One story that I think should be widely shared is that the US Senate is on the cusp of passing the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act or RAWA, which is a bill that would provide close to $1.4 billion a year for restoring wildlife populations across the country. I saw this story in the news after reading about the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act, which includes some of the most important and comprehensive legislation to combat the effects of climate change to date. I am interested in climate change and environmental policy, so this part of the Inflation Reduction Act and the proposed Recovering America’s Wildlife Act was interesting to me. I think that more people should be paying attention to the RAWA because it is a bill that is specifically aimed at one of the major effects of climate change, the loss of biodiversity and endangered species. This is an important topic because the loss of biodiversity and endangered species has significant ramifications in our country which are more than just environment related. Outdoor recreation and wildlife recreation specifically are huge industries in the United States, which is why passing this bill has bipartisan economic incentives attached. There are 14 Republican co-sponsors for the bill, which I think is an uplifting moment of bipartisan cooperation. This story has not received much coverage in the media because it has been overshadowed by more “important” or significant political and environmental issues, such as the rising inflation in the US. However, this issue and the proposed bill should receive more media attention because if it is passed, it would be a historic and much needed advancement for environmental and conservation efforts in our country. Here is the link to the article that I read from Vox News: https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/23288563/recovering-americas-wildlife-act-explained.
Initial Summary of my CapStone
The community that I was interacting with during my Global Scholars summer experience was the local community in Valencia, Spain, specifically students ages 12-17 and teachers. I was volunteering at a local school, Colegio Sagrado Corazón, while I was studying abroad at the FSU Valencia campus through FSU International Programs. The topic that I focused on during my experience was the education system in Spain, and how it can be studied to learn about how religion and history have affected modern Spain across different generations. During my time in Spain, I made observations through my interactions with the students and teachers while volunteering. I also want to incorporate the knowledge that I gained from the classes that I attended in Spain, which were taught by Spanish professors and focused on applying the knowledge we learned in class in the Valencian community. So far, I have found that Spain’s history as a Catholic nation and the Franco dictatorship in the second half of the 20th century have had an immense impact on the Spanish education system and have created divisions in viewpoints between the younger and older generations living in Spain today. The discoveries that I made impacted my view of the community because they opened my eyes to divisions in that society that I previously was not aware existed.
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