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.