1. Key takeaways:

- Learning about the natural world is the only thing that many people think we need to do to understand and preserve it. However, it is more important to learn from the natural world than to learn about it.

-In order to effectively capture carbon, protect seedlings for reforestation, or tackle other environmental challenges, it is helpful to study how the natural world does these things on its own and mimic those techniques.

-Despite the fact that the government does not appear to have climate change-fighting technology on top of their priorities, the new Petra Nova plant is going to draw 90% of CO2 emissions from the plant, capturing 1.6 million tons of carbon dioxide each year.

-Planting seedlings is a time-consuming and laborious task; however, drones are now able to plant as many as 100,000 trees in a single day, and this can leave farm workers the proper time to tend to these seedlings and protect them.

2. All three of the articles that I chose relate to the environment, specifically highlighting the topics of reforestation and carbon capture. One of the main challenges of reforestation is getting the seedlings to survive past the first year. A lot of times, non-native plant and animal species, as well as other factors such as dry-spells, cause the plants to die within the first year that they are planted. Scientists are attempting to combat this issue by creating devices, such as Nucleario, that provide seeds with a small circular environment to grow in safely. The device is completely biodegradable, and will provide a mulch-covered environment with a water retention device so that the plant has a sufficient environment to grow in. Another solution to the issue of seedlings dying during reforestation is the use of drone technology to plant seeds. This can obviously allow for the volume of seeds planted to increase drastically, but also allow human labor to be put to better use. Rather than having all of the workers spending their time planting tiny seedlings into the ground, they are able to focus on making sure that those seeds have the protection to make it past the first year. In addition, potential solutions to the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere are being created at power plants and they have the capability to not only capture large amounts of carbon, but to put that carbon to other functional uses.

3. I really did not know what technology was being created or implemented regarding carbon capture. I was interested reading about how the carbon captured would be put to use in some other way to benefit society. The Petra Nova will not only capture carbon but compress it and send it 81 miles through a pipeline until it reaches an oil field. There, it will be used for enhanced oil recovery, and will contribute toward increasing oil production at that facility from about 300 barrels to 1,500 barrels of oil each day. This is incredible and changes the way I think about carbon dioxide. My generation grew up learning about climate change and now negative all of these gases are, and it was interesting to learn about how they can be useful if used the right way rather than released into the atmosphere. 

In addition, I enjoyed learning about how solutions to environmental issues can be drawn from nature. Seeing how nature nourishes new plants and borrowing those techniques to do it ourselves allowed me to have a new perspective on reforestation. Nature has a magnificent way of handing things such as nourishing plants, purifying water, and much more, and we should learn a little more from that.

4. I tried to chose stories that all had some relation to one another, and that is why I chose all environmental-related stories. However, I did read others. I read one story called "How Compulsory Voting Works: Australians Explain" and it talked about how the voting system in Australia compares to our voting system. In Australia, they make voting more like a party. It always occurs on a Saturday, and people barbecue and hangout together and make it enjoyable and relaxed. However, people can be charged up to 80 Australian dollars if they do not show up to the polls to cast their vote. Although this sounds like a foreign concept to us, it seems to work for them as over 90% of eligible voters show up to vote. This far surpasses the voting rate in the United States, which was about 55% in the most recent Presidential election in 2016. 

5. Australia uses a food tradition to go hand-in-hand with voting, and that is the tradition of eating "democracy sausages". 

1. What are three to six key points or impressions that you will take away from these stories?

2. Write a 200-word reflection that engages, analyzes, critiques, expands upon, and/or questions what you read or listened to.

3. Share your reflections on your experience reading, watching or listening to the solutions journalism stories. Did you learn new information; gain new understanding; see things with a different perspective than you had in the past? Did the stories reinforce an idea or thought you'd previously had? Did you meet new people, or learn about opportunities you were previously unaware of? 

4. Were there other stories this week that you’d like to give an “honorable mention” -- that you enjoyed, but were not your top choice to share?

5. What else would you like to share?