Synthesis of Quiz/Podcast

With listening to McKibben the environment of the world was opened up. Bill used specific details to enforce reasoning with the world’s lack of knowledge with how humans react. Like Dr. Taylor posted an assignment about a bioregional quiz which was hard to react to. The quiz had questions that were unknown to many. McKibben tied a lot of the bioregional quiz into his podcast. Saying that local farmers should increase and industries should decrease. McKibben wants to be able to eat local foods that would not harm the body or the environment. This Earth is not the same as at the beginning of time. Now Earth is polluted, over populated and lacking natural resources that are proper for the survival of mankind. Quoted from the podcast was Obama speaking of bettering the economy. Honestly, Obamas probably as in the dark about the bioregional quiz as anyone. Like where the water comes from or what types of grass surrounds you. These are all good environmental questions but not many answers are known by the majority of society.

           

Today a stand needs to be made to better the world. This is what McKibben was stating. Bill just wants to give the world an information session about how the world is changing related to how society is acting. If politicians were able to identify all of the bioregional quiz questions without having to Google them this Earth might be different.

Opinion of Bill McKibbens Podcast

                Bill McKibben at first had me lost, and then I listened to it again until I understood it. He is talking about how Earth has become another planet than the one he was born on. McKibben is basically trying to tell that the Earth can no longer support our economic or population growth. This is hard to believe because every day new technology is made but it doesn’t help to bring down the climate changes that could possibly wipe us from this Earth. He goes on a binge about how Obama is always talking about improving our economy but not about how to improve the real world.

            McKibben gives specific details about how we barely have enough resources to feed the human population. With only 1% of the world farming we are harming our bodies by putting harmful foods into it. Yes, we need more farmers but the way most of the world looks at it is as long as we have food it doesn’t matter whether it’s safe or not. I like how McKibben spoke of eating more food grown locally. This would slow down the rate of obesity, heart problems, and etc. I believe like McKibben that we as Americans should change our ways and become more aware of what we have done to this Earth.

Environmental Issues

What is fracking? Fracking is the of study natural gas extraction using a technique of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. This technique is a huge environmental issue for all of the United States. It requires millions of gallons of fresh water, acres of land per well pad, and the use of undisclosed chemicals. While this new technique is becoming worldwide, almost all communities are noticing an increase in air emissions, water contamination, and very serious problems associated with the disposal of horizontal fracking waste fluids.

We already have a scarce amount of water to drink and produce products so why try and contaminate it? This answer is beyond me, but from research it has already shown that if fracking is done within three thousand miles of a water resource, it will contain chemicals prone to cause cancer. Ohio is trying to pass legislature to hold off on permits to frack until it is proven safe for the environment. I believe this is progress to put a hold on fracking, but I do not think it is effective enough to work. Fracking should be done away with completely in my eyes. In 20 years I don’t want to die due to contamination of pure drinking water because of fracking.

Not only is fracking contaminating the water, it is also producing mass amounts of air-borne chemicals that is hazardous not only to mankind but also to the environment. With the exposure of these air-borne chemicals people have had an increase of dying with cancer. This is devastating because we our killing our own people by thinking we are doing right. Honestly fracking only causes more altercations for our future generations. This places stress on my heart because there is no telling how much longer the planet will be able to survive.

I believe that if they are going to frack they should at least send everyone a list of all the harmful chemicals that will be drilled into the ground. This at least raises awareness to the communities of what will be subject to happen in their environments. If the communities knew more about what was going on they could start petitions and try to fight the contamination of what goes into their bodies. This new technique is a major concern to everyone even North Carolina.

With research I learned that the North Carolinian general assembly recently passed legislator to approve fracking to happen in the Triassic Basin. This means all the fresh water that surrounds us could be in jeopardy of becoming contaminated. This is tragic because we have a lot of fresh water resources in that area. I love my state and myself, so I am not ready to have it more polluted than it already is. Also, I want to live a long life and die of old age not cancer. If you do not agree with me or my opinions do some of your own research and see if fracking is for the better or the worse. With this let us as North Carolinians gather knowledge about fracking and try to put an end to it . http://www.southernenvironment.org/cases/fracking_in_north_carolina 

Summary and Response to Civilization: A Vision for Human Occupancy of Earth in the Fourth Millennium by Roderick Frazier Nash

 “Island Civilization: A Vision for Human Occupancy of Earth in the Fourth Millennium” by Roderick Frazier Nash is basically a discussion about how Nash feels the world will be in a thousand years. He starts it off by saying that his ideas maybe controversial to some and they may disagree. If so he challenges them to think outside of the box and create their own descriptions of how the world will be, but you need to have logical evidence and reasoning behind your theories.  Nash used this tactic to grab his audience’s attention and let their minds wonder how the world could be in a thousand years.  Then, he proposed four theories of his own on how the world would end due to human interference to nature and the wild.

The wasteland theory was the first of the four. It went into detail about how the earth would end due to a polluted planet. This is true in ways because today all you ever hear about is how the gas from cars is breaking down the ozone layer, or how we are dumping trash into the ocean. Once mankind realized what we were doing to our once aesthetic planet we tried to repair it by recycling and manufacturing cars that run on electricity. Needless to say it may be a little too late in my opinion.

The garden theory is where mankind uses its technological ways to better nature. This is false to me because as the years have progressed we have only thought about the human ways of life and forgot about nature. For instance as we advance technologically we take up more of the wild and nature. We do experiments with nature and its animals. We have forgotten that God put us here to look after the animals and show them compassion not dominance. As time continues to progress we may not have any food left to eat because we will be used all the resources we have.

The third theory is future primitive were mankind goes back to the homo sapient lifestyle of hunting and gathering to survive. This would be almost impossible to accomplish because of all the advancements we have made over the years to improve our own ways of life. Not to mention it would be a waste of all the centuries our ancestors put forth trying to better the world. We should not have to compromise our ways because of the wilderness and nature. We are the dominate species of the world and we let it be known with our improvements to Earth.

The final theory of Nash’s is Island Civilization. This being the main theory Nash supports the most. He believes we could drop the population to 1.5 billion people and learn to adapt to our surroundings. This is most absurd because it is almost physically impossible to decrease the world population to that much. There would have to be a mass genocide all over the world. Honestly I would like to have known how it would be to roam the wild and just let nature take its course. Unfortunately I may never know what the fourth millennium holds because I will not be living.

In reading this essay it helped me to realize that we change our world every day. Without us helping to reserve some parts of this planet as wild; someday it might all disappear. This would be tragic because God put it here for us to love Mother Nature as well as us. It all started with Adam and Eve disobeying God, so now we all were banished into the wild. Every day it gets worse. We may not have the wild animals to worry about but we do have each other to be skeptic about. Nash opened up my mind with his theories and now I will do my own reasoning for the worlds end or beginning.

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