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Final :)

Self Evaluation: A-

This first semester has definitely been really challenging for me, I have never been so far away from home for this amount of time before (I am literally on the opposite side of the country from my mom). This is my first year of college so trying to adapt and provide the amount and quality of work that is being expected of me is also quite tough, on top of working four to five times a week and having to find time to still feed myself and sleep just has not been the easiest of feats. I have also never gotten sick so frequently before in my life. It has definitely been an overwhelming 14 or so weeks of life, but I have been learning and finding out what works for me and what doesn’t so that I can go into next semester better equipped. That being said, I also took into account the note about my previous blogs not containing academic rigor or citations, and while I got backed up on my blogs with everything going on, I didn’t want to submit half-assed work because I know better. I think Blogs 7-12 are written well academically, demonstrate my understanding of the material well, have an abundance of elaborate citations, and also have a little bit of humor so they aren’t miserable for you to read. I definitely think that these blogs, my participation in class, and my presentation with Celeste better represent my academic abilities. Overall, thank you for a great semester and the knowledge that I promise to take with me throughout my life.

Blog #7

As we have been observing over the last 8 weeks, human impact is continually destroying earth’s biodiversity to the point of extinction. Elizabeth Kolbert’s article, “The Sixth Extinction?” discusses several issues that extinction creates; the most dangerous and damning being mass extinction. A mass extinction, think dinosaurs or the wooly mammoth from Ice Age, “takes millions of years for life to recover” (Kobert, 5). While human action did not necessarily cause a mass extinction of our beloved dinos, we are actively aiding in the extinction of other species such as rhinos, sharks, and tigers by hunting for sport or extraction of ivory from rhinos and elephants or the fins from sharks for food, and of course, other human interference with wildlife. The decline of these species and many others causes a huge decline in biodiversity causing trophic catastrophes and could ultimately lead to a mass extinction of humans. Since “20-50% of earth’s known species could disappear this century primarily because of human activities'' it is vital that we continue to search for solutions to protect wildlife and our ecosystems and essentially have more government intervention and involvement with hunting regulations and protecting animals that are nearing extinction (Miller, Spoolman 177).

As mentioned time and time again, it is human ignorance of nature that is the most prominent cause in our lack of sustainability and low rates of sustainability efforts. For example, “up to 60% of the wood consumed in the United States is wasted unnecessarily” for uses such as fuel, building material, paper, clear space for growing agriculture for farm animals, etc (Miller, Spoolman 214). In doing this, we are actively destroying habitats not only for all species that find homes in trees, but more importantly the habitats of endangered animals like orangutans. We’ve already observed the detrimental effects of deforestation to extract goods like palm oil, but “without urgent protective action, the endangered orangutan may disappear in the wild within the next two decades” if we continue this harmful process (Miller, Spoolman 179). This is quite similar to the case studies that Kolbert mentions in her article; the first regarding the death of bats and “White Nose Syndrome” or WNS, a fungal disease that killed nearly “90% of northern long-eared, little brown and tri-colored bat populations in fewer than 10 years” (USGS, “White-Nose Syndrome Killed Over 90% of Three North American Bat Species.”). According to Kolbert, these bats dying almost exponentially is “breaking the evolutionary chain” and causes concern for many other species that this is occurring to that is going unnoticed. The second case study that Kolbert discusses is different frog species disappearing around Panama, explaining that species of frogs and other amphibians are dying at alarming rates due to multiple fungal diseases. It is predicted that “between a third and a half of all Panama’s amphibians to be gone within the next five years'' which is extremely damaging to Panama’s ecosystem as one population of the food chain dies out, the whole pyramid collapses, wiping out the entire ecosystem which little chance of regrowth/recovery (Kobert 7). Not only are these fungal diseases a huge concern for the fact that they are killing populations of animals, but it is even more concerning how rapidly they can spread from one animal to another: “in a single afternoon, a pathogen like Bd can move, via United or American Airlines, halfway around the world. Before man entered the picture, such a migration would have required hundreds, if not thousands, of years—if, indeed, it could have been completed at all” (Kobert 22). Sounds familiar, right? If you were thinking Covid-19, you’d be correct. The virus managed to make its way from overseas to the United States and spread so rapidly that it forced us to shut down. The first case of the omicron strain made its way to the Western United States all because of one person who traveled from South Africa. Now imagine if we had the same government response to the dying and endangered species that are keeping us alive, the world would look a lot different, wouldn’t it? Well we have the facilities to do so, but our ignorance to nature trumps any sort of desire to; if only people were more aware that these species that we are killing and that are dying off have a similar impact on human health that this pandemic does then maybe our environment would be in a better place. This is why education is so important!

Mass extinctions are occurring more often than we realize, and it is mostly because of human activity that “a third of all amphibian species, nearly a third of reef-building corals, a quarter of all mammals, and an eighth of all birds are classified as ‘threatened with extinction’” (Kobert 23). This impending threat of extinction will soon be upon humans if we continue to pollute the earth and use up all of its resources as we have been doing in a vicious cycle for years and years and years. As we continue to search for possibilities of living more sustainably and decreasing the loss of biodiversity, it is crucial that we alter our living habits for the better/more sustainably and press for more laws and regulations regarding the environment that are similar to the Endangered Species Act. There is hope that we can slow down the rates at which some of these species are dying off. Making the unnatural extinctions (because some do occur naturally and keep population growth in check) of animals come to a halt is more of a challenge, but I believe that it is possible if we start with attempts to “slow the spread” (get it? covid?).

What human processes are unnecessary and should be banned or regulated to help save some of the endangered species?

Word count: 946

Bibliography:

Spoolman and Miller, Tyler and Scott. Living in the Environment. Printed in the United States of America, 2019.

Kolbert, Elizabeth. “The Sixth Extinction?” May 25, 2009. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/05/25/the-sixth-extinction.

USGS. “White-Nose Syndrome Killed Over 90% of Three North American Bat Species.” April 21, 2021. https://www.usgs.gov/news/white-nose-syndrome-killed-over-90-three-north-american-bat-species.

Blog #8

Why should we care about aquatic biodiversity (which I will refer to as AB in the future)? Great question that you have so kindly asked. If you care about jobs, then about 300 million jobs rely on the ocean; if you care about food, about “42% of the world’s people get 15–20% of their animal protein and essential nutrition from seafood;” if you care about breathing, oceans generate 50-70% of the oxygen we breathe; and if you simply care about existing, oceans absorb about 25% of the CO2 and 90% of the excess heat that humans produce (Miller, Spoolman 233). Just to name a few. Decreasing aquatic biodiversity will negatively impact the economy, human health, and the environment as a whole with pollution and the increase in human population being its biggest threats.

However, overfishing is another imminent threat to AB. Overfishing is mostly the result of bycatch in an attempt to catch a large amount of fish with one net; essentially more fish with less labor. Bycatch is the accidental capture and killing of dolphins, sea turtles, sharks, and other marine mammals which exist in the same location in which fisheries send out their boats (Miller, Spoolman 240). Bycatch of these animals results in the destabilization of their ecosystems and trophic catastrophes, as I have previously discussed, of the oceanic populations. But wait, seafood is a large part of many people’s diets and cultures, especially in Asian countries where there is more of an abundance of fish than meat. We also need to feed the ever-growing population, so let’s look into what we can do here.

With this exponential growth in human population there became a need for innovating the fishing industry and finding a way to increase the amount of seafood available for consumption, as well as meat and crop products (but let’s stay focused on fish for right now). Well, we have left the age of hunter-gatherers and entered the age of industry; we no longer depend on the wild for meat and produce, so it wouldn’t make sense to depend on the open ocean to supply the roughly 150 million tons of seafood we consume in a year. Thanks to industry, we don’t have to! As of today, around 47% of our seafood consumption is supplemented by aquaculture. Considering the mass overfishing and diminishing oceanic species, aquaculture has become a necessary solution (if you will), considering that around 30% of the world’s commercial fisheries have been overfished and 57% have been harvested at full capacity (Miller, Spoolman 241). Additionally, the aquaculture industry is worth roughly $78 billion and the global output from fish farming in 2012 exceeded 70 million tonnes, surpassing beef and land animal meat production, not accounting for the other half of seafood caught wild (Britannica).

A case study that I found important was “Why Should We Protect Sharks?” If you’re into philosophy and ethics then the answer might be that their lives are just as intrinsically valuable as ours, but the answer goes a little deeper than that. According to an IUCN study, “25% of the world’s open ocean shark species are threatened with extinction, primarily from overfishing” and some sharks are keystone species, so their extinction can threaten the ecosystems and the ecosystem services they provide (Miller, Spoolman 242). Sharks are especially vulnerable to population declines because they grow slowly, mature late, and have only a few offspring per generation, so with the addition that they are being overfished and the fact that they are “among the earth’s most vulnerable and least protected animals” it is crucial that we find ways to protect them, ultimately protecting our environment as well (Miller, Spoolman 242). A solution could be to either ban the fishing of sharks and provide monetary or legal repercussions in doing so, or to place a quota on how many can be fished per annum, giving them time to reproduce.

Nearly “80% of all ocean pollution comes from land-based coastal activities” emphasizing how much of an impact we have on our surrounding environments and how damaging it actually is (Miller, Spoolman 237). One of our plethora of human activities that causes multiple different issues is the fact that we generate an unimaginable amount of trash, which is a significant problem for both fish and seabirds. In the trailer to the film Albatross, we see several scenes of nature and its beauty, then… a dead bird with stomach contents of only plastics and then more and more depictions of dead birds and an island of trash. This portrays the idea that we are perpetually destroying nature’s aesthetic, stripping her of her beauty because we are careless and self consumed.

In what ways can we replenish nature’s beauty and save aquatic biodiversity?

Word Count: 777

Bibliography:

Spoolman and Miller, Tyler and Scott. Living in the Environment. Printed in the United States of America, 2019.

Jordan, Chris. “Albatross.” 2018. Video, 01:29. https://www.albatrossthefilm.com/.

“The Pros and Cons of Fish Farming.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., https://www.britannica.com/explore/savingearth/the-pros-and-cons-of-fish-farming.

Blog #9

Ground beef, ✓; eggs, ✓; salmon, ✓; mixed veggies, ✓. When at a grocery store, most people don’t really have a second thought about where their food is coming from, they just know they need to check it off of their grocery list to make dinner that night. The words “organic” and “cage free” sound enticing, but not many people really know what that means.

The documentary Food Inc. (a film I’ve seen about 4 times now and each time has made me temporarily vegan), examines and elaborates on the process of where our food comes from, and the dangers and hidden horrors that these processes inflict not only on the animals, but on human and environmental health.

The documentary puts focus on the presence of E.coli in the foods that we are eating. Remember Chipotle’s tainted lettuce? Yeah, me too. Schlosser explains that in factory farming, “animals stand ankle-deep in their manure all day long so that if one cow has [E. coli], the other cows will get it. When they get to the slaughterhouse their hides are caked with manure, and if the slaughterhouse is slaughtering 400 animals an hour, how do you keep that manure from getting onto those carcasses? And that’s how the manure gets in the meat” (Kenner, “Food Inc.”). Their solution to keeping E.Coli out of the meat we eat? Deep clean all of the cows before slaughter? That surely would fix the problem safely. Nope! Takes too long. But what doesn’t take long? Ammonia. One of the workers explains that “ammonia kills bacteria, so it became a processing tool,” and when asked how much of their meat is in hamburgers around the country, Eldon Roth, the CEO of Beef Products Inc., responds with 70% and that she thinks in five years it will be 100% (Kenner, “Food Inc.”). Meaning almost all of the beef consumed in the US contains ammonia, and without that ammonia would contain E.coli. Sure, it’s the lesser of two evils, but why should we settle for consuming ammonia? We can’t all possibly go vegan.

This documentary also explains the problems regarding genetic engineering for mass production. The film talks about genetically modified chickens, and how “birds are now raised and slaughtered in half the time they were fifty years ago, but now they’re twice as big. People like to eat white meat so they redesigned the chicken to have large breasts” (Kenner, “Food Inc.”). There was also a quote where a farmer said “If you could grow a chicken in 49 days, why would you want one you gotta grow in 3 months?” The basis behind producing genetically modified food, which genuinely is not good for us, is more profit in less time. Everything is about money.

In a similar film I believe is called “Eating Animals,” though I am not entirely sure, also talks about the unethical ways these animals are treated before they are led to the slaughter. Caged chickens were not given enough space to even turn around, and “cage free” barely means anything, the hens also have barely enough room to move around and can’t go outside, it just means they aren’t held in battery cages. The beaks of young female chicks are also cut off (without any sort of mediation for pain) so that the hens cannot peck at each other, and the male chicks are just killed because they can’t produce eggs or grow large enough to be eaten. The hens are also often fed antidepressants because of the stress they have from being confined in these factory farms. Farmers also cut off the tails of pigs so that other pigs cannot chew off their tails due to stress. Female cows are repeatedly inseminated to the point where their udders get mastitis and they are no longer able to produce milk (where they are then killed), in addition to having their young calves taken away from them after birth. All of these horrible conditions for animals take place every single day, and very few people are aware of the fact that they are buying and ultimately incentivizing factory farms to continue these practices. And if they are aware, they don’t seem to care. Ding ding ding! Human ignorance at its finest.

Another problem regarding cattle, not to mention the amount of water that is required to raise/farm cattle, is overgrazing, a process that is mentioned in the documentary “Symphony of Soil”. It explains that “the US Department of Agriculture reports that we have a serious overgrazing problem and of course that contributes to increased soil erosion,” and as we know, soil degradation reduces the ability to grow more grass for future grazing, or even future crop land due to the lack of nutrients in the soil (Koons Garcia, “Symphony of Soil”). The documentary also discusses the importance of soil, and how healthier soil = healthier crops = healthier environment. Described in the film: “soils have parents just like we have parents so they came from somewhere and soils form from some material that’s in a particular location” (Koons Garcia, “Symphony of Soil”). This quote reminded me of my environmental science class in high school where we learned about ecological succession and how “pioneer plants” grow from environments that are generally unsuitable for life and then die to create soil, starting a biological community that grows more complex and diverse as time goes on. However, it takes hundreds of years after the first pioneer plant to create a climax community. The goal is to maintain a climax community like “Times Square on New Year’s Eve,” instead of waiting upwards of 300 years for earth to restore our damage, if it remains untouched (Koons Garcia, “Symphony of Soil”).

I believe that these films should be shown and the conditions and processes that occur in producing the food we eat should be taught widely throughout the United States and the UK where most factory farming takes place because it is vital that we start cracking down on human ignorance and pushing for more environmental education to raise a generation of environmentally conscience leaders.

Should we make classes like Environmental Science/Studies a mandatory class, similar to math and english? How helpful would it be to have a generation as educated on our environmental issues as we are?

Word Count: 1019 (I really didn’t think it was that long)

Bibliography:

Kenner, Robert. “Food Inc.” Filmed 2008. Video, 01:34:00.

Koons Garcia, Deborah. “Symphony of Soil.” Filmed 2012. Video, 01:44:24.

Blog #10

While the average life expectancy in the US has increased from 35.1yrs in 1865 to 78.81yrs in 2020, and about 73yrs in 2019 worldwide (according to Statista) and we’ve been able to increase overall sanitation, we still have an overwhelming amount of threats to our health in our environment. Even more alarming, we have posed these threats to ourselves with chemicals polluting our water sources, atmospheres, and common household materials and items. Many of “these highly toxic chemicals have been shown to produce numerous harmful effects, including cancers, birth defects, compromised immune systems, and declining sperm counts and sperm quality in men in a number of countries” which clearly alter and decrease the quality of life in a person (Miller, Spoolman 428). Solutions? “Banning the use of harmful chemicals or regulating their use” (Miller, Spoolman 427). Think Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, notably the most effective way in which the use of DDT was banned. I think the easiest way that we could enable these regulations/bans would be to enforce fines of such a high amount that companies would ultimately lose money/profit if they did use the chemical(s). Most large corporations are able to find ways around fines (loopholes) or they simply make enough money that they can pay off fines fairly easily. There is often little oversight into if companies are following laws or regulations, so there would need to be a system in place in which their actions are accurately documented and submitted to an official to maintain regulation/oversight.

I also think that we could fund research that studies these agents and how to protect humans against them seeing that we cannot fully eliminate these chemicals from our environment because of the Learning in Nature note in the textbook. “A shark’s skin is covered with tiny bumps that somehow help it to avoid bacterial infections” (Miller, Spoolman 410). If we can discover the ways that animals naturally protect themselves (because there is no ‘animal’ hospital in nature), we can use biomimicry (as discussed at the beginning of the year. I love when things come full circle) to attempt to find, modify and create similar protection for humans. No, I did not just make up that possibility. It’s a thing! “Scientists are using this information [about the shark bumps] to create antibacterial films with a bumpy structure that could reduce human skin infections” (Miller, Spoolman 410).

I think we can all agree that it is not shocking that LDCs have higher rates of disease or health issues, since many of them have fewer access to health care, clean water sources, and overall have lower health standards. However, while there are higher rates of disease in less developed countries, “almost everyone who lives in a more-developed country is exposed to potentially harmful chemicals in their environment” (Miller, Spoolman 425). There is greater greenhouse gas emissions in MDCs because they have the money to burn fossil fuels for electricity and heat, and there are more cars on the roads in MDCs all contributing to the toxins that are trapped in our atmosphere. As always, humans are to blame.

In terms of bacterial infection, there are infections that are becoming resistant to antibiotics (similarly to pests that overtime gain resistance to pesticides). New strains arise from these bacteria that are stronger than the antibiotic designed to combat it, like the somewhat recent emergence of the STD “Super Gonorrhea” that is antibiotic resistant, or as the textbook mentions, new strains of Tuberculosis. “WHO considers antibiotic resistance one of the biggest threats of this century and the World Economic Forum calls it a ‘potential disaster’ for the global economy and human health” (Miller, Spoolman 411). Additionally, there is an alarming amount of infections that are virtually untreatable and almost “2 million of u.s. citizens get infections that cannot be treated with any known antibiotics” (Miller, Spoolman 412). Viruses are much more aggressive and cannot be treated with antibiotics, but antivirals that in a lot of cases aren’t extremely effective, such as Influenza, Ebola, HIV/AIDS and others. The flu shot is different each year because the flu adapts each year, and you can very well get the flu even if you get the vaccine. Similar to the possibility of getting Covid-19 even if you have been vaccinated.

Hazardous waste production and disposal is very common in toxic chemical exposure. In fact, “workers who recycle e-wastes [...] usually wear no masks or gloves, often work in rooms with no ventilation, and are exposed to toxic chemicals” (Miller, Spoolman 553). All I can think about is The Simpsons intro where Homer accidentally slips the glowing green nuclear product into his suit at the powerplant. How careless! I think we could mitigate this issue by providing more protection gear and safer protocol or attempting to mimic the natural disposal of these wastes by reusing/recycling them.

Would you test out engineered protection such as the biomimicry of the tiny shark bumps (the antibacterial films)? Why or why not?

Word count: 814

Bibliography:

Spoolman and Miller, Tyler and Scott. Living in the Environment. Printed in the United States of America, 2019.

O'Neill, Aaron. “World - Life Expectancy at Birth 2019.” Statista, 3 Aug. 2021, https://www.statista.com/statistics/805060/life-expectancy-at-birth-worldwide/.

Blog #11

We are quite literally surrounded by water no matter where you live on our planet; water makes up just about 71% of earth. Despite the bounty of water we have, about 3% of it is freshwater that is able to be used for human activities, and only about 0.024% is readily available to us as is, and water desalination is extremely expensive making that 0.024% of water just about all we have (Miller, Spoolman 302). All of the water we drink and use now is the water we’ve had since the “birth” of our planet and all we will ever have; remember the Law of Conservation of Matter? Unfortunately, we are currently using and polluting our available freshwater at a rate that is unsustainable (Miller, Spoolman 303). As the planet warms due to climate change, droughts become increasingly common, and the ice caps are melting. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, “10 percent of land area on Earth is covered with glacial ice” and “glaciers store about 69 percent of the world's fresh water.” But what happens when they melt? Yep, they melt into the surrounding ocean’s saltwater, making it no longer potable without desalination processes. Currently, 2.1 billion people are facing water scarcity, and as populations grow and the climate warms, this number is only expected to grow (Miller, Spoolman 306).

Only 57% of the world’s population have water piped to their homes, mostly developed countries with the facilities and money to do so (Miller, Spoolman 301). The rest, commonly LDCs, must find and carry it from distant sources or use it directly at the source (as they do in India), or pump groundwater from aquifers resulting in water table and aquifer decimation. Aquifers are formed through the porous layers in the soil that water percolates through storing water underground. Normally, they can be restored naturally through the water cycle; however, as we develop and pave more and more land for roads, sidewalks, etc, surface water is unable to penetrate the concrete, causing groundwater to be used at a rate faster than it can be restored (Miller, Spoolman 302). There are types of cementing and asphalt that are permeable and meant for water to be able to, you guessed it, permeate through the concrete; however, pervious/porous concrete is generally more expensive than regular concrete and typically used in areas where rainfall is common. When I used to live in Las Vegas (the literal desert where rain was not common), any and every time that it did rain (small or large amounts) there was always a flash flood because we did not have the proper cementing for the water to percolate through or proper storm drainage systems because the rain wasn’t terribly common. You might be thinking “but it’s a desert, there’s dirt for the water to penetrate” and you would be correct, for the unpopulated areas of Nevada. Populated cities like Las Vegas, its surrounding cities/most of southern Nevada, and Reno are extremely urbanized causing this flooding. The aquifers in these areas could not really be restored because the water really could only “go away” through evaporation, which is why Lake Mead (the largest man made water reservoir) supplies most of Nevada’s and Arizona’s water.

Due to human and industrial activities, we are currently polluting our available fresh water at an exponential rate. This pollution can come from point sources (specific discharge locations such as pipes from factories) or nonpoint sources (nonspecific pollution diffusion, such as agricultural runoff) (Miller, Spoolman 507). Not only does water pollution cause the destruction of ecosystems, such as eutrophication, but it can also be extremely detrimental to human health, as “over 1.6 million people die each year from water-borne infectious diseases” (Miller, Spoolman 508). This is mostly in LDCs where they do not possess the ability to treat their wastewater or don’t have/enforce laws or regulations in the disposal of wastewater. In these LDCs with less treatment infrastructure, according to the Global Policy Project, it is estimated that 80-90% of raw sewage is dumped directly into streams and rivers, the same water they use for drinking, bathing, and cleaning. Additionally, 62% of the billions of gallons of raw sewage produced each day in India ends up untreated in nearby rivers and other bodies of water (Miller, Spoolman 512).

Streams and rivers can generally cleanse themselves through natural processes due to their constant movement and decomposing bacteria, unless they are too saturated with slowly degrading or non-degradable pollutants or if they have been altered by man-made structures such as dams in a way that prevents self-purification (Miller, Spoolman 511). Lakes, where there are stratified layers that often don’t mix and very little movement of water, are even more difficult to cleanse of pollutants (Miller, Spoolman 512). Lakes are especially susceptible to cultural eutrophication (the oversaturation of plant nutrients such as nitrates and phosphates that causes algal blooms), resulting in a depletion of dissolved oxygen (because when these algal organisms die they are decomposed by aerobic bacteria that require the DO in the water to breakdown the organisms overall decreasing the amount of DO entirely). The lack of dissolved oxygen makes it impossible for any other respirating aquatic organisms to survive in the body of water, and the toxic algae can be fatal if consumed by many land species (Miller, Spoolman 513). Eutrophication can also halt photosynthesis processes as it blocks sunlight from reaching the aquatic plants in addition to causing “Blue Baby Syndrome” in children drinking the deoxygenated water.

An example of a water pollution success story is the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio (my birthplace!). Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River was so polluted that it caught fire several times and no one seemed to care until a highly publicized image of this burning river was shown virtually everywhere in the city. It prompted elected officials to enact laws to limit the discharge of industrial wastes into the river and to provide funds for upgrading sewage treatment facilities. Today, it is no longer flammable and this accomplishment illustrates the efficacy of bottom-up pressure by citizens who prodded elected officials to change a severely polluted river into an economically and ecologically valuable public resource.

It is possible for us to pressure city and state officials to fix environmental issues, but I believe that it is more important to focus on water pollution prevention because it is much easier to mitigate the problem instead of having to eventually clean up after ourselves after the damage has already been done.

What are some ways that we can help LDCs with their water pollution crisis?

Word count: 1090 (I know it is way too long, but this was my presentation chapter and I really want to display my knowledge here. Thanks for reading it)

Bibliography:

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott Spoolman. “Chapter 20: Water Pollution.” Living in the Environment:  Concepts, Connections, and Solutions, vol. 20, Brooks/Cole, Belmont, CA, 2011, pp. 506–533.

“National Snow and Ice Data Center.” Facts about Glaciers | National Snow and Ice Data Center, https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/glaciers/quickfacts.html.

Blog #12

Recently, representatives gathered from around the world to meet in Glasgow for the annual United Nations Climate Change Conference. While representatives made some pretty intrepid new commitments to reduce the impact that their respective countries have had on climate change, those “commitments” simply won’t be enough to truly address the looming threat posed by climate change. After this week's readings that condensed what occurred during the conference, I’m not convinced that many of the commitments and goals are to be met and upheld.

Alarmingly, the meeting actually opened with a UN chief stating that it’s time to “go into emergency mode” (Quiñones). I personally think we should have gone into ‘emergency mode’ a long time ago and maybe we’d be better off than we are now, but this statement alone only goes to show how serious of a threat our planet is under. After learning that “to keep the goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C within reach, we need to cut global emissions in half by the end of this decade” and that “the United Nations calculates that these plans, as they stand, put the world on track for 2.5 degrees C of warming by the end of the century” you almost are forced to lose hope (Mountford). While it is better than the 4 degrees C trajectory the world was on before the Paris Agreement, Prime Minister Mia Mottley was quoted as saying that “2 degrees is a death sentence” (Quiñones). Even better, you have to almost laugh when the negotiations concluded that 1.5C is in reach (“just barely” according to Mountford) once you’ve heard that it’s looking like we’re on track for 2.5C even with the plans to cut global emissions in half. These are just some insane expectations that are most probably unrealistic. I mean imagine how much easier it would have been to reach 1.5C or even lower if we started caring more earlier on. We can no longer “prevent” climate change. Climate change has happened, is happening, and will continue to happen. Words like “prevention” are just blatantly ignorant and create a group of people who “don’t believe in climate change” because issues that can be prevented generally haven’t occurred yet, but we are in preparation for their occurrence. How utterly damaging is that belief system? We should have been preparing for climate change the minute we realized the effect human activity has on the environment. Albeit, we should have been preparing for all of the environmental issues then at that time too. The only thing we’re “preparing” for, is the mass extinction of all living things on earth, since that has yet to occur.

However, (let me stop bashing the conference for a second) one thing that COP26 was successful in doing was that it acknowledged the fact that climate change is already causing loss and damage “to millions, including the loss of lives, livelihoods, and ecosystems” (COP26 Explained, 11). Great! (A continuation of criticism now ensues). We’ve finally realized how bad we’ve messed up; can’t prevent that now, can we? It is already too late for the Maldives, a breathtaking island that now cannot be saved by the 1.5C goal (Quiñones). The Maldives and similar countries will have to begin to make plans to relocate their citizens, and this could possibly only be the start of, what I’m going to call, evacuations. What happens when the 1.5C goal is not met? Are more and more countries going to be forced to evacuate their countries, because life there is no longer sustainable? Does it finally end when there is nowhere else to go?

As I’m writing this, I’m sitting here baffled and sad that it has taken this long for world leaders to truly realize the trouble that we’ve been in for so long and how it is only progressively getting worse. While from an economic standpoint, I can be understanding of profit margins and the importance of maintaining a good economy; but from an environmental standpoint, I’m simply not in favor of the economy. At first I was thinking “What is there possibly to negotiate? What is so much more important than the environment that whatever it is can’t be sacrificed?” Now I understand that we can’t destroy the economy of any country just for the sake of saving our environment (though if it were up to me, maybe we could). But, economies have absolutely destroyed and continue to destroy our planet. The economy won’t and can’t possibly mean anything if we’re all fighting to stay alive on earth. The money that is being gained, or just not lost, from all of the detrimental human activities we’ve talked about over the course is not worth anything if our kids or their kids don’t have a place to live.

I found myself most disappointed to read of the change to the pact made by two of the world’s guiltiest polluters and contributors of coal-fired power generated emissions. “COP26 President Alok Sharma struggled to hold back tears following the announcement of a last-minute change to the pact, by China and India, softening language circulated in an earlier draft about “the phase-out of unabated coal power and of inefficient subsidies for fossil fuels”. As adopted on Saturday, that language was revised to “phase down” coal use” (Quiñones). If the words “struggled to hold back tears” didn’t jump out to you at first, I hope they do now. The fact that this announcement caused such emotions is a red flag! Though we shouldn’t cause mass hysteria and nihilistic views on life, we should ALL be concerned and somewhat afraid of the future of our planet. If that’s what causes action, then so be it. But we cannot continue to just sit back, continuing our harmful habits, and watch as the world around us deteriorates.

Considering some of these negotiations are basically “last resort” efforts, how can we make lasting improvements to the health of our environment? What needs to be sacrificed?

Word count: 977

Bibliography:

“COP26 Explained - ukcop26.Org.” COP26 Negotiations Explained. UK Government. Accessed December 8, 2021. https://ukcop26.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/COP26-Explained.pdf.

Mountford, Helen, David Waskow, Lorena Gonzalez, Chirag Gajjar, Nathan Cogswell, Mima Holt, Taryn Fransen, Molly Bergen, and Rhys Gerholdt. “COP26: Key Outcomes from the UN Climate Talks in Glasgow .” World Resources Institute, November 17, 2021. https://www.wri.org/insights/cop26-key-outcomes-un-climate-talks-glasgow.

“Organization of Work, Including for the Sessions of the Subsidiary Bodies.” Glasgow Climate Pact. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, November 13, 2021. https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/cma2021_L16_adv.pdf.

Quiñones, Laura. “COP26 Closes with ‘Compromise’ Deal on Climate, but It’s Not Enough, Says UN Chief | | UN News.” United Nations. United Nations, November 12, 2021. https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/11/1105792.

Environmental Stakeholder Statement

I believe that as an environmental stakeholder, I am extremely concerned about the environment, as most of us are. We all actively chose to take this class, but considering environmental studies has absolutely not a thing to do with my major and counts as an elective credit for me, I would say that I care just a bit more than the average human, I would hope. I think it is pretty prevalent in my blog posts and my participation in class that I care a great deal about ongoing issues such as climate change, deforestation, pollution, water resources; basically everything we have covered over these last fourteen weeks or so. After taking AP Environmental Science in high school I think that I started to view the world in a more critical/enlightening way. Not only do I know the stages of wastewater treatment like the back of my hand, but I feel I can say that I also fully understand how all of my actions impact the environment, both positively and negatively. While having never boughten a single seafood product, I can’t say that I have single handedly solved the fishing crisis, but I do understand how collective efforts to not buy certain goods because of how they are produced can provide an economic incentive for companies to practice sustainability and attempt to be more ethical in their ways. I love using my reusable water bottle and filling them up in the water fountains and seeing how many plastic bottles have been eliminated, and not ended up in the ocean or a bird’s stomach. I also think that this course and APES gave me a greater appreciation for my environment. I know not many scientists believe in theology, but environmental degradation doesn’t only upset me because we are sending earth to the slaughter, but because the animals and pure life that God created for us is being destroyed every second of every day because of human activity. It is the simple yet detrimental ignorance of nature that a lot of humans have toward our planet that is most upsetting because it feels like you can’t change their minds; and in some ways you can’t, you can’t change the mind of every single person to do better or to be better inhabitants of earth, but the fact that so many people aren’t even willing to listen is really disheartening when you know what we are doing to our planet.

As a Political Science major, I hope that I can take this knowledge and apply it in the future, you know when I’m a successful politician (manifesting it), to help engrain positive, environmentally charged thinking into politics because as I have learned in this class, the solution to most of earth’s problems lay in hands of leaders. I’m hopeful that our generation and future generations will shape human thinking and create an age of leaders who choose quality of life for all living beings over measly profit gain. But for now, I will continue to share my knowledge with even those who don’t want to listen, because I have the ability to do so and as mentioned more times than I can count, education and educating is so very important.

Climate Initiative Practicum

Similarly to the Midterm Practicum Report, my extensive work and school schedule (in addition to trying to somewhat maintain a social life) has prevented me from being able to participate in a lot of the programs and activities I would have loved to do. But work never stopped me from attending the weekly meetings, even if I did have to join on Zoom and secretly listen while working (let’s not tell my manager that). There was a week of activities for Sustainability Week and the sign up times that I could attend were already taken and the others were either times that I had work or class. I’m pretty bummed that I couldn’t participate in Sustainability Week because it would have been a lot more fun than making coffee for people who are probably going to end up throwing their cup on the ground when they’re done. However, there was an activity where we could go to Thousand Fell, which is a sustainable shoe store in Manhattan. Unfortunately, I couldn’t attend the time that everyone was going, but, don’t worry, I went with my roommate on my day off to go check it out! I couldn’t bring myself to buy anything because truly the shoes were over $100 each and I put most of the money I make working into my savings account, but they have an online website, so I put the link into my Christmas list.

Speaking of Christmas lists, we contacted and compiled a list of websites and discount codes for businesses that practice sustainability or are environmentally conscious because Christmas, and other practiced winter holidays, are right around the corner. I was actually really excited to hear about this because not only are we all striving to support sustainable businesses, but they provided us with unique coupon codes which I think is super helpful for college students trying to buy presents. I also really appreciate the discount codes because sustainable products are generally more expensive (the Thousand Fell shoes for example) to their unsustainable counterparts, so this allows us better access or ability to purchase these products when I probably could not have been able to afford otherwise. Some of the brands on the list don’t have discount codes, but I feel are important to be included because it can guide holiday shopping, for those who can afford to purchase from them, towards brands that are more sustainable.

In the likes of shopping, I am proud to say that I have not bought any new articles of clothing since the school year started. I want to say that it is because I am constantly trying to decrease my carbon footprint, but it could be that I really don’t have the money to do so; however, I am going to go ahead and say that it is probably a combination of both. I have realized that I don’t need new clothes. At all. I am pretty sure I have reached the end of growing and that I probably am not going to grow out of clothes any time soon, at least I haven’t in the past year or two, so “needing” new clothes is more of a “wanting” new clothes at this point. This decision has kind of sucked because of the growing fashion trends and the fact that my roommate is always ordering new clothes online, so I can’t lie and say that I haven’t been jealous; but even when I have had the money to buy some new clothes, I just haven’t and I would say that is an accomplishment for me, especially because I really like buying clothes. I was able to participate in a program held by one of my building RAs where we went to a GoodWill in Harlem to go thrift shopping; I didn’t get any good finds, but some of my friends found some really cool pieces. I think that the Climate Impact Initiative and this course have both really guided my way of thinking and acting, I definitely would not have been able to go this long without buying fast fashion previously.

Another really cool mission the Climate Impact Initiative has started is attempting to shape the core curriculum. Nicolette Makris has been in contact with one of the deans at Fordham about updating the core curriculum and advocating for including more environmental components as they are looking to make changes to it. I contributed by suggesting that they change this class (Environmental Studies) to fulfill a science (or similar) credit, instead of being an elective because I think more people who are not majoring in Environmental Science or Studies would take the course if it would fill a needed requirement. I think I asked in one of my blog questions if ENST or APES should be a requirement and I 100% believe that it should. Not only do both classes teach about the impending environmental issues, but also shapes young minds to think more critically about our planet. I think it could be really beneficial as a required course in college when we are really finding out what we are passionate about and what we believe in. In one of our class discussions we were all trying to figure out ways that we can participate in local activities to push for environmental change similar to Occupy Wall Street.

Due to the fact that I couldn’t participate much during this semester, I continued to watch the seminars from Slow Factory as I did and mentioned in the Midterm Practicum Report because I found them really interesting and I liked that I could do it during the very little free time that I had. I am thinking that next semester I will have more availability to participate in the activities and projects as my work schedule will be changing based on my class schedule. Overall, it has been a really fun semester and I hope I can join some more clubs that are similar and just as passionate about the environment because it is really cool to come together with like-minded people and share ideas and just talk.

Word count: 1018

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Blog #12

Recently, representatives gathered from around the world to meet in Glasgow for the annual United Nations Climate Change Conference. While representatives made some pretty intrepid new commitments to reduce the impact that their respective countries have had on climate change, those “commitments” simply won’t be enough to truly address the looming threat posed by climate change. After having read this week's readings that condensed what occurred during the conference, I’m not convinced that many of the commitments and goals are to be met and upheld.

Alarmingly, the meeting actually opened with a UN chief stating that it’s time to “go into emergency mode” (Quiñones). I personally think we should have gone into ‘emergency mode’ a long time ago and maybe we’d be better off than we are now, but this statement alone only goes to show how serious of a threat our planet is under. After learning that “to keep the goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C within reach, we need to cut global emissions in half by the end of this decade” and that “the United Nations calculates that these plans, as they stand, put the world on track for 2.5 degrees C of warming by the end of the century” you almost are forced to lose hope (Mountford). While it is better than the 4 degrees C trajectory the world was on before the Paris Agreement, Prime Minister Mia Mottley was quoted as saying that “2 degrees is a death sentence” (Quiñones). Even better, you have to almost laugh when the negotiations concluded that 1.5C is in reach (“just barely” according to Mountford) once you’ve heard that it’s looking like we’re on track for 2.5C even with the plans to cut global emissions in half. These are just some insane expectations that are most probably unrealistic. I mean imagine how much easier it would have been to reach 1.5C or even lower if we started caring more earlier on. We can no longer “prevent” climate change. Climate change has happened, is happening, and will continue to happen. Words like “prevention” are just blatantly ignorant and create a group of people who “don’t believe in climate change” because issues that can be prevented generally haven’t occurred yet, but we are in preparation for their occurrence. How utterly damaging is that belief system? We should have been preparing for climate change the minute we realized the effect human activity has on the environment. Albeit, we should have been preparing for all of the environmental issues then at that time too. The only thing we’re “preparing” for, is the mass extinction of all living things on earth, since that has yet to occur.

However, (let me stop bashing the conference for a second) one thing that COP26 was successful in doing was that it acknowledged the fact that climate change is already causing loss and damage “to millions, including the loss of lives, livelihoods, and ecosystems” (COP26 Explained, 11). Great! (A continuation of criticism now ensues). We’ve finally realized how bad we’ve messed up; can’t prevent that now, can we? It is already too late for the Maldives, a breathtaking island that now cannot be saved by the 1.5C goal (Quiñones). The Maldives and similar countries will have to begin to make plans to relocate their citizens, and this could possibly only be the start of, what I’m going to call, evacuations. What happens when the 1.5C goal is not met? Are more and more countries going to be forced to evacuate their countries, because life there is no longer sustainable? Does it finally end when there is nowhere else to go?

As I’m writing this, I’m sitting here baffled and sad that it has taken this long for world leaders to truly realize the trouble that we’ve been in for so long and how it is only progressively getting worse. While from an economic standpoint, I can be understanding of profit margins and the importance of maintaining a good economy; but from an environmental standpoint, I’m simply not in favor of the economy. At first I was thinking “What is there possibly to negotiate? What is so much more important than the environment that whatever it is can’t be sacrificed?” Now I understand that we can’t destroy the economy of any country just for the sake of saving our environment (though if it were up to me, maybe we could). But, economies have absolutely destroyed and continue to destroy our planet. The economy won’t and can’t possibly mean anything if we’re all fighting to stay alive on earth. The money that is being gained, or just not lost, from all of the detrimental human activities we’ve talked about over the course is not worth anything if our kids or their kids don’t have a place to live.

I found myself most disappointed to read of the change to the pact made by two of the world’s guiltiest polluters and contributors of coal-fired power generated emissions. “COP26 President Alok Sharma struggled to hold back tears following the announcement of a last-minute change to the pact, by China and India, softening language circulated in an earlier draft about “the phase-out of unabated coal power and of inefficient subsidies for fossil fuels”. As adopted on Saturday, that language was revised to “phase down” coal use” (Quiñones). If the words “struggled to hold back tears” didn’t jump out to you at first, I hope they do now. The fact that this announcement caused such emotions is a red flag! Though we shouldn’t cause mass hysteria and nihilistic views on life, we should ALL be concerned and somewhat afraid of the future of our planet. If that’s what causes action, then so be it. But we cannot continue to just sit back, continuing our harmful habits, and watch as the world around us deteriorates.

Considering some of these negotiations are basically “last resort” efforts, how can we make lasting improvements to the health of our environment? What needs to be sacrificed?

Word count: 979

Bibliography:

“COP26 Explained - ukcop26.Org.” COP26 Negotiations Explained. UK Government. Accessed December 8, 2021. https://ukcop26.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/COP26-Explained.pdf.

Mountford, Helen, David Waskow, Lorena Gonzalez, Chirag Gajjar, Nathan Cogswell, Mima Holt, Taryn Fransen, Molly Bergen, and Rhys Gerholdt. “COP26: Key Outcomes from the UN Climate Talks in Glasgow .” World Resources Institute, November 17, 2021. https://www.wri.org/insights/cop26-key-outcomes-un-climate-talks-glasgow.

“Organization of Work, Including for the Sessions of the Subsidiary Bodies.” Glasgow Climate Pact. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, November 13, 2021. https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/cma2021_L16_adv.pdf.

Quiñones, Laura. “COP26 Closes with ‘Compromise’ Deal on Climate, but It’s Not Enough, Says UN Chief | | UN News.” United Nations. United Nations, November 12, 2021. https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/11/1105792.

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Blog #11

We are quite literally surrounded by water no matter where you live on our planet; water makes up just about 71% of earth. Despite the bounty of water we have, about 3% of it is freshwater that is able to be used for human activities, and only about 0.024% is readily available to us as is, and water desalination is extremely expensive making that 0.024% of water just about all we have (Miller, Spoolman 302). All of the water we drink and use now is the water we’ve had since the “birth” of our planet and all we will ever have; remember the Law of Conservation of Matter? Unfortunately, we are currently using and polluting our available freshwater at a rate that is unsustainable (Miller, Spoolman 303). As the planet warms due to climate change, droughts become increasingly common, and the ice caps are melting. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, “10 percent of land area on Earth is covered with glacial ice” and “glaciers store about 69 percent of the world's fresh water.” But what happens when they melt? Yep, they melt into the surrounding ocean’s saltwater, making it no longer potable without desalination processes. Currently, 2.1 billion people are facing water scarcity, and as populations grow and the climate warms, this number is only expected to grow (Miller, Spoolman 306).

Only 57% of the world’s population have water piped to their homes, mostly developed countries with the facilities and money to do so (Miller, Spoolman 301). The rest, commonly LDCs, must find and carry it from distant sources or use it directly at the source (as they do in India), or pump groundwater from aquifers resulting in water table and aquifer decimation. Aquifers are formed through the porous layers in the soil that water percolates through storing water underground. Normally, they can be restored naturally through the water cycle; however, as we develop and pave more and more land for roads, sidewalks, etc, surface water is unable to penetrate the concrete, causing groundwater to be used at a rate faster than it can be restored (Miller, Spoolman 302). There are types of cementing and asphalt that are permeable and meant for water to be able to, you guessed it, permeate through the concrete; however, pervious/porous concrete is generally more expensive than regular concrete and typically used in areas where rainfall is common. When I used to live in Las Vegas (the literal desert where rain was not common), any and every time that it did rain (small or large amounts) there was always a flash flood because we did not have the proper cementing for the water to percolate through or proper storm drainage systems because the rain wasn’t terribly common. You might be thinking “but it’s a desert, there’s dirt for the water to penetrate” and you would be correct, for the unpopulated areas of Nevada. Populated cities like Las Vegas, its surrounding cities/most of southern Nevada, and Reno are extremely urbanized causing this flooding. The aquifers in these areas could not really be restored because the water really could only “go away” through evaporation, which is why Lake Mead (the largest man made water reservoir) supplies most of Nevada’s and Arizona’s water.

Due to human and industrial activities, we are currently polluting our available fresh water at an exponential rate. This pollution can come from point sources (specific discharge locations such as pipes from factories) or nonpoint sources (nonspecific pollution diffusion, such as agricultural runoff) (Miller, Spoolman 507). Not only does water pollution cause the destruction of ecosystems, such as eutrophication, but it can also be extremely detrimental to human health, as “over 1.6 million people die each year from water-borne infectious diseases” (Miller, Spoolman 508). This is mostly in LDCs where they do not possess the ability to treat their wastewater or don’t have/enforce laws or regulations in the disposal of wastewater. In these LDCs with less treatment infrastructure, according to the Global Policy Project, it is estimated that 80-90% of raw sewage is dumped directly into streams and rivers, the same water they use for drinking, bathing, and cleaning. Additionally, 62% of the billions of gallons of raw sewage produced each day in India ends up untreated in nearby rivers and other bodies of water (Miller, Spoolman 512).

Streams and rivers can generally cleanse themselves through natural processes due to their constant movement and decomposing bacteria, unless they are too saturated with slowly degrading or non-degradable pollutants or if they have been altered by man-made structures such as dams in a way that prevents self-purification (Miller, Spoolman 511). Lakes, where there are stratified layers that often don’t mix and very little movement of water, are even more difficult to cleanse of pollutants (Miller, Spoolman 512). Lakes are especially susceptible to cultural eutrophication (the oversaturation of plant nutrients such as nitrates and phosphates that causes algal blooms), resulting in a depletion of dissolved oxygen (because when these algal organisms die they are decomposed by aerobic bacteria that require the DO in the water to breakdown the organisms overall decreasing the amount of DO entirely). The lack of dissolved oxygen makes it impossible for any other respirating aquatic organisms to survive in the body of water, and the toxic algae can be fatal if consumed by many land species (Miller, Spoolman 513). Eutrophication can also halt photosynthesis processes as it blocks sunlight from reaching the aquatic plants in addition to causing “Blue Baby Syndrome” in children drinking the deoxygenated water.

An example of a water pollution success story is the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio (my birthplace!). Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River was so polluted that it caught fire several times and no one seemed to care until a highly publicized image of this burning river was shown virtually everywhere in the city. It prompted elected officials to enact laws to limit the discharge of industrial wastes into the river and to provide funds for upgrading sewage treatment facilities. Today, it is no longer flammable and this accomplishment illustrates the efficacy of bottom-up pressure by citizens who prodded elected officials to change a severely polluted river into an economically and ecologically valuable public resource.

It is possible for us to pressure city and state officials to fix environmental issues, but I believe that it is more important to focus on water pollution prevention because it is much easier to mitigate the problem instead of having to eventually clean up after ourselves after the damage has already been done.

What are some ways that we can help LDCs with their water pollution crisis?

Word count: 1090 (I know it is way too long, but this was my presentation chapter and I really want to display my knowledge here. Thanks for reading it)

Bibliography:

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott Spoolman. “Chapter 20: Water Pollution.” Living in the Environment:  Concepts, Connections, and Solutions, vol. 20, Brooks/Cole, Belmont, CA, 2011, pp. 506–533.

“National Snow and Ice Data Center.” Facts about Glaciers | National Snow and Ice Data Center, https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/glaciers/quickfacts.html.

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Blog #10

While the average life expectancy in the US has increased from 35.1yrs in 1865 to 78.81yrs in 2020, and about 73yrs in 2019 worldwide (according to Statista) and we’ve been able to increase overall sanitation, we still have an overwhelming amount of threats to our health in our environment. Even more alarming, we have posed these threats to ourselves with chemicals polluting our water sources, atmospheres, and common household materials and items. Many of “these highly toxic chemicals have been shown to produce numerous harmful effects, including cancers, birth defects, compromised immune systems, and declining sperm counts and sperm quality in men in a number of countries” which clearly alter and decrease the quality of life in a person (Miller, Spoolman 428). Solutions? “Banning the use of harmful chemicals or regulating their use” (Miller, Spoolman 427). Think Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, notably the most effective way in which the use of DDT was banned. I think the easiest way that we could enable these regulations/bans would be to enforce fines of such a high amount that companies would ultimately lose money/profit if they did use the chemical(s). Most large corporations are able to find ways around fines (loopholes) or they simply make enough money that they can pay off fines fairly easily. There is often little oversight into if companies are following laws or regulations, so there would need to be a system in place in which their actions are accurately documented and submitted to an official to maintain regulation/oversight.

I also think that we could fund research that studies these agents and how to protect humans against them seeing that we cannot fully eliminate these chemicals from our environment because of the Learning in Nature note in the textbook. “A shark’s skin is covered with tiny bumps that somehow help it to avoid bacterial infections” (Miller, Spoolman 410). If we can discover the ways that animals naturally protect themselves (because there is no ‘animal’ hospital in nature), we can use biomimicry (as discussed at the beginning of the year. I love when things come full circle) to attempt to find, modify and create similar protection for humans. No, I did not just make up that possibility. It’s a thing! “Scientists are using this information [about the shark bumps] to create antibacterial films with a bumpy structure that could reduce human skin infections” (Miller, Spoolman 410).

I think we can all agree that it is not shocking that LDCs have higher rates of disease or health issues, since many of them have fewer access to health care, clean water sources, and overall have lower health standards. However, while there are higher rates of disease in less developed countries, “almost everyone who lives in a more-developed country is exposed to potentially harmful chemicals in their environment” (Miller, Spoolman 425). There is greater greenhouse gas emissions in MDCs because they have the money to burn fossil fuels for electricity and heat, and there are more cars on the roads in MDCs all contributing to the toxins that are trapped in our atmosphere. As always, humans are to blame.

In terms of bacterial infection, there are infections that are becoming resistant to antibiotics (similarly to pests that overtime gain resistance to pesticides). New strains arise from these bacteria that are stronger than the antibiotic designed to combat it, like the somewhat recent emergence of the STD “Super Gonorrhea” that is antibiotic resistant, or as the textbook mentions, new strains of Tuberculosis. “WHO considers antibiotic resistance one of the biggest threats of this century and the World Economic Forum calls it a ‘potential disaster’ for the global economy and human health” (Miller, Spoolman 411). Additionally, there is an alarming amount of infections that are virtually untreatable and almost “2 million of u.s. citizens get infections that cannot be treated with any known antibiotics” (Miller, Spoolman 412). Viruses are much more aggressive and cannot be treated with antibiotics, but antivirals that in a lot of cases aren’t extremely effective, such as Influenza, Ebola, HIV/AIDS and others. The flu shot is different each year because the flu adapts each year, and you can very well get the flu even if you get the vaccine. Similar to the possibility of getting Covid-19 even if you have been vaccinated.

Hazardous waste production and disposal is very common in toxic chemical exposure. In fact, “workers who recycle e-wastes [...] usually wear no masks or gloves, often work in rooms with no ventilation, and are exposed to toxic chemicals” (Miller, Spoolman 553). All I can think about is The Simpsons intro where Homer accidentally slips the glowing green nuclear product into his suit at the powerplant. How careless! I think we could mitigate this issue by providing more protection gear and safer protocol or attempting to mimic the natural disposal of these wastes by reusing/recycling them.

Would you test out engineered protection such as the biomimicry of the tiny shark bumps (the antibacterial films)? Why or why not?

Word count: 814

Bibliography:

Spoolman and Miller, Tyler and Scott. Living in the Environment. Printed in the United States of America, 2019.

O'Neill, Aaron. “World - Life Expectancy at Birth 2019.” Statista, 3 Aug. 2021, https://www.statista.com/statistics/805060/life-expectancy-at-birth-worldwide/.

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Blog #9

Ground beef, ✓; eggs, ✓; salmon, ✓; mixed veggies, ✓. When at a grocery store, most people don’t really have a second thought about where their food is coming from, they just know they need to check it off of their grocery list to make dinner that night. The words “organic” and “cage free” sound enticing, but not many people really know what that means.

The documentary Food Inc. (a film I’ve seen about 4 times now and each time has made me temporarily vegan), examines and elaborates on the process of where our food comes from, and the dangers and hidden horrors that these processes inflict not only on the animals, but on human and environmental health.

The documentary puts focus on the presence of E.coli in the foods that we are eating. Remember Chipotle’s tainted lettuce? Yeah, me too. Schlosser explains that in factory farming, “animals stand ankle-deep in their manure all day long so that if one cow has [E. coli], the other cows will get it. When they get to the slaughterhouse their hides are caked with manure, and if the slaughterhouse is slaughtering 400 animals an hour, how do you keep that manure from getting onto those carcasses? And that’s how the manure gets in the meat” (Kenner, “Food Inc.”). Their solution to keeping E.Coli out of the meat we eat? Deep clean all of the cows before slaughter? That surely would fix the problem safely. Nope! Takes too long. But what doesn’t take long? Ammonia. One of the workers explains that “ammonia kills bacteria, so it became a processing tool,” and when asked how much of their meat is in hamburgers around the country, Eldon Roth, the CEO of Beef Products Inc., responds with 70% and that she thinks in five years it will be 100% (Kenner, “Food Inc.”). Meaning almost all of the beef consumed in the US contains ammonia, and without that ammonia would contain E.coli. Sure, it’s the lesser of two evils, but why should we settle for consuming ammonia? We can’t all possibly go vegan.

This documentary also explains the problems regarding genetic engineering for mass production. The film talks about genetically modified chickens, and how “birds are now raised and slaughtered in half the time they were fifty years ago, but now they’re twice as big. People like to eat white meat so they redesigned the chicken to have large breasts” (Kenner, “Food Inc.”). There was also a quote where a farmer said “If you could grow a chicken in 49 days, why would you want one you gotta grow in 3 months?” The basis behind producing genetically modified food, which genuinely is not good for us, is more profit in less time. Everything is about money.

In a similar film I believe is called “Eating Animals,” though I am not entirely sure, also talks about the unethical ways these animals are treated before they are led to the slaughter. Caged chickens were not given enough space to even turn around, and “cage free” barely means anything, the hens also have barely enough room to move around and can’t go outside, it just means they aren’t held in battery cages. The beaks of young female chicks are also cut off (without any sort of mediation for pain) so that the hens cannot peck at each other, and the male chicks are just killed because they can’t produce eggs or grow large enough to be eaten. The hens are also often fed antidepressants because of the stress they have from being confined in these factory farms. Farmers also cut off the tails of pigs so that other pigs cannot chew off their tails due to stress. Female cows are repeatedly inseminated to the point where their udders get mastitis and they are no longer able to produce milk (where they are then killed), in addition to having their young calves taken away from them after birth. All of these horrible conditions for animals take place every single day, and very few people are aware of the fact that they are buying and ultimately incentivizing factory farms to continue these practices. And if they are aware, they don’t seem to care. Ding ding ding! Human ignorance at its finest.

Another problem regarding cattle, not to mention the amount of water that is required to raise/farm cattle, is overgrazing, a process that is mentioned in the documentary “Symphony of Soil”. It explains that “the US Department of Agriculture reports that we have a serious overgrazing problem and of course that contributes to increased soil erosion,” and as we know, soil degradation reduces the ability to grow more grass for future grazing, or even future crop land due to the lack of nutrients in the soil (Koons Garcia, “Symphony of Soil”). The documentary also discusses the importance of soil, and how healthier soil = healthier crops = healthier environment. Described in the film: “soils have parents just like we have parents so they came from somewhere and soils form from some material that’s in a particular location” (Koons Garcia, “Symphony of Soil”). This quote reminded me of my environmental science class in high school where we learned about ecological succession and how “pioneer plants” grow from environments that are generally unsuitable for life and then die to create soil, starting a biological community that grows more complex and diverse as time goes on. However, it takes hundreds of years after the first pioneer plant to create a climax community. The goal is to maintain a climax community like “Times Square on New Year’s Eve,” instead of waiting upwards of 300 years for earth to restore our damage, if it remains untouched (Koons Garcia, “Symphony of Soil”).

I believe that these films should be shown and the conditions and processes that occur in producing the food we eat should be taught widely throughout the United States and the UK where most factory farming takes place because it is vital that we start cracking down on human ignorance and pushing for more environmental education to raise a generation of environmentally conscience leaders.

Should we make classes like Environmental Science/Studies a mandatory class, similar to math and english? How helpful would it be to have a generation as educated on our environmental issues as we are?

Word Count: 1019 (I really didn’t think it was that long)

Bibliography:

Kenner, Robert. “Food Inc.” Filmed 2008. Video, 01:34:00.

Koons Garcia, Deborah. “Symphony of Soil.” Filmed 2012. Video, 01:44:24.

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Blog #8

Why should we care about aquatic biodiversity (which I will refer to as AB in the future)? Great question that you have so kindly asked. If you care about jobs, then about 300 million jobs rely on the ocean; if you care about food, about “42% of the world’s people get 15–20% of their animal protein and essential nutrition from seafood;” if you care about breathing, oceans generate 50-70% of the oxygen we breathe; and if you simply care about existing, oceans absorb about 25% of the CO2 and 90% of the excess heat that humans produce (Miller, Spoolman 233). Just to name a few. Decreasing aquatic biodiversity will negatively impact the economy, human health, and the environment as a whole with pollution and the increase in human population being its biggest threats.

However, overfishing is another imminent threat to AB. Overfishing is mostly the result of bycatch in an attempt to catch a large amount of fish with one net; essentially more fish with less labor. Bycatch is the accidental capture and killing of dolphins, sea turtles, sharks, and other marine mammals which exist in the same location in which fisheries send out their boats (Miller, Spoolman 240). Bycatch of these animals results in the destabilization of their ecosystems and trophic catastrophes, as I have previously discussed, of the oceanic populations. But wait, seafood is a large part of many people’s diets and cultures, especially in Asian countries where there is more of an abundance of fish than meat. We also need to feed the ever-growing population, so let’s look into what we can do here.

With this exponential growth in human population there became a need for innovating the fishing industry and finding a way to increase the amount of seafood available for consumption, as well as meat and crop products (but let’s stay focused on fish for right now). Well, we have left the age of hunter-gatherers and entered the age of industry; we no longer depend on the wild for meat and produce, so it wouldn’t make sense to depend on the open ocean to supply the roughly 150 million tons of seafood we consume in a year. Thanks to industry, we don’t have to! As of today, around 47% of our seafood consumption is supplemented by aquaculture. Considering the mass overfishing and diminishing oceanic species, aquaculture has become a necessary solution (if you will), considering that around 30% of the world’s commercial fisheries have been overfished and 57% have been harvested at full capacity (Miller, Spoolman 241). Additionally, the aquaculture industry is worth roughly $78 billion and the global output from fish farming in 2012 exceeded 70 million tonnes, surpassing beef and land animal meat production, not accounting for the other half of seafood caught wild (Britannica).

A case study that I found important was “Why Should We Protect Sharks?” If you’re into philosophy and ethics then the answer might be that their lives are just as intrinsically valuable as ours, but the answer goes a little deeper than that. According to an IUCN study, “25% of the world’s open ocean shark species are threatened with extinction, primarily from overfishing” and some sharks are keystone species, so their extinction can threaten the ecosystems and the ecosystem services they provide (Miller, Spoolman 242). Sharks are especially vulnerable to population declines because they grow slowly, mature late, and have only a few offspring per generation, so with the addition that they are being overfished and the fact that they are “among the earth’s most vulnerable and least protected animals” it is crucial that we find ways to protect them, ultimately protecting our environment as well (Miller, Spoolman 242). A solution could be to either ban the fishing of sharks and provide monetary or legal repercussions in doing so, or to place a quota on how many can be fished per annum, giving them time to reproduce.

Nearly “80% of all ocean pollution comes from land-based coastal activities” emphasizing how much of an impact we have on our surrounding environments and how damaging it actually is (Miller, Spoolman 237). One of our plethora of human activities that causes multiple different issues is the fact that we generate an unimaginable amount of trash, which is a significant problem for both fish and seabirds. In the trailer to the film Albatross, we see several scenes of nature and its beauty, then… a dead bird with stomach contents of only plastics and then more and more depictions of dead birds and an island of trash. This portrays the idea that we are perpetually destroying nature’s aesthetic, stripping her of her beauty because we are careless and self consumed.

In what ways can we replenish nature’s beauty and save aquatic biodiversity?

Word Count: 777

Bibliography:

Spoolman and Miller, Tyler and Scott. Living in the Environment. Printed in the United States of America, 2019.

Jordan, Chris. “Albatross.” 2018. Video, 01:29. https://www.albatrossthefilm.com/.

“The Pros and Cons of Fish Farming.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., https://www.britannica.com/explore/savingearth/the-pros-and-cons-of-fish-farming.

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Blog #7

As we have been observing over the last 8 weeks, human impact is continually destroying earth’s biodiversity to the point of extinction. Elizabeth Kolbert’s article, “The Sixth Extinction?” discusses several issues that extinction creates; the most dangerous and damning being mass extinction. A mass extinction, think dinosaurs or the wooly mammoth from Ice Age, “takes millions of years for life to recover” (Kobert, 5). While human action did not necessarily cause a mass extinction of our beloved dinos, we are actively aiding in the extinction of other species such as rhinos, sharks, and tigers by hunting for sport or extraction of ivory from rhinos and elephants or the fins from sharks for food, and of course, other human interference with wildlife. The decline of these species and many others causes a huge decline in biodiversity causing trophic catastrophes and could ultimately lead to a mass extinction of humans. Since “20-50% of earth’s known species could disappear this century primarily because of human activities'' it is vital that we continue to search for solutions to protect wildlife and our ecosystems and essentially have more government intervention and involvement with hunting regulations and protecting animals that are nearing extinction (Miller, Spoolman 177).

As mentioned time and time again, it is human ignorance of nature that is the most prominent cause in our lack of sustainability and low rates of sustainability efforts. For example, “up to 60% of the wood consumed in the United States is wasted unnecessarily” for uses such as fuel, building material, paper, clear space for growing agriculture for farm animals, etc (Miller, Spoolman 214). In doing this, we are actively destroying habitats not only for all species that find homes in trees, but more importantly the habitats of endangered animals like orangutans. We’ve already observed the detrimental effects of deforestation to extract goods like palm oil, but “without urgent protective action, the endangered orangutan may disappear in the wild within the next two decades” if we continue this harmful process (Miller, Spoolman 179). This is quite similar to the case studies that Kolbert mentions in her article; the first regarding the death of bats and “White Nose Syndrome” or WNS, a fungal disease that killed nearly “90% of northern long-eared, little brown and tri-colored bat populations in fewer than 10 years” (USGS, “White-Nose Syndrome Killed Over 90% of Three North American Bat Species.”). According to Kolbert, these bats dying almost exponentially is “breaking the evolutionary chain” and causes concern for many other species that this is occurring to that is going unnoticed. The second case study that Kolbert discusses is different frog species disappearing around Panama, explaining that species of frogs and other amphibians are dying at alarming rates due to multiple fungal diseases. It is predicted that “between a third and a half of all Panama’s amphibians to be gone within the next five years'' which is extremely damaging to Panama’s ecosystem as one population of the food chain dies out, the whole pyramid collapses, wiping out the entire ecosystem which little chance of regrowth/recovery (Kobert 7). Not only are these fungal diseases a huge concern for the fact that they are killing populations of animals, but it is even more concerning how rapidly they can spread from one animal to another: “in a single afternoon, a pathogen like Bd can move, via United or American Airlines, halfway around the world. Before man entered the picture, such a migration would have required hundreds, if not thousands, of years—if, indeed, it could have been completed at all” (Kobert 22). Sounds familiar, right? If you were thinking Covid-19, you’d be correct. The virus managed to make its way from overseas to the United States and spread so rapidly that it forced us to shut down. The first case of the omicron strain made its way to the Western United States all because of one person who traveled from South Africa. Now imagine if we had the same government response to the dying and endangered species that are keeping us alive, the world would look a lot different, wouldn’t it? Well we have the facilities to do so, but our ignorance to nature trumps any sort of desire to; if only people were more aware that these species that we are killing and that are dying off have a similar impact on human health that this pandemic does then maybe our environment would be in a better place. This is why education is so important!

Mass extinctions are occurring more often than we realize, and it is mostly because of human activity that “a third of all amphibian species, nearly a third of reef-building corals, a quarter of all mammals, and an eighth of all birds are classified as ‘threatened with extinction’” (Kobert 23). This impending threat of extinction will soon be upon humans if we continue to pollute the earth and use up all of its resources as we have been doing in a vicious cycle for years and years and years. As we continue to search for possibilities of living more sustainably and decreasing the loss of biodiversity, it is crucial that we alter our living habits for the better/more sustainably and press for more laws and regulations regarding the environment that are similar to the Endangered Species Act. There is hope that we can slow down the rates at which some of these species are dying off. Making the unnatural extinctions (because some do occur naturally and keep population growth in check) of animals come to a halt is more of a challenge, but I believe that it is possible if we start with attempts to “slow the spread” (get it? covid?).

What human processes are unnecessary and should be banned or regulated to help save some of the endangered species?

Word count: 946

Bibliography:

Spoolman and Miller, Tyler and Scott. Living in the Environment. Printed in the United States of America, 2019.

Kolbert, Elizabeth. “The Sixth Extinction?” May 25, 2009. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/05/25/the-sixth-extinction.

USGS. “White-Nose Syndrome Killed Over 90% of Three North American Bat Species.” April 21, 2021. https://www.usgs.gov/news/white-nose-syndrome-killed-over-90-three-north-american-bat-species.

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Midterm!

Blog #1

When I initially went to take the Ecological Footprint Quiz, I felt confident in myself that I would score well as I've taken my knowledge from my Environmental Science class and integrated more sustainable habits into my day to day life; however, I scored 8.1 Earths and stared at my computer for a solid couple of minutes realizing I may not be as environmentally conscience as I had hoped.

Sustainability, the capacity of the earth's natural systems that support life and human economic systems to survive or adapt to changing environmental conditions indefinitely (Miller 2), is vital to maintain earth's natural resources for our lifetimes and lifetimes after us. Every action we take impacts the earth in one way or another, good and bad. All life depends on energy from the sun, solar capital, and the resources and ecological services of the earth, natural capital, to survive. Ideally, an environmentally sustainable society provides for the current needs of its people without undermining the ability of future generations to do the same. Ensuring that we lead by example can aid the future generations in maintaining environmental sustainability and preserving natural resources so that the earth can be able to naturally replenish itself in less time. The basic causes of today's environmental problems are population growth, wasteful use of resources, the tragedy of the commons, poverty, poor environment accounting, and ecological ignorance.

The world's population is growing exponentially, adding about 80 million people per year. Overpopulation is a huge issue as it is important that we can maintain an equilibrium, the number of people born should not exceed the number of people dying. As our population continues to rise, the less food and natural resources we will have to expend. It is projected that we will run out of fossil fuels by 2050 (A textbook I read in my APES class). The earth's main resources are perpetual resources (like solar energy), renewable resources (like forests and fresh water), and nonrenewable resources (like oil and gas). These resources are depleted or degraded by overuse, waste, pollution, and by man's increasing ecological footprint. Pollution is one of the biggest dangers to the environment and as all the water we have on earth right now is all the water we will ever have, polluting fresh water (about 3% of water on earth can we actually have access to and drink) is detrimental to keeping not only humans, but all ecosystems alive.

Another topic that I feel knowledgeable about is tragedy of the commons. Philosophically, humans are naturally selfish creatures and we use other people and resources as a means to an end. In the environment this means that we will use up natural resources and food to our heart's content, because we're all living to survive. And in a capitalistic nation like America; unfortunately, the more money you have the more you have in general- therefore, those with less money will have less. One of the factors of the ecological footprint quiz was my house: the size of my house, the green energy factors, electricity, and what my house was made out of. As I have a large house, the more electricity we use, the more materials it takes to build our house, and the more water we use. While I am fortunate to live in such a nice house, it is unfortunate that we do waste a lot of earth's resources to live in it. But going back to the tragedy of the commons, we have more money and we can buy more goods and our house is an example of how we use up resources because we have the money to do so. The best example of tragedy of the commons is fish in a lake. There is a certain number of fish in the lake and one person may catch the majority of the fish to feed himself, leaving little to the rest who may have a family to feed. And once all the fish are gone, there is no way to replenish the fish, they can no longer breed (which also connects to keystone species and ecosystem catastrophe). If we continue using resources until there is none left, there is no way earth can replenish itself.

It is beyond vital that our nation as a whole implements more environmentally conscious regulations and provide more incentives for Americans to be more aware of our ecological footprint because one person cannot reverse the damage of an entire nation's doing. While I understand this may be challenging because it might damage economic growth, I feel it is important for America to lead by example for other nations so that we can collectively save our earth.

What steps as a nation can we take to improve our ecological footprints?

Word count: 782

Bibliography:

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott Spoolman. Living in the Environment. 20th ed. Cengage Learning, 2021.

Union of Concerned Scientists. “World Scientists’ Warning To Humanity,” 1992.

Blog #2

Science is an attempt to discover the natural world's order and is used in describing what is likely to happen in nature. Scientists ask a question or identify a problem to investigate the world. Then, they collect scientific data through observation and measurement and experiments may be used to study specific phenomena.

The major components of complex systems are environmental inputs, flows within the system, and outputs to the environment. The basic forms of matter are elements and compounds. Matter is useful to us as a resource because it makes up every material substance. Energy is useful to us as a resource because it moves matter; the two major forms of energy are kinetic energy and potential energy. Each and every still object has potential energy, once moved it is converted into kinetic energy and once the movement has stopped (either by gravity, a person, or another still object according to Newton’s Law of Motion) then the energy is converted back to potential energy. There are a lot of people who can channel their own energies to move other objects (though I still have not been able to figure that one out myself yet). Two principles of sustainability found from learning how nature works are the law of conservation of matter and the two laws of thermodynamics. The First Law of Thermodynamics states that in all physical and chemical changes, energy may be converted from one form to another but it is neither created nor destroyed. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that when energy is changed from one form to another, there is always less usable energy left; this is because the energy is exerted outward or into another object or person, but it will never be destroyed. Everything is made up of both matter and energy. The Law of Conservation of Matter states that matter is neither created nor destroyed when either a physical or chemical change occurs.These laws, then, show that energy goes from a more useful to a less useful form and that high-quality energy cannot be recycled. So, the quality as well as the quantity of our resources and our environment will be reduced.

Ecology is the study of connections in nature: matter, energy, and life are the major components of an ecosystem. Life on earth is sustained by the one-way flow of high-quality energy from the sun, by the cycling of matter, and by gravity. Matter is recycled through the earth's ecosystem of air, land, water, and living organisms. This vast global recycling system is composed of nutrient cycles. Energy in an ecosystem decreases in amount to each succeeding organism in a food chain or web because energy is lost as metabolic heat when the organisms from one trophic level are consumed by organisms from the next level. Scientists study ecosystems through the use of aquarium tanks, greenhouses, and controlled indoor and outdoor chambers. Specific variables are carefully controlled in each simulation or experiment, like temperature, light, carbon dioxide, and humidity.

Soil is a complex mixture of eroded rock, mineral nutrients, water, air, decaying organic matter, and billions of living organisms. It covers most of the earth and provides nutrients for plant growth. Soils are formed by a breaking down of rock, decomposing surface litter and organic matter and can be made again even after an environmental disaster. Bacteria and other decomposer microorganisms break down some of soil's organic compounds into simpler inorganic compounds.

Evolution is the change in a population's genetic makeup over time. Evolution forces adaptations to changes in environmental conditions in a population. The diversity of life on earth reflects the wide variety of adaptations necessary and suggests that environmental conditions have varied widely over the life of the earth and with the changes in climate, evolution is crucial for life forms to withstand our carbon footprint.

An ecological niche is a species' way of life or its functional role in a community. Everything that affects its survival and reproduction (temperature tolerance, water needs, space needs, interactions with other organisms, etc.) is a part of that niche. The ecological niche helps a population survive by the adaptive traits that its organisms have acquired.

Extinction of species and formation of new species constantly change the biodiversity of the earth and biodiversity is crucial to a thriving ecosystem. Invasive species can be extremely harmful to an ecosystem’s biodiversity as they can, more often than not, prey on native species, outcompete native species for food or other resources, cause or carry disease, or prevent native species from reproducing or killing a native species' young. This can cause an ecological catastrophe if the keystone species is harmed.

In the future, evolution will continue to influence our environment. Man's use of artificial selection and genetic engineering to evolve species may have unintended consequences because evolution is a long, slow process and can be unpredictable. Human interference with natural processes will always come with consequences; however it can often lead to more advancements.

Will we be able to mimic evolution to combat the growing issues (climate change, etc) and maintain our ecosystems?

Word count: 827

Bibliography:

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott Spoolman. Living in the Environment. 20th ed. Cengage Learning, 2021.

Blog #3

To first understand how to tackle the ongoing climate crisis, we must first examine the root of the problem. The short answer: humans; the longer answer: the actions of humans, but let’s elaborate. Humans have been degrading soil to the point of desertification since we began cultivating land to sustain ourselves. Air pollution has also existed since humans (cavemen) began creating fires in enclosed spaces (such as caves). Both of the aforementioned issues originated in an attempt to provide for humans.

With the ever-growing population, our need for growing crops has also grown with the population to provide enough food for all of us. Growing and harvesting crops, while essential, is detrimental to the state of soil. All of the nutrients and nitrates in the soil are expended in helping the crops grow and with repeated growing and harvesting in the same areas with the same soil, eventually the soil will no longer be able to replenish its nutrients and be unusable (desertification). We will eventually run out of surface area to grow crops not only for human consumption, but "More than half the U.S. grain and nearly 40 percent of world grain is being fed to livestock rather than being consumed directly by humans," meaning that we use more of earth’s natural resources to sustain livestock, and not to mention the amount of water that is required for sustaining agriculture for both humans and livestock (Pimental).

Environmental history shows that ancient civilizations and populations’ survival depended mostly on wood burning for cooking, staying warm, harvesting and agricultural growth. As early as the middle ages, wood burning fires used for cooking and to heat homes created a dense smoke over highly populated urban areas (Cengage Learning, 2007). However, because of the amount of wood that was required to upkeep a fire, the burning of coal in homes actually mitigated the local environment from more deforestation by reducing the need for wood (Lewis and Maslin, 193). Unfortunately, the burning of coal is not a long term solution to the environmental crises either, and it would prove detrimental to air quality, especially in urban areas. Because of the increase of energy needed due to the industrial revolution, the burning of coal in both homes and factories resulted in poor air quality resulting in people to develop respiratory diseases like asthma and bronchitis, which affected vulnerable populations like children and the elderly (Cengage Learning, “Air Pollution”).

Coal burning is one of the worst air pollutants because as the coal burns, the carbon in the coal is released and bonds with the oxygen in the air creating carbon dioxide and a visible smoke and soot residue that also attaches to molecules in the air. In London circa 1850, there was a mixture of coal smoke and fog (earning the name smog in 1905) and killed over three thousand people by 1911. And unfortunately, “in December 1952, an even worse yellow fog lasted for 5 days and killed 4,000–12,000 Londoners. Visibility was so low that people walking outside during the day could not see their feet. So many people died that undertakers ran out of coffins” This tragedy prompted the British government to pass the Clean Air Act of 1956, which eventually resulted in the improvement of air quality in the city; however, now the concern for air quality is revolved around vehicle transmissions (Cengage Learning, “Air Pollution”)

The government intervention in the tragic events in London proved to be a powerful force in improving not only the air quality for means of improving the environment, but also in improving the quality of life of its citizens. Most of the environmental issues our world is facing have a direct impact on human health which makes it vitally important for global government intervention to protect the human population while simultaneously combating environmental crises.

First synthesized in 1874, but not yet used until 1939 when a Paul Hermann Muller discovered its insecticidal properties, DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) did not appear to have a toxic effect on humans. However, as outlined in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, DDT was a biocide with the potential to destroy all forms of life. In a somewhat vivid manner, Carson expressed the dangers of human consumption as spraying crops with this insecticide could contaminate drinking water, fresh water, and insecticides like DDT can even change the biochemistry of frogs and fish. Bioaccumulation of this toxic chemical can occur and as humans eat the fish contaminated with this poison, they are then ingesting (knowingly or not) DDT, which can cause vomiting, seizures, or even death. Carson shocked readers all over the nation that human consumption can “erode the very fabric of life” (Stoll, Declarations of Interdependence).

What government interventions have occurred thus far in the United States in an attempt to combat environmental crises? What more should be done?

Word count: 783

Bibliography:

Stoll, Steven. U.S. Environmentalism since 1945. Printed in the United States of America, 2007.

Vanburen, John. 2007. Living in the Environment. N.p.: Cengage Learning. https://learn-us-east-1-prod-fleet02-xythos.content.blackboardcdn.com/5fd3b7d419aac/8077468?X-Blackboard-Expiration=1632862800000&X-Blackboard-Signature=ZHST%2B1UNgKVT7%2FszfD6a9tJKSn345nfoSrg5yWe0bCE%3D&X-Blackboard-Client-Id=100403&response-cache-control.

August 7, 1997. “U.S. Could Feed 800 Million People with Grain That Livestock Eat, Cornell Ecologist Advises Animal Scientists.” Cornell Chronicle, 7 Aug. 1997, https://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-million-people-grain-livestock-eat.

Blog #4

Earth is the only planet that can sustain life and it has done so for 3.8 billion years; in the opening of this chapter we found that the function of Earth’s natural ecosystems cannot be replicated and cannot sustain life (Living in the Environment 638). So this begs the question: why are we so careless of our footprint? We can’t move to Mars or Jupiter or any other planet that looks cool once we destroy the earth to the point of no return, so why aren’t people more concerned? The textbook introduces environmental ethics and the different views that we all have pertaining towards Earth, but I believe the most important worldview to adopt is the stewardship worldview: the “view [that] assumes that we have an ethical responsibility to be responsible managers, or stewards, of the earth. It also calls for us to encourage environmentally beneficial forms of economic growth and development and discourage environmentally harm- ful forms” (Living in the Environment 367). We’ll get into the why shortly.

The idea of living on Earth is far more complicated than the fact that we’re all stuck (courtesy of gravity) on a floating rock, in space, in a galaxy, in the universe; and the ignorance to our purpose and effect of living on Earth is detrimental to her existence. It is common for a majority of Earth’s inhabitants to be so consumed by their own personal endeavors to not think twice about the environment, if it weren’t the vast majority then the streets of NYC wouldn’t look the way they do and I suspect we would have a lot more students in our class. This idea of a disconnect between people and the environment only aids humanity in bringing Earth to the slaughter. In Wilson’s Biophilia, we see that man’s natural affiliation to nature due to our history as hunters and gatherers causes us to naturally have an affinity for nature and “innate attraction to water” beautiful scenes of nature (Biophilia 112). Because of industrialization and urbanization people tend to “create water features and lush gardens in the desert; they raze hilltop forests to build hotels and houses that take advantage of panoramic views” instead of preserving the natural environment they are perpetually destroying (Biophilia 112). If humans had more of a desire to preserve nature and what we already have, instead of trying to recreate it, there would be more of a feeling of urgency in humans to take action in maintaining its natural state. But instead, we have the ability and money to create man-made landscapes with money as a motivator: to bring tourists or more money into a neighborhood, etc. We continuously take and use resources from the environment, depleting the supply rapidly, but yet we have such a desire for a beautiful environment. In The Land Ethic, Leopald suggests that “A land ethic of course cannot prevent the alteration, management, and use of these 'resources,' but it does affirm their right to continued existence, and, at least in spots, their continued existence in a natural state” and here we can attempt to create roles in which we respect what little we have left (Leopald 204).

The most valuable asset that we have as humans is education. The importance of an educated society and valuing education leads to more logical and rational thinking and problem solving and, for the most part, money can be left out of the equation on what the right thing to do is. The role of education in understanding our environment is one of the most impactful solutions to a lot of environmental issues Earth is facing. By placing fundamental ideas of urgent action in the minds of young children, we raise a generation of environmentally sympathetic people who will likely be the face of an environmental revolution. David Orr puts it in a way that education will not lead to the possibility of “managing the planet,” but “managing us: human desires, economies, politics, and communities” and it makes more sense for us to adapt to a finite planet than for us to try and “reshape the planet for our infinite wants” (“What is Education For?” Orr). In this article, Orr also urges a re-examination of self and observation. There are steps that we can take to lead to a society of “people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane” and educating ourselves and others in a productive and valuable way can aid us in the start of progressing towards the aforementioned goal.

What solutions can we start trying to achieve on a personal, communal, and national level?

Word Count: 759

Bibliography:

Orr, David. “What is Education for?” Context Institute, 1991. https://www.context.org/iclib/ic27/orr/

Leopold, Aldo. “A Land Ethic” In A Sand County Almanac. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott Spoolman. Living in the Environment. Cengage Learning , 2021.

Callicott, J. Baird, et al. “Biophilia.” Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy, Macmillan Reference USA, 2009.

Blog #5

As mentioned time and time again, government intervention is like a magic key that can open up many doors to where the “grass is greener;” however, the monetary incentive for the government to profit off of systemic environmental degradation is what is keeping the U.S. from opening those doors. “The economies of the Earth would grind to a halt without the services of ecological life-support systems, so in one sense their total value to the economy is infinite” but unfortunately, earth’s natural resources are finite (Costanza 253).

There are a lot of ways that the government intervenes in our day to day lives, but the government intervention that really occurs “cannot be relied on to provide adequate levels of public services such as national security, police and firefighters, and environmental protection” and instead the government subsidizes and funds so many projects, programs, and goods and the government is far too large an entity for there to be any sort of oversight or supervision as to where this money is going (Miller, Spoolman, Living in the Environment, 591). In my Intro to Political Science class back in high school, we learned about government waste and it is extremely alarming the money that we (the government) spend on the military and the cost per year is $1.4 trillion. The cost to complete every single task on the conservation based graph seems like nothing in comparison, with the most costly project (eliminating world hunger) only reaching a maximum of $48 billion dollars (Miller and Spoolman, 605). I believe that if we shift our priorities from military more to environmental issues and human rights issues that we could have more sustainability and we could focus more on finding solutions to the depletion of natural resources and the negative health impacts from the environmental travesties that that action alone could send us on the right path to creating a healthier planet and population.

In “The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital” there is a table of regulations and services that would benefit the ecosystem; ecosystem services consist of flows of materials, energy, and information from natural capital stocks which combine with manufactured and human capital services to produce human welfare (Costanza 254). In terms of business and economics, “green business has been seen as a possible mediator of economic-environmental relations, and if proliferated, would serve to diversify our economy, even if it has a negligible effect at lowering atmospheric CO2 levels. The definition of "green jobs" is ambiguous, but it is generally agreed that these jobs, the result of green business, should be linked to clean energy, and contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gases” (Environmental Law, Wikipedia). However, in the “Consumer vs. Citizen” reading, we can observe that we constantly put profit above anything else, which makes sense as we live in such a capitalistic society. This makes it virtually impossible to implement “greener” strategies for businesses as their main focus is the money that is going into their pockets. I believe that there is an ideology derived from our capitalistic society that money is the meaning of life; that making money and having an abundance of it means that you’ve succeeded and have had a fulfilling life. However, our lack of care for the environment and our continuous efforts to make money are ever decreasing the chances that the children we bring into this world will have a world to live in. There is also a huge ignorance from businesses and the men that run them about the effects that they are having on the environment because it’s “not their problem” because they won’t be alive to see the day the world ends (dramatized, but true). But there is more concern about losing money than there is about losing all of Earth’s natural resources. It can be challenging to pass an environmental law in itself, but to implement, enforce, and fund it is even more difficult (Miller 617). Overall, it is a complicated process because wealthy individuals and corporations are the ones affected, yet they have enough strength to go against them and create obstacles or find a way to create a loophole so they don’t have to abide by the laws. If there were more oversight in making sure businesses are meeting the requirements of things like quotas on waste disposal or carbon emissions, etc, I believe that we could get closer to having more “green businesses.”

I also think that having more environmentally conscientious people in our government we could be able to see more change in the laws and regulations that are passed regarding the environment. The Trump administration rolled back on over 100 environmental rules and the bulk of the rollbacks identified by the Times were carried out by the Environmental Protection Agency, “which weakened Obama-era limits on planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and from cars and trucks; removed protections from more than half the nation’s wetlands; and withdrew the legal justification for restricting mercury emissions from power plants. At the same time, the Interior Department worked to open up more land for oil and gas leasing by limiting wildlife protections and weakening environmental requirements for projects. The Department of Energy loosened efficiency standards for a wide range of products” (Popovich, New York Times). This is shockingly detrimental to the environment and sets us back in any improvements that businesses were making in their footprints.

How do we re-regulate big businesses, especially after the Trump admin. rollbacks?

Word count: 903

Bibliography:

Spoolman and Miller, Tyler and Scott. Living in the Environment. Printed in the United States of America, 2019.

Partridge, Ernest. “Consumer or Citizen?” April, 2002. http://gadfly.igc.org/politics/left/consumer.htm.

Costanza, Robert. D’ Arge, Ralph. De Groot, Rudolf. Farberk, Stephen. Grasso, Monica. Hannon, Bruce. Limburg, Karin. Naeem, Shahid. O’neill, Robert V. Paruelo, Jose. Raskin, Robert G. Sutton, Paul. Van Den Belt, Marjan. “The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital.” Nature Vol. 387 (May 15 1997): 253–60.

“Sustainable Business.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 8 Oct. 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_business.

Popovich, Nadja, et al. “The Trump Administration Rolled Back More than 100 Environmental Rules. Here's the Full List.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 16 Oct. 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-environment-rollbacks-list.html.

Blog #6

An overlapping theme that we’ve examined throughout the textbook is sustainability and how to achieve sustainability. However, “in the 1960s and early 1970s, any serious personal interest in the environment often was seen as the definitive mark of radical extremism” and to deter the attacks of environmentalists, big businesses frequently argued that growth was good, “that any legislation aimed at limiting pollution meant cutting jobs, and that ecologists were crackpot limousine liberals willing to put the existence of snail darters before modern humanity's material progress” (Green Consumerism 116). With immigration constantly on the rise, cutting jobs was a serious threat to a lot of Americans; and as can be argued time and time again, humans naturally prioritize their own self-interest. So unfortunately, this tactic by businesses was highly effective as being able to put a roof over their family’s head trumped “saving the environment.” We see a change, though, in the 1990s as environmentalism became much more “legitimate” and while businesses were making largely false claims about Earth Day to appease the public, the change in ideologies is not to be discounted. Let’s take a closer look at “Green Consumerism.”

During the early 1970s, President Nixon and Congress “rapidly reacted to mounting popular pressure for environmental reforms with a series of major legislative initiatives and passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. They also authorized the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)” and these laws did have a noticeable decline on pollution in some areas and EPA provided, at least cosmetically, that businesses and corporations were in compliance with government regulations (Green Consumerism 117). While in the 1980s the vision to solve ecological problems was widely ignored, when the Exxon spill occurred in ‘89, “counterrevolutionary ecological rhetorics [...] gained momentum” and while the spill was tragic, we have observed that tragedies lead to change (like in London) (Green Consumerism 117).

In the last 200 years, populations have reached a higher level of growth (Miller and Spoolman, 110). The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates the world population will surpass 9.1 billion by 2050, at which point agricultural systems will not be able to supply enough food to feed everyone (Sohngen, Global Citizen). But how do we decrease the population? We can’t just start killing people off… right…? To keep the population under control we need to maintain an equilibrium and there are two different inputs and two different outputs. The first pair is birth rates and death rates. To maintain equilibrium the birth rate percentage needs to equal the death rate percentage; currently in the U.S according to the CDC the birth rate is 11.4 per 1,000 population and the death rate is 869.7 deaths per 100,000 population. If we do some math to simplify the death rate and create a common denominator, the death rate is 8.697 per 1,000 population, or vice versa the birth rate is 1,140 per 100,000. Clearly the birth rate is substantially higher than the death rate, which will in turn continue to increase the population. A solution to the growing population due to the high birth rate is educating young men and women about family planning and making contraceptives more widely accessible and/or affordable. The birth rates in developing countries are exceptionally high in developing countries, most likely due to the lack of family planning and access to women’s healthcare or contraceptives (Miller and Spoolman 112). The second pair is immigration rates vs migration rates which should also reach an equilibrium in each country to maintain a steady population, and this can be achieved by enforcing a quota system of how many people we let into the country annually based on the amount of people who leave the country annually on average.

With population growth comes urbanization. People have been moving to urban cities so much that 55% of the world’s population and 82% of the U.S population lived in urban areas in 2017 (Miller and Spoolman 566). Urbanization, while it has it’s advantages that I will touch on shortly, also has a lot of disadvantages on the environment, including: environmentally unsustainability, increased carbon emissions, decrease in land and biodiversity, economic effects, pollution and health problems, water problems, and local climate effects and light/noise pollution (570-572). All of these issues negatively affect the earth’s ecosystems and cause irreversible damage to the earth’s environment. However, there are advantages to urbanization. Urban residents in many parts of the world tend to live longer than do rural residents and tend to have lower infant mortality and fertility rates. Urban residents also usually have better access to medical care, family planning, education, and social services than rural residents which helps keep the birth rates lower than that of rural and underdeveloped areas (Miller and Spoolman 570). There are also environmental advantages to urbanization. Recycling is more economically feasible because of the high concentrations of recyclable materials in urban areas. “Satellite images show that urban areas containing 55% of the world’s people occupy only 2.8% of the earth’s land, excluding Antarctica. Concentrating people in urban areas helps preserve biodiversity by reducing the stress on wildlife habitats” (570).

Overall, is urbanization a universal advantage more so than a disadvantage to Earth’s natural capital? Or the opposite?

Word count: 877

Bibliography:

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott Spoolman. Living in the Environment. Cengage Learning , 2021.

Sohngen, Tess. “The World Could Run out of Food by 2023, Study Says.” Global Citizen, 2017, https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/world-running-out-of-food-by-2023/.

“FASTSTATS - Deaths and Mortality.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 9 Apr. 2021, https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm.

Luke, Timothy. “Green Consumerism: Ecology and the Ruse of Recycling.”

Climate Change Practicum

After joining the Climate Impact Initiative, I started attending the weekly meetings where we go over the agenda of that week and any events that are occurring. We propose ideas for some events that we could do, for example we may be holding a yoga event on Edward’s Parade and next week we might do a screening of Seaspiracy, or another documentary of the like. Unfortunately, I have not been able to attend any of the events thus far due to my work schedule and working upwards of about 35 hours a week on top of my school schedule; however, there is a website shared by the CII team called Slow Factory, and I have been able to watch these seminar-type videos on my own time. In the month of September, the theme was “Anti-Colonialism” and I’ve learned a lot about Indigenous political cultures and their agriculture -- my favorite one for September was “Land and Indigenous Politics” and I thought it was really interesting because I am a Political Science major and it tied into environmental aspects of politics which I thought was really cool because I hadn’t broadened my knowledge of politics aside from the U.S. government -- and the final one for the month of September was “Challenging Anti-Blackness for Collective Liberation.” In comparison from September’s seminars and October’s, I really enjoyed the October seminars that have been focused on textiles and the fashion industry as this month’s theme is “Regenerative Design.” There is another seminar on 10/22, that I am really looking forward to called “Regenerative Agriculture” which I believe will help me in our Environmental Studies class. Though I haven’t been able to do any of the events so far, my schedule does allow me to attend the docu-screening (as we’ve planned it for the evening) and I was also able to sign up for “Curbside Composting” as I am part of the composting team and I am super excited for that because I believe we could really change the appearance of the Bronx if people from the community join us as well.

Word count: 348

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Effects of Population and Urbanization Blog #6

An overlapping theme that we’ve examined throughout the textbook is sustainability and how to achieve sustainability. However, “in the 1960s and early 1970s, any serious personal interest in the environment often was seen as the definitive mark of radical extremism” and to deter the attacks of environmentalists, big businesses frequently argued that growth was good, “that any legislation aimed at limiting pollution meant cutting jobs, and that ecologists were crackpot limousine liberals willing to put the existence of snail darters before modern humanity's material progress” (Green Consumerism 116). With immigration constantly on the rise, cutting jobs was a serious threat to a lot of Americans; and as can be argued time and time again, humans naturally prioritize their own self-interest. So unfortunately, this tactic by businesses was highly effective as being able to put a roof over their family’s head trumped “saving the environment.” We see a change, though, in the 1990s as environmentalism became much more “legitimate” and while businesses were making largely false claims about Earth Day to appease the public, the change in ideologies is not to be discounted. Let’s take a closer look at “Green Consumerism.”

During the early 1970s, President Nixon and Congress “rapidly reacted to mounting popular pressure for environmental reforms with a series of major legislative initiatives and passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. They also authorized the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)” and these laws did have a noticeable decline on pollution in some areas and EPA provided, at least cosmetically, that businesses and corporations were in compliance with government regulations (Green Consumerism 117). While in the 1980s the vision to solve ecological problems was widely ignored, when the Exxon spill occurred in ‘89, “counterrevolutionary ecological rhetorics [...] gained momentum” and while the spill was tragic, we have observed that tragedies lead to change (like in London) (Green Consumerism 117).

In the last 200 years, populations have reached a higher level of growth (Miller and Spoolman, 110). The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates the world population will surpass 9.1 billion by 2050, at which point agricultural systems will not be able to supply enough food to feed everyone (Sohngen, Global Citizen). But how do we decrease the population? We can’t just start killing people off… right…? To keep the population under control we need to maintain an equilibrium and there are two different inputs and two different outputs. The first pair is birth rates and death rates. To maintain equilibrium the birth rate percentage needs to equal the death rate percentage; currently in the U.S according to the CDC the birth rate is 11.4 per 1,000 population and the death rate is 869.7 deaths per 100,000 population. If we do some math to simplify the death rate and create a common denominator, the death rate is 8.697 per 1,000 population, or vice versa the birth rate is 1,140 per 100,000. Clearly the birth rate is substantially higher than the death rate, which will in turn continue to increase the population. A solution to the growing population due to the high birth rate is educating young men and women about family planning and making contraceptives more widely accessible and/or affordable. The birth rates in developing countries are exceptionally high in developing countries, most likely due to the lack of family planning and access to women’s healthcare or contraceptives (Miller and Spoolman 112). The second pair is immigration rates vs migration rates which should also reach an equilibrium in each country to maintain a steady population, and this can be achieved by enforcing a quota system of how many people we let into the country annually based on the amount of people who leave the country annually on average.

With population growth comes urbanization. People have been moving to urban cities so much that 55% of the world’s population and 82% of the U.S population lived in urban areas in 2017 (Miller and Spoolman 566). Urbanization, while it has it’s advantages that I will touch on shortly, also has a lot of disadvantages on the environment, including: environmentally unsustainability, increased carbon emissions, decrease in land and biodiversity, economic effects, pollution and health problems, water problems, and local climate effects and light/noise pollution (570-572). All of these issues negatively affect the earth’s ecosystems and cause irreversible damage to the earth’s environment. However, there are advantages to urbanization. Urban residents in many parts of the world tend to live longer than do rural residents and tend to have lower infant mortality and fertility rates. Urban residents also usually have better access to medical care, family planning, education, and social services than rural residents which helps keep the birth rates lower than that of rural and underdeveloped areas (Miller and Spoolman 570). There are also environmental advantages to urbanization. Recycling is more economically feasible because of the high concentrations of recyclable materials in urban areas. “Satellite images show that urban areas containing 55% of the world’s people occupy only 2.8% of the earth’s land, excluding Antarctica. Concentrating people in urban areas helps preserve biodiversity by reducing the stress on wildlife habitats” (570).

Overall, is urbanization a universal advantage more so than a disadvantage to Earth’s natural capital? Or the opposite?

Word count: 877

Bibliography:

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott Spoolman. Living in the Environment. Cengage Learning , 2021.

Sohngen, Tess. “The World Could Run out of Food by 2023, Study Says.” Global Citizen, 2017, https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/world-running-out-of-food-by-2023/.

“FASTSTATS - Deaths and Mortality.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 9 Apr. 2021, https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm.

Luke, Timothy. “Green Consumerism: Ecology and the Ruse of Recycling.”

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Government in the Environment Blog #5

As mentioned time and time again, government intervention is like a magic key that can open up many doors to where the “grass is greener;” however, the monetary incentive for the government to profit off of systemic environmental degradation is what is keeping the U.S. from opening those doors. “The economies of the Earth would grind to a halt without the services of ecological life-support systems, so in one sense their total value to the economy is infinite” but unfortunately, earth’s natural resources are finite (Costanza 253).

There are a lot of ways that the government intervenes in our day to day lives, but the government intervention that really occurs “cannot be relied on to provide adequate levels of public services such as national security, police and firefighters, and environmental protection” and instead the government subsidizes and funds so many projects, programs, and goods and the government is far too large an entity for there to be any sort of oversight or supervision as to where this money is going (Miller, Spoolman, Living in the Environment, 591). In my Intro to Political Science class back in high school, we learned about government waste and it is extremely alarming the money that we (the government) spend on the military and the cost per year is $1.4 trillion. The cost to complete every single task on the conservation based graph seems like nothing in comparison, with the most costly project (eliminating world hunger) only reaching a maximum of $48 billion dollars (Miller and Spoolman, 605). I believe that if we shift our priorities from military more to environmental issues and human rights issues that we could have more sustainability and we could focus more on finding solutions to the depletion of natural resources and the negative health impacts from the environmental travesties that that action alone could send us on the right path to creating a healthier planet and population.

In “The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital” there is a table of regulations and services that would benefit the ecosystem; ecosystem services consist of flows of materials, energy, and information from natural capital stocks which combine with manufactured and human capital services to produce human welfare (Costanza 254). In terms of business and economics, “green business has been seen as a possible mediator of economic-environmental relations, and if proliferated, would serve to diversify our economy, even if it has a negligible effect at lowering atmospheric CO2 levels. The definition of "green jobs" is ambiguous, but it is generally agreed that these jobs, the result of green business, should be linked to clean energy, and contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gases” (Environmental Law, Wikipedia). However, in the “Consumer vs. Citizen” reading, we can observe that we constantly put profit above anything else, which makes sense as we live in such a capitalistic society. This makes it virtually impossible to implement “greener” strategies for businesses as their main focus is the money that is going into their pockets. I believe that there is an ideology derived from our capitalistic society that money is the meaning of life; that making money and having an abundance of it means that you’ve succeeded and have had a fulfilling life. However, our lack of care for the environment and our continuous efforts to make money are ever decreasing the chances that the children we bring into this world will have a world to live in. There is also a huge ignorance from businesses and the men that run them about the effects that they are having on the environment because it’s “not their problem” because they won’t be alive to see the day the world ends (dramatized, but true). But there is more concern about losing money than there is about losing all of Earth’s natural resources. It can be challenging to pass an environmental law in itself, but to implement, enforce, and fund it is even more difficult (Miller 617). Overall, it is a complicated process because wealthy individuals and corporations are the ones affected, yet they have enough strength to go against them and create obstacles or find a way to create a loophole so they don’t have to abide by the laws. If there were more oversight in making sure businesses are meeting the requirements of things like quotas on waste disposal or carbon emissions, etc, I believe that we could get closer to having more “green businesses.”

I also think that having more environmentally conscientious people in our government we could be able to see more change in the laws and regulations that are passed regarding the environment. The Trump administration rolled back on over 100 environmental rules and the bulk of the rollbacks identified by the Times were carried out by the Environmental Protection Agency, “which weakened Obama-era limits on planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and from cars and trucks; removed protections from more than half the nation’s wetlands; and withdrew the legal justification for restricting mercury emissions from power plants. At the same time, the Interior Department worked to open up more land for oil and gas leasing by limiting wildlife protections and weakening environmental requirements for projects. The Department of Energy loosened efficiency standards for a wide range of products” (Popovich, New York Times). This is shockingly detrimental to the environment and sets us back in any improvements that businesses were making in their footprints.

How do we re-regulate big businesses, especially after the Trump admin. rollbacks?

Word count: 903

Bibliography:

Spoolman and Miller, Tyler and Scott. Living in the Environment. Printed in the United States of America, 2019.

Partridge, Ernest. “Consumer or Citizen?” April, 2002. http://gadfly.igc.org/politics/left/consumer.htm.

Costanza, Robert. D’ Arge, Ralph. De Groot, Rudolf. Farberk, Stephen. Grasso, Monica. Hannon, Bruce. Limburg, Karin. Naeem, Shahid. O’neill, Robert V. Paruelo, Jose. Raskin, Robert G. Sutton, Paul. Van Den Belt, Marjan. “The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital.” Nature Vol. 387 (May 15 1997): 253–60.

“Sustainable Business.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 8 Oct. 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_business.

Popovich, Nadja, et al. “The Trump Administration Rolled Back More than 100 Environmental Rules. Here's the Full List.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 16 Oct. 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-environment-rollbacks-list.html.

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Desertification, Dehydration, and DDT

Blog #3

To first understand how to tackle the ongoing climate crisis, we must first examine the root of the problem. The short answer: humans; the longer answer: the actions of humans, but let’s elaborate. Humans have been degrading soil to the point of desertification since we began cultivating land to sustain ourselves. Air pollution has also existed since humans (cavemen) began creating fires in enclosed spaces (such as caves). Both of the aforementioned issues originated in an attempt to provide for humans.

With the ever-growing population, our need for growing crops has also grown with the population to provide enough food for all of us. Growing and harvesting crops, while essential, is detrimental to the state of soil. All of the nutrients and nitrates in the soil are expended in helping the crops grow and with repeated growing and harvesting in the same areas with the same soil, eventually the soil will no longer be able to replenish its nutrients and be unusable (desertification). We will eventually run out of surface area to grow crops not only for human consumption, but "More than half the U.S. grain and nearly 40 percent of world grain is being fed to livestock rather than being consumed directly by humans," meaning that we use more of earth’s natural resources to sustain livestock, and not to mention the amount of water that is required for sustaining agriculture for both humans and livestock (Pimental).

Environmental history shows that ancient civilizations and populations’ survival depended mostly on wood burning for cooking, staying warm, harvesting and agricultural growth. As early as the middle ages, wood burning fires -- used for cooking and to heat homes -- created a dense smoke over highly populated urban areas (Cengage Learning, 2007). However, because of the amount of wood that was required to upkeep a fire, the burning of coal in homes actually mitigated the local environment from more deforestation by reducing the need for wood (Lewis and Maslin, 193). Unfortunately, the burning of coal is not a long term solution to the environmental crises either, and it would prove detrimental to air quality, especially in urban areas. Because of the increase of energy needed due to the industrial revolution, the burning of coal in both homes and factories resulted in poor air quality resulting in people to develop respiratory diseases like asthma and bronchitis, which affected vulnerable populations like children and the elderly (Cengage Learning, “Air Pollution”).

Coal burning is one of the worst air pollutants because as the coal burns, the carbon in the coal is released and bonds with the oxygen in the air creating carbon dioxide and a visible smoke and soot residue that also attaches to molecules in the air. In London circa 1850, there was a mixture of coal smoke and fog (earning the name smog in 1905) and killed over three thousand people by 1911. And unfortunately, “in December 1952, an even worse yellow fog lasted for 5 days and killed 4,000–12,000 Londoners. Visibility was so low that people walking outside during the day could not see their feet. So many people died that undertakers ran out of coffins” This tragedy prompted the British government to pass the Clean Air Act of 1956, which eventually resulted in the improvement of air quality in the city; however, now the concern for air quality is revolved around vehicle transmissions (Cengage Learning, “Air Pollution”)

The government intervention in the tragic events in London proved to be a powerful force in improving not only the air quality for means of improving the environment, but also in improving the quality of life of its citizens. Most of the environmental issues our world is facing have a direct impact on human health which makes it vitally important for global government intervention to protect the human population while simultaneously combating environmental crises.

First synthesized in 1874, but not yet used until 1939 when a Paul Hermann Muller discovered its insecticidal properties, DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) did not appear to have a toxic effect on humans. However, as outlined in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, DDT was a biocide with the potential to destroy all forms of life. In a somewhat vivid manner, Carson expressed the dangers of human consumption as spraying crops with this insecticide could contaminate drinking water, fresh water, and insecticides like DDT can even change the biochemistry of frogs and fish. Bioaccumulation of this toxic chemical can occur and as humans eat the fish contaminated with this poison, they are then ingesting (knowingly or not) DDT, which can cause vomiting, seizures, or even death. Carson shocked readers all over the nation that human consumption can “erode the very fabric of life” (Stoll, Declarations of Interdependence).

What government interventions have occurred thus far in the United States in an attempt to combat environmental crises? What more should be done?

Word count: 783

Bibliography:

Stoll, Steven. U.S. Environmentalism since 1945. Printed in the United States of America, 2007.

Vanburen, John. 2007. Living in the Environment. N.p.: Cengage Learning. https://learn-us-east-1-prod-fleet02-xythos.content.blackboardcdn.com/5fd3b7d419aac/8077468?X-Blackboard-Expiration=1632862800000&X-Blackboard-Signature=ZHST%2B1UNgKVT7%2FszfD6a9tJKSn345nfoSrg5yWe0bCE%3D&X-Blackboard-Client-Id=100403&response-cache-control.

August 7, 1997. “U.S. Could Feed 800 Million People with Grain That Livestock Eat, Cornell Ecologist Advises Animal Scientists.” Cornell Chronicle, 7 Aug. 1997, https://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-million-people-grain-livestock-eat.

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Environmental Ignorance Blog #4

Earth is the only planet that can sustain life and it has done so for 3.8 billion years; in the opening of this chapter we found that the function of Earth’s natural ecosystems cannot be replicated and cannot sustain life (Living in the Environment 638). So this begs the question: why are we so careless of our footprint? We can’t move to Mars or Jupiter or any other planet that looks cool once we destroy the earth to the point of no return, so why aren’t people more concerned? The textbook introduces environmental ethics and the different views that we all have pertaining towards Earth, but I believe the most important worldview to adopt is the stewardship worldview: the “view [that] assumes that we have an ethical responsibility to be responsible managers, or stewards, of the earth. It also calls for us to encourage environmentally beneficial forms of economic growth and development and discourage environmentally harm- ful forms” (Living in the Environment 367). We’ll get into the why shortly.

The idea of living on Earth is far more complicated than the fact that we’re all stuck (courtesy of gravity) on a floating rock, in space, in a galaxy, in the universe; and the ignorance to our purpose and effect of living on Earth is detrimental to her existence. It is common for a majority of Earth’s inhabitants to be so consumed by their own personal endeavors to not think twice about the environment, if it weren’t the vast majority then the streets of NYC wouldn’t look the way they do and I suspect we would have a lot more students in our class. This idea of a disconnect between people and the environment only aids humanity in bringing Earth to the slaughter. In Wilson’s Biophilia, we see that man’s natural affiliation to nature due to our history as hunters and gatherers causes us to naturally have an affinity for nature and “innate attraction to water” beautiful scenes of nature (Biophilia 112). Because of industrialization and urbanization people tend to “create water features and lush gardens in the desert; they raze hilltop forests to build hotels and houses that take advantage of panoramic views” instead of preserving the natural environment they we are perpetually destroying (Biophilia 112). If humans had more of a desire to preserve nature and what we already have, instead of trying to recreate it, there would be more of a feeling of urgency in humans to take action in maintaining its natural state. But instead, we have the ability and money to create man-made landscapes with money as a motivator: to bring tourists or more money into a neighborhood, etc. We continuously take and use resources from the environment, depleting the supply rapidly, but yet we have such a desire for a beautiful environment. In The Land Ethic, Leopald suggests that “A land ethic of course cannot prevent the alteration, management, and use of these 'resources,' but it does affirm their right to continued existence, and, at least in spots, their continued existence in a natural state” and here we can attempt to create roles in which we respect what little we have left (Leopald 204).

The most valuable asset that we have as humans is education. The importance of an educated society and valuing education leads to more logical and rational thinking and problem solving and, for the most part, money can be left out of the equation on what the right thing to do is. The role of education in understanding our environment is one of the most impactful solutions to a lot of enviornmental issues Earth is facing. By placing fundamental ideas of urgent action in the minds of young children, we raise a generation of environmentally sympathetic people who will likely be the face of an environmental revolution. David Orr puts it in a way that education will not lead to the possibilty of “managing the planet,” but “managing us: human desires, economies, politics, and communities” and it makes more sense for us to adapt to a finite planet than for us to try and “reshape the planet for our infinite wants” (“What is Education For?” Orr). In this article, Orr also urges a re-examination of self and observation. There are steps that we can take to lead to a society of “people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane” and educating ourselves and others in a productive and valuable way can aid us in the start of progressing towards the aforementioned goal ("What is Education For?" Orr).

What solutions can we start trying to achieve on a personal, communal, and national level?

Orr, David. “What is Education for?” Context Institute, 1991. https://www.context.org/iclib/ic27/orr/

Leopold, Aldo. “A Land Ethic” In A Sand County Almanac. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott Spoolman. Living in the Environment. Cengage Learning , 2021.

Callicott, J. Baird, et al. “Biophilia.” Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy, Macmillan Reference USA, 2009.

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Three E's: Ecosystems, Ecology and Evolution

Science is an attempt to discover the natural world's order and used in describing what is likely to happen in nature. Scientists ask a question or identify a problem to investigate the world. Then, they collect scientific data through observation and measurement and experiments may be used to study specific phenomena.

The major components of complex systems are environmental inputs, flows within the system, and outputs to the environment. The basic forms of matter are elements and compounds. Matter is useful to us as a resource because it makes up every material substance. Energy is useful to us as a resource because it moves matter; the two major forms of energy are kinetic energy and potential energy. Each and every still object has potential energy, once moved it is converted into kinetic energy and once the movement has stopped (either by gravity, a person, or another still object according to Newton’s Law of Motion) then the energy is converted back to potential energy. There are a lot of people who can channel their own energies to move other objects (though I still have not been able to figure that one out myself yet). Two principles of sustainability found from learning how nature works are the law of conservation of matter and the two laws of thermodynamics. The First Law of Thermodynamics states that in all physical and chemical changes, energy may be converted from one form to another but it is neither created nor destroyed. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that when energy is changed from one form to another, there is always less usable energy left; this is because the energy is exerted outward or into another object or person, but it will never be destroyed. Everything is made up of both matter and energy. The Law of Conservation of Matter states that matter is neither created nor destroyed when either a physical or chemical change occurs.These laws, then, show that energy goes from a more useful to a less useful form and that high-quality energy cannot be recycled. So, the quality as well as the quantity of our resources and our environment will be reduced.

Ecology is the study of connections in nature: matter, energy, and life are the major components of an ecosystem. Life on earth is sustained by the one-way flow of high-quality energy from the sun, by the cycling of matter, and by gravity. Matter is recycled through the earth's ecosystem of air, land, water, and living organisms. This vast global recycling system is composed of nutrient cycles. Energy in an ecosystem decreases in amount to each succeeding organism in a food chair or web because energy is lost as metabolic heat when the organisms from one trophic level are consumed by organisms from the next level. Scientists study ecosystems through the use of aquarium tanks, greenhouses, and controlled indoor and outdoor chambers. Specific variables are carefully controlled in each simulation or experiement, like temperature, light, carbon dioxide, and humidity.

Soil is a complex mixture of eroded rock, mineral nutrients, water, air, decaying organic matter, and billions of living organisms. It covers most of the earth and provides nutrients for plant growth. Soils are formed by a breaking down of rock, decomposing surface litter and organic matter and can be made again even after a enviornmental disaster. Bacteria and other decomposer microorganisms break down some of soil's organic compounds into simpler inorganic compounds.

Evolution is the change in a population's genetic makeup over time. Evolution forces adaptations to changes in environmental conditions in a population. The diversity of life on earth reflects the wide variety of adaptations necessary and suggests that environmental conditions have varied widely over the life of the earth and with the changes in climate, evolution is crucial for life forms to withstand our carbon footprint.

An ecological niche is a species' way of life or its functional role in a community. Everything that affects its survival and reproduction (temperature tolerance, water needs, space needs, interactions with other organisms, etc.) is a part of that niche. The ecological niche helps a population survive by the adaptive traits that its organisms have acquired.

Extinction of species and formation of new species constantly change the biodiversity of the earth and biodiversity is crucial to a thriving ecosystem. Invasive species can be extremely harmful to an ecosystem’s biodiversity as they can, more often than not, prey on native species, outcompete native species for food or other resources, cause or carry disease, or prevent native species from reproducing or killing a native species' young. This can cause an ecological catastrophe if the keystone species is harmed.

In the future, evolution will continue to influence our environment. Man's use of artificial selection and genetic engineering to evolve species may have unintended consequences because evolution is a long, slow process and can be unpredictable. Human interference with natural processes will always come with consequences; however it can often lead to more advancements.

Will we be able to mimic evolution to combat the growing issues (climate change, etc) and maintain our ecosystems?

Word count: 845

Bibliography:

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott Spoolman. Living in the Environment. 20th ed. Cengage Learning, 2021.

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Conservation and Sustainability

When I initially went to take the Ecological Footprint Quiz, I felt confident in myself that I would score well as I've taken my knowledge from my Environmental Science class and integrated more sustainable habits into my day to day life; however, I scored 8.1 Earths and stared at my computer for a solid couple of minutes realizing I may not be as environmentally conscience as I had hoped.

Sustainability, the capacity of the earth's natural systems that support life and human economic systems to survive or adapt to changing environmental conditions indefinitely (Miller 2), is vital to maintain earth's natural resources for our lifetimes and lifetimes after us. Every action we take impacts the earth in one way or another, good and bad. All life depends on energy from the sun, solar capital, and the resources and ecological services of the earth, natural capital, to survive. Ideally, an environmentally sustainable society provides for the current needs of its people without undermining the ability of future generations to do the same. Ensuring that we lead by example can aid the future generations in maintaining environmental sustainability and preserving natural resources so that the earth can be able to naturally replenish itself in less time. The basic causes of today's environmental problems are population growth, wasteful use of resources, the tragedy of the commons, poverty, poor environment accounting, and ecological ignorance.

The world's population is growing exponentially, adding about 80 million people per year. Overpopulation is a huge issue as it is important that we can maintain an equilibrium, the number of people born should not exceed the number of people dying. As our population continues to rise, the less food and natural resources we will have to expend. It is projected that we will run out of fossil fuels by 2050 (A textbook I read in my APES class). The earth's main resources are perpetual resources (like solar energy), renewable resources (like forests and fresh water), and nonrenewable resources (like oil and gas). These resources are depleted or degraded by overuse, waste, pollution, and by man's increasing ecological footprint. Pollution is one of the biggest dangers to the environment and as all the water we have on earth right now is all the water we will ever have, polluting fresh water (about 3% of water on earth can we actually have access to and drink) is detrimental to keeping not only humans, but all ecosystems alive.

Another topic that I feel knowledgable about is tragedy of the commons. Philosophically, humans are naturally selfish creatures and we use other people and resources as a means to an end. In the environment this means that we will use up natural resources and food to our heart's content, because we're all living to survive. And in a capitalistic nation like America; unfortunately, the more money you have the more you have in general- therefore, those will less money have less. One of the factors of the ecological footprint quiz was my house: the size of my house, the green energy factors, electricity, and what my house was made out of. As I have a large house, the more electricity we use, the more materials it took to build our house, and the more water we use. While I am fortunate to live in such a nice house, it is unfortunate that we do waste a lot of earth's resources to live in it. But going back to tragedy of the commons, we have more money and we can buy more goods and our house is an example of how we use up resources because we have the money to do so. The best example of tragedy of the commons is fish in a lake. There is a certain number of fish in the lake and one person may catch the majority of the fish to feed himself, leaving little to the rest who may have a family to feed. And once all the fish are gone, there is no way to replenish the fish, they can no longer breed (which also connects to keystone species and ecosystem catastrophe). If we continue using resources until there is none left, there is no way earth can replenish itself.

It is beyond vital that our nation as a whole implements more environmentally conscience regulations and provide more incentives for Americans to be more aware of our ecological footprint because one person cannot reverse the damage of an entire nation's doing. While I understand this may be challenging because it might damage economic growth, I feel it is important for America to lead by example for other nations so that we can collectively save our earth.

What steps as a nation can we take to improve our ecological footprints?

Word count: 793

Bibliography:

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott Spoolman. Living in the Environment. 20th ed. Cengage Learning, 2021.

Union of Concerned Scientists. “World Scientists’ Warning To Humanity,” 1992.