Blogs
Virginia Tech Tragedy
- 08 May 2007 09:00
The world was shocked by the events of Monday 16 April 2007 at Virginia Tech University in America. Twenty-three year old Cho Seung-hui shot 33 students and staff at the university including himself at the end of his deadly rampage.
Virginia Tech Tragedy 2007 - The Waterfront looks at the safety of our campus here in Swansea and talks to students and lecturers about their views of the event.
What do you think of American gun culture? Should there be stricter controls to prevent tragedies such as this? Do you feel safe on campus in Swansea? Let us know your views...
Your Say: Welsh Assembly Debate
- 08 May 2007 08:50
Wales went to the polls last week to elect its third National Assembly for Wales, and faces a new political landscape.
Waterfront Debate: The National Assembly for Wales - Nia Williams and Nia Probert share their views on whether the Welsh Assembly should exist.
Does Wales need an Assembly of its own? Can things ever really be changed from the Senedd building? Let us know your views...
Environment Debate: Followup
- 06 Feb 2007 09:00
Following on from our debate articles in waterfront issue 151 Catherine McMillan from the Conservation Society has a few words on the topic of the enviroment:
If the modern industrial world were to be intentionally recreated upon a clean slate today, it would represent a most terrifying and unnatural design assignment.
Imagine a world instructed to use human intelligence to design a system which releases billions of kilos of highly toxic material into the air, soil and water every year. Unfortunately this situation is a reality in modern living, with all of these highly toxic outputs having a highly detrimental effect on surrounding habitats and their inhabitants.
Being in the shadows of Port Talbot steel works provides Swansea with a stern daily reminder of the prevalence of the input of harmful chemicals into the environment, made apparent by the clouds of billowing smoke arising from the unsightly furnaces.
Industrial establishments, such as that at Port Talbot, are the major producers of toxic and "greenhouse" gases (those causing the greenhouse type effect with our surrounding atmosphere). However industrial power stations are proving to have a deeper, less noticeable effect due to the extraction of natural resources from the earth, that once combusted release carbon dioxide - one of the leading gases to contribute to the "greenhouse effect."
Power stations provide populations with energy, used to power our electrical appliances. In order to constantly satisfy the energy demand we dig up ancient material, whose very burial has allowed us to inhabit the earths surface. We burn it and allow the bi-products from this combustion to invade almost every living system.
The major and possibly sole effective method for this combustion of natural materials "fossil fuels" is a decrease in human demand for energy. This can be achieved in the simplest from by us as individuals switching from normal to energy-saving light bulbs and having more self-discipline with powerful electrical appliances. These small efforts from an individual level could lead to a very large combined group effect.
But if we choose to ignore the destruction of natural resources to extinction, carbon dioxide levels are indefinitely going to increase. This rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide will have a marked effect on the climatic variance or "climate change" patterns of the world; this variance in temperature being caused by these gases creating a gaseous blanket around the earth.
With the main gas being related to climatic change being carbon dioxide, the gas that is being so carelessly released with a volume equivalent to tonnes every day, only a fraction of this is recycled by the ocean and plant life. Although carbon dioxide can be recycled by plant life, deforestation places another limit on the amount of carbon dioxide recycled with the decrease in the flora biomass.
From my perspective it is obvious that we should be working with and not against nature's own design principles. Everything works in extraordinarily complex cycles - cradle to cradle - not cradle to grave as modern industrial protocols and lifestyles would ask us to believe.
Nature operates on current income, it does not mine or extract energy from the past, there is a critical importance of biodiversity in today's world with the richness and interdependence of all systems becoming a priority subject within industries to simple households.
The fight towards a natural future for our forthcoming generations is imperative. With Swansea being abundant in resources for a sustainable future how can we as students choose to bypass this ever-worsening problem, whilst being amongst some of the most beautiful surroundings in the world?
Catherine McMillan
Conservation Society President
Jac Smith