Editorial #2- A Natural Choice

This editorial is about the idea that natural gas may be effective in reducing carbon emissions. Burning natural gas produces half the emissions as does burning coal, which means using natural gas as a source of energy instead of coal could put a large dent in America's carbon footprint. The author of this editorial states that there were rumors of President Obama supporting legislation that would discourage the use of coal and encourage the use of natural gas in his speech to the Business Roundtable on Wednesday. The author also said however that these rumors seemed to have been false, which is unfortunate, because nudging natural gas forward is something that the government can do quickly and relatively cheaply, to meet its medium-term emissions goals. This editorial also shared the importance of making sure America doesn't rely too much on one commodity for their energy. A drastic increase in the amount of natural gas burned would require infrastructure investments in certain regions as well as retrofits of certain plants, or the construction of completely new ones.

I agree with this editorial in the sense that if the burning of natural gas n order to generate energy can in fact reduce America's carbon footprint drastically, it is something worth looking into. With that said, I think it is important that we "look into" and research the effects of using natural gas a little bit more before any major legislation is passed. In my opinion if we use to much of any source of energy there have got to be some pretty serious effects on the environment. It would be great if there was some source of energy out there that was not bad for our environment at all, but unfortunately that hasn't been found yet, and I don' think it will be discovered anytime soon. I think that what we know about natural gas being better than coal sounds good, but that a bit more research should be done on what problems the use of natural gas could produce that coal does not cause.

Editorial #1- Lessons in the snow

Summary- This editorial discusses the effects the recent blizzard had on the Washington area. For the most part the blizzard was not to catastrophic, the were only a few deaths, and the homeless and the sick were given special attention. There were certain areas in which D.C. could have been better prepared however. One of these areas was the metro system. The author argues that when the metro closes the federal government also has to close, and although the amount of snow we got poses major problems for metro, we should have some kind of plan of how to solve the problem. Also the author argued that the federal government should do more to help the metro in this situation seeing as how tens of millions of dollars in forgone productivity are lost everyday the federal government is closed. Another issue addressed in the article was whether or not jurisdictions should impose alternate parking areas and sidewalks so that there is somewhere we can put the snow when we get as much as we did in this last blizzard.

My opinion- I would have to agree that our area did a pretty good job of controlling the situation during the blizzard of 2010. Sure there were some roads that were in pretty bad shape for a few days, but in the large scheme of things it was made sure that people in special situations such as the homeless were safe, and roads were cleared enough for emergency vehicles to get around pretty quickly considering how much snow we got. I also agree with what the author said about the metro. Poor metro has had quite a bad rap lately, but I think their controlling their snow conditions is just one more aspect they need to improve. As for the talk about imposing new side walks, parking areas, etc., I think it is a good idea in theory, but I;m just not sure it's where our money should be going right now. As we all know the economy isn't exactly in the greatest shape ever, and I think there are more pressing issues that deserve attention and funding over this jurisdiction.