Environmental History "Artifact"

http://www.cfr.org/interactives/GH_Vaccine_Map/index.html#map

I chose this "artifact" dealing with environmental history because of the history it contains within the medical field. Since I'm a biology major, vaccines, medications, and outbreaks of certain diseases, bacterial and/or fungal infections is pretty interesting. This map of the world shows outbreaks within a particular timeline of various highly contagious diseases like measles, mumps, and rubella (which is also what I wrote my paper #1 about). It's very interesting to see how various diseases can have different types of outbreaks. One particular disease could cause an outbreak of 1000 cases while another could only have 6 cases and be considered an outbreak. I feel as though this map relates to environmental history due to the fact that it shows the recent outbreaks of certain diseases, which is a sense, is history.

What should be the relationship between religion and the environment?

Previously, religion and the environment have not been two related topics of interest. When one typically thinks of religion, they think of churches, preachers, and trying to prevent living a dreadful afterlife. When an average person typically thinks of the environment, they think of "tree-huggers" and nature itself. Recently, however, scholars have started to link the two entities together for the main reason that religion does have a strong connection with the environment. For example, in Christianity, God hopes to protect all of the environment and not just the humans in it. God wanted humans and various types of animals on Noah's Ark and not just humans. Therefore, Christianity is rather big on protecting all lifeforms and not just humans. Also, like the religion and environmental studies video that we watched in class dealing with Yale University, Buddhism could possibly save trees in Thailand. Since many people look to religion on how to live their daily lives and what to believe, it's important that the environment be stressed within religions in order to attempt to save the earth. For example, in the article "Faith in Conservation, New Approaches to Religions and the Environment," many Christian churches have realized that one way to help spread the word about environmentalism is to do it via churches. One church has even gone as far as promoting "What car would Jesus drive?" to try to implement proper environmental decisions on purchasing items like cars. There are also several organizations that combine the environment with religion like the World Bank, Alliance of Religion & Conservation and even the World Wildlife Fund (Worrell 365-6). Overall, I do believe that religion and the environment should have a slight relationship. Since organizations have tried other ways of marketing eco-friendly products and they haven't exactly succeeded too well, I feel as though the church could step in and make this marketing a little more productive. After all, the first religions were based on thee relationship between man and the environment and even the Christian God loves "the whole world."

Worrell, Ernst. "Faith in Conservation, New Approaches to Religions and the Environment." Resources, Conservation & Recycling 41.4 (2004): 365-6. Print.

Shit _______ Say

The video that we watched in class called "Shit Yogis Say" made me think about a lot of the other videos like that that I've seen previously. These types of videos are quite humorous and are guaranteed to make you laugh. This particular video was mainly about the earthy and funny things that typical "yogis" say on a daily basis. One of the funnier videos I've seen is called "Shit College Freshmen Say." I find this particular video funny because even though it makes fun of my current status as a college freshman, the things that the "college freshmen" actually say are quite true. For example, the actors in the video make fun of the fact that college freshmen think they know everything about a particular subject since they've taken the introductory course to that subject. More specifically, the video specifically says "the economy is going to turn around eventually, trust me, I've taken intro to econ." Even though it's so embarrassing to admit, college freshmen really do feel like they know everything about a subject even though they've only had the intro course to it. The college freshmen video also talks about the various fraternities and sororities on campus and how they just don't know which one to pick from. The actor then starts naming off the random greek groups like tri delta, chi o, kappa delta, sig ep, and ends the scene with brb, std, wtf, and other random acronyms to prove the "stupidity" of college freshmen. Satiric videos like this are quite hilarious. There are so many of them and each one is definitely guaranteed to at least make you chuckle. 

Feb 3, 2012 HW- Richard Kahn

Rebecca Purvis

Dr. Taylor

February 5, 2012

ENG 101

Schools and the Environment

            “Towards Ecopedagogy” by Richard Kahn functions as a call-to-action for not only Americans, but for individuals of the earth to figure out how to teach sustainability properly in schools. Kahn briefly describes the environment that American’s are currently living in, mentions that problems that arise with environmental education and the need for a more beneficial type of education, and examples of environmentalists with opinions on environmental education.

            In the beginning section of the article, Kahn talks about the state of the environment as an effect from the various social events and happening of the past century. Kahn talks about the “threat of [mass being] extinction (Kahn 1)” caused from the globalization that occurred in the Post- World War II world. Globalization, according the Kahn and his colleagues, is one of the causes of the unbelievable degradation of natural resources that has happened in the last few decades. The large corporations within capitalist systems that are big on fast production, more product, and huge profit, have forced humans to become a species of consumers. Kahn talks specifically about the fact that “tree consumption… has doubled… resulting in about half of the planet’s forests disappearing (2).” He also talks about the disappearance of 90% of major fish species over the last forty years. The lifestyle that many humans have acquired is not healthy, nor environmentally sustainable and Kahn is sure to point that out.

            He then goes on to write about the legislation that mandates environmental education to become a part of the public education since apparently a shocking number of American’s have no idea what’s going on in the world from an environmental aspect. One example of how this legislation is being put into play is with the Apple Valley, Minnesota “Zoo School.” Although the school’s students are primarily taught on the zoo grounds where they are able to learn through independent studies featuring environment themes, Kahn still wasn’t so hip to this idea. He claims it doesn’t actually teach students how to voice opinions and make change because it forces them to simply stress doing better on standardized tests and to get good grades.

            Since Kahn wasn’t so thrilled to hear about the “Zoo School,” he decided to research various ideas about how to weave ecopedagogy into schools in more beneficial ways. He writes about leaders within the field such as Jim Cummins, Dennis Sayers, Frijtof Capra, David Orr, and many other scientists and environmentalists with their own beliefs about how students should be taught the concept of sustainability.

            Overall, Kahn effectively shows the need for change in how school children are taught about the environment and sustainability. Due to the large metamorphosis that the world has had to endure since the end of the Second World War, it’s important that students be taught how to prolong the amount of natural resources available and learn important concepts of saving the environment. 

Kahn, Richard. "Towards Ecopedagogy: Weaving a Broad-based Pedagogy of Liberation for Animals, Nature, and the Oppressed People of the Earth." n. page. Print.