Blog 2 by Millie Alvarez

Blog Post #2 By Millie Alvarez 

    The theme project presentations left a remarkable amount of information and analyzing to do, so in this blog post we will be reflecting and breaking down everything we learned. There were three main topics: climate change, gender inequality, and infrastructure. Each group presented their topics with great knowledge and plenty of pictures, videos, and graphs to support and enhance the knowledge and information they shared.

         Climate change is the long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. These shifts have been slowly but surely going on for the past hundreds and thousands of years, causing many imbalances on our planet. Climate change is a very real and serious situation, as it poses many life-threatening consequences to every living being on Earth. We have all been warned for many years of the ugly truths of climate change, but it seems that the more we are warned the more we disregard it. As the generations get older the less they believe the truth, almost as if they have given up a fight and are ready to surrender.

Group 3 starts off their presentation with an interview they did with the director of the Miami Dade College Earth Ethics Institute, Mike Matthews. Matthews explains how the institute is “the voice for Earth’s literacy and sustainability”. I found that very interesting, as most climate change and Earth clean-up organizations are more solely based on how we can restore the planet as opposed to understanding the life-long connection we have to the planet and to nature. The interview continues to inform us about greenhouse gases, which are gases that are emitted into the air to trap heat in the atmosphere and stabilize the temperature of our planet. The main gases responsible for the greenhouse effect are carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane, and a few others.

The presentation then continues to inform us on ways we as a whole have slowly been damaging the planet the more we have advanced and industrialized. Yuliya introduces and presents air pollution, which is the contamination of the atmosphere due to harmful substances that are released into the air. Air pollution is mostly a man-made problem that is the result of industrialization. Some causes of air pollution are cars, factories, and most significantly, the burning of fossil fuels. However, there are some natural causes of air pollution such as wildfires and volcanic activity. In the presentation, Yuliya plays us a short informative video that thoroughly explains the causes and effects of air pollution. We then hear the other presenters go in-depth on the various negative effects climate change has on the world, from the animals, to the ocean, to human’s physical and even financial well-being. Group 3 concludes their presentation with an eye-opening short video that shows how we are running out of time but we can still save our home.

Although it is very scary, I believe it is important that we constantly hear the truth and statistics. Experts say that we have until about the year 2030 to save our planet. That means we have about 8 years to resolve the mess we as a whole have created and contributed to. Although time does fly, we are still not out of time. If we all decided to do something good for the planet each day, we can slowly but surely heal our home.

The next topic for the presentations was gender inequality presented by my group, group 2. Gender inequality is defined as discrimination due to sex or gender. People usually refer to gender inequality as the unfair treatment between men and women, but gender inequality does not only apply to men and women, it can apply to all the genders on the spectrum. However, in order to keep this group assignment more organized and condensed, we decided to focus solely on the unequal treatment of women throughout history. Being a Hispanic woman myself, I personally really empathized and connected with this topic. Although it hurts to know the truth, I believe it is deeply important we become educated and educate others on this topic.

Our presentation started off with Natalie and Joshua introducing the meaning of gender inequality, giving us examples of the phenomenon, and some of its causes. Gender inequality is believed to have stemmed from stereotypical social and cultural norms that have given men the advantage over life. For decades, these stereotypes have labeled men as the more dominant and stronger individuals, naming them the “superior” gender. The next portion of our presentation was feminism, which is the movement that strives for equality among all of the sexes. Feminism has been around for centuries but it wasn’t popularized until the 19th century when women were finally granted the right to vote in the year 1920. As Leanett states in the presentation, feminism has been around for a very long time however, it was very controversial and it wasn’t given much importance in the past which makes it difficult to find factual and consistent information on its history. The next topic we highlighted was the women’s suffrage movement, the long and exhausting fight for women’s right to vote in the United States, which took almost 100 years to finally win. In a twist of events, women are now more politically involved than men and vote at higher rates than men.

The next subtopic we discussed was the gender wage gap issues, which was the portion that I presented. I specifically chose this portion because I have always found it so interesting and extremely unfair when I see the statistics. The gender wage gap refers to the salary difference between genders. Studies have shown that women make an average of 79 cents for every dollar men make. I find it unbelievable that to this day a woman can work just as hard as a man but will get paid less. The last subtopic my group presented was violence against women, which highlighted how women are more at risk of sexual assault, rape, and harassment. It is a very sad truth that gender inequality is still prevalent in today’s society but, we can only hope and continue to fight for the equality we deserve.

The last topic that was presented was infrastructure, which was presented by group 1. I found this presentation very interesting because I don’t feel like I knew much about the topic and it’s not something that has been presented to me before. Infrastructure is defined as the basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society. In other words, it is everything that makes up a society, from buildings, bridges, houses, roads, sewer systems, power lines, waste management, highways, etc. Group 1 begins their presentation with a quick historical overview of infrastructure. Cities have been around since the BC times, they are defined as any place with a large population. Over time cities have evolved with the advancement of technology and although they are the same as the ones in the past, they look and work very differently today.

With the increasing rise in population, infrastructure is more important than ever before. The more people, the more expansions and renovations that need to be done and the more careful architects and engineers need to be. Infrastructure and the economy go hand in hand. Infrastructure depends on the government’s funds and the government depends on the infrastructure to increase production and productivity. With the rise in population, the more careful architects and engineers must be with certain issues like poor infrastructure, harmful infrastructure, and climate change (which is closely related to population growth) on infrastructure. It is very important that we are aware of the different infrastructure issues as it can affect us all, and it has actually impacted us very close to home recently with the collapse of the apartment building in Surfside and the FIU bridge that collapsed in 2018.

These presentations have opened my eyes to a few issues we face today. I believe it is very important we stay constantly educated and informed on these issues as they have been around for far longer than they should. I really enjoyed this project, as I am a fan of knowledge and new information.