We ought to have clean, renewable energy.

Global warming is one of mankind’s greatest obstacles we’ve been faced with and could very well end our existence. For this reason, finding clean energy should be one of our top priorities. America and other select countries are working on a solution to this. Many places are turning to wind or solar energy to power their cities and homes. Unfortunately, this kind of technology is expensive and some countries who need it the most simply cannot afford it. Global warming has been proven, yet some people still have not opened their eyes to possibility of it. If we do not do anything, we will be prone to floods, superstorms, higher sea elevation, and record-breaking heat. Measures have been taken to ensure our environmental well-being such as the Paris Agreement which will place taxes on carbon emissions, but shortly into the agreement, some countries already backed out. Experts say we currently have the technology to have 100% clean, renewable energy for the whole world and could be done by mid-century. The problem is, we have to have enough resources and capital to implement the new technology. If we can build autonomous robots and self-driving cars, we should be able to successfully create clean renewable energy as long as we focus our attention on the problems that really matter, rather can focusing on creating luxury robots that will eventually be smarter than us.

“Renewable Energy Can Provide 80 Percent of U.S. Electricity by 2050.” Union of Concerned Scientists, www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/smart-energy-solutions/increase-renewables/renewable-energy-80-percent-us-electricity.html#.WsRIyiOZPjA.

Transportation should be faster and more efficient than ever.

Throughout time, technological progress has brought us new inventions from the horse buggy to cars. In the industrial revolution, cars and steam engines were being developed into what we know today. With these new technologies, we developed massive projects like the international highway and railway. Soon after this came airplanes and made traveling that much easier. If the exponential growth in technological process is true, we should see a new form of transportation that we might not even be able to comprehend today. In theory, this new transportation should be faster than cars, more convenient than flying, and more diverse than a train. Not only should we have faster and more efficient transportation, this may in turn create jobs for massive projects like building roadways. Perhaps self-driving cars are the future and could, in theory, get you wherever you want without you having to do any work. Safety is a concern when it comes to self-driving cars and could potentially be the reason for a development of a new form of transportation completely different from traditional cars. Flying cars are a cliché prediction for the future, but it is still a possibility. Flying cars or personal airplanes could make sense from a resource standpoint because there would be more space in the air to fly making it safer and you would not have to building any roadway for if like you would cars or trains, saving labor and resources.

McLellan, Charles. “Tech and the Future of Transportation: From Here to There.” ZDNet, ZDNet, 2 Feb. 2018, www.zdnet.com/article/tech-and-the-future-of-transportation-from-here-to-there/.

Healthcare ought to be affordable and effective.

Many Americans cannot afford professional healthcare and therefore, cannot receive proper treatment on any problems they might have. Just an ambulance ride to the hospital can be hundreds of dollars even without any care to the patient. One of the top causes of bankruptcy is due to exorbitant medical bills that a normal person could never afford. One factor that contributes to this is there is too much unnecessary care for patients. Experts say one-third to one-half of all health care costs are lost or wasted. There is a general distrust in medical institutions and that could be caused by the lack of transparency in that setting. These institutions are not required to release their rates and details, so you cannot really compare each hospital. The pharmaceutical industry is also overdue for a reform as some medicine can cost hundreds of dollars a month. Medicine should be more affordable when it could potentially save a life and it is being made for a miniscule fraction of the price for what it is being sold for. Medicinal progress has been enormous within the last century, but we have not really got to experience a drop in price to make healthcare more affordable to everyone. If anything, it has gotten more expensive and when it comes to human lives, medicine should be available to all who are in need of it. In order for this to happen, the political scene must come together to solve a common problem instead of being deadlocked which helps with nothing except growing political strife.

Binder, Leah. “The Five Biggest Problems In Health Care Today.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 21 Feb. 2013, www.forbes.com/sites/leahbinder/2013/02/21/the-five-biggest-problems-in-health-care-today/#10c7b40c4587.

Education should cater more to each individual’s interests and strengths.

Formal education is outdated, and the same teaching techniques have been used for over a century. Since George W. Bush’s implementation of No Child Left Behind, education has been extremely streamlined and standardized, so students are only being taught to pass a test. This has proven to be ineffective in not only building a foundation of education, but also captivating the students’ attention. Students are not interested in what they are learning and therefore, schools should take a more individualized approach to teaching to cater to each students’ strengths and interests to better prepare themselves for the future. Preparing children for the future is essentially the idea behind education, but schools are not currently doing that. Instead, they are forcing ideas to us, so we can pass a test that will never help us in the future. Schools should have more applicable teaching strategies that students can use in everyday life while teaching them material that will be relevant in the future. Standardized tests take the passion out of learning and is why many students struggle with getting through school. Many low-income schools are low performing because they are constantly being overseen and receiving budget cuts because of underperformance. Those budget cuts only further strengthen the disparities between underperforming school and more prestigious schools. Because of this, low income areas are receiving a significantly less valuable education than those above them. The education in America is overdue for a reform to level out the schools and to implement and different style of teaching.

Schneider, Jack. “America's Not-So-Broken Education System.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 22 June 2016, www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/06/everything-in-american-education-is-broken/488189/.

The difference in extreme wealth and extreme poverty should be shrunk.

The gap of wealth inequality has grown in the last few decades. The median net worth of upper income families is 75 times more than the median net worth of lower income families in 2016. The top 1% owns roughly 39% of the nation’s wealth while the bottom 90% only owns about 23%. This wealth gap is especially prominent in lower income areas with minorities such as Blacks and Hispanics. The median income for low income minorities have barely changed in the past decade while the upper income median is only growing. Experts have linked greater income disparities to worse health conditions. They compared countries and their wealth gap and found life expectancy, mental health, and happiness lowers as the gap is increased. This is not just poverty levels though, researchers say inequality reduces social cohesion, a dynamic that leads to more stress, fear, and insecurity for everyone. This gap also contributes to an older retiring age, forcing older people into working, in most cases, physically demanding jobs well into their fifties which does not help the health factor. The fact is, in no case is it fair to have the top 10% own a majority of the nation’s wealth while so much of the nation is struggling with poverty and are living day-to-day financially.

low-, While wages for, and middle-income workers have begun to recover. “America's Wealth Gap Is Bigger than Ever.” CNNMoney, Cable News Network, money.cnn.com/2017/11/03/news/economy/wealth-gap-america/index.html.

We ought to be more open to the possibility of space exploration and colonizing other planets.

The general interest in space exploration has steadily gone down in the past couple decades and the cuts to NASA has only slowed down our progress to exploring the vast universe. Experts say we could visit new planets and even send over our genes within the next fifty years. With more resources being allocated to the space program, this goal of colonizing other planets could be in reach in the near future. Some institutions have even started trying to colonize close by planets like Mars. There are countless possibilities if we unleash the power to travel to new planets in a timely manner. New resources, minerals, and elements could be found and utilized to develop our technology here on Earth and possibly make it more sustainable, efficient, or a more developed planet in general. Overpopulation will soon become a problem as well and if we start attempting to find new possible homes now, we will be more prepared to colonize later in the future when we have no more room or resources on Earth. Increased technological progress in multiple fields will better equip us to explore this new frontier and will only continue to progress to the point where we can successfully explore space.

Redd, Nola Taylor. “Future of Space Exploration Could See Humans on Mars, Alien Planets.” Space.com, www.space.com/26010-future-of-human-space-exploration.html.