The Environment

In the Book Thresholds:The Environment by Bill Harris, he talks about changes in the world. Harris talks about how the earth can be considered a single organism just like people and trees. He also talks about how earth can be independent too. The main thing Harris talks about that is changing the world is the collapse of fisheries all over the world, people destroying the primary food sources and iron.

According to Harris Collapse is “worm and his co-authors define collapse as being when a part of the ocean where a particular fish species once plentiful and fished from has hit about 10 percent of its natural original population” (24). This quote means that collapse is when the fish species has about 10% of its original population, showing that when there are only 10% left of natural fish population fish are at there collapse. This has a huge affect on the world because fish in the water are dying and if fish continue to die less food will go around the world to eat. A Hole in the World

Another way that the world is changing is that people are destroying their primary source of food. This means that people are getting rid of their own sources of food by destroying the world. According to Harris “While changes in our atmosphere . . . may well, in and of themselves, make much of the planet hostile to human life, at the same time we are destroying the primary source of our food” (22). This quote means that even though the earth's atmosphere is making the planet hostile to human life, humans are also causing problems to the earth. People are not using the right about of nutrients when people first came to the world nutrient use was better, but as it excelled things changed through the world such as, fertilizer growth, iron use. The human body needs iron people according to Harris “become lethargic, don't sleep well, become depressed and tired, often gain weight, and are vulnerable to a wide variety of diseases”. (22). This quote shows that without iron life itself will be harder to survive in.

The movie The 11th Hour

In the movie The 11th Hour by Leonardo DiCaprio, economist, scientist, biologist and advocates discuss what is happening to the natural environment. The natural environment is earth and these people discuss what has been happening to it over the last hundred years. They go through many different things that can be the caused to why the earth has changed so much, but there are a few things that have changed the world to a great extent. Two main keywords that can be used for the world changing are deforestation, isolation and nature.

Deforestation is when forest are being cleared of the trees that are inside of it. Deforestation has had a huge affect on the world. 90% of the world's forest have deforested over the last hundred years. That means that out of 100% only 10% natural trees are still alive. That affects the world by a great amount because the life forms living on earth need trees for oxygen without any trees it is harder to breathe. If every tree in the world dies out people will also die because of lack of oxygen.

Another problem that affects the world a lot is isolation. Isolation is when something or someone separates their selves from others is something else. People live on earth, but even though they live on earth they isolate themselves from it. People don't realize that earth and nature was here before people were. People take advantage of the world that is in front of them and just change it into what they want. Instead of co-existing with nature people separate themselves from it and try to control it. Nature does twice as much work for free then the ecosystems do, but people still isolate themselves from it and try to ignore it. If people continue to isolate their selves from nature then they will worsen the world because they are not learning from it.

The last problem is nature. Nature is the trees, grass and bushes that are in forest and around the world. The main problem with nature being around is that people don't seem to realize it exist. People are not realizing that nature should be treated fairly too. Nature is taken advantaged of and stead of people respecting nature they use it and do what ever they want with it.

A Hole In The World

In the article A Hole In The World “The Bp disaster reveals the risk in imagining that we have complete command over nature,” by Naomi Klein, she discusses how BP does not take credit for the oil spills they created and that the oil is endangering species in the water. An Oiler named Matt O' Brien believed that “We don’t need to hear this any more. We just don’t trust you”. This means that oilers are tired of hearing that Bp will figure out how to fix the spills in time. The oilers always hear how things will be changed, but now they no longer believe BP or any one else who say there will be a change in oil. Oilers are the school’s unfortunate name for its sports team.

A huge problem with oil is once it hits marshes there is no way to get the oil safely out of. This also in dangers the species that live in the water because the species can’t survive in oil. Klein mentioned “The larvae of countless species for which the marsh is a spawning ground-shrimp, crab, oysters and fin-fish-will be poisoned.” This affects the species and can possible kill them if they get poisoned. This problem could have been prevented once the oil spilled, but instead of doing something about it BP chose to only say they would do something, but never did.

In the text The Party’s Over by Richard Heinberg he discusses the central role of energy as a resource. Energy is the ability to do work. According to Heinberg “Without energy, nothing happens,” p.10. This means if there is no energy in human life than nothing will occur. Energy is needed in life because energy is the main source of all things. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be transported or transformed in many different aspects, but it cannot literally be transformed into something different. Energy can be manifested into various forms: nuclear, mechanical, chemical, thermal, electromagnetic and gravitational; these different forms can be converted from one form to another. The issue with energy being converted is that it is often dissipated.

Dissipated means heat. Dissipated energy still exist, but it is barely found and when it is found or used it is often scattered making it less valuable then it once was. According to Heinberg “If we could gather it up and re-concentrate it, it could still work for us; but the act of re-concentrating it would itself require more energy,” This means that people could work together to gain it, but the only problem is it would waste more energy trying to gain it then to probably use it.

Energy is a huge resource that people need to survive, but it is always being lost. This leads energy into entropy. Heainberg states that entropy” It takes work-thus energy-to keep chaos at bay,” Meaning if we continue to use energy with out thinking about it then chaos will occur.

The Long Emergency/Maya Collapses

In the Book The Long Emergency:"Sleep walking into the future" by James Howard Kunstler and the text Maya collapses by Jared Diamond both authors discuss the fall in oil in a different matter. Diamond defines Maya collapses as particular cites becoming powerful, loosing that power and then regaining that power without any significant change. Where as Kunstler says America is sleep walking into political disorder that they do not seem to realize. Diamond believes that problems around the world are based more on greed and power then actual change. Kunstler goes against this because to him America is running on cheap oil, which is natural supplies that underlie everything people identify in modern life, the denial of Americans and The long emergency which is a harsh view of the decades ahead and what will happen in the U.S and people cannot stand too much reality.

In Maya collapses Diamond goes through the text explaining how people in the world aren’t in a collapse consuming everybody, he mentions how the people who are in a collapse can just get out of it and put other people in one. He goes on talking about how even with different places being in collapse it is not causing a real significant change in the world (meaning different places may gain more power, but every one is still on their feet just a step lower then others). Power is also a part of this version of collapse that Diamond discusses. When a place has more power then the other place with power it is not in a collapse and the one without power is. Diamond believes that there is a problem with the world, but he doesn’t believe it is fully falling a part; where as Kunstler who wrote The Long Emergency disagrees.

In The Long Emergency:Sleep Walking into the Future, Kunstler goes through this explaining how people in America are sleep walking into the future, meaning they are walking into a dangerous area and still taking those extra steps without realizing it or accepting it (denial). Along with walking blindly into the future, they are relying on cheap oil, and falling into the Long Emergency ahead. Kunstler believes that America is falling into Long Emergency which means a harsh time that will occur decades ahead from now and if America doesn’t stop wasting cheap oil and accepting this crises then they will never get out of it.

The Limits of power

In the story The Limits of Power by Andrew J. Bacevich he discusses how America is for the name, but not the people within it. Throughout this exertion America is being thought of off of the Declaration of Independence from Thompson Jefferson. The declaration of independence is mentioned as a great law confining declaration, but yet it also shows throughout the article how rights and regulations were not through roughly followed. Over time America has rearranged and redefined the way they want the declaration of independence rights to be using their own sense of want for rights and nobody else.

American people are proud to say that they do all these individual hobbies, but the issue is they say these hobbies, but it does not define being a real American. On page 16 Andrew J. Bacevich states that “Liberty and the pursuit of happiness centers on a relentless personal quest to acquire, to consume, to indulge, and to shed whatever constraints might interfere with those endeavors.” Andrew is saying that people in America have hit the point that selfishness is changing people and becoming more important than needs of others and that people will stop at nothing to do what they want to. This form of selfishness according to Andrew has also lead America into causing wars and taking advantage of war situations. A quote that left a good impact within this writing was “The ethic of self-gratification threatens the well-being of the united states.” (page 17, Andrew). This quote is saying that the selfishness of America is what will be its down fall in the near future.

World war two was a big thing with in this article because it talks about how America rose through the situations and problems that occurred, but they weren’t as great and innocent as the war portrayed them to be. America had African Americans within the country that had no idea what freedom of speech or free rights were, but yet they portray themselves as such un-selfish people, but all the evidence is right in front of the world that proves them wrong.

" Collapse " Summary

In the documentation “Collapse” by Michael C. Ruppert, I learned that the collapse he was referring to is the oil lost in the world and if people don’t start trying to help save the environment then we will start a new life for humans because we will no longer have oil to provide or lights, gases and transportation. Throughout the documentation Michael discusses how people are in life and how politicians and people with money knew all about the possibility of running out of water and causing a lot of damage to the world. I also learned in the movie that there are many ways that we can still manage to save and keep fertilizer around without having to worry about burning oil. This is a big struggle that the world is facing how can we rise through this collapse if everyone is choosing to ignore it. One problem I realized through the movie is that even though people see all these problems occurring they do nothing to try to help change or fix it. The CIA was smuggling drugs through cops and Michael kept reporting it for years and eventually people started to believe him, but it continued because nobody actually tried to stop it Michael was a police officer and he did what he could to report the situations occurring in the world for over thirty years; he even brought it to the government, but they refused to listen.

One specific quote that made me think a lot about was by saint timothy and it said that the love of money is the root of all money.” To me this quote fits in well with this whole entire document because the greed and selfishness of people in the world have led us to this form of depression with loosing oil. Everybody faces struggle, but if us as a people actually tried to make a change and start saving oil it could help, but all of that is being ignored to fight wars, build more transportation, but what about animals and other life forms isn’t that important?