Download Unit 4 Reflective Letter

Irving Kelley III
Univ 200
Unit 4 Reflective Letter
My remediation of my inquiry assignment took the form of a PowerPoint presentation. The
topic of my remediation was should world governments pass legislation to force transportation
manufacturers to produce only electric vehicles to mitigate the effects of climate change. When I first
started my research I already knew that I would find reasons why climate change is an issue and that it
needs to be stopped. What I really wanted to know was the feasibility of legislation to make only the
production of electricity powered vehicles to stop climate change or if it should be done at all. I didn’t
find any examples of electric cars only being produced but I did find legislation that was favorable for
electric vehicles, articles that highlighted the benefits of electric or hybrid vehicles and legislation that
was passed on other expansive industries like transportation, food packaging and distribution.
Now I wanted to make a PowerPoint to highlight the existence and dangers of climate change,
the main contributors to climate change and the benefits of electricity powered vehicles. I used several
charts and graphs to help visualize just how much of an issue climate change is and how much
transportation contributes to climate change through the emittance of greenhouse gasses primarily in
the form of CO2.
The reason I wanted to make a PowerPoint was not because it was an easy way out. My
audience was to be the United States government being, Department of transportation, the President,
congress and the House of Representatives. So I chose a PowerPoint because this seemed the most
professional of the options I had to remediate my inquiry assignment. Now for the past 8 years our
government has been quite liberal under the democratic administration of Barack Obama and climate
change was already on the to do list under his administration. The issue is now that with the new
President elect Donald Trump, who is a very conservative republican, has been known to deny climate
change just like many other conservative republicans now and before him. An example would be under
the Bush administration in 2007 a United Nations bill named the Kyoto protocol that would take steps to
stop climate change was declined by his administration because they believed that there was not
significant proof or threat of climate change. It was safe for me to assume that Donald Trump would
take the same stance on climate change and that is the reason why for the first part of my presentation I
provided scientific evidence of climate change and an example of a threat climate change imposes. The
whole idea of the PowerPoint was trying to convince a majority republican government that climate
change is an issue and that electric vehicles was the best way to get that message across because it
allows me to give professional points and evidence like a research paper while also providing visuals to
help my audience better understand the benefits of electric vehicles.
The presentation has 4 different graphs covering climate change, its effects on the world, the
main contributors to climate change, and the contribution vehicles has on climate change. Now at first I
had other graphs that were from around the world but I decided to keep the graphs specifically from
America only. I did this because Donald Trump and his administration are all about keeping everything in
America and has a large bias for America so if I were to provide evidence from other countries they
might throw it out as a conspiracy or a way to damage America but if I provided evidence that was
provided by American scientists and databases it would have more of an effect on them. Now the first
graph showed how global warming has been on a constant increase, I included this graph from NASA
because it is an American source and that it gave clear evidence of climate change. Now the graph does
have some information from other countries but I believe it just verified the correctness of the American
scientists and my audience would overlook it. The second graph displayed rising sea levels, I thought this
to strike a personal nerve with Donald trump because his home town and businesses would be affected
by rising sea levels, also provided by NASA. The third graph provided by NASA again showed how CO2
has been increasing over the years and is currently at an all-time high. I would hope that the audience
would be able to recognize the relationship between the rising CO2 levels and the increase in climate
change. The final graph was from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and it showed the
different contributors to different greenhouse gasses. The main focus of this graph was to be on the CO2
being produced by burning fossil fuels that were burned in vehicles, which was over half. My audience
was to see how bad fossil fuel burning vehicles were for the environment and I would then show them
the best alternative which would be electric vehicles. The next few slides just specified the information
being provided by the graphs and highlighted the damaging effects of burning fossil fuels thus making
electric vehicles a better alternative.
In class I mainly collaborated with four other students doing PowerPoints and with some help
from my professor. Collaborating with them really helped me learn to specify who my target audience
was. At first it was just going to be the current government in general so I would not have specified it to
a Donald Trump presidency and I wouldn’t have included the necessary information needed to persuade
a republican government of the benefits of electric vehicles. I also helped my group to specify who they
wanted their target audience to be and the best ways to persuade their target audience of their claims. I
believe my remediation project greatly benefitted from this because if I hadn’t collaborated my project
would not have enough specific information or the organization it needed to persuade my audience.