Blog 2

In the first reading, "The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis", it talks about how the human race and religion have made it seem in such a way that humans are the dominators of the land, animals and all its inhabitants. This deep rooted ideology has created problems for mankind, when we look at the current ecological state and how we are working to restore it, but at the same time working with things that destroy it. It really shows that mankind has little to no idea what value and sustenance the environment has to offer. In one part it talks about how we have advanced in our farming methods, from a family owning enough land to sustain themselves, to a time where more advanced ploughs are used. But the new ploughs require more oxen to pull them, and so the land ownership developed to a point where the family with the most oxen owned the most land (as they could farm it all in the same time it took others) So we as humans had moved from a place where we lived alongside the environment to a time where we live on top of the environment, constantly demanding more of less and leaving more waste than it can handle. At the end of the reading it poses a question: "What is the 'purpose of nature?" I think that the purpose of nature is to (if we think of it as an object that we can observe) show us that it is possible to live without needing to leave things unused. That there is a way that you can create, use and dispose, things and still sustain yourself.

In the second reading, "A Sand Country Almanac", it talks about how there is a more deep meaning to what happens in nature, how (for instance) when we removed the wolves from most of the US, we thought that there would be more deer, and thus more game. Everyone would be happy and we would all win, well this was true for the first little while, the deer population soared and then the land started to suffer. The trees and low shrubbery were wiped out by the massive deer herds coming in and eating everything. The system has only started to recover from that impact because we have started to re-introduce the wolf population back to the land. Here lies Aldo Leopold's land ethic, an ethic that implies that the land is not something that is a resource to be used. But in fact it too is a living and breathing organism. The land ethic implies that the land should not be forgotten when decisions are being made, it too has a crucial part in the life and death of everything that it supports. At the end of the chapter it asks a question; "What is the basic lesson of Aldo Leopold's 'Thinking Like a Mountain'?" I think that the basic lesson of Aldo Leopold's essay is that although we think we will do something good for society and the land, we really need to stop and think deeper and realize all the different things that our decision will affect, and how it will affect them.

In the third reading "Climate Change: The Physical Science Basis" it speaks on how since the major industrial revolution, humans have been polluting the air and the earth. It talks about how since that time we have been getting worse and worse, and most unfortunately it is not on a linear scale, no it is more on an exponential curve. This greater amount of pollutants that the human race is outputting is showing no signs of slowing down. This reading was really an analysis of how certain elements and compounds are becoming more apparent in the atmosphere, and these compounds are not the greatest things to have hanging around in the air. The study then goes on to talk about how there has been recent disruptions in the climate "Climate Change" this study works to find and prove a correlation between the two. It even goes as far to predict the future of how the climate will be affected. At the end of the paper there are some critical thinking questions one of them is: "What consequences can we expect from global warming?" My answer to this is, that this can not be a set in stone answer, for all we know the ozone layer could deplete and the earth could be fried by incoming UV rays, there could be an increase in seismic activity or other natural disasters. There is only one thing for certain tho, if we do continue polluting as we do the earth and its activities are going to rapidly change.

In the fourth reading "A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030" it talks about how the entire world uses power, how we are creating new technologies that need power, and how we are powering those technologies. The main problem with our current energy generation techniques are that they are already in place and it costs too much to implement new energy production plants. The reading talks about how there are WWS energies, Wind, Water and Solar. The current maximum energy production in the world is stated to be something around 12.5 Terawats, according to the U.S Energy Information Administration. With the creation of WWS and removal of fossil/nuclear energy sources the total energy output is something like 620TW (M. Jacobson, M. Delucchi) At the end of this reading it asks "Over the years, society has spent enormous amounts of money to build the current energy system. Why does this make it difficult to change to a new energy system?" I think the answer to this is, that we are used to what we have now, and it is working so why should we change it? This mentality of the public is what is keeping the current energy system in its  state of non-change. Sure over the years there have been modifications to the current methods but it has really stayed the same, this new path should be taken and made as a concern to the public, let them see why the new energy is the way to go. Make it simple for them, and the rest will come!

For the activity i watched the "Being a Caribou" documentary there was a couple that decided that they were going to go and follow the porcupine herd, and 'become a part of the pack'. The journey took them across the Canadian Yukon and into Alaska, 2343 miles on the road and 1500 KM on foot, just to raise awareness of the caribou herd that is going to be affected by the possible future drilling for oil in the north western part of Alaska's Artic National Wildlife Refuge. Once the duo got back to the capital of the US to tell their story, they were not accepted as they had hoped. They went and spoke to people at the capital and the story they told was just shrugged off. Now they are on a new trek, a trek to get the people of the US to care and know about the herd, to get the citizens of the US to lobby the government. My impressions of this documentary were that of interest, at first i was not too sure what was going on, other than that they were following the porcupine herd's migration to the calving grounds. The video did not quite strike a chord with me, as i didn't really grasp what they were doing until the later part of the video. It was an interesting documentary that is for certain, but not something that would motivate me to get into action over the fate of the herd. Now this is an older documentary (2004) and a lot has since changed, but the future of the caribou is never going to be set in stone.

This class over the past couple weeks has really opened my eyes to the sorts of things that people will do for a buck. The way that large oil operations are willing to avert attention from big oopsies to make their image look a little better in the public eye. This is going to be an interesting class in that i am interested to see how i will mentally develop in my opinions in different sides of all arguments. In class there were some blog reflections to go over, one was about the Albertan tar sands, and what sort of a future I'd like to see with them. Well my answer is kind of off topic, but i think it still applies in this instance. I would like to see the entire earth go WWS (Fourth reading) therefore not having much of a need for the oil sands, and thus we can leave them alone. Other oil platforms that are able to cheaply  extract and process oil can be used for the few lasting things that actually require oil and fossil fuels to run.