Water Forum & Google Alerts Response

During class on Friday, we talked a lot about Postel's essay on water and several classmates talked about the videos that they found and their thoughts on them. By reading the essay and listening to the various stories and videos, I've realized that something has got to be done about our freshwater supply. Postel really opened my eyes to the effects that our wasteful mindsets are having on the supply of freshwater and my continuing to hear and learn of the various polluted freshwater bodies throughout the world forced me to become a concerned citizen about this problem that no one really knows/ cares about. The only options for fixing this problem that we talked about in class were mainly just the ones that Postel suggested but I feel as though we need to come together as a world to make a change because just a few people caring and changing their lifestyles isn't going to do much. One of my google alerts for "loss of biodiversity" was actually semi-linked to the problem of freshwater that we talked about in class. This article talks about how the habitats of many organisms (specifically those in water) severely need their habitat protected because their ecosystems are becoming extremely polluted. I thought that this tied in greatly with the fact that our freshwater supply is being polluted and used up. The article is linked in my response as "this article."

Patagonia Response Jan 26, 2012

The "New" River
       While reading the Patagonia environmental story, a few things really stood out to me. It was hard to believe that the author of this essay was terrified that putting their feet in the particular body of water was going to harm them. Therefore, I looked up rivers around America that are very similar to this and I found one called the New River in southern California. This river was created completely by "accident" when an irrigation system failed and created it. About one hundred year ago, the New River began running from California to Mexico and neither country could figure out who should claim it. Therefore, it just kind of became a river that didn't belong to anyone. Factories, farms, and people began dumping trash and disposing of everything in the river turning it into a toxic wasteland.
       The group that's in charge of monitoring bacteria levels and contamination levels within this river were brought into the video and talked about the processes that their group had to go through in order to test the water and even the results compared to typical rivers. The testers dress up in what looks like hasmat suits for super toxic chemicals. They wear several pairs of gloves and even masks and robes everywhere in order to prevent any bodily contact with the water. The leader of the group stated that typically, any amount of bacteria over 260 per ml of water is deemed contaminated and isn't allowed to be used in people's homes. This particular river, would sometimes test at millions per ml of water. That finding is astonishing. It's hard to believe that in less than one hundred years, a body of water that was pristine has now been turned into a wasteland that you cannot even come into contact with.
       Another thing that was quite astonishing about this video was how it showed several illegal immigrants from Mexico using this river to cross over into the United States because border patrol wouldn't follow them into such contaminated areas. Just imagine all of the bacteria and diseases that they bring with them once they get into America and all of the sicknesses that can be caused just from exposure to a person with all of this bacteria on them.
       Overall, this story was quite astonishing and even a little bit scary. In the part of the country where water is hard to come by, is it really safe and reasonable to turn freshwater (that is REALLY limited in our world) into a huge wasteland? Something needs to be done about this river before it begins to flow into seas where it can cause a lot of damage for larger cities in the western part of the USA.

Go Local! Haiku

Local farming is
Better than importing the
Much Bigger farm's food

Sustainability Jan 17, 2012

My initial experience with google alerts and twitter is very positive. After perusing the sustainability websites, I decided to set up google alerts for loss of biodiversity and I decided to follow several conservation ecology twitter accounts. So far, I've been able to read a few websites that talk about plant life biodiversity. In some areas where the plant biodiversity has begun to decrease, the availability of drinking water and even some food and energy sources have started to decrease. It's horrible how just the decreasing plant biodiversity can cause such drastic things like this to occur. Just imagine if some important organisms in food webs and ecosystems begin to disappear. That can only cause harm to our environment. Overall, the loss of biodiversity is harming our ecosystem in more ways than one.

http://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-technology/ecosystem-biodiversity-key-climate-change-buffer

Environmental Issue

I feel as though one of the environmental issues that could contribute to the need for an "island civilization" is the rapidly increasing human population. The earth simply cannot support over seven billion people with the limited amount of resources that it has. Much of the technology that humans have created has led to global warming which is very harmful to the environment. Also, the growing human population is causing a lot of deforestation and habitat loss for a very large amount of other organisms. It’s not right for humans to be so selfish and to feel as though they are better and more deserving of the “wilderness” than the other types of organisms. In previous classes I’ve learned that population growth is the most in developing nations and these nations typically don’t have all of the resources that they need in order to survive. I feel as if many other countries, even developed nations, get to the point of a huge overpopulation, they won’t have a sufficient amount of resources either. Overall, I feel as though if the human population growth were limited, the environment would clear up drastically in more ways than one. 

"The Interaction of Population Growth and Environmental Quality"

Jan 10 Nash Reading Response

            Island Civilization: A Vision For Human Occupancy of Earth In the Fourth Millennium by Roderick Frazier Nash highlights several of the key historical events that forced the earth to become the not-so ecologically friendly environment that it is today. It talks about the fact that since humans have evolved into somewhat of a dominant species and no longer see themselves as a part of wilderness and nature, the majority of the decisions they make about the environment are extremely anthropocentric. Humans have once seen nature as almost pointless and that it’s better to just conquer the territory no matter what the consequences because human expansion is seen as power. The article goes on to discuss the recent radical changes and laws passed within the second millennium that forced humans to look at other types of life forms as important and beneficial and gave them the right to live in their land peacefully.

            The article talks about the changing minds of humans and how we are attempting to learn to see ourselves as part of the environment and nature without being separate from wilderness. Humans are trying to learn conservation skills to try to maintain and preserve all types of life and not just their own. The most important topic of this article wasn’t the description of the ever-changing thoughts of humans and their environment, but rather the possible consequences that can come about at the start of the fourth millennium in close to one thousand years. There are two different extremes to what can become of the entire earth’s biotic relationships- either the earth enters into the “wasteland scenario” or the humans in the earth learn to become completely sustainable and use their technology and intelligence to create “island civilizations” or something of the sort.

            The “wasteland scenario” can occur if the planet and the people in it continue to trash it leading to a planet with a very low amount of biodiversity. On the other end of the eco-friendly spectrum is the “island civilization” in which humans move to little islands and allow for wilderness to continue in the mainland in order to limit the ecological footprint that humans leave. In between these two scenarios include the possible “garden scenario” in which humans end up controlling all parts of nature and our society becomes completely anthropocentric as well as the “future primitive” in which humans learn to use technology in a much more efficient and responsible way.

            Overall, I feel as though Nash has an excellent point when he talks about the fact that everything humans create and everything humans do pretty much revolves around the wants and needs of our particular species. It’s not fair to cause all of the other species that we share this planet with to suffer and possibly lose their habitats for the enjoyment of humans. Although the changes that humans have created in order to benefit other species on the planet have been rather minute, it’s a rather large step in helping to get our earth in functioning in the way it was ten thousand years ago.

            As phenomenal as the “island civilization” scenario for the fourth millennium seems, I highly doubt anything like that will ever occur. The only scenario I could actually see occurring on this planet in the future are the negative ones. The human species is incredibly selfish and I cannot see them giving up their mainland and moving to islands in order to support the rest of life on the planet. I can understand humans learning to recycle and using their technology more efficiently but I know there will be billions of stubborn people that refuse to go through and allow the drastic change that the earth needs to return to it’s primitive healthiness.

            One point that Nash did make that I completely agree with was that one of the main ways to help earth is to get population growth back to a stable percentage. The fact that human populations are growing in such an extreme manner, it’s limiting the natural resources and using all of them up. Overall, something has to be done about the current environmental situation. However, I’m not sure what laws one could pass or what changes could be made that will be the most beneficial in order to prevent our planet from turning into a rather large wasteland.