Ryan
Shumate
Dr.
Taylor
English
101
February
6th 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.
This is a great blog. I really like your use of the statistics because they got my attention early on. The fact that 45 million Americans think that the ocean is a source of freshwater is very alarming, and it makes me completely agree that the environmental education system desperately needs to be revamped.
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