Blog 1

     In the first reading, “Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed” it talks about how societies of the past have failed and how they left behind only the things that once made them look mighty, the heads on Easter island, the great pyramids and the ancient temples the Mayans and Aztec people left behind. It looks at the reasons that these societies failed and it notes on the environmental effects that could have led to the demise. Also looking into the decisions that people could have made, what decisions were made and how we as a current societies need to look upon the past failures and learn from experience. We have choices and decisions to make and many will not be easy, but they need to be made or else we may just end up like one of the past great societies.. Great buildings and ruins that just hold a haunting beauty. At the end of this reading it asks; "Are societies that damage their environment doomed to collapse? Is ours?". My answer to this question is that of three parts; to what extent is the damage, how long the damage has happened (and the extent of the damage over that period) and what are the people doing about the current situation. If the damage done is so bad that not even with the current technologies they cannot even help the environment recover they are lost, if that damage has gone on at a high rate for a short period there is a strong chance that they can slow and turn around the damage done to their environment  If the people are doing nothing to help the environment then of course they will fail, resources will be depleted, land will be destroyed, water will be polluted and species will move away or die. And the final part of the question, "Is ours?" I think that we have a chance to slow the damage to an extent where we can work on getting a solution to our problem figured out, but we will never have the earth back to what it was once like. This optimism of mine can only show as long as there is actual progress in these areas. Because if someone is being pushed by a ball rolling down a hill, and they do not push back and yet expect the ball to return to the top of the hill.. well it just won't happen.

     In the second reading, "Human Carrying Capacity" it starts off about how the inhabitants population, on easter island were, growing in size and how they started to use up all of the resources on the island. Then suddenly there was a great decline in the population. The inhabitants started to fight (with themselves or others it is not known) but within the years 1722 and 1774 there was a great depletion in the population on the island. Thus started the idea of the human carrying capacity of the island. The inhabitants used the island for its resources until it could no longer provide for them and then the population crashed. They talk about how the easter island can be used as a micro model for the earth and its inhabitants  We are using resources at a much faster rate than they can regenerate, so when will our turn come to crash. When will the human carrying capacity of the earth fully show itself. At the end of the reading it poses a question, "In what sense does the Earth not have a single carrying capacity for human beings?" My answer to this is that how the usual carrying capacity works is, when an area of human occupation is no longer able to support the human populations. But in this day and age if we run out of resources or any other commodity we can just import it from another region or country. Thus the Earth does not have a single carrying capacity for humans but several, and the question that is being asked by some is, when will they all run out.

     In the third reading, " Tragedy of the Commons" it tells a story of two herdsmen each share a single pasture with each other and others. One day one of the herdsmen wants to be more profitable and so he wants to add an animal to his herd. So there are two parts to this, a positive and a negative. The positive is that the herder gets another animal and therefore more profit, the negative however is that that animal is now grazing on the pasture and so there is that bit less for the other animals to eat. This trend continues, the herdsman adding more and so the other herdsmen see him adding an animal and so they add more animals until the land is no longer producing for the animals. So the good that came from adding an animal to the pasture came with the ultimate demise of the shared pasture system. This idea can be applied to several other situations including those that go on in every day life, like pollution, consumerism, breeding, and working. (too much of a good thing can be bad) At the end of the text it asks: "Why should people not have as many children as possible?" I think that people should not have as many children as possible because the Earth is currently pretty full. The lives that us westerners live is not one to take for granted, the immense amount of resources that we use each and every day is beyond imagination. To bring more children into the world than it can currently support is not a good idea. I believe that each family should only bring into the world as many children as the number of parents in the relationship there are. This enables the human population to level off to a point where we as a species can figure out a way to live on this planet without 'driving it into the ground'.

     In David Suzuki's "The Sacred Balance - Gaia Hypothesis" it talks about how the Earth is a unique planet among the ones in our solar system, how the earth is the only one within the solar system that has the capabilities to support and drive life. James Lovelock (the chemist that David Suzuki spoke to) saw the earth as an entity and not an object, and he called that entity after a the Greek goddess Gaia, the mother of the earth. It then went on to show that the human race is using up the planets resources, the only planet around that can support life. We as humans have started to destroy the earth's processes that keep the life within it going. This video really made me think, it made me think about how we really don't see the destruction and erosion of the resources that we use but we know what we are doing, and yet we continue to spend and consume. The idea that we as humans can live with harmony with the environment is a great thing to envision, but with our current ways and consumption we will never be able to reach that ideal dream, we will continue down this mountain side into the darkness of the future.

     This class has so far been quite a class where i think, a class where i can wonder about what I as a human can do differently to make my own impact on the world. What i can do to help the environment recover, and not only the environment in my backyard, but the environment in every part of the world. It has been wondered what humans do that connect them to nature, or what makes humans feel more connected to nature. My thoughts on this is that its the essence of silence. The void of any human made noise, the airplanes that fly overhead, the cars that idle beside the road, the trains that rumble across the landscape. All of these things are noise, and when they are not present a human (lest I) can really get in touch with the 'inner self' and feel that connection to nature. When that silence is around i really see what nature has to offer and all its little working parts. And on the same note one can become disconnected from nature when they hear those sounds again, when they are brought back into the busy lives that they need to live to make way in the human world. A person can become disconnected from nature when they start to think about what they need to do to satisfy their human life, what needs to be done to drive the human life. If a person becomes too disconnected from nature they may not preform as they once did. They will be stuck wondering where their human life will lead them, where they will end up  And with this they have nothing to step back to and just relax, let the worries go away and not need to worry about anything, because they are in the lap of Gaea  Its been asked where my environmental ethics lie. I feel that the best ethic to follow is the Ecocentric, this is like the utopia for all ethics. The ecocentric ethic is where one feels that the integrity of the ecosystem must be held at high, if there is an invasive species them that species must be gotten rid of. Everything that the ecosystem held prior to human contact shall be held as the native species. Species that may try to wipe out other species within the ecosystem, they are important in one way or another. Just because we do not see the connection the destructive species has to the ecosystem, does not mean that there is not one.