A video and an article a day keeps what away?

Hey there, it's the start of my recess week (holidays!!) but it also means that my research essays are due soon and my mid terms are going to haunt me once the holidays are over.

This week, i would be sharing with you a video that i chanced upon while doing project work for one of my modules. 

This is a video that was particularly interesting to me as it allowed me to catch snippets of nature that were so high definition it made me feel like i was at the scene itself. It also briefly summarised what the current impacts of human on our environment are, and how we can seek to reduce such impacts. In it, you can see images of humans polluting water bodies with plastic, deforestation, plants releasing industrial emissions etcetera. In particular, the scene where the elephant was trumpeting and where the polar bear was jumping into the sea was especially mesmerising and impactful. Overall, i felt that this was a very interesting video that should be shared to my fellow readers!

This week, i also chanced upon an article titled ' The Volkswagen emissions explained'. This issue was only raised this week, and this article by The Guardian is basically a breakdown of how Volkswagen cheated their emissions test by making its cars appear as if it is releasing far less emissions than what it really will be when it is on the roads.

 The US Environmental Protection Agency discovered that 482,000 VW diesel cars on American roads were emitting up to 40 times more toxic fumes than permitted - and VW has since admitted the cheat affects 11m cars worldwide.

The impact of this cheat is no doubt a significant one, with levels of harmful emissions into our air much more higher as what we thought it to be. This also highlights the prevalence of companies prioritising profit goals over environmental goals, and raises ethical issues as to how companies, even influential ones like Volkswagen, are cheating their way out of environmental regulations. This is despite that fact that harmful emissions like this that can cause climate change and is one of the major causes of damage to Earth's ecosystems. Even with that, companies stay regardless and irresponsible for their own technology, even manipulating facts so as to get their products on the market, as shown by Volkswagen.

Read the article by clicking on the URL below!
 http://www.theguardian.com/business/ng-interactive/2015/sep/23/volkswagen-emissions-scandal-explained-diesel-cars

Till then,
Mu Rong