I must say, I was surprised to read this article(DC’s Green Jobs)—it has been three years since this article was published and I don’t think a whole has changed since then. Of course, I was not in DC three years ago, and I cannot say what has improved and what hasn’t without further research, but it made me ponder for a while after reading this article. It said that there are vocational schools specifically to improve the DC public transportation which I completely support. But look at the DC public system now, there are always delays and problems in the metro system such as escalator outage, the DC bus (metrobus) never arrive on time so you cannot rely on them. So as a result, people end up having to take cabs and use cars as a mode of transportation.

While the other New York Times article focused on a broader issue of the environment, it does not make sense to me at all to argue in terms of a competition. Yes, there are times when comparing with other countries are necessary, however should green environment be considered as a mode of competition? Probably not. I must say that people in China are probably adapted to their situation and living in a polluted environment is normal to them. This is quite devastating, but it is the fact in some parts of the world. People live in an undesired environment but that does not affect their lives. Then what do we do? Wealthy countries like us in the United States, we are all aware and there are discussions and debates to discuss how to improve the situation, whereas in a place like China, the environment is not even their concern as they are already dealing with the pollutions and they don’t see a benefit for investing time and money. I can’t talk for everybody in the country, but if we were to be in their plate, we probably would be doing the same thing and not giving a huge concern about the environment. In the end what Carolyn has mentioned, economic development is the top priority—always. If it wasn’t for economic development, many people and companies will stop giving concerns for the improvement for environmental degradation. I think it is part of the human beings to make profit in people’s action and without the profit or benefit, there would be no point of conducting the project, for this particular instance movement to improve the environment. So a competition with other countries do not make sense as instead of dealing with the environment issues, it will end up solely being an economic competition, which can result in harming the environment.

Climate change is definitely not best addressed through technological innovation. I believe people use climate change and all other environmental issues as an excuse to work on technological innovation. There is an infinite amount of chance that technology can improve climate change and other issues, however this is almost like a gamble. There is no definite answer. A country like the US, this technological innovation can benefit but for some countries, there are no time to gamble. In addition, I have watched a clip online of a debate of the World Economic Forum. Although it was not focused in the environment per say, it was pretty obvious that only a limited amount of people had access to such a talk (of course all of these people seemed to be the “qualified” elites) and I feel that many of the environmental issues that we face is also hierarchically limited in a sense that only wealthy countries can attempt to improve the problem—and people in wealthy countries are the people who consume the most. So this complicated relationship with the developing countries and developed countries come into play especially when talking technological innovation.