Final Research Essay:

Earth Has Problems, We Can Fix Them

By: Zachary Ewoniuk
Film 1070
Anita Davis
 Throughout the semester, we touched many different topics such as racial injustice,

gender inequality, the greed of man, nuclear destruction, and the collapse of Earth’s climates. In

the heart of it all, it seemed that America was a big contributor to all these problems. It made me

curious how these problems are being handled, both in our state of Utah and throughout the

country as a whole, surely we must be fixing these on some level, right? With a cup of coffee

and desperate desire for our country to have the people with the integrity and drive to fix what

the past had broken, I dove into the internet.

One of America’s greatest scars is our racial injustice. Since the birth of this country, it

has been controlled by the white man and everyone who was not a white man was stepped on in

some way or another. Five cities in this country are working on systems to tear down the racial

injustices in their cities. All five have different approaches, though Albuquerque, New Mexico

may have the strongest approach. The Mayor of Albuquerque, Richard Berry, celebrates

diversity in his “minority-majority” city and wishes that all the residents have the opportunity to

learn the skills needed to join the workforce (Lab). The grand idea is to implement a skill-based

hiring process. Job applicants can test for a set of core competencies that employers require

throughout the city, including libraries, community centers and even homeless shelters. By doing

this, the city is hiring skilled, well-intentioned employees who do not have a traditional path to

employment. This is a step in the right direction to fix the bias that many Americans have

towards immigrants while also allowing employers to hire the right person for the job.

Throughout 2017, I heard many people complain about the air quality of Salt Lake City.

It is a small city but the people here understand the dangers of air pollution and the environment

around us. The state agency that safeguards Utah’s air, land, and water from environmental

threats celebrated small victories in 2017 despite being muscled out by the complaints. However,
the state has initiated a clean-car program for Cache Valley and Franklin County, Idaho, an area

that regularly fails to meet federal clean air standards in the winter (O'Donogue). This helped

motorists identify pollution-problem cars and offered rebates to fix the issues, cutting down the

pollution due to vehicles in this area of Utah and Idaho. I heard another issue nearly as much as

the air quality. The radiation waste being dumped in Utah’s backcountry. The Utah Division of

Radiation Control and Waste Management continued work on assessing the potential disposal of

radioactive mining activity in the state, and continued its oversight of the remediation of the

former seventeen-hundred acre Geneva Mill site in Utah County (O'Donogue). I hope that they

are assessing the fact that radiation would be bad to have upwind from the population, and

decide to disallow the continued dumping of radiation in Utah. This is an example of where the

people have to yell louder than the companies do in order to protect our state.

Another plague in our country is the unjust treatment of women, especially in the

workplace. It is said that women are paid 79 cents to the dollar for the exact same job that a man

is doing. One way that America could improve on this is to look to a foreign land, Iceland. In

Michael Moore’s movie Where to Invade Next Michael Moore goes to Iceland in order to point

out America’s problems with gender inequality. He interviews three women who were all CEO’s

of companies at one point and they answer him saying, “Iceland is the best country to be a

woman in” and that ever since Vigdís Finnbogadóttir was elected president the change that

Iceland saw in their gender inequality was dramatic. They explained how Iceland’s companies

are required to have at least 40% of either gender on the board of directors. This way you get an

equal representation of both genders and both genders can voice their ideas and opinions. Halla

Tómasdóttir also explains in the film that by having not one, not two, but at least three females

on a council, the conversation is changed entirely. She says, “One is a token, two is a minority,
but once you have three it all of a sudden changes the group dynamic. It changes how the

dialogue is taken and what is discussed. It’s been well shown that it goes beyond the balance

sheet when you have more women around the table and they start asking about all stakeholders.”

If America could implement even the most basic ideas from the Icelandic people, we would

begin to see a change.

These three major topics are all in different stages and the solutions are being sourced

from different plans. Iceland could help diminish the gender gap, the Utah Department of

Environmental Quality could help clean up the air, and our political leaders in major cities could

help make the American people more accepting of the rest of the human kind. All of these can

help us, as both a state and a country, but the outcome depends on how we implement them as a

community.
Works Cited
Lab, City. citylab.com. 2017. 1 May 2018. <https://www.citylab.com/sponsored/Living-Cities-
Racial-Equity-Here/how-do-cities-dismantle-decades-of-racial-injustice/12/>.

O'Donogue, Amy Joi. Deseret News Utah. 5 Jan. 2018. 1 May 2018.
<https://www.deseretnews.com/article/900006966/utah-grappled-with-multiple-
environmental-challenges-in-2017.html>.

Where to Invade Next. Dir. Michael Moore. Perf. Michael Moore. 2015.