that art has on this problem. When revising my paper, I plan to combine the academic language I currently have with my own everyday language, using inspiration from some of the templates in the chapter including “Essentially, X argues___.” and “Plainly put,___” (Graff and Birkenstein 121). Furthermore, the multimodal elements that I include will help translate my opinion to the readers, an aspect that was suggested to me by my peers. Adding these changes within my paper will assist the readers in building a better understanding of my views about the power art has in improving access to education.
Endnote: Your essay is off to a great start. I really like how you introduced your sources within your introduction. This makes it clear for the reader as to where your evidence is coming from and the context behind it. When further developing your essay, I would make sure to go more in-depth. I added some comments where you could be a little bit more specific so the reader can build a better understanding of the points you are making. Adding quotes may be helpful with this. For example, be more specific as to why art is the connecting element between mental health and the science behind our minds to make your thesis stronger. Also, when discussing each of the sources within your essay, make sure to elaborate on their messages and how they relate to one another. Finally, make sure you relate your thoughts and discussions of each source back to your thesis so the reader understands how they all connect to one another.
The essay I chose, titled “Preparing Teachers for a Mobile World, to Improve Access to Education” and written by Mohamed Ally, Margarete Grimus, and Martin Ebner, discusses how mobile technologies have the ability to increase access to education around the world. Currently, there are disparities in access to education, especially in developing countries. However, mobile technologies have the potential to change this. Through mobile devices, the world is becoming more connected. They enable us to gather information and communicate with one another, no matter where we are in the world. And in developing countries, people are subscribing to mobile plans in order to become connected to the rest of the world, something they were not able to do previously. This results in them receiving information that they were not able to before. Increased accessibility to information improves access to education for those living in remote and developing areas. However, in order for mobile technologies to be effective within education, teachers and educators need to be instructed on how to teach with them. Their role within the classroom will change as well, shifting from a lecturer to a facilitator of learning. Only then will the nature of learning be understood as part of a mobile lifestyle.
I chose this essay because it offered a different perspective on solving the disparity in education throughout our world. I believe that everyone should have access to education and with today’s technological advancements, there should be no excuse as to why we are not doing our best to provide that access. Education is the key to freedom because learning information enables you to make your own independent decisions, giving you the knowledge to decide ‘right from wrong’. Those without access to education will never be able to reach their full potential as information that will help them understand the world is prevented from reaching them. Furthermore, this essay shows how both science and art can contribute to solving this problem. Educating those living in developing regions in the sciences will enable them to comprehend the world and its phenomenons. And the arts expand ones’ thinking beyond the scope of reality, offering different perspectives and discovering hidden meanings in what seems like the obvious. This way of thinking that the arts teach will allow those in developing regions to realize that they are capable of achieving so much more than what was thought possible of them. Also, it allows educators to realize that education needs to be looked at from a different point of view. Currently, our methods of instructing are unable to reach everyone in the world, though with the increased use of teaching through mobile devices, that may change and the access to education is improved as our world becomes more and more connected with one another.
This source is a trustworthy source. Not only are its author’s listed, but their credentials as well. Furthermore, it was recently published in 2014 and all the information is up to date. The information within it is accurate and supported by evidence which was cited and a reference list was included. There are no misspelling and grammatical error and it was scholarly and peer-reviewed. Also, the title of this essay reflects its content which is organized throughout.
Scientists may want to question whether or not science needs the arts. They argue that science is a reflection of reality as it is used to explain everything in the world. Yet is this fact necessarily true? If it is, then why are there so many unanswered questions left? I cannot deny that science is essential in explaining the world’s phenomenons but in order to interpret and make sense of the remaining unknowns, it is necessary that we look at them from a different perspective. That different perspective comes from the arts. Art enables us to uncover the hidden meanings within literal topics including neuroscience and physics, creating a deeper understanding. They offer an abstract point of view of the obvious as art goes beyond the scope of reason and build connections between our thoughts and emotions and the physical world. These connections then allow us to make sense of the unknown because they place them in a familiar context. Without the inclusion of the arts within the sciences, we will never be able to form a holistic understanding of the world and ourselves.
Barclay: [Topic] Both Yo-Yo Ma and Jonah Lehrer advocate for the importance of art in today’s world. [IQ1] In “Necessary Edges: Arts, Empathy, and Education”, Ma argues the significance of integrating the arts within our education. He worries that in the current industrial world we are living in, we are losing our ability to think empathetically. [Q1] According to Ma, “empathy comes when you understand something deeply through arts and literature and can thus make unexpected connections. These parallels bring you closer to things that would otherwise seem far away. Empathy is the ultimate quality that acknowledges our identity as one human family.” [EQ1] These “unexpected connections” that Ma refers to are the multiple points of view we can discover through the variety of art forms, which in turn leads to new ideas. These new ideas lead directly to innovation, which would not have been possible without empathetic thinking. [IQ2] Lehrer develops Ma’s argument by claiming that art allows us to think beyond reason and make sense of the unknown, especially in science. [Q2] He explains that “it’s clear that solving the deepest mysteries of the brain-what the philosopher David Chalmers calls ‘the hard questions of consciousness’- will require a new scientific approach, one that is able to incorporate the wisdom of the arts. [EQ2] According to Lehrer, art will offer a new perspective because they exceed what is thought possible of reality. [Analysis/Transition] It is vital to bring together the arts and sciences as it is the only way in which ideas surrounding each can be exchanged with one another. When they become intertwined, critical and empathetic reasoning are linked together creating a balance between thought processes that allow us to answer questions addressing the unknowns.
TREAC: [Topic] Science leaves behind unanswered questions because it does not go beyond the scope of reason. [Restriction] Art has the ability to open up new perspectives as it sheds a light on the emotions and thoughts felt by others, building a common understanding amongst ourselves. [Evidence] Jonah Lehrer writes “The art revealed the fissures in everything, turning the solidity of matter into a surreal blur.” [Analysis] Art can uncover the deeper and hidden meanings in what seems likes the obvious. It goes beyond the literal interpretation, opening up our minds to look at the unknow from a different point of view as art showcases the connections between the physical and mental worlds of ourselves.
