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.