PowerPoint Review

Let me know your thoughts!

Indigenous Resistance Synthesis

Michael Marker’s, Indigenous Resistance and Racist Schooling, discusses how the Coast Salish Indians were assimilated. During the 1900s the Coast Salish people were brought into modern culture. The Coast Salish Indians lived on the Washington State and Canadian border. Within the United States’ borders the Salish Indians were placed into boarding schools, however in those in Canada were sent to traditional schools along with other Canadians. Discrimination was not a huge issue in the United States for these people because they were all in boarding schools together, but in Canada, discrimination was fierce due to the Salish being placed in school with the rest of the Canadians.

This article reminded me of when American schools became integrated. Basically what happened in Canada happened here when Whites and Blacks started going to the same schools. American avoided the problem by placing all of the Salish Indians into a boarding school just for them, thus preventing discrimination. 

Factory Farming & Clayton,NC

I grew up in Clayton, NC in Johnston County. Johnston County use to be well known for tobacco farming. Now, not many people farm tobacco due to the government. However, many of these small farms have converted into pig farms or corn/soybean farms. While I understand that the business practices of large corporations are not right when it comes to how they treat their employees, I do think that factory farming is essential to our current lifestyles. Because the United States eats so much meat and corn based products, to have enough, everything must be mass produced. In the end you are just killing the animal anyways. It is sad, but it is the only way to keep our society fed and unless you can change our society’s diet, there is no way factory farming will ever end.

Biotechnology Reading

            I thought the biotechnology reading was a good example persuading with balanced arguments. In the essay the author uses both arguments that support is view point and also uses arguments that go against his view. By using arguments that go against ones views allows him to disprove those arguments which makes his original argument look better.

            The reading itself was about feeding the poor and genetically modified foods. Personally I have to support genetically modified foods. While they might not be as healthy for us, it is better than increasing the amount of people who are starving for food. If we did not genetically modify foods then the amount of people that would go hungry would increase a lot faster than food production. In this day and age, making everything organic or as close to organic as possible is just not feasible. There are seven billion people in the world and continually increasing. We have to find ways to increase food production and if that means genetically modified foods then so be it. 

Fracking Synthesis

Ryan Shumate

Dr. Hill Taylor

ENG 101

March 1^st 2012

Fracking Synthesis

            After reading the article on Natural Gas Fracking linked to Water Contamination, I think that the Environmental Protection Agency needs more accurate data before it can accuse fracking for water contamination. Due to the EPA being a government agency, they should be required to use data from outside sources so that their data is not considered bias. For example, “there was a single detection of 2-BE among all the samples collected in the deep monitoring wells. It was found in one sample by only one of three labs.” Obviously more tests need to be run to find out if it is certain that fracking is the cause for ground water contamination. There are hundreds of other possible causes for ground water contamination and people are using this to fight fracking. Fracking is allowing the United States to actually produce more natural gas. The United States is already far enough behind the way it is with production. Our society runs on fossil fuels and if we do not have them, it will fail. Damaging the environment to withdraw these fossil fuels is sometimes necessary. New water filters can be designed to get rid of contaminates in the ground water. The ground water already has to go through filters before we drink it anyways, so it’s just another filter we will have to use. There are some necessary sacrifices we have to make to continue to live the way we do and the environment is one of them. However, if the EPA can provide sufficient data saying the fracking is a major cause in groundwater contamination, then it needs to be looked at. Until they can provide sufficient data that says otherwise, they should continue fracking.

Powerpoint Thoughts

Creating a Powerpoint is a lot more interesting than writing a paper. Typically papers contain a lot of fluff just so that they meet a page length. Powerpoints give all the same information without the fluff. Plus they are a lot more enjoyable to make than sitting and writing for hours on end. In most papers you do not get to use pictures and charts, where as with powerpoint they add a whole lot to the presentation. Powerpoints also show that you know the information that you are presenting. With a paper, most of the time, you look up the information, write it down and forget about it. With a powerpoint, you have to know what you are talking about when you give the presentation, because if you do not know what you are talking about, people can tell by the way you present. All around, using powerpoint is a much more enjoyable experience than writing a paper.

Environmental History Artifact

Clayton, NC 2005

Clayton, NC 2010

These two photos represent the change over the past few years in the town that I grew up in, Clayton,NC. If you look towards the center what use to be a huge wooded area has now been demolished, and they are building houses. Recently, not pictured on the map, across from the homes they have also demolished the wooded area across from them for a public park. Along the lower left hand corners you will notice where about two years ago they built the Highway 70 Bypass. It is amazing how just after a few years how much we can change the landscape of the Earth.

Environment & Religion

            I do not believe that religion should be based around the environment. Many older religions are based around the environment, where a group of people believe in something like a Sun god. In modern religions I do not believe they should be based around the environment. Most modern religions believe in some sort of greater being which dominates over the universe. Personally, being a Christian, I do not believe that the environment has anything to do with religion other than the fact that God gave us nature to use. Religion is a faith between yourself and God and nothing else has an effect on that.

God created humans in his image, not animals. God appointed humans to subdue and rule over all animals and the approval to use animals for food. The Bible does say that humans have a moral obligation to treat animals humanly. Also, according to the Bible, God commanded humans to have dominion over all of nature, subduing it and ruling over it. However, this does not mean abusing it. We have the approval to use nature for our own needs and purposes, such as for food. Since nature was created by God and pleases God we should manage the damage we cause to nature. 

Response to "Towards Eco-Pedgogy"

Ryan Shumate

Dr. Taylor

English 101

February 6^th 2012

Response to Towards Eco-Pedgogy

            Richard Kahn beings his article by giving incredible statistics about how humans have destroyed the Earth. One of his examples tells the exact number of animals that Americans kill each year for food and on top of those numbers, people hunt the animals for sport. According to Kahn’s source, “eight billion chickens are slaughtered annually in America.” Kahn continues his discussion by going into the global economic situation. According to Kahn, “1.2 billion people live on less than $1 per day and nearly 3 billion live on less than $2 per day.” That means about 43% of the world’s population is living off of $2 a day. Just to survive these people enter into slave-labor and global sex trade.

After many more examples of how humans are destroying the Earth, Kahn talks about promoting environmental education. For humans to continue to survive on Earth, they must learn to be “aware of the effects that pollution and toxic ricks associated with industrialized civilization.” Since the 1990’s, environmental education programs are mandatory in the public education system. However, as Kahn continues, he gives examples of just how the current environmental education program has failed. For example, “45 million Americans think the ocean is a fresh source of water.” One of the first things one learns when they go to the ocean is not to drink the water because it is salty, yet there are still millions of Americans who think it is a fresh source of water. Kahn digs further into the problem to reveal that teacher-training in the environmental education subject area us often limited and are not focused on like math or reading skills. Kahn supports that as a whole, humans need be better educated in environmental issues and more sustainable.

Sustainability and sustainable development has also come up in many political debates. One of the main issues is the use of non-renewable resources such as oil, coal, and natural gas. These issues are typically a clear dividing line between political parties. The use of almost all non-renewable resources pollutes the air and can contaminate the ground when it is retrieve. Another problem that rises is the economic control of resources which can cause even more pollution by higher demands for the fuel.

Overall, Kahn’s issue is with educating the public about the environment. A better education about the environment is the only way people are going to learn how to help stop pollution and to stop destroying the environment. If we continue to destroy the environment like we are, mankind will start to die out. Our current lifestyle is not sustainable and we need to prevent future generations from not having enough food or water to survive. This all starts with a better plan for educating people about the environment. Once people learn about all the issues regarding the environment they will think twice before polluting. 

Water & Google Alerts

     After our discussion on water, the many issues surrounding fresh water are very evident. As American’s we are very wasteful people. We waste thousands of gallons of water each day while some child over in Africa has to walk an hour just to get a gallon of water that is not even safe to drink. Although we have access to a lot of the world’s fresh water, it is not right for us to continue to waste it. Not only is wasting water an issue, but using so much of it that it causes environmental issues. When we tap into tributaries to divert water from rivers to cities, it destroys the river’s natural flow. In the end it can kill fish and vegetation. We cause these issues by building dams and diverting water. We need to start thinking about the consequences to the environment before we continue to destroy it all.

            One of my Google Alerts issues is “Nuclear Environmental Issues.” Lately I have read quite a few articles about the Fukushima disaster in Japan. One of the articles talked about the use of Nuclear power as being an economical decision due to the jobs it would produce. They did not think of any environmental issues that the use of Nuclear power would cause. They are now currently looking into more environmentally safe power producers such as wind mills and solar energy to produce Japan’s power. 

The Colorado River

End of a River, by Jonathan Waterman, discusses how the Colorado River is drying up and what is causing the problem. Waterman takes a journey along the Colorado River investigating the issues and finds horrible water conditions, to there being no water at all. After reading Waterman’s article I found the following YouTube Video:

The video by TroutUnlimitedNatl goes further into the discussion about the Colorado River. One of the largest issues that the video brings up is the fact that many of the tributaries to the Colorado River are being diverted to large cities, such as Denver, to sustain the population growth. By diverting these tributaries the Colorado River losses water that it normally would have received, thus lowering the water level. Diverting tributaries has occurred so many times that where white waters once were, now the water slowly crawls by trickling over rocks.  When the water levels reach such a point, fish can no longer survive and die out.  Waterman said, “The Colorado River has been engineered to death,” and this can been seen through the diverting of tributaries and building of dams all along the river. 

Sustainability

     I set up Google Alerts to notify me every day about Sustainability. Google Alerts is an interesting idea, because instead of going out and searching for information about something, you can tell Google what you want to know about and it will continue to notify you of updates in a certain field each day for as long as you want. Sustainability, according to Wikipedia, is the capacity to endure. Sustainability for humans is basically everything that we need for survival depends on our environment and for us to sustain life we need to protect our environment. Looking through the different articles I realized how much we depend on the environment and that we need to protect it and do more to prevent destruction to our environment. With Google Alerts notifying me about sustainability, I will learn more and more about sustainability over time. 

Environmental Issue

     One of the great environmental issues that we face today is the use of nuclear technology. Radioactive byproducts from the use of nuclear technology cause many environmental issues. From the mining process of nuclear fuel to the waste, all of it is damaging to the Earth. Every time we mine for Uranium we contaminate ground water making it radioactive. After the Uranium is spent it is still radioactive and is buried underground.  Radioactivity is damaging to the environment and all living things. By using Nash’s idea of Island Civilization we can eliminate the use of nuclear technology or at least not damage the Earth nearly as much by not needing as much power. Lower populations would not require as much energy to survive, so the use of nuclear power plants would not be needed to support smaller civilizations. Not needing nuclear power would reduce the amount of Uranium need and thus reduce the amount of groundwater and land contamination.

Source: http://www.beyondnuclear.org/

Island Civilization Response

Rodrick Nash’s Island Civilization discusses how we as humans have impacted our environment for the worse over time and offers a solution to the problem. He begins his essay by defining wilderness as “self-willed land” or land that humans did not interfere with. Humans slowly developed from being hunters and gatherers, where they would live off the wilderness, to pastoral societies, where they would farm and herd animals. Pastoral societies destroyed the environment because they introduced human dominance in to the wild. These pastoral societies developed into industrialized societies and continued to spread further and further. Now, “only about two percent of the contiguous forty-eight states are legally wild,” which shows how over three hundred years humans have taken control of millions of acres of land where now only a very small portion remains like it was thousands of years ago.

            After giving a brief history of how humans have destroyed the wild, Nash goes on to suggest a way to return to its natural state over time. First, he points out that the human population cannot continue to grow exponentially. He suggests a maximum population of 1.5 billion humans. These humans would be spread out over the world in “islands” or what we would compare to currently as communities or cities. These “islands,” however, would be self-sustaining meaning that they would provide all of the food, water, electricity, and other essentials for life to their community and their community only. There would not be communication between the different “islands” nor economic exchanges. The communities would have a one hundred mile radius in which the humans would maintain. Anything that was not within the “island” would transform back into the wild as it would not be maintained by humans.  Humans would have the choice to live within these “islands” or, if they desired, they could go out into the wild, but they would have to maintain the hunter and gatherer lifestyle. This was Nash’s solution to the current environment issue.

            While I do agree that there is an environment issue, I would have to disagree with Nash and his idea. While it would be an effective way in eliminating human destruction of the wild, his idea is just not feasible. The amount of destruction humans have done to the Earth is enormous, and almost irreversible. For example, the roadways which we drive on are designed to last for the longest amount of time possible. While everything does eventually disintegrate it will take years upon years before the Earth is back to its natural beauty. Once the roads finally disappear, trees will have to grow again. Then there is the human aspect of the issue. The current population of Earth is almost seven billion people. Nash wants to eliminate five and a half billion people. While, theoretically over time, decreasing the population is possible, but you would have to convince billions of people not to reproduce or find a way to force them.  While a utopian society would be ideal, uniting everyone in the world to go along with this idea would be the greatest hindrance.  Nash’s idea would have to have a lot of things going for it which is why I do not see it as being a practical solution to the destruction of the wild.