essay 4 rough draft

Population Growth: Does It Even Exist?

Introduction

            Population growth is not a new phenomenon. Since the day humans walked the earth, the human population has increased every year. Some areas of the world have seen a decreasing population, but that is not true of the world as a hole. Especially since the baby boomer era, which occurred just after World War II ended, even the rate at which the population is growing has grown. Our planet earth can only hold so many people sustainably, and it is blatantly obvious that we have reached that limit, otherwise known as carrying capacity. Environmentalists all over the world have contributed their two cents on the matter. One whose opinion particularly stands out is that of Derrick Jensen who described carrying capacity as the number of any given species who could live in a particular place forever without harming it.” With all of the non-renewable sources, and even the renewable sources, being depleted, it has become painfully clear that we are no longer living sustainably on this planet. This issue has been happening for years now and it is clear that there is no clear-cut way to counter this, or we would have done something about it by now. It is especially hard to find a way to counter the growth when a portion of the population doesn’t believe it is even an issue. However, the majority of the population does recognize that population growth is, in face, a real problems. Some people have even started coming up with potential solutions including educating the public and raising awareness about the matter, providing more birth control services to women, and improved family planning services across the board.

Theoretical Frame

            This essay is centered on whether or not people believe population growth is actually real or not. My theory is that most people who believe it is real are (1) more educated than those who don’t, and (2) they are taking steps (be it directly or indirectly) to at the very least retarded the rate at which the population is growing. My theory also takes into account the people who believe population growth is a myth. The people who don’t believe population growth is happening are mostly uneducated people who don’t take any steps to try to slow down population growth and, by default, contribute to the growing population. Delaying population growth would require people to go out of their way to do an extra little something or other on a regular basis, be it go out and get a prescription for birth control, or go out to buy a pack of condoms, or go out and get educated on population growth itself. Whatever it is, it requires an extra effort on a person’s part to contribute to the slowing down of population growth. The fact of the matter is that usually, people aren’t inclined to solving problems that aren’t “in your face” problems. While population isn’t an in your face problem right now, it will be one day, and that day is getting closer and closer. Population growth isn’t a concern that you can’t necessarily point a finger at, but that doesn’t mean the generations of today should leave a downward-spiraling problem for the generations of tomorrow.

Data Collection/Analysis

            In order to validate the claim I made earlier in this essay, I created an administered a survey open to people (that I know) of all ages. Some of the results help to give me insight on this topic to help me formulate a better theory in the future. The survey consisted of ten questions, some of which were yes or no questions, and some of which were open-ended. The survey required survey-takers to (more or less) identify themselves in order for me to get a better feel of who was taking the survey.

            The first few questions were general questions such as are you male or female, what age range are you in, what your ethnicity is, and what level of education have you achieved. So far, about 80% of the survey takers were female and 80% of the survey takers were in the 18-20 years old age range. That is not to say that all the females who took part in this survey are 18-20 years old; it simply indicates that 80% of all survey takers were in that age range. About 63% of the people taking the survey were currently enrolled in college, and 26% were high school degree or below. About 9% of survey takers had degrees. Approximately 85% of the people who partook in the survey were white and only about 4% were black and another 4% Asian.

            The next several questions were more personal, with a couple of them geared specifically towards women. One of the survey questions that was geared towards the female population asked whether or not they were on birth control. Of the 38 women who took the survey, 26 of them were on birth control. Of the 26 women who were on birth control, 16 of them believed that two people should be married before having kids. My theoretical claim was that people who are aware of population growth are directly or indirectly doing something to slow it down. Getting married before having kids requires a level of family planning, which is indirectly going to slow down the rate of population growth, thereby supporting my theoretical claim. Of the 26 women who were on birth control, 7 of them answered “other” to the question inquiring about whether or not people should be married before having kids. Some of the women who answered other elaborated on their response, most of them adding that it was “preferable, but not necessary.” Some women added that as long as they were aware of the responsibilities that come with having a child or were in a stable relationship, marriage was not necessary.

Notably, of the 38 women who took the survey, 12 were not currently on any birth control medication. Of the dozen, half believed that people should be married before having kids. At first, this was surprising because it seems the norm that if a woman is waiting to be married to have kids, she would be taking contraceptives. What my survey did not inquire about that could have potentially made this statistic more clear was whether or not the 12 women who were on birth control were sexually active. If they aren’t, then it seems obvious that there would be no need for them to be on birth control (unless it was for other reasons such as cramps or regulating her period).

Another one of the questions in the survey asked survey takers to answer the question of whether or not population growth was real. Of the 44 people who partook in the survey, 36 of them believed that population growth was real. The subsequent question then asked for a potential solution to population growth. The majority of the people who responded “yes” believed that education was a potential solution. Overall, this supports my theoretical claim that education does play a fairly large role in population growth. Other answers to the ‘potential solutions’ question include having children at an older age which would require family planning (family planning does not necessarily mean two parents, a family can be a single parent and a kid), required birth control for teenagers, cheaper and better access to birth control, incentives for less births, or limiting births outright. Two of the survey takers believed there was no concrete solution to the matter.

TAKE MY SURVEY

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MLC32WM

just say thanks

I don't understand why people don't AUTOMATICALLY say thank you when someone holds the door for them. Honestly, it only takes a breath and it goes a long way. You aren't entitled to have the door opened for you; whoever opened the door for you did an act of kindness. Show the world that you're not so self-centered that you can't give someone a little thanks for opening the door for you. Geez.

April 12 post

In my survey, which consisted of mainly freshman, I found out that while most people don't have a strong relationship with someone who is homosexual (i.e. a family member or a friend), there are still quite a few people who do. Almost all the people who do have gay family members or friends claimed they would vote against the (discriminatory) Amendment One. Questions
What year are you
Fr	15
So	1
Jr	0
Sr	0
What is your GPA
1 and lower	0
1.0-2.0	1
2.0-3.0	4
3.0 and higher	11
Male or Female
Male	10
Female	6
Lower, Middle or Upper class?
Lower	2
Middle	9
Upper	5
Would you say you are more…
Conservative	9
Liberal	7
Age
17	1
18	7
19	6
20	2
21	0
Do you have homosexual family members?
Yes	6
No	10
Do you have homosexual friendS?
Yes	4
No	12
Which way will you vote for Amendment I?
Support	4
Against	8
Abstain	4

Response to Ecojustice Education

I believe that in the past decade, our education system has been improving. Being from the Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools District, which I would constitute as elite in education, I firmly believe that the education system is starting to produce higher quality students. From SAT scores to AP exam scores, the education particularly in Chapel Hill and Carrboro has been increasingly more and more competitive. In this writing, it mentions that we need to start educating people to better human life, not just prepare people for jobs and the workforce. Furthermore, in the writing it mentions that there are pretty much two ways of educating people. Pretty much, there is the old school way which is compared to "farms" or agrarianism and the new school way which would be compared to "factories" or industrialism. What I believe this essay is outlining is that while both pretty much are based from deeply held values, there are, in fact, differences to these two subjects. "The difference has to do with the values associated with the traditions and what those values have meant in political, economic, and educational arenas."

One of the other big points of this article is that the American public has lost sight of noble values including frugality, good neighborship, the avoidance of risk, and the psychological profit in work done well. I agree with three of four of these topics. I agree that the average american is pretty wasteful whether it's trash, water,  water or time. I also agree that the american public has lost sight of "good neighborship." We are no longer a society that is based off of deeply held values and instead we are one that will use others for our own benefit. The third concept that was listed in this writing was that americans are no longer avoiding risks. While it is true that people should stop being careless, in my opinion people should not stop taking risks. People take risks every day and the world is a better place because of it. The fourth topic is the psychological profit in work done well. I think that there is a lot of value in doing something with a purpose and doing it well. However, as a full-time student, I understand that it is nearly impossible to put forth your best effort with everything. Which is why people need to prioritize. Prioritizing, in my opinion, is a skill that many people lack. It is important to be able to determine what you need to do and when and in what order.

peer reviewed article

on homophobia

http://jfi.sagepub.com/content/25/7/881.full.pdf+html

Response to Indigenous Resistance

In my opinion, I think it was really presumptuous and unjustified for countries to try to get rid of indigenous roots. I believe that it has been extremely costly for cultural and historical purposes because now we know very little about those cultures and there's no way to bring them back. Using schools as a mechanism to weed out the indigenous culture is extremely manipulative. No one should be using children as leverage in any way. Trying to civilize indigenous populations was unjustified. Who is America and who is Britain to say that they can't do what they want to do and live the life they want to live. I know that sounds clicheed, but we wouldn't want some country to completely change our lifestyle and negate everything we've learned growing up. There was no reason for America and Britain to do that to the Aboriginal people in their regions.

Response to reading (p 148-165)

Hi.

One of the things that stuck out most to me in this reading was the first line on page 150 of the first real paragraph under "Writing in the Discipline." The quote was: "one surefire way to infuriate your critics is to call their motives into question." I thought this was such a good quote because critics often times are degrading and, to a point, pretty condescending. Their thoughts usually go unquestioned because they have the label of a "critic." But when the tables are turned, and the critic's motives come into question, they get pissed because they are not accustomed to being questioned. In this reading however, it says that while it is one thing to do things like that in politics (where people "improve" themselves by bringing down someone else), doing that in writing is not considered persuasive because it "entrenches existing disagreements rather than encourage people to work together to solve real-world problems." I agree with this comment. I think that in the political realm, immaturity and stupidity are what people go for but in the real world, solutions come from collaboration and cooperation.

I liked how the Feeding the World article outlined how the essay was written. It makes it easier for me to figure out what it is i need to do for my papers.

Bye.

Response to Fracking

            Fracking is a relatively new way to extract oil and natural gas from the earth. The process involves drilling into rocks to create pathways for the oil and gas that has been retained in the rocks to come out make it easier to extract. This process has created issues for the surrounding areas predominantly by affecting nearby water sources to residents’ homes. This issue has created a heated national debate about whether or not it is fracking itself that is causing this problem. On one side, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has conducted studies to determine if it is in fact fracking that is causing these issues. On the other side, the drilling industries are arguing that fracking is a safe practice. What this article addresses is what the impacts of the results of the studies conducted by the EPA and the effects that the findings will have on the future of extraction of natural gases using processes like fracking.

            In Pavillion, Wyoming, residents have complained about the effects of fracking on their drinking water. “Residents complained that their well water turned brown shortly after gas wells were fracked nearby” (Lustgarten, Kusnetz paragraph 9). According to the article, the companies at working during that time provided them with water for a period of time. However, the gas companies cannot provide water for an extended period of time, so providing them with water while operating was only a short-term solution.

            The experiment conducted by the EPA determined that other sources, like abandoned oil and gas waste pits, were the main reason for the pollution of shallow groundwater. However, in their experiment, “EPA investigators drilled two water monitoring wells to 1000 feet” and the pollution occurring in those wells had to have been caused by fracking (Lustgarten, Kusnetz, paragraph 11). The drilling companies were outraged at the accusations claiming that the studies were inconclusive because only a few traces of carcinogens were found in one of three of the samples taken. The drilling companies are probably not the best people to trust, though, because they declined to give federal officials detailed breakdowns of every compound they used in their fracking processes. This makes it seem that they are guilty by omission because if they are not willing to be open about what they use, then it seems that they have something to hide. And if their process truly is safe, then it seems silly to have to hide anything.

            I believe that since our water sources are slowly dwindling, we should not be compromising what little freshwater we do have left. While this process does seem to be a good solution for the dearth of oil and natural gasses dilemma, water is not something to overlook. Human beings cannot survive without a week of water, but our species has survived for thousands of years without using oil and natural gases to power our big screen TVs and Hummer SUVs.  

Powerpoint vs. Essays

Personally, I don't really mind either. It just depends on the topic. If the topic is something I am interested in and I am allowed to throw in my opinion, it is easier for me to write and essay. I like writing when I'm not being forced to write. That's just human nature. I would also like to think that I have a pretty good writing style (when I'm not being rushed or, again, forced to write). I would prefer power-point presentations when the topic is something more facts or when it's something I'm not as interested in because, in my opinion, it doesn't take as much effort to make a powerpoint as it does to write an essay.

Powerpoints are also more for presentations, so if that is the end-result of the assignment, then this would be what I would rather do. Essays, I feel like are more for one person to reflect on while reading it. So if it is for a teacher to grade, obviously an essay would be better suited for that.

Artifact: Environmental History

Here is a link to some environmental history.

Click on "Women's Movement" to learn more about Women's roles in "the nation's environmental movement." 

Click on "Mother of the Forest" to learn more about the history of finding gold in California.

One particularly outstanding woman was Ellen Richards who started the "home ecology" movement which fought for clean kitchens, clean water and clean cites. 

Link to article

Click Here for the link to my peer-reviewed article.

Religion and the Environment

In my opinion, I think religion and the environment can and maybe even should be a joint practice if it means a positive outcome for both. As long as the relationship between religion and the environment is not harmful, I don't think there is a problem. However, the distinction that must be made is that they are separate practices: one involves gods and faith and "believing" while the other is essential to earth. They are two practices that are independent from each other but that doesn't mean that they can't join together.

In the video, I was intrigued by what Mary Evelyn Tucker was saying about needed to take what is written in scriptures and other religious writings but apply it to today and today's problems because they are much different from what they used to be. What was written in the past isn't really relevant to the present which is why people need to take what was written and put it into context that is relevant.

Basically, I think that while they could be intertwined, they are two separate and independent practices that should in the end, remain separate and independent of each other, but there's no reason that they couldn't join together in order to benefit one or the other.

Sh!t Yog!s Say Response

After watching this youtube clip, I'm kind of inspired to make my own Sh!t _______ Say clip. I've seen the Sh!t Girls Say and Sh!t Sorority Girls say and they're all hilarious to me. I think they're funny because they make fun of people who take themselves way too seriously. I think these videos also humble the people they're making fun of because the people who do say these things all think they're unique for saying them. Like in the Sh!t sorority girls say video, one of the "girls" says "I'm not taking another shot." But everyone knows, that doesn't mean anything and everyone knows that sorority girls say that all the time. Also, the "namaste" in Sh!t Yog!s say video is something that all yoga-ers say but they all think they're super special for saying it.

forum on water and google alert

Response to “water”

The forum we had on water was interesting, to say the least. Water is something almost everybody takes for granted, and because we take it for granted, we abuse it and, in the end, waste it. It seems idiotic to me that everyone is so wasteful with water because without it, we could not survive. People can survive without internet, without TVs, without laptops, without iPods and event *gasp* without coffee. But nobody can survive for more than a week or two without water. We need it to survive, and we need to stop wasting it.

One of the suggestions in class was that we should stop using water even in cases where we would normally need it. But why? If I stop using water because people half way around the world don’t have water, the water I don’t use isn’t going to get to them. So in my opinion, we don’t need to stop using water period, we need to find ways to get water to the people that don’t have any.

One of my google alerts that I get daily is about the Costa Concordia cruise ship. The biggest issue (besides finding people, of course) was determining how to extract the oil from the ship before it starts leaking out into the pristine waters off the coast of the island of Giglio. It would be an enormous environmental disaster should 1) the oil leak out into the waters or 2) the ship sink to the bottom of the ocean before the extraction is complete. When the ship falls to the bottom of the ocean, the oil tank will most likely rupture on impact and the 500,000 plus gallons of oil will contaminate the idyllic waters of Italy.

Link to Costa Concordia oil extraction article

Towards Ecopedagogy

Towards Ecopedagogy: Response

                This piece of literature written by Richard Kahn is an astonishing wake-up call to reality. People do not want to believe that there is a real issue occurring right outside their window, but there is. This real issue refers to the degradation we, as humans, are causing to our Earth: over-deforesting, overfishing, overhunting, and simply overproducing and over-consuming. It is eye-opening to see the results of our actions in just the past century. With a majority of the population living in poverty and only the top percentages of our population in control of resources, money, and other necessities, our world as we know it is soon going to disappear.

                Not only are we as human beings making poor choices, but we are making these poor choices in the most harmful way possible. Let us take farming as an example. Farming has been around for ages, but only recently has farming become a cruel and inelegant practice. Since when has the maltreatment of animals been accepted? In Towards Ecopedagogy, there is a fact pulled from Matthew Scully’s book Dominion that states that “nothing less than 103 million pigs, 38 million cows and calves, 250 million turkeys, and 8 billion chickens are slaughtered annually in America alone.” These numbers alone should be enough to get Americans to raise a little red flag and notice that this is not okay. But, let’s pretend that this was okay, and we were simply killing these animals to survive. Any additional animal deaths should from these numbers on, not be tolerated. This means that the animal deaths related to hunting, sport or pelt, global transportation, scientific experiments and so on should not be accepted in our society. Excessive killing of these animals is cruel and unnecessary and it needs to stop.

                Another way that people are going to be the sole cause of Earth’s future “dysfunctional-ity” is through deforestation practices, over-farming, and over-development. It should be apparent to everyone that our practices are actively making a huge negative impact on the environment. Cutting down trees to make paper should be controlled. There should be a maximum numbers of trees allowed to be cut down for making paper, and any trees cut down over that maximum should result in a large penalty of some sort (not monetary, however, because that would cause a gap between the rich and the poor industries). Also, excessive development needs to be brought under control as well. Like it says in this writing, “since the end of the 1960’s, half of the planet’s wetlands have either been filled or drained for development, and nearly half of the Earth’s soils have been agriculturally degraded so as not to support life.” That means that even if we bull-dozed the buildings that stood on a particular region that had been filled or drained for development, the nature that once flourished there would not be able to grow back. That is a disappointing and ominous thought; basically, we cannot undo what we have done. Every decision we make is final.

                In this writing, Kahn explains that we have achieved good things but have had to sacrifice other elements of our life in order to do so. For example, the last four decades has led to “startling achievements in science and technology.” By itself, this fact is seemingly harmless; however, the steps taken to accomplish these achievements have had “devastating effects upon planetary ecosystems…”  What this means is that yes, we are doing all these great things but we had to cause all these bad things along the way. What we really need to do is find a way to accomplish “all these great things” without having to sacrifice an element of our environment.

These practices of over-doing everything are “escalating and most are accelerating.” It is scary to think that we are doing things at such an unstoppable rate. We as a human race are condemning our future to doom by allowing for all these bad things to happen. While it would be nearly impossible to rally everyone around a single idea that could reverse the damage we’ve done, we need to start brainstorming ways to at least get “these trends” to slow down. 

Response to Patagonia

Building the Dam

At first, building the Hoover Dam seemed to be an innocent project. It was to prevent flooding, provide jobs for workers while it was being built, and provide hydroelectric power. What they didn't expect was the impact it would have on the environment; four species that were indigenous to the Colorado river before the dam was built are now endangered.

On top of the species endangerment, the building of the Hoover Dam set a precedence to the entire nation. At the time, building this dam was going to help irrigation and thereby promote farming success. However, it sent a message that building dams and diverting the natural paths of rivers was acceptable so long as it was for a purpose. The meaning of "purpose" has changed a lot since then. We are no longer building dams to benefit something; we are disturbing the environment because it is what is convenient for us. This school of thought is exactly what is going to cause us to self-destruct.

Scientific American Haiku

In this world there are
environmental issues
McKibben tells all

Too many people
reside on this earth today
STOP HAVING BABIES

In his book he says
Bigger does not mean better
I'm sorry Texas

We consume too much
who has any ideas
about what to do

Possibilities
change the price of energy
they might change their ways

Google Alerts/Twitter :: Sustainability

I have been using Twitter for a few years now, so that experience was nothing new to me. However, I have never followed an account that has to do with environmental issues. It came as no surprise to me that our world is not-so-slowly and steadily becoming crippled. While, yes, there have been a number of amazing technological innovations and medical advancements, very little attention has been geared toward keeping our planet from imploding.

With regards to coral reefs (which is the sustainability issue that I have previously blogged about), they are continuously being degraded. Increased acidity and increased temperatures are proving to be quite fatal for the under-sea world. Tons of marine species are becoming extinct and it's almost all completely because of human beings.

Google Alerts was a new experience for me. I have never used that program before but in class on Monday, I created a Google Alert for the Chick-fil-A anti-gay ordeal to keep up with how disgustingly homophobic they are and to remind myself never to eat there again! And I created a Google Alert for the Costa Concordia shipwreck. Receiving Google Alerts via email is great because I check my email all the time, so staying up to date on interesting topics is no longer an issue for me.

Environmental Issues

One environmental issue that I believe is extremely overlooked is the degradation of coral reefs. Due to climate change and marine endeavors, our coral reefs are being demolished. Climate change is causing temperatures to rise in the oceans and when the temperatures rise, the algae that live in the coral reefs die out. Algae are an organism that is put on the back burner. But the algae are what give the coral reefs their beautiful color and when the algae die, the reefs are bleached out and no longer give us the gorgeous portrayal of the under-water world we see in post cards.

In his article, Matt Kallman explains that “Since reefs are highly sensitive to changes in water temperature, clarity, and acidity, they are early indicators of the impacts of climate change and human activities. They are vulnerable to coastal development, sediment runoff, water pollution, and many fishing practices.” All of these factors are almost totally caused by human activities.

It is not fair to these organisms that obviously don’t have the means to defend themselves against everything “we” do to them that they are being destroyed. We don’t have the right to determine what gets to live and what doesn’t get to live, therefore we need to contain the damage we do to a smaller region. The destruction of coral reefs is a prime example of why we need Island Civilization to decrease our impact on the earth and its beautiful coral reefs. 

Source

As an aside, I think it is important to point out that one person can have a tremendous impact on reefs. For example, the captain of the Costa Concordia made the decision "deviate the ship from its ideal route" and ran the ship into a reef.

Costa Concordia Accident

Island Civilization - Summary/Response

While most people in this day and age worry about things like jobs, family matters and social richness, Roderick Nash worries about the status of our planet earth in years to come. Before reading this article I thought to myself, what do I care about what the world will be like in the Fourth Millennium? I will be dead, my kids will be dead, and their kids will be dead and their kids after that. So why should I worry about what the world will be like after that? Then I got to the word “legacy” on the second page. I may not be a historian, but I too “am concerned about how the future will regard what happened to the planet on our watch.” We may not be here to witness the Fourth Millennium but what we do and the decisions we make today will either bless or damn the generations to come.

                In his essay, Nash explains that the purpose of his work is to promote and help generate ideas about what to do to change the path we humans are on because it does not seem to be even remotely sustainable. Our population is growing at uncontrollable speeds and we’re expanding at an unsustainable rate. Both of these factors (and these examples of two of many) are jeopardizing species diversity and exhausting the Earth’s resources. It seems that “our” thought process was we took over, we are taking over and we will continue to take over until we cannot take over anymore… but it is obvious that this is not going to work indefinitely.

                Back in the day when people were hunters and gatherers, humans were a part of the wild. It was when the desire for more and more and more outdid the idea that we should get by with only what we needed to survive that the ecosystem was doomed and the “mental line” between wilderness and civilization was drawn. This idea of the wilderness didn’t exist before we “civilized” land by fencing it in. Wilderness is just a place that that hasn’t been compromised by people (yet). According to the Bible, “‘wilderness’ was the land God cursed.” This seems senseless seeing that we are now trying so hard to preserve it. And if this almighty God thinks the wilderness is so bad, why are we trying to preserve it? Is it because of the priceless beauty of trees and grass when they haven’t been cut down? Or is it because of how awing it is to see hundreds of species successfully cohabitate when we humans can’t? Or at least not without causing some species to become extinct… That’s a different matter entirely, but it seems hypocritical to me that God would “curse” the wilderness if that same God “created” the Earth.

                It appears that in the last two centuries, scholarly people have started to catch on to the fat that we aren’t doing something right. We have finally figured out that bigger does not equal better (sorry Texas). We’ve realized that we’ve taken the whole idea of the frontier too far because it’s ending. In addition, it scares me that people might be starting to look to the galaxies to take over and expand. Seriously? Enough is enough. Anyway, it seems that we are starting to get back on some kind of track with the establishment of national parks. On paper, it looks like a good thing but in reality, it’s not. We’re doing it for tourism purposes to boost our economies. We’re doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, which poses a new question: what the heck is wrong with our moral compass?

                A lot.