Hey there everyone, and welcome back to my recently \u2018energetic\u2019 blog!<\/p>\n
Yes, that\u2019s right, I made a ridiculous pun.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n If you’ve been following the blog this year, you’ve realised I\u2019ve been a recent environmental slant these days. I\u2019ve always been interested in science and the environment, and I\u2019m incredibly proud of British Columbia (abbreviated BC by all Canadians!) for its forward-thinking policy towards renewable energy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Chatting with my girlfriend, who is from Germany, I also realised how unique BC is, so I wanted to share a little about my home.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Last time, I ended on a bit of a negative note, listing some of the downsides of hydroelectricity. If there\u2019s one thing that really annoys me, it\u2019s bias, or prejudice. When you\u2019re presenting a topic, you should always present all sides of the topic, both positive and negative. If you only present the positive aspects of something, this is known in English as whitewashing<\/i><\/b>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Whitewashing is particularly prevalent in the environment and science fields. Too often, people will only consider the positive aspects to support their work. Then, when the negative aspects come out later, there is even more backlash, because the negative aspects had been hidden.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n So, I make no claims that I\u2019m unbiased: I\u2019m heavily biased towards hydroelectricity as an excellent source of clean electricity. But, being biased won\u2019t stop me from being fair<\/b>, and presenting all sides.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I mentioned a few of them last time, but there are numerous downsides to hydroelectricity. One of the most often cited is habitat destruction. There\u2019s no getting around it: building a dam necessitates the flooding of a large area to form a reservoir. This destroys habit, both for humans and other organisms. It also releases greenhouse gasses as the vegetation in the flooded area decomposes.<\/p>\n So, does that mean that hydroelectricity is bad? Of course not! Remember that the most common alternative to hydroelectricity is burning fossil fuels like coal or oil.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I think it goes without saying, but I\u2019ll say it anyway. Producing fossil fuels like coal and oil result in significantly more destruction of habitat<\/b>. Coal mines are massive operations which wreak permanent damage to mining sites. The same goes for oil. While they\u2019re certainly less destructive than the open-pit mines required of coal extraction, oil drilling, especially the fracking procedures becoming more prevalent today, are incredibly resource and land intensive.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I could go on and on with this topic, and I will, but next time! In fact, I\u2019ve got some packing to do, since I\u2019m finally returning to Japan after 2 long years of being away during the COVID-19 pandemic. I can\u2019t wait to safely return to my home, and I\u2019ll be writing from my favourite place in the world next time! See you next time everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hey there everyone, and welcome back to my recently \u2018energetic\u2019 blog! Yes, that\u2019s right, I made a ridiculous pun.\u00a0 If you’ve been following the blog this year, you’ve realised I\u2019ve been a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":7458,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[78,302],"class_list":{"0":"post-7900","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-america","8":"category-liveabroad","9":"tag-78","10":"tag-302","11":"article cf"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/IMG_2948-scaled.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7900"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7913,"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7900\/revisions\/7913"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Whitewashing\u3068\u306f\uff1f<\/h2>\n
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