In your responses to classmates, take the opposite perspective that they present and present your own counterargument. "Greenhouse gas emissions are among the most dangerous environmental threats to date as they continue to contribute to climate change. These gasses were brought about by the technologies which made burning fossil fuels possible. The specific technology I will be focusing on is the technologies which refine oil into usable fuels such as gasoline which are used for transportation, industry, agriculture, and residential/commercial uses. These categories make up 74% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. (Environmental Protections Agency, 2023). Fossil fuels were first discovered as a means of more efficiently producing heat for quality of life improvements without the understanding of the potential harm they could do. As society grew, energy needs were more difficult to sustain, and fossil fuels were much more efficient than other fuels available at the time, becoming quickly adopted and pushing society into the industrial revolution. (NASA, 2024) This technology was adopted without the understanding of the consequences, and those consequences are now among the most dire threats to the future of humanity (World Health Organization, 2023). In order to avoid similar threats in the future, technologies of all kinds should be evaluated for the potential for harm then have. Even a brief glimpse at the history of environmentalism uncovers the fact environmental laws came about because the free market was taking advantage of natural resources to the point there was concern for the environment (Barkanov, 2024). The idea of free market environmentalism is, at it's core, basically arguments in favor of a movement which ignores the reasons why legislation had to be introduce in the first place; that environmental problems are the result of a free market utilizing resources to meet demand. There are natural incentives in a free market to create a monopoly of supply to meet demand. This is a problem because natural resources are limited and there is heated competition to harvest as many natural resources as possible to have a competitive advantage. While there may be individual companies which combat those natural incentives, again the origins of environmental legislation were in response to the environmental problems the free market created in the first place. (Barkanov, 2024)