Earthopoly Board Game

Played Earthopoly board game with my course mates Elias and Gabriel. Earthopoly is a game like monopoly where you roll the dice and move along the board, there are different properties for us to buy along the way and whenever someone lands on our property they have to pay rent to the owner of the property. Similar to monopoly, we can cannot buy property in the first round around the board, and we collect $200 everytime we pass the starting point. We are all given the same amount of money at the start of the game to spend on property. The properties are color coded and we are allow to buy houses if we own all the properties of 1 color. There is also a place on the board known as pitch in, and whoever lands on that area gets to collect the money in the middle of the board, which is all the money used to pay for the properties. There is also a dump where if a player lands there, he has to roll a double( 2 same values on the dice) to get out of the dump, he is given 3 tries and if he fails he has to put $100 in the middle of the board.The game continues until someone runs out of money.
We played the game for around 2 hours and i was the one who ran out of money as i did not get a single pitch in and i kept buying properties so i could not pay rent when i landed on someones property.

Watched the movie "The Last Mountain" in class

22/4/16:
Watched "The Last Mountain" in Energy and Environment class and was given a quiz that we were supposed to complete during the course of the movie including 2 personal opinion questions at the end of the quiz.

Review
The movie was a documentary on the Appalachia Mountains and the people who are living in these mountains, which they call the Coal River Valley. The people of the Coal River Valley are protesting against a company called Massey Energy as they are responsible for the mountaintop removal of over 470 of the Appalachia Mountains and in the process polluting the rivers with sludge and the air with coal dust. These made the conditions of the Coal River Valley unsuitable for living and caused many health issues for not only the adults but the children who are studying in the area.
The activists in the movie state that even though around 50% of the electricity in America comes from coal mining, there are other alternatives such as wind turbines that produce the same output but do not harm the environment, which is something that cannot be replaced once it is destroyed.

They show in the movie that the activists have protested many times to the government but to no avail as the coal mining industry is a source of economy in their country and a source of jobs for many people. Thus, the CEO of Massey Energy has enough wealth and power to violate safety rules for his workers and also environmental regulations and only get away paying a small fine.

Robert F. Kennedy, John Kennedy's nephew is also on the activist's side in the movie and supports their idea of building a small scale of wind farms on the top of what is left of the mountains that were removed and maintains that " The United States is the Saudi Arabia of wind", hoping that it would reduce the reliance on coal mining and therefore reduce the pollution and other harmful effects that the coal mining industry brings.

The film concludes showing that the protest is still ongoing and that " the fate of the River Valley Mountains is still in the balance" and that " we are all connected to coal, whether we know it or not".

Personal Opinion

In my opinion,i think that certain actions of the activists are not required and that they should have focused their effort on the implementation of the wind farms or other alternatives because the coal mining industry, like any other industry, generates income and jobs for people thus the government, which usually rely on these numbers to gain the recognition and popularity among citizens, would not take any action against them unless a similar alternative is produced. Therefore, the activists are making the lives of the riot police and the coal miners difficult as they are just doing their job and that is their livelihood, they are not responsible for the greed of the company's plans. The movie is informative and shows the effect of human activities on other humans and their environment and also shows the effect of greed, but it is still biased. Nevertheless, i still recommend it to all as it shows the side of the coal mining industry that the companies would rather not let the general public see.

References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Mountain
Watch the full movie on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6neSdVOh_BM

Details of the Assignment and Score Sheet.

Attached are the details such as the requirements and "rules" of the assignment and also a score sheet which we use, along with this blog, to keep track of our progress.