John Hardy: My green school dream

Statement: My city could be a green city.

Climate change has brought many negative effects, including the rising of the sea level. As a preventive measure, the government can reconstruct the city into a green one. The government can raise the tax of gasoline in order to encourage citizens to take public transportation and ride bicycles. In addition, setting up laws to reduce the usage of plastics is also a effective way to improve the environment. By holding activities such as planting trees and cleaning the beach, each one can put their concern into action and return and unpolluted earth to everybody. In short, if we make our city green, the dying world would regain its life and those disasters would never ever occur.

- Young

Centuries ago, the earth was a planet covered by trees and flowers, but later the industry began and forest and rainforest disappeared because of using those lands to build factories and other industries. Tainan had been a green city too, but like the other ones, factories popped up using the land of the natural forests. Back then, people hadn't thought out how big the greenhouse effect problem would be, so they kept using the lands without thinking what would happen later. But now the problem has appeared. The average temperatures has risen up, the iceberg melted and caused the sea level to rise up, too. It has made some of the lowland countries sink under the water. Now people have thought up some conclusions that can save the world. For example, our city planted trees beside the road; we use solar energy to exchange the fire or nuclear energy to save the resources and our planet. People now are thinking up many solutions to help our world to be a better place to live, although we can't return it to like the one many centuries ago, we can still find ways to not let it not become worse.

- Will

Tainan is a blend of modern and ancient beauty, but it absolutely doesn’t meet the demand of being a green city nowadays. There should be enthusiasm when completing this goal, which is lack in Tainan’s civil service. Stress and long work hours often leave people exhausted and emotionless about their surroundings. Further more, the government of Tainan is busy having a political conflict. They do have slogans in their politics, but it’s no surprise that none of them have been achieved. Therefore, nobody is planning and outlining a green city project clearly and in an organized way. Also, according to the study of a few of the greenest cities in the world, all of them have a similar element in common. This is public transportation, which Tainan should be dedicated to improving, too. It often confuses me whether the bus in Tainan is there to make lives more convenient-or inconvenient. Still, I do believe that Tainan can be a green city some day. It just needs some enlightenment and cooperation between government parties, companies, and the civilians. It’s really a challenging task to convert Tainan into a green city, but with the efforts and contributions, it can shock the world with it’s ancient, modern, and Eco-friendly environment.

- Jessie

I disagree with this thought. The city I live is Tainan. I think Tainan City is a kind of industrial city. Usually when my family drives on the highway, I see lots of factories. The smoke from factories is serious problem that we have seen on the news recently. Sometimes we may see the politicians talk about the plan to make city into a green city, but what I see is they only say it without doing it. Also I haven’t even seen any green facilities. Maybe they’re just somewhere I don’t know. Tainan, in my mind, is very polluted, full of buildings, and highly crowded. After I saw the video about the green school in Bali on Ted’s Talk, I felt that what the creator has done is so amazing. It’s a mission impossible for Tainan to be as green as it is there. We can’t see any really industrial things there in the video. It’s so not like what Tainan City looks like. Well, for me, an industrial city like Tainan is hard to make into a green city.

-Mika